On this episode of the Healthful Woman Podcast, Dr. Nathan Fox speaks with reproductive psychiatrist Dr. Esther “Esty” Rollhaus, who shares the first part of her personal fertility and birth journey: years of male-factor infertility and multiple IVF cycles during medical school and residency, culminating in a twin pregnancy. She recounts a harrowing delivery at 32-33 weeks complicated by an unrecognized preterm labor, an inability to breathe while pushing, and serious postpartum infections in both her and her newborn son, followed by a difficult seven-week NICU stay for both twins. The episode closes on a reflective note about the disconnect between the joy she expected as a new mother and the fear and emotional numbness she actually experienced.
“Esty’s Story, Part 1” – With Dr. Esther Rollhaus
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Dr. Fox: Welcome to today’s episode of “Healthful Woman,” a podcast designed to explore topics in women’s health at all stages of life. I’m your host, Dr. Nathan Fox, an OBGYN and maternal fetal medicine specialist practicing in New York City. At “Healthful Woman,” I speak with leaders in the field to help you learn more about women’s health, pregnancy, and wellness.
Dr. Esther Rollhaus, Esty, welcome to the podcast. Thank you for joining. How you doing today?
Esty: I’m great. Thank you so much for having me on.
Dr. Fox: I would say there’s, like, 13 people in my life who are taking credit for us speaking today, who are just like, oh, yeah, I connected you two and you guys have to speak and all these different emails and texts and this. I’m not going to shout them all out. A, because I’ll forget somebody and, B, because they’re probably all patients of yours. So, I don’t want to divulge that. But there are many, many, many, many people who have been just saying, “You have to have her on the podcast. You have to have her on the podcast.” So, here you are. Welcome aboard.
Esty: Thank you. Thank you so much. I’ve been listening to your podcast. It’s amazing. And thank you so much for the work that you’re doing.
Dr. Fox: Oh, that’s very sweet. I appreciate it. So, I guess, for our listeners, maybe you can let them know just high level, who are you? What do you do? Why are we talking today?
Esty: All right. So, let’s start professionally. So, hi. I am Esty Rollhaus, Dr. Esther Rollhaus, professionally. I’m a reproductive psychiatrist. So, what that means is that I went to medical school, psychiatry residency, which is adult general residency. I did a fellowship in child and adolescent psychiatry. And so, my specialty is in children and teenagers. And then after I finished, I did postgraduate education to really hone a specialty in reproductive psychiatry, which is the interaction between hormones and the brain, why periods of reproductive transition are periods of vulnerability for depression and anxiety. And I love to go throughout the lifespan. So, of course, there’s pregnancy, but there’s also puberty, monthly cycles, perimenopause. And so, all that is my jam.
Dr. Fox: And you work in private practice. You see patients in an office, on Zoom, the whole thing?
Esty: The whole thing. I see patients in person, usually for the first intake. And then we follow up via Zoom.
Dr. Fox: Terrific. And you have a family and you’re on the podcast. And one would think that we would just focus on reproductive psychiatry, reproductive psychiatry, and pick a fascinating topic in mental health and talk about that. But in fact, you wanted to pivot and actually tell your story, which is plot twist, which is great.
Esty: Plot twist, yeah. I’ve been listening to your podcast and I’ve been so inspired by the other people on it who have shared their stories. And not just you, but in other podcasts, there have been so many brave people who have come out and shared their own stories. And so, this is actually my first time sharing my story publicly. My friends know, a lot of people in my life know about it. But I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. And I do want to get my story out there because I think it can really help other people.
Dr. Fox: And what was it sort of that made you shift from not telling people your story to wanting to tell people your story?
Esty: Yeah. I mean, part of it is sitting with patients. And every patient comes in to me, they say, “Dr. Rollhaus, I’m really a normal person.” And I’m like, “I know. I know. And so am I.” And so, in psychiatry, we don’t have a practice of disclosing person to person. It’s not my story in the clinical encounter. But if this would be helpful to any patients out there who are like, I’m not normal, I’m not normal, this couldn’t happen to someone like me. I’m like, I know, me neither. I’m normal, too.
