So Much for THAT Idea

I conducted an unofficial experiment on the weekend...and what a spectacular failure it was. Due to a series of events too stupid to even blog about, I found myself without a prescription renewal for Diclectin - the sweet, sweet anti-nausea medicine that has more or less saved my sanity for the last 3 months. (And its funny I say that because even with the pills I've been violently ill most days, but I shudder to remember how bad I was without them.) However, the last few weeks I've been feeling much better overall, so when I realized I was without a prescription I thought I would try to see if I could go without the pills. HA! Needless to say after skipping my night dose, I woke up on Saturday morning and within minutes I was feeling so ill that I ended up having to skip the Parent and Tot swim class or else risk being the mother who throws up in the wading pool.

A few hours later, I'm talking to my mother, who has oddly been against the pills from the start - even though when the sickness set in and I was unable to keep even the tiniest amount of liquid down, she was actually considering cancelling their then-upcoming trip to Ireland out of concern for my well-being. Anyway, she seems to think that somehow my body has become dependent on the pills and that if I had never been on them to begin with, I'd be fine by now. I know she is wrong, but I decided to give her theory a try and skipped the pills that night too. Enter the spectacular failure - I will withhold the details, but it may be enough to say that after a short car ride I had to return home to change my clothes entirely - including my underwear. Needless to say, I went to the walk in clinic that afternoon to beg for a prescription renewal.

I guess I should have asked the doctor about my mother's theory, but ,while I'm sure she hasn't, I have thoroughly Googled the subject without reading any legitimately scary information. The Motherisk hotline thru Sick Kids Hospital is 100 per cent behind it, and my own doctor when she first gave me the prescription told me that no other drug has been tested as much as this and to, I quote, "not be a hero." But there is a kicker, according to Motherisk, the American equivalent of the drug was pulled from shelves 20 years ago due to a lawsuit claiming that takers of the drug had a high incidence of babies with get this...limb deformities. Sigh. However, it was later proven that the incidence was no higher than if you weren't on the drug. Still, the drug has never been reintroduced (although there is an American over the counter equivalent - a do-it-yourself concoction of Unisom and Vitamin B6).

So, while pregnant with Kieran I never so much as took an illegal aspirin and still he was born with 4 fingers missing, it leads me to an interesting thought...had i been this sick with him and been put on Diclectin (neither of which happened), I think I would have reacted quite differently to the news that the drug had been pulled in the States for limb deformities. I'm quite sure that I would have questioned the official diagnosis of the apparently totally random Amniotic Band Syndrome and instead blamed the pills which I so selfishly took at the expense of my poor defenseless baby. Or at the very least, have blamed the pills for causing the ABS. Even though I wasn't on any prescription medicine with Kieran I still question every cup of coffee, every time I stood needlessly in front of a microwave or even accidentally slept on my stomach during my pregnancy with him. I think any mother would. And I may well have hesitated to have another child, knowing that I might get that sick again and, as a result of my desperation, another child might pay the price. But I guess in pregnancy, just like in life, all we can say is that to varying degrees, sometimes the odds are on your side, sometimes they aren't.

In the meantime, I filled my prescription and am back to taking the pills because I'm quite sure that I, not to mention my unborn child, would not have survived the last few months without medical intervention. Fingers crossed though.