In preparation for my MRI, the nurse asked, “Do you have an IUD?”
My left eyebrow said something along the lines of, “I have been asked my date of birth five times since I walked into this hospital, you know how old I am, no I don’t have an IUD.”
The nurse answered my left eyebrow with, “I ask everyone now, ever since I had a 75-year-old lady come in with an IUD.”
I didn’t say anything, but I thought, “You go, 75-year-old lady.”
The nurse continued, “I can’t think of why she had it. It had something to do with her hormones, she said, but she shouldn’t have had any hormones left at her age.”
I thought, “Maybe she had it in there so long that her uterus grew around it and encapsulated it like those trees that grow around bicycles.”
I suppose it was made of copper and didn’t react to magnets, so it didn’t keep her from getting her MRI.
After the MRI (#NoNewLesions!), I waited in a long slow coffee line.
I heard a woman behind me get on her phone and say, “Hey, I’m in line for coffee and it’s really slow. Can you give the lady in Room 5 a belly rub? You can? … Thanks … bye.”
I think I paused a whole half a second before spinning around to say, “Did I just hear you say belly rub?”
She explained, “I’m an OB-GYN nurse, and after delivery we rub the woman’s uterus so it stays in shape.”
Evidently this has been going on even in the last half of the 20th century, even during my birth, and like the geriatric IUDs this is the first time I have heard of it.
Tell me, did all of you get one of the special super-secret belly rubs?
6 responses to “TWIL: Two ways in which reproductive science has passed me by”
I indeed got the belly rubs, my kids were born in the 1980’s.
Kristie Gerulski – Now I’m wondering if they rub the uterus while the woman is still under anesthesia. Otherwise, wouldn’t it hurt?
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Later: I found a video!
https://youtu.be/xaGuOoeMA0A?is=oY1QtTKbq2kGMEAX
I followed along so I wouldn’t feel like I missed out.
No anesthesia for me, or epidural even. It probably wasn’t fun, but after the main event, not the worst pain! So long ago now I don’t recall.
Kristie – They say that mothers supposedly have retrograde amnesia and just forget the pain entirely. But I hope that was not true in your case, just that it was truly not awful. My Mom got the serious knock-out drugs and did not regret it.
It’s news to me, too, and I have 2 kids! (By c-section)
Rosie – well rubbing on a new C-section scar would be a very bad idea.