And this is my story. This is what has happened to me also. We’re all humans, all humans with brains, with vulnerabilities, with hormones, and with stories. And I think, encounter after encounter, listening to people, I’m always like, there’s so much shame. And I’m always like, oh, if you could just meet the patient before you or the patient after you, you would know you’re not alone. And I think, just hearing that, I’m like, well, you know what, is shame what’s keeping me from telling my story? And I think there are a couple of reasons, but that historically has been one of them. And I feel done with that emotion now. I feel done. I’m ready to get rid of that one.
Dr. Fox: I’m over it.
Esty: I’m over it. It’s a burden.
Dr. Fox: Yeah. No. Listen. I really appreciate that. And it’s interesting. I frequently said when I had people come on to tell their stories that, number one, there’s a lot of benefit to the listener, obviously, because you really get to understand and you get to really get insight into what someone’s going through and maybe develop knowledge, compassion, empathy, understanding, sort of maybe some practical skills and advice for how to interact with people who are struggling with mental health or with birth or whatever it might be. And so, there’s obviously such a value to the listeners. Plus a lot of these stories are just flat out fascinating, just really interesting in a sense, and inspiring, obviously.
But there’s also this tremendous value for the storyteller because when do you ever get to tell your story? Who the hell is going to listen? Who’s going to say, oh, yeah, I got 45 minutes, tell me your story. It’s so unusual. Maybe a really close friend or a family member. But most people don’t get a chance to tell their story. And it’s therapeutic. I mean, you tell me. You’re a professional, you’re a psychiatrist. I mean, it’s therapeutic to tell your story.
Esty: Yeah. Having a narrative to what has happened to you is so powerful. So powerful. And it’s like, okay, I have some uninterrupted airtime. I think, even people who know me in my current iteration of my life with my gorgeous husband, three children, my really, you know, thank God, thriving career might know that I’ve been through things, but don’t know the full story. And so, I’m almost like, hi, friend. Do you all just know what happened to me? Just catch you up on what has happened to me 10 years ago, just so that you know…give you context to this.
Dr. Fox: Terrific. Well, in terms of your story, I guess, we should start prior to having children and you’re sort of at a point in your life when you decide you are going to try to have children. Right? So, I guess, give our listeners a sense at that point in your life when you’re just making the decision, you and Jonathan, to have kids. Where were you in life at that time? Where were you professionally? Where were you geographically? What was your situation?
Esty: Mm-hmm. So, I was a medical student at the time. My husband and I got married relatively early. I was 22 when I got married, four days after graduating college. And so, I graduated. Four days later, I got married. And then two weeks later, I started an intro program to medical school. I don’t know if you’ve heard of this. There was a Mount Sinai program called the Humanities in Medicine Program.
Dr. Fox: I’m well aware.
Esty: Oh, are you? Okay.
Dr. Fox: Yeah.
Esty: So, that’s my alma mater.
Dr. Fox: Did you know I went to Mount Sinai? Are you aware of that?
Esty: No, I didn’t.
Dr. Fox: Yeah. I’m a graduate of…
Esty: It’s a great place.
Dr. Fox: …class of 2001.
Esty: Ah. What am I?
Dr. Fox: I’m older than you.
Esty: 2014. Yeah. I didn’t even know that. Yeah. So, I was a humanities and medicine student. What that means is people who are interested in humanities, who majored in humanities in college, were able to explore other majors, and then were selected for the ability to do medical school, but without having focused on science in the undergrad.
Dr. Fox: Yeah. It’s a great program. I mean, the valedictorian of my class was, I think, a music major from Williams. You’re talking like…
Esty: That sounds classic.
Dr. Fox: Yeah. And sort of the philosophy behind it is, yeah, it’s great to get a bunch of science nerds into medical school, but honestly, if you take anyone who’s bright and interesting, you can teach them what they need to know in order to start medical school because you don’t really need to know physics to start medical school or organic chemistry. It’s been a very successful program. Many great, great doctors have come out of that program.
