The Sarah Palin pregnancy mess
I don’t want to get into all the tabloid type speculation about whether Sarah Palin or Bristol Palin is the mother of Trig Palin. Nor do I want to go into the just announced fact that Bristol Palin is currently pregnant. I will leave that to the others and I will take the stance that unless a blood test is given that we will just go with the name that is on the birth certificate (which I assume is Sarah Palin).
What I do want to go into is the decisions that Sarah Palin made as a pregnant woman. See, my wife is pregnant at the moment as well (it’s a boy) so I have become familiar with what you can or cant do in pregnancy.
Here is the initial article that describes what went on with that trip.
So lets go through the time line (and opinion of a doctor) of what Sarah Palin did while pregnant.
She claims she flew from Texas to Anchorage after she was having contractions and leaking amniotic fluid. This simply doesn’t make sense.
I am a physician and I deliver babies (my last delivery was about 36 hours ago).
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There is very little chance that a 44 year old woman who was pregnant with her fifth child would last 8 hours with ruptured membranes and contractions. Especially when the baby was approximately 4 weeks early; She would have delivered this baby on the plane.
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Playing the back seat doctor here, my advice would have been get in the car and go to the nearest hospital with a maternity ward. This is called Premature Preterm Rupture of Membranes (PPROM) and it is dangerous.
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10:30pm - Palin arrives in Anchorage (approximately 22 hours after membranes ruptured, you start to get worried at 12 hours).
11:30pm - Palin checks into Mat-Su regional in Wasilla, Alaska. (It seems kind of strange that she wouldn’t have gone to Providence in Anchorage which has the highest level maternity care in the state. You would want a child with genetic defects to be delivered in a bigger place with more services available.)
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If she knew her child had this disorder and got on a plane with leaking amniotic fluid, then she shows incredibly poor judgment.
First and foremost, my wife was told to not travel in the 3rd trimester. No air travel. What was Palin doing traveling to Texas on a plane in the first place?
Next, if my wife was having issues with her pregnancy, we would have never gotten on a plane. We would have went directly to the nearest hospital to make sure that she was OK. Ambulance to the nearest hospital: Good Decision. Airplane to hospital in Alaska: Bad Decision.
And that is the the bottom line here. We have a woman with several children already who, if we assume that her explanation of the facts is true, she made extremely bad (and risky) decisions about her pregnancy. These correct decisions would have been common sense but apparently she lacks the common sense to go to a hospital if something strange is happening with her pregnancy. Apparently she lacks the common sense to get a second opinion of another doctor if questionable advice is given. Apparently she lacks the common sense that would keep her from traveling long distances while pregnant.
So why should we believe that she has the common sense required to be our Vice President and be one heartbeat away from the Presidency?
And if McCain lacks the judgment to pick someone with common sense as VP, then why should we assume that he has the common sense required to be President?
Just sayin…