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Preemie Books
The
Preemie Parents Companion: The Essential Guide to Caring for Your Premature Baby
in the Hospital, at Home, and Through the First Years by Susan L Madden M.S,
William Sears MD, Jane E Stewart MD
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Reprinted
with permission from John Zakour Throughout your wife's pregnancy you are bound to hear countless words of pregnancy jargon. Here is a handy guide to what those words mean. 1st Trimester: when your wife doesn't look pregnant but acts it. 2nd Trimester: when your wife looks pregnant but doesn't really act it. 3rd Trimester: when your wife really looks pregnant and REALLY acts pregnant. Fear her. After Birth: kind of looks like the blob. Amniocentesis: something you should be glad you never have to go through. Amniotic sac: kind of like a really flexible football padding that covers the entire unborn baby. Apgar score: one of the thousands of standardized tests your baby will take throughout his or her life. Beer: something that when consumed in quantities often leads to pregnancy. Birth canal: chances are you're pretty familiar with this already. Birthing room: a room in a hospital made to look like it's not a room in the hospital but a room in your house (especially if you keep forceps around the house). This way you'll feel more comfortable and they can charge more. Braxton Hicks Contractions: warm up for the real thing, kind of like the pre-game show. Breach baby: butt first. Breasts: what you and the baby will be competing over for awhile. Cervix: chances are if you are reading this, you already know this one. Cesarean birth: just be glad you're a man. Colostrum: it looks kind of gross but never tell your wife this. Contractions: the things that hurt. Craving: really really longing to eat something that seems really really bizarre to a non-pregnant person. Crib: the thing you'll be spending most of your nights awake by. Death Threats: you may get a couple of these from your wife throughout the course of labor. Don't sweat it though, very few wives follow up on these threats. Delivery Room: what the hospital will charge you for. Delivery: what the doctor will charge you for. Diaper: a cloth or plastic like object that you will grow all too accustomed to. Dilation: the cervix is normally closed which is a good thing--except when the baby needs to come out then the cervix needs to dilate or in less technical terms--spread apart or slowly expand so a baby can fit through it. Due Date: the date your wife's doctor is going to be vacationing in the Bahamas. Fainting: what happens if you look too close at the wrong time. Football: something that when watched in quantities often prevents pregnancies. Actually it often prevents attempts at pregnancies. Gynecologist: a doctor who gets paid to look at things in women that you would get arrested for if you tried to look at. Headache: the one symptom of pregnancy that actually continues and increases as the child is born and grows. Hormones: chemical messengers released by the body that make you either craze the opposite sex or seem crazy to the opposite sex depending on your point of view. In-laws: people who will tell you everything you are doing wrong throughout this pregnancy. Kegel exercises: special exercises for pregnant women that will help prepare them for child birth. (Though screaming at the husband is technically not considered to be a Kegel exercise.) Knife: something your wife may talk about using over and over again on you as she experiences the joy of child birth. I believe this is called the Bobbit syndrome. Labor: pain. Lamaze classes: classes where you go to learn how to do something humans have been doing for roughly 5 million years without taking classes. Medical Insurance: if you don't have this you really shouldn't be reading this. Morning sickness: barfing, throwing up, tossing your cookies and the general nausea your wife may or may not go through. If you want to relate to your wife just think back to the morning after your first beer blast. Mucus membrane: trust me, you don't want to know. Nurse midwife: a nurse trained to deliver babies. Midwives have been around since babies started being born only now they are becoming kind of trendy making them cooler and more expensive than they use to be. Ob/Gyn: a doctor who is both a gynecologist and an obstetrician; thereby making more money. Obstetrician: a doctor who specializes in helping baby's enter the world. If all goes well he or she basically just catches, cuts, and charges. Placenta: looks a lot like the blob on TV. It usually follows the baby out of the mom--it's really funky looking. Quickening: the first movement of the baby that the mommy can feel. Once it starts, it grows stronger and stronger until it seems there is a full blown football game going on inside there. Recovery room: if a pregnancy is especially tough (there are no easy pregnancies) the mom may spend some time in this room to be closely monitored while she regains her strength so when she recovers she'll be able to give you a good thorough beating. Rh incompatibility: a blood thing that is way beyond the scope of this book and my knowledge. Rooming in: a modern technique stolen from the cavemen that lets the whole family hang around while the mom goes through child birth. Sex: something that makes babies and what you won't be getting much of once the baby comes. Sleep: something you won't be getting much of once the baby comes. Smoking: no joke here--this should be avoided at all cost by and around pregnant women. Superbowl Sunday: the day you really don't want your wife to go into labor. Toxemia: something you don't want to deal with if at all possible. Ultra Sound: due to kind of old, but still kind of neat technology we can now use sound waves to create a pictures of the baby while he is inside the womb. This allows us to get actual baby pictures before we have an actual baby in our hands. Thus allowing us to really embarrass our children in later years, "look this is what you looked like when you were born." Ultrasound pictures do make lousy Christmas cards though. Umbilical Cord: the baby's life line while inside of the mommy. Some "lucky" daddies may get to cut this once the baby has made its first outside appearance. Uterus: where the baby lives, grows, plays and generally hangs out for 9 months or so. Vasectomy: something your wife will threaten to perform on you throughout her labor. Video Taping: something your wife will probably kill you if you do. Water breaking: if you are in the car when this happens ACCELERATE!!!!!!! Wet Nurse: a nurse who tries changing a newborn baby at the wrong time. Womb: a nicer way of saying uterus. About the author: John Zakour is a web coordinator/freelance writer/part time graduate student in Human Behavior who use to be an emergency medical technician. He is qualified to write a book such as this as he survived the very experience he is writing about. Visit his Web site at http://www.ss-24-7.com or E-mail him at jmz5@nysaes.cornell.edu. John is also the author of The Plutonium Blonde (now available all over the place!) For more information visit his GeekToons site. Copyright© John Zakour |
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