Esty: Do you know what’s an overrepresented specialty?
Dr. Fox: Psychiatry?
Esty: Yeah, you’re right. Exactly. A lot of us become psychiatrists, which is not surprising at all. There’s a lot of art to psychiatry, not just the physics or orgo.
Dr. Fox: Fascinating. What was your undergraduate major, or what did you study as an undergrad?
Esty: So, I was a psychology major, which I think has really helped me in my career, really understanding the dynamics of the brain, not just the chemicals of the brain. And then English literature, which is so…I loved modernist poetry. I love the literature piece, too. I think it adds so much also to my ability to think and feel. And I do credit it with a lot of the humanism in my practice right now.
Dr. Fox: All right. Well, terrific. Okay. So, you’re married, you start sort of the medical school boot camp for those who didn’t take orgo. I know that program well. Okay. Good. So, that’s where you are to get married.
Esty: That’s where we are. We do not want to get pregnant right away. That’s super important. But I start thinking about it in my third year of medical school, kind of the lore is that the fourth year of medical school is the best time to have a baby. And we really did want to start our family. I am a very big planner. And so, I was basically…when I was designing my third year rotations, I was kind of like, okay, let’s put this in this order. So, I can be nauseous in the first trimester during this rotation, and then this rotation. And then essentially had this plan of like, okay, in fourth year, now, I am giving birth to a baby. And now, I have this number of months of maternity leave until I start internship. So, it was this very carefully crafted plan that most certainly did not go according to plan.
Dr. Fox: What rotation is it good to be nauseous during? I’m curious.
Esty: Honestly, I was thinking psychiatry, to be honest with you.
Dr. Fox: Not surgery.
Esty: Not surgery. You do not want to be nauseous during…you want to be in tip-top shape for surgery, physically.
Dr. Fox: Yeah. In psychiatry, if you puke in front of a patient, it’s no big deal. They’ll forgive you. Yeah, that’s cool.
Esty: Yeah.
Dr. Fox: Okay. So, you have your whole life mapped out, and it did not go according to plan.
Esty: No, no. So, we tried to get pregnant for a bit, and we realized that that wasn’t happening. And so, we needed to go get assessments. And we found out that there was male factor infertility that made it very unlikely for us to get pregnant spontaneously. And even with an IUI, an intrauterine insemination, it was very unlikely. We tried it twice just to kind of dot our Is, but I did not get pregnant from the IUIs. And so, we transitioned to IVF.
Dr. Fox: Okay. How’d that go?
Esty: Eventually, it was successful, but on our fourth try.
Dr. Fox: Fourth IVF.
Esty: Yeah, IVF. So, instead of kind of having a baby or maternity leave during fourth year, I was spending it doing IVF, which as you know, you have the early morning appointments, and it’s very stressful and also very hard to balance that with a medical school rotation because you have to be in IVF monitoring very early and kind of all of those things. And so, I was able to manage it, but it doesn’t have the same, let’s say, compassion or understanding as something like maternity leave where everyone knows what you’re busy with. And for me, I was kind of like asking the residents, can I come in just a little bit late, working very hard to compensate so that people would know that I was not lazy or not, you know, slacking, but really had this other very important thing going on.
Dr. Fox: Did the residents you were working with [inaudible 00:12:39] did they know it was because of IVF? I mean, were you…
Esty: I told them. Yeah. And we were open with our families about it and with our friends because we genuinely wanted the support.
Dr. Fox: Yeah. Okay. I mean, I tell people, IVF, it’s like a full-time job. It’s crazy.
Esty: It is. Right.
Dr. Fox: All right. So, you’re doing IVF, you’re doing this through your fourth year in medical school. And at what point was it successful?
Esty: It was actually successful only in my second year of residency.
Dr. Fox: That’s a long time.
Esty: It’s a long time, and it was multiple cycles. My husband had tried different medicines along the way. Ultimately, he ended up having a TESE, which is a testicular extraction. And those are our babies.
