Intrauterine Growth Restriction

Chances are that you've never heard of intrauterine growth restriction and that's okay because it's not that common.  If you want to get technical, here's the wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intrauterine_growth_restriction.  You can also Google it and read the horrifying articles.  Basically, it means that the baby was small, way too small, and had stopped growing.  How is this diagnosed?  Well, routine sonograms (check), but more importantly, they check your placenta and the umbilical cord to make sure that blood flow is normal.  Somewhere between this appointment and the previous appointment, blood had reversed-flowing from the baby back into me-and this caused the baby to stop growing.  My placenta was failing and the baby was going to die if we didn't get her out.  I was in my 30th week.

So the least professional doctor in the entire world is sitting across a conference table telling me all of this, still showing way too much thigh, and my mother bursts into hysterical tears.  She calls Dr. Dad who, on speaker, has a vaguely medical conversation (only vaguely on least professional's end-she even spoke to my dad like a Valley Girl), and then least professional attempts to give us directions to Valley Hospital (see, I told you she would try to give us directions-the directions were crap, by the way-my mother drove and I calmly navigated).  I didn't cry.  I barely even reacted.  I don't know how much of it actually sunk in, mostly because it was hard to believe anything this woman said to me while her boobs were staring at my face.

While navigating and remaining calm and reminding my mother to stay calm I also called hubby-he hopped a train out to Ridgewood.