Midwives Make Awful Clients

February 15, 2013

At 9 weeks I got my new doppler (my previous doppler was stolen out of my car along with my whole prenatal bag) and tried it out on myself just for kicks.  I had to wait until I needed to pee really really bad, and looked around for nearly ten minutes, but I found a fast little heartbeat.  The weird thing about being a midwife is that the sound itself isn’t magical and time-stopping, like it is for some expecting parents.  My first emotion was actually relief that if there’s a heartbeat, it isn’t a hydatidiform mole.  Seriously!?  A molar pregnancy is when egg and sperm meet up and divide, but the chromosomes aren’t right and it doesn’t divide in an organized way, basically forming a non-baby growth that can become cancerous.  Really traumatic and folks who have one shouldn’t get pregnant again for a long time.  But it’s so incredibly rare, there’s absolutely no reason why someone would even think of the possibility of having one (unless they had symptoms, of course).  In fact, most pregnant folks shouldn’t even know that it’s a thing at all.  But pregnant midwives do.  So until I heard that heartbeat, I was fretting that it could be a mole. And then I could move on to worrying about anencephaly. So yeah, midwives make the worst clients.

Tags: Personal

Author Bio: Jasper Moon, CPM LMT (they/ them)

Perinatal care specialist. Parent of two. Hosted three fetuses: my big kid, a surrogacy in the middle, and my little kid. Vegan; drinks a lot of tea. Board game (and general) geek. Goat hugger extraordinaire.

Read more about Jasper here.