- Hey, y'all welcome back.
I'm Mama Dr Jones, a board certified ObGyn and mom to four,
and it's everybody's favorite time of the month.
Much better than that other time of the month,
where we review an episode of TLC's famously entertaining,
"I Didn't Know I was Pregnant"
and ruin it with educational commentary.
This is my new friend.
He doesn't have a name yet.
So if you have a great name
for the overwhelmingly pink bright bar fetus light
that I have now added to the background,
drop that in the comments down below.
This episode is excellent.
You will love it mostly because it includes a throwback
to yours truly, and the hypocritical recommendations
doctors sometimes make, both on the internet
and in real life.
I confess, I did that.
It was a bad idea.
Let's get past this because we really need to move on
and stop talking about my bad decisions in my own labor.
This video is kindly sponsored by Nord VPN.
We'll hear more about them in a minute.
(upbeat music)
- [Narrator] Christie is living with her parents
and raising her two year old son Casen.
- He's so cute. - As a single mother.
- I love that.
- He's just a great Kid.
- [Narrator] Christie's pregnancy with Casen
was very difficult.
- [Christie] I was sick every day.
I probably gained about 50 pounds
and I just felt huge and tired.
I had crazy stretch marks all over.
It was pretty miserable.
- I can relate to that feeling,
but it is also important to recognize
you're growing a human.
It's okay to feel different about your body,
and the changes happen really quickly.
Sometimes that is hard to mentally adjust to.
Don't be hard on yourself.
Your body is doing really important work.
- [Narrator] In March of 2009,
she breaks up with her boyfriend
and worries when she misses a period.
- I took a pregnancy test and it was negative.
I always used a condom.
So I just figure due to stress maybe I had missed my period.
And, you know, the following month, my period had come back.
- This is a common thing that people say.
I missed a period and then the next month it came back.
I know that's really confusing,
but you don't actually have periods in pregnancy.
We've talked about this many times.
You can have bleeding related to the pregnancy
because of the cervix being a little bit more sensitive,
or bleeding related to a subchorionic hemorrhage
or something like that, but not a period.
It probably would not come every 30 days
or whatever your normal cycle is,
but if you're not paying really close attention,
it may make you think, okay this is a period.
But usually there's some delineating factor
if you're really marking it down and following,
I won't say a hundred percent of the time,
but most of the time.
- [Narrator] Christie is taking full advantage
of one of the perks of living at home,
her mother's cooking.
- She makes really good cheeseburger macaroni.
- Who's ready for more?
I did notice she was not watching the portions
quite so much.
- I had gained from spring 'til about midsummer
15 pounds or so.
- Side note, there is not macaroni and cheese
like we have in the United States
available easily here in Aotearoa, New Zealand.
I really, really miss the Cracker Barrel brand
macaroni and cheese so much.
That was my pregnancy craving
when I was pregnant with my twins.
I work at a convenience store and I'm a cashier.
I also had to unload trucks
and carry packs of 32 ounce drinks.
I had constant back pain.
I was starting to notice that my eyes
were starting to go a little bit, you know, blurry.
I couldn't see the date.
But, you know, my mom and dad wore glasses,
and I figured I was getting a little bit older
that it was gonna happen sometime.
- We talked about this
in the historical pregnancy test video,
which by the way, it is an excellent video.
My favorite video I've ever made.
You do you tend to have more eye problems in pregnancy.
Dry eye, more blurry vision, vision changes
might happen in pregnancy,
and a lot of this is related to two things,
both hormone changes as well as fluid retention.
It's not usually really, really noticeable to most people,
but in some people it can be really significant.
It usually goes away after delivery.
- [Narrator] Christie's energy level is low,
but her Christmas spirit is high.
- I had gone Christmas shopping on December 4th.
I had worked, you know, really hard
to go shopping for my son Casen
- [Narrator] But suddenly, Christie is overcome
by an urgent and painful need to go to the bathroom.
- I was having cramps.
I'm in a lot of pain very quickly.
- Labor?
- It's coming on fast and strong.
- Did she just have one period after the missed period,
or is she saying she bled the whole pregnancy?
I'm confused.
I need more information.
Not enough information has been given to me.
- Called my mom into the bathroom
'cause I figure maybe she would know.
It hurts really bad.
- Maybe she's got a bladder infection or something.
- Her bladder infection had a heartbeat.
- [Narrator] Alarmed by how severe Christie's pain is,
Teresa decides that they should go to the hospital.
They immediately head out.
- Excellent decision. - And leave Casen
with his grandfather.
(suspenseful music)
- On the way to the hospital,
I'm driving because my mom can't see well in the night.
- Why? Why would you do that?
If you're in severe pain and you don't know why,
or really even if you do know why,
don't drive yourself to the hospital.
Have someone take you or call an ambulance.
And I do realize for long term viewers,
you are aware how hypocritical this is of me to say.
In actuality, not an emergency
and not an excuse to drive yourself to the hospital
in the middle of the night while you're in labor.
I confess, I did that.
Let's get past this because we really need to move on
and stop talking about my bad decisions in my own labor.
Don't drive yourself to the hospital
especially if you are in labor.
- [Narrator] True or false?
There can be up to six cups of amniotic fluid
that surround a full-term baby in the womb.
Your answer when we return.
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Now, let's get back to the video.
- [Narrator] Your answer, true.
A typical full term uterus
contains two to six cups of amniotic fluid.
- This is technically correct, but I find it so weird
that they worded it in cups.
Two to six cups of fluid.
What a bizarre way to put that.
I would expect it to usually be
in either ounces or milliliters.
Usually milliliters because it's a medical thing
and we use metric system most of the time, but I digress.
