Damned Doctors

Warning - pregnant stuff. Feel free to call me hormonal. You're all out of arms reach.

OK, so babies get bigger in the bellies and they start smooshing things around, down and up. The problem with "down" is that you have to go to the bathroom a lot, which interferes with sleep but is otherwise not a big deal. The problem with "up" is that your stomach gets pressured and forces stuff back up. Hormones that loosen ligaments up (that's why women's feet get bigger during pregnancy, I think) don't help with the reflux either, because there are ligaments in your esophagus. This is particularly unpleasant in the middle of the night when you wake up in a panic because you just threw up in your mouth a little bit, and it wasn't because you were having a bad dream about George Bush.

So. To stop the reflux, you can avoid certain foods - a LOT of "certain foods" - but after a while, that stops working. And besides, who knows what foods to really avoid - I saw a chart that said to avoid mashed potatoes but baked potatoes are OK. Whatever.

You can drink more water - but not too much. Avoid coffee/soda - not too much of a problem. Don't drink alcohol - also not a problem. Sleep with your head elevated - no problem, we have an adjustable bed. All of that works for a while, and then ... it doesn't.

Next? Take Tums. Lots and lots of Tums. That helps, until it doesn't anymore. Then it's time to take Zantac 150 twice a day, plus Tums. That appears to work. Yay!

Next problem. Pregnant women can get anemic. In particular, women already prone to low blood iron can get really anemic. About a month ago my nurse took blood for a glucose test (cuz pregnant women can also get diabetes), took one look at it and said, "your iron is too low." Didn't even test it.

Great. Have to take an iron supplement. Iron supplements are not great, because they have a tendency to cause ... um ... stuck-up-ed-ness, which is something ELSE that is not uncommon for pregnant women in the first place, so nobody wants to exascerbate the problem. BUT ... it's better than being anemic, because that makes you even more tired than you already are.

So, we take the iron supplement. We take our prenatals. We take our whole food supplements that should have plenty of iron in them as well. We take our softeners to counter the effects of the iron supplement. We take our Zantac and keep popping our Tums. We go back to the doctor and find out that our iron is STILL DROPPING, but hey, it's OK, because hopefully we won't need a transfusion at the hospital and everything will be fine. Seriously, she said that.

And then what do WE do? We decide that there has to be a reason why our iron is still dropping, so we look on handy dandy Google and guess what we find out is a very effective blocker of iron absorption?

TUMS! Antacids block iron absorption. Took all of two minutes to find.

Now, I know doctors have to know a lot of stuff and they can't possibly know everything, but shouldn't an OB/GYN know that two incredibly common pregnancy related issues have "treatments" that would interact like this? Or rather, that one treatment would have a pretty whopping effect on the other?

@$%&^#%$&. Gah.