The Effects of Placental Calcification; Kim’s Story, Chapter Three
What did or didn’t the doctor know
about the effects of placental calcification
and why didn’t she share with us?
Kim’s Story, Chapter Three.
As we shared in the previous chapter of Kim’s birth story, Kim’s birth was successfully uneventful,
and other than induction and low birth weight,
we never received any inkling that the birth process of our beloved daughter wasn’t completely normal.
The term “placental calcification” was described to us in the birthing room after Kim was safely in my arms and pronounced a 10 on the Apgar.
That 10 was the factoid I latched onto, I guess.
If she was a 10, then what did placental calcification matter?
So most of what the doctor casually explained to us went by the wayside.
I wouldn’t remember, and realize the significance of that diagnosis, until years later.
Kim’s Story; Our Journey on the Spectrum
We’ve shared about Autism Spectrum Disorder before, here, here and here, but we’ve never told Kim’s birth story, the dawn of our journey onto the spectrum. Because when a child is on the spectrum, the journey involves the whole family.
To start at the beginning read this post, and then this one.
This begins “Chapter 3”.
What a birth consultant says
about placental calcification
”
…it was hard to know if the practitioner wasn’t fully informed on placental calcification at term, or wasn’t fully forthcoming about the non-clinical indications of that particular development in a healthy pregnancy.
To be sure, there are times when the benefits of an induction to rescue a compromised baby far outweigh the short and long-term risks of an induction.
Unfortunately, when trying to make an informed decision, clients often need to learn what their practitioners don’t know or won’t tell them. So let’s take a little tour of the placenta.
“
billieharrigan.com, consulting and education for the childbearing years
To be fair to our doctor, Kim was born in 1991, and so much more has been learned about the correlation of low birth weight and stress during pregnancy than medical professionals knew then.
Today calcification can easily be caught on an ultrasound. Did our doctor see it and not recognize it? Did she not mention it to us until after the birth because she herself didn’t know what it was?
Perhaps she didn’t know the ramifications of what was happening because it wasn’t known at the time.
It’s also possible that the doctor, like us, believed in the magic of the number 10. If our baby was a 10 on the apgar, that must mean the placental calcification didn’t apply.
What is Placental Calcification?
When I read about it now, I can’t believe I wasn’t more concerned about it when Kim was born.
But we truly believed we had dodged a bullet.
Yes, the placenta was half “dead” at the time of birth, and yes, the baby was low birth weight, but she was 5 pounds, 8 ounces, which didn’t require her to go into PICU. Actually, that birth weight was the cut off number. An ounce less, and they would have treated her as a preemie.
But when to all appearances we had a strong, healthy baby, we immersed ourselves in the beautiful life of a typical family. Two proud parents, two loving big brothers and a precious, tiny baby.
Here’s what the web says about placental calcification as it pertained to us:
”
When the placenta is not well, the baby is usually not well. When the baby is well, then the placenta is usually well. Sometimes, there are variations in the placenta that are more common in babies at risk and they might also be present in a healthy baby. So not all variations mean something is wrong every time…
One of the features of a Grade III [last weeks of pregnancy] placenta is that it often shows circular indentations that have calcium deposits (calcification). This is considered to be a natural part of the aging process in much the same way that our skin develops wrinkles as we age. And just as wrinkles in the skin of a person of any age doesn’t mean that this person is at risk of imminent death, neither does the appearance of calcification in a normal placenta at term mean that it’s about to expire (Harris & Alexander, 2000; Jamal et al., 2017; Nolan, 1998).
So where did this idea come from that calcification on a placenta meant it was dying?
This notion has come from the observation and study of preterm births of compromised fetuses. A compromised fetus that is born early often has a “grade III” placenta with significant calcification…
Only when there’s extensive infarction, meaning 10% or more of the placenta has died and been replaced by scar tissue is there an association with fetal growth restriction, fetal hypoxia, and fetal death, particularly if the infarctions occurred in the second and early third trimester (Mousa & Alfirevic1, 2000).
”
Billie Harrigan
In 1991, our doctor couldn’t have read any of the above, as it wasn’t printed until 1998 at the earliest. And since she was concerned about the low birth rate, she monitored me extensively. And the last couple of weeks intensively.
Our consensus
is that our doctor did all she could with what was medically known at the time.
Parents today would look on our story with pity, shaking their heads at the common ignorance.
However, we felt we were on the cutting edge of medical science. We felt fortunate to be having our baby in a large city hospital with the best obstetricians and pediatricians. And we felt confident they weren’t hiding anything from us. They couldn’t have known a lot of the things we’d learn later.
So in conclusion of this chapter,
let me repeat what I said before:
We returned home with our newborn full of optimism. We had a strong, healthy baby and we lived the beautiful life of a typical family. Two proud parents and two loving big brothers with a precious, tiny baby sister.