Dr. Fox: I mean, you’re talking, I guess, two to three-year period. And, obviously, you had also started your residency during that time. What was going on with you guys then? That’s a very stressful situation. I mean, you’re talking about two to three years trying to have kids, very demanding. It’s the most demanding time of your career for a lot of people during your training. How were you guys getting through that? Did you have to do anything else? You know, I’m just trying to figure out what that time period was like, if you even remember. Sometimes we block it out.
Esty: I blocked it out. I mean, what I remember about it was that it was so hard, and you just don’t know that it’s going to happen for you. And if I could go back and say, listen, it’s going to happen for you in second year, relax in the meantime or look fast forward to when you’re 38, look what your family looks like. But back then, we really did not know if we were going to be able to have biological children from both of us. And that was terrifying to us. We knew we really, really wanted to, but we wanted…we knew we wanted to have children even more than, you know, kind of just biological children from us. And it was scary. It was genuinely scary. Really not my favorite time. It was tough.
Dr. Fox: And probably all around you, family and friends are having babies left and right, you know.
Esty: Yes. And that was…and what we ended up doing, which I actually really recommend to people, we basically sent out an email to 70 of our best friends of reproductive age. And after a particularly devastating trial that didn’t take, we were kind of like, hello, this is what’s going on. Please stop asking us about when we’re going to have children. Please don’t say this, this, and this. We wrote an email about what we would like people to say. And it was actually really effective. It was really effective of like, listen, I’m so happy for you when you tell me you’re having a baby, but can you please text me or email me? Because I found those face-to-face conversations very, very difficult because there wasn’t space to acknowledge your own feelings when you’re hearing this, and you just want to present as happy and…happy for the other person, which you are. But it certainly sparks a lot of darker emotions like envy, doubt, jealousy.
Dr. Fox: Yeah. I would say…sorry, go on.
Esty: No. So, I preferred for people to tell us just in a way that I could process it and then reach out and say, oh, we’re so happy for you, which again, don’t negate each other. And that was something that I really struggled with that feeling of envy that is completely appropriate. You just want what the other person has.
Dr. Fox: Yeah. And I would say, in terms of the first part, a public service announcement to our listeners, PSA, never ask any couple when they’re planning on having kids. That’s probably just a question that should be off the table. Just don’t ask it of anybody. No good thing can happen with that.
Esty: No. If they’re working on it or they’re not working on it, but it’s really none of your business.
Dr. Fox: Hey, when are you having kids?
Esty: Right. Or also like, oh, enjoy it now. You know, it’s so stressful. Go on vacation. And this is like, no, this is not vacation time. This is pretty brutal in terms of the regimen of IVF. This isn’t so fun.
Dr. Fox: Wow. All right. This isn’t the…the things people say, it’s just delightful.
Esty: Oh, god. Yeah. And so, I’m actually really proud of us for just really putting out a public service announcement of like, you know, you might not know what to do or say for us. We ended up getting lasagnas and casseroles out of it. And I was really, really overjoyed with that. That was a beautiful outcome of like, right, it’s not just…you don’t just get casseroles when you have a new baby. Sometimes not having a new baby is a reason to get a casserole.
Dr. Fox: Depends on the casserole, I guess.
Esty: That is actually a good point.
Dr. Fox: All right. So, your second year residency and you ultimately get pregnant. So, tell us about that.
Esty: And we get pregnant with twins.
Dr. Fox: All right. Game on.
Esty: Game on. So, we put on two embryos…put in two embryos. That was almost just…oh, our friends are on their second babies. We just want this to work so badly. Let’s double our chances. And that did set off a cascade that we’re going to talk about, you know, premature labor and a lot of NICU difficulties. But we are thrilled to have our twins [inaudible 00:18:05] we’re thrilled to have our twins. But it was a very difficult pregnancy. We knew that there was a risk for premature labor. And for me, never having had a positive pregnancy test before. So, I have a lot of anxiety about pregnancy and about what that means and about loss. And so, I’m going through the whole pregnancy week by week. I remember I once even…you know the things of like, your fetus is the size of an avocado. Your fetus is the size of a peach. Right?