Average amniotic fluid is around 300 to 600 milliliters,
and normal is anywhere from about
200 milliliters to 1500 milliliters.
So six cups, if you must,
is getting to the higher end of normal,
but is definitely still a normal amount of fluid.
- [Mother] We're two miles from the hospital.
- Oh no, not now.
- The gas pump thing in the car is blinking.
- We're almost outta gas.
I'm gonna pull over.
- Okay, okay. That's fine.
- As a habitual, let it get to the bottom on E
and stay there as long as possible.
This is a really great argument
in my husband's favor for filling up
when you have a quarter tank left.
Don't any of you ever tell him that I said that.
- I come out and I started pumping the gas.
- She did the gas pumping too?
My gosh.
Why is her mom not helping out?
- And all of a sudden.
(actress screams loudly)
It's like a waterfall of, you know, fluid in my pants.
I was just completely shocked and confused.
- And at this point, did we go, maybe this is labor
or were we still not sure what was happening?
- Now I'm starting to get scared.
- Yeah, I would imagine.
- She gets back in the car.
Once I got really looking at it,
and it hit me like lightning that her water broke.
I was just believing, that it had to be that.
- Her mom figured it out.
I love that.
She's like, what else could it be?
Obviously, her water broke.
- She just looked totally surprised.
She's like, "But I'm not pregnant."
- I couldn't wrap my head around the fact
because how would you not know?
You know, that's not possible, really.
- I just had my period.
- I said I can't be pregnant.
I've had my period.
- Judging by how many people go on this show,
I will venture to say it is possible,
and I think watching some of these shows, we understand why.
And then sometimes we go, yeah, I don't know.
I'm confused.
- We need to get to the hospital.
- And the cramps started getting very quickly stronger.
- They're still not gonna call and ask somebody to take her?
- I realized that it was possible
that I was gonna be having a baby.
- Can you imagine how scary that would be?
Like it all of a sudden just hits you.
You're like, yep, I think you're right.
I think it's a baby.
- [Nurse] We have a woman in labor.
Just relax.
- They put me in this big room
and they're like checking the heartbeat.
I did feel guilty
that if there was anything wrong with the baby,
it would've been my fault because I had no prenatal care.
- Obligatory moment for every
"Didn't Know I Was Pregnant" video.
You do the best you can with the information that you have.
You took a pregnancy test.
It was negative.
You felt like you were having your period still.
You didn't know.
You can't let that guilt continue with you.
You have to give yourself permission to move forward
knowing that you did the best you could
with the information that you had.
- They examined her.
She was already three centimeters.
- Doctor, her last baby was a section.
- Okay, notify the OR.
- [Nurse] Okay.
- [Narrator] Because her last baby
was delivered by C-section,
Christie is prepped for the same procedure.
- You don't have to have a C-section
if you had a C-section last time.
You can have a VBAC or vaginal birth after cesarean.
This would be a situation where I would be
a little bit hesitant because we don't know
the gestational age, the size of the baby,
we don't know anything about her history,
she's had no monitoring during the pregnancy.
So it might make me a little more nervous.
It's not a hard and fast rule,
but it would be ideal in a situation
where the person can be appropriately counseled
and make an informed decision,
which is quite hard to do when you're actively in labor
with a baby that you didn't know was in your uterus.
- [Narrator] Just minutes later,
doctors deliver Christie's baby.
A seven pound boy.
(baby crying)
- [Christie] The next thing I know.
I hear him crying and the doctor's like,
"he's fine, he's healthy."
- They have an actual cesarean delivery tray open
although it's interesting that they're not using
any of their instruments at the point
that they've gotten to where they're delivering the baby.
Maybe they have special powers
and they can do their C-sections without any instruments.
That yellow tray is generally what they put sharps in.
Things that they have in that yellow tray
are supposed to be sterile on a sterile field,
and they're not sterile.
They're still in the package.
In real life, you wouldn't be able to put those things
which are suture packets into that yellow tray
because that would break your sterility.
But otherwise, quite similar
to what we would use in real life,
the one that has the white puffy thing on the end
is what we call a sponge on a stick,
which is a Ray-Tec or sponge on the end of a ring forceps,
and is used to clear your field if there's blood in the way.
Way over on the right side of the table
is a bladder blade
because the bladder and the uterus are side by side.
So we push the bladder out of the way
so that we don't cause an injury.
It helps us see the place where we need to make
the incision on the uterus more easily.
- He was a little bit early,
but his lungs were fully developed.
He was doing great, and I was very happy.
(soft calm music)
I think the best moment
was when I actually held him for the first time.
- I wonder how early he was.
- [Narrator] A seven pound boy.
- That's pretty average at least close to term weight.
- Completely in love with him from the time I held him.
- Baby. Aw.
- [Narrator] Christie names
her baby boy Christian. - Look how cute he is.
Oh my gosh, those little lips.
I can't handle it.
I always find it fascinating when they say
they immediately fell in love with the baby.
I love that people can do that,
but I also always try to add in
when we're having these discussions
that that's not always how people feel when a baby's born
even if they knew they were pregnant.
For me personally, when my babies came out, I loved them.
I would've done anything for them,
but I didn't feel that like starry eyed love.
It took me a little while.
I needed to get to know them,
and that doesn't mean you aren't bonding with your baby.
It doesn't mean you're depressed
or that there's something wrong with you,
or you'll be a bad parent.
It just, for some people, you wanna get to know them.
I always worry when they say things like that,
especially in these didn't know I was pregnant scenarios,
that people will be like, "That didn't happen to me.
What's wrong with me?"
And it's fine, you don't have to have that starry eyed love
to have a really wonderful
and just as equally perfect connection to your baby.
That was a super sweet video.
I'm so glad that she and baby Christian are both okay.
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(upbeat bright music)