28 Weeks and Pre-Term Labor

I'll take a bit of time to share a little bit about the latest happenings...in the sense that this sort of thing could happen to anyone, apparently including this pregnant post-doc!  So, cutting right to the chase, here's the blow-by-blow of the events of the past few days!

Still not fully recovered from the news of last week, I think the stress of it all hit EVERYONE pretty hard.  There is no way of knowing how much of an impact that had on what happened/what is happening...I hate to speculate on that...but it's hard to deny that stress can manifest in physical ways.

At my 24 week check, I reported to the doctor that I was having Braxton Hicks contractions, but they didn't seem regular, and definitely not painful.  Occasionally, I'd have one that would throw me for a loop and stop me in my tracks, but it was less than daily.  Stress levels increased at work last week, and I noticed that I was having the same contractions, but the painful ones turned to once a day, to a couple of times a day.  Frequency picked up on Monday and Tuesday, and I was going through all of the things to try and calm them down (laying down when I could, sitting more, drinking lots of water, etc).  In fact, drinking water was making them WORSE, anecdotally speaking, but everything I was doing was not changing them.  But, at this point, I figured they were just BH contractions, benign and normal practice contractions.

Wednesday I almost looked forward to because I had a meeting with HR to discuss the terms of my departure.  I thought that having answers and a timeline would make me a bit more relaxed (so I could plan for the future).  Instead, no change.  I debated long and hard about just waiting until my 28 week appointment the next day, but decided to call the nurse just to see if there was something I could try to make myself more comfortable (and see if I was just missing out on doing something I should be!).  Instead, they had me come in, just to be on the safe side and be checked.

I had my appointment at 1:30, expected the standard vaginal check and figured I'd get a reassurance that everything was OK.  I wasn't leaking amniotic fluid (I didn't figure that I was, but hey, easy test!), and they were going to do a fetal fibronectin swab just in case (I also expected that to be negative).  Cervical dilation, well, I am a master dilator and when they start the checks usually I'm usually a pro in that department.  I don't know if I was shocked or not that I was, indeed, a cm or so dilated.  So, just because it was available, and possibly convenient, or she wanted a good measure, the doctor sent me to the ultrasound tech.  There, she found that my cervix was about 1.5cm dilated, but also shortening...down to 1cm in length, instead of the usual 3-5cm that they see at that point.  More as a precaution at this point, the doctor sent me with the fFN test to the hospital to get hooked up to contraction monitors and await the results of the test.

As a bit of a breather here, and summary...as each of these occurred, I kept thinking that I'd be heading home soon.  I figured I'd go thru triage at the hospital, maybe it'd show the 4 contractions I clocked each hour, mentally, get the test results and then go home.  Maybe it'd earn me a bit of time off of work and orders to take it easy.  Who knew.

Instead...the biggest piece to the puzzle came back, and adding up all of the changes that my body was undergoing earned me a 3 night stay in the hospital.  Fetal fibronectin came back positive.  I was contracting a few more times an hour than I thought.  Cervix dilating.  I was on track to potentially deliver SOON.

At which point, I was prepared for admission...IV started, first shot of steroids, magnesium sulfate to stop contractions.  I went from being uncomfortable from my belly having "false labor" contractions (or so I thought) to being hooked up to wires, tubes and monitors.  I was in pre-term labor...and it was the most serious thing I can ever think of happening to me, possibly in my lifetime.

(to be continued)

Topic: Pushed out of a Job

This doesn't pertain to me specifically, and I know the title of this post sounds horrible all around. When could a pregnancy push a person out of their job? What situations pose a particular job related hazard to pregnant women? I think of all of these things in the context of being a post-doc after I read this article. It's a starting point for discussion.

The article that I came across (and forgive me for not remembering how and when I saw it...I'll blame the mommy-brain on that) is titled Pregnant, and Pushed out of a Job

It's an opinion piece, and so I'm almost giving my opinion of an opinion, and giving my take on things.

Short summary of the article is about women who are somehow forced to leave their job because of something related to pregnancy. Since we all know that it's illegal to fire someone because they're pregnant, the collective we also know that there are ways around it. The article also discusses what reasonable accommodations for pregnant women are, how it would benefit employers to do these things, and so on.

I'll admit that when I was pregnant with my youngest, things were good. I have the type of job where I can get up and go to the restroom as much as I reasonably would like. That came in handy in the 1st trimester when I would purge the contents of my stomach there. The red bags in the lab were handy for that too (although nothing of real quantity landed in the lab biohazard). I could sit down, and I had a chair to put my feet up on if I needed to (or just felt like it!).

However, there were two things of concern to me as a pregnant post-doc. The first was biological/chemical hazards. The second was time spent off of work (for various reasons and in various capacities). Were accomodations necessary for the first one? I'll answer quickly with a "no". There was nothing about that that would push me out of a job. The second one I'll discuss a bit more.

Time spent off of work. I'll give mad props to my place of employment for having short-term disability available for maternity leave. I also like that other people can donate sick time. My problem came with just not having enough sick time, and that I'd inadvertently lost some sick time when the New Year rolled around (my bad for not reading the HR policy). My oldest son and husband had active MRSA infections that required some extra medical care on their part, and I was showing signs of pre-term labor (don't read too much into that...I'm an early and big dilator, which translated to having weekly appointments earlier than normal). As in a previous post, I mentioned how I kept research (as well as my mind) going while on maternity leave.

However, not everyone is so lucky. How many times have I heard of post-docs going back to work soon (think days) after their child is born? Too many! A fear that I might have would be if my job would push me out if I took too much time off of work to care for a newborn. Even if it didn't push me out, how does having a baby alter plans for grant submissions? Publications? 6 weeks doesn't seem like a lot of time off (and it's not, really), but in research, taking 6 weeks off might translate to twice that in catch-up time or planning for the leave.

For now, in my current position, I feel comfortable that I won't be pushed out of a job for being pregnant, or be pushed out of the competition because of having a child (or children) while being a post-doc.