Dr. Fox: Yeah.
Esty: I would only look at it the day that I turned that week. I would never go ahead. It was superstitious. But looking back, I definitely had clinical anxiety back then. I didn’t know it. I just thought that that was like… I mean, there was a preciousness to this pregnancy that I couldn’t tolerate the thought of losing. But clinically, that was anxiety.
Dr. Fox: Yeah. Did it impact your day-to-day? I mean, obviously, being pregnant and pregnant with twins impacts your day-to-day life, obviously. But did it impact your ability to be a resident, to do the things you had to do to interact with family and friends, stuff like that?
Esty: At that point, no. That part’s coming up. During the pregnancy, I would say that there wasn’t functional disturbance, meaning I was anxious, there was a lot of internal distress, but externally, I was functioning okay, which is actually something that I look back on and I’m like, I tend to do that. There might be some internal distress, but kind of as a resident, as a medical student, you kind of stuff that down, and the show must go on.
Dr. Fox: Right.
Esty: And so, I would say, internally, I was quite distressed, quite anxious, but getting through the overnight calls, getting through the consultations, just doing it and going forward, I think, with clenched hands.
Dr. Fox: Right. And on the plus side, when you were nauseous, at least you were already in psychiatry.
Esty: See? There you go. It all worked out.
Dr. Fox: So, how did the pregnancy go? I mean, twin pregnancies, they can be smooth, but they could be rocky, obviously.
Esty: Yeah. I would say that the pregnancy itself was smooth, that there weren’t necessarily significant complications except that it ended too early. So, around week 32 or 33, I went into my OB and said, I’m having a lot of abdominal pain. I think they’re contractions. And unfortunately, at that point, she didn’t take that seriously. And she was like, that’s probably gas pain. And I kind of knew deep down that this wasn’t gas pain, but I’d never been pregnant before, and that’s what the OB is telling me. And it kind of felt like there was nothing to do about it. And there was a part of me that was also in denial of like, yeah, I really hope this is gas pain, and kind of went home.
These “gas pains” continued for over a whole weekend where they kept getting worse and worse. And, obviously, at this point, we’re realizing that these are not gas pains. These are contractions. But again, because of that, it took me three days to actually present myself to the hospital. They started on Friday, and I basically showed up to work on Monday, actively contracting, being like, I’m ready.
Dr. Fox: Were you delivering at the same hospital you were training at or different?
Esty: Yes, yes. At Weiler. So, I was training at Montefiore. And so, it’s affiliated with Weiler. I basically drove from one campus of Montefiore to the…and I drove myself there. Again, kind of speaking to the sense of denial. I was not ready to have babies. So, this wasn’t happening. But unfortunately, that is what was happening. And I was, I think, about 3 centimeters dilated by the time I had gotten there. And so, they tried to arrest…they gave me steroids for the baby’s lungs, and they tried to arrest the labor, which then ultimately became successful, but only once I was 6 centimeters dilated. And then I essentially had an arrest of labor.
Dr. Fox: Right.
Esty: So, essentially, this lasted about…so, the total labor was about six days, four of which were in the hospital. By Thursday morning, I was begging them to just induce me. I couldn’t take it anymore. It was so, so unbelievably painful. And so, they did end up popping Nadav’s [SP] sack. He was the first one. And ultimately, I delivered them vaginally in the OR. But what had happened was that I wasn’t able to breathe during labor.
Dr. Fox: You were not able to breathe during labor.
Esty: Yeah. I was not able to breathe during labor. So, they would say, you know, hold your breath for 10 seconds, and push. And I could probably keep it for about seven. And apparently, you know, you never want to see wide eyes in your physicians as you’re delivering, where they look really scared. So, apparently, what was happening was that I was desat-ing. I was desaturating down to the 70s every time I was trying to push.
Dr. Fox: So, for our listeners, that means your oxygen level’s dropping to dangerously low levels when you’re pushing, which is unusual. I mean, if you hold your breath for seven seconds, your oxygen does not typically drop to 70%. It usually stays pretty normal. You don’t turn blue. Well, that’s a problem.
Esty: That’s a problem. They ended up… Something is wrong, but we ended up literally pushing through. Nadav came out first, and I got to have a moment with him where he was put on me. And I got to look at him and just love him up, basically. With him, it was a love at first sight moment. And I looked at his…I think they’re called milia, those tiny acne that they have on their nose. And I was like, gosh, this boy is so cute. Apparently, then they’re like, okay, next one. And okay, this part I don’t remember, but my husband remembers it very clearly. I was like, no, thank you. All done. Bye-bye. I already got one. I was in so much pain at that point. And they had cranked up the Pitocin that I was like, no, thanks about the second one.
Didn’t have a choice. Four minutes later, our gorgeous Kira [SP] was born. And she was born completely blue. So, I did not have a moment like that with Kira. And that is something that still pains me because she was whisked away right to the NICU as was Nadav because he was born early. But she didn’t even have a moment with me. They were incredibly concerned about her.
Dr. Fox: Right.
Esty: Okay. Then it’s me. It’s like, what’s wrong with your breathing? So, they’re in the NICU, they’re safe. But then it’s my turn and they go take me down for a CAT scan because they’re concerned about a pulmonary embolism. I don’t know if…for your listeners, that’s basically like a blood clot in your lungs that is very dangerous. Thank God I did not have that. But what I had was something called atelectasis, which was kind of like your lungs, part of your lungs kind of collapse if you’re not breathing deeply for a long amount of time. So, I was in labor for six days, in a lot of pain, and I wasn’t able to take deep breaths for that time because I was splinting. I guess, trying to guard against the pain. And the alveoli, the parts of the lungs had collapsed.
Dr. Fox: Well, that’s interesting. I would have guessed you had fluid in your lungs, but no, not true.
Esty: I don’t know. It could have been…I mean, six-day labors are just brutal.
Dr. Fox: Yeah. I would put my money on that, but okay. You know, I could be wrong. That’s cool. So, atelectasis it is. All right. Then I assume they fixed that and you got less blue?
Esty: Yeah. But then I was diagnosed with chorio. So, I spiked a fever. An infection. And then most traumatically, Nadav was then diagnosed with an infection.
Dr. Fox: Right.
Esty: So, I’m like, I have to breathe deeply at this point because this is just…it felt like it was never ending, you know? So, my husband and I got woken up the day after we had delivered, and the pediatrician comes to see us. And I was like, go away, please. I’d rather see an OB if this is an issue about us, but it was about that we needed to sign for a consent for a lumbar puncture for Nadav.
Dr. Fox: Oh. Yeah. Spinal tap. Yeah.
Esty: Because he was found to have sepsis. Yeah. Spinal tap. Exactly. And I was a doctor. I know what that means. I was like, oh, my god, like gram-negative bacterial meningitis. That’s lifelong. I was really spiraling at that point. Thank god, his…he did not have meningitis. The infection didn’t cross into his brain, but he did have sepsis. So, an infection in his blood and needed to get IV antibiotics for the first about three weeks of his life.
Dr. Fox: Right. And how did Kira bounce back from being blue at birth?
Esty: Yeah. What ended up happening was it turns out that she actually wasn’t having trouble breathing. It was actually like one trauma to her. So, she was blue, kind of more like a battered woman. I don’t know if you’re allowed to say that phrase anymore, but I don’t know if she was kicked, but she had bloodshot eyes. She was blue, and she was the loudest baby in the NICU.
Dr. Fox: Did she deliver face first, like a face presentation?
Esty: She did. And so, I wonder if Nadav kicked her a little bit. The two of them kind of joke about that of like [crosstalk 00:27:58] beat her up a little bit.
Dr. Fox: I want you to take us to…so, this moment, right? It’s after the delivery, you know, day or two later, you’ve been waiting for years, right? And trying for years to have kids. And now, you have two kids, you had a medical scare. They’re both, you know… I don’t know. It’s maybe not critical, but they’re not perfectly well at that time. How are you, in your brain, processing the overwhelming joy that you have two kids now compared to the overwhelming terror that, oh, my god, I might have two sick kids now? And how do you…how does that work, you know, in terms of just in your conversation with each other and how you’re thinking? Get us into your mind at that time, because it’s probably complex.
Esty: Oh, my god. So complex, right? I remember holding…after I got better, it was delayed because I was sick and then finally was able to go down to the NICU and really meet them for the first time. I look back at that picture and it’s like, what is going on in that…in my brain? Right? How am I coping with this? I’ll say that I was not able to really hold Kira at the beginning because she was still…her eyes were bloodshot. She was blue. And a lot of difficulty connecting with her in the beginning. And then Nadav with his little IV in his scalp, he was really cute in some ways, but it was really terrifying. After that initial moment of connection with Nadav, I felt distant from the kids, you know, like, yay, this has finally happened to us, but I’m scared. I’m terrified. You know, I almost don’t want to get too close to them. They’re scary to me.
Dr. Fox: Did it impact your ability to have joy, or were they just going on simultaneously?
Esty: No, I don’t think I had joy back then. I had, I think, terror. Maybe it was like a cognitive joy of like, oh, our babies are here, you know? But no, I don’t think I experienced any joy. I think the coping mechanism that I had at the time, which was kind of like what I was doing in terms of white knuckling, was, listen, I’m going into action mode. I’m going to be the best NICU mom ever. I ended up pumping a ton for them, which was kind of my way of taking care of them. They weren’t able to suckle. So, nursing wasn’t an option. And so, basically, I was like, okay, you know what? I’m having a lot of time sitting with them. I remember I couldn’t visit them for more than two hours a day. It was torture. So, I would sit at home and pump, and that was my way of taking care of them. But I would say that pumping in and of itself became a little bit obsessional.
Dr. Fox: Right. And were you…was it helpful to you, unhelpful to you, or sort of neutral that you were a doctor and a training psychiatrist at the time?
Esty: I think the NICU was a little bit less scary to me than what it would have been if not. I had spent time in the NICU. I did my internship in pediatrics. I knew that their prognosis was excellent. Meaning, they were 34-weekers. They were 5 pounds when they were born. And they were also having a lot of episodes of bradycardia and apnea. So, they would stop breathing. They would turn blue.
Dr. Fox: Yeah. It’s a NICU problem. Yeah.
Esty: Yeah. It’s a NICU problem, but they kept doing it. So, usually, it’s just like a maturity of the brain that they can’t coordinate, like sucking and breathing. But they kept having it until term. So, we were in the NICU for seven weeks.
Dr. Fox: Wow. And during all this time, you’re home, you’re not working, right? You’re postpartum, but your kids aren’t at home.
Esty: Yeah.
Dr. Fox: Yeah, it’s a…
Esty: Nightmare.
Dr. Fox: Yeah. That’s a tough spot, obviously. It’s sort of, you know, your reality minus your expectations type of thing.
Esty: Yeah.
Dr. Fox: You know, you sort of have this vision, this dream of what it’s going to be like when these kids are born and they’re home and you’re a postpartum mom with your babies, and it’s here, I am driving to the NICU.
Esty: Yeah, exactly. And kind of like without an anchor, right? Psychiatry had been my life up until then. Now, I’m not working. I have these two quite ill children. I’m pumping all the time to try to do the right thing for them. I don’t think that there was a lot of joy back then.
Dr. Fox: Yeah. Esty, what I think I want to do is…at this point, I think we’re going to pause because I think this is a natural break point. You know, the kids are born, they’re in the NICU. And I think we’re going to get to part two of your story next week, sort of the aftermath of the birth and these kids in the NICU. So, thank you for an amazing and really interesting and emotional story for part A, part one, and we’re going to pick up part two next week.
Esty: Amazing.
Dr. Fox: Thank you for listening to the “Healthful Woman” podcast. To learn more about our podcast, please visit our website at www.healthfulwoman.com. That’s healthfulwoman.com. If you have any questions about this podcast or any other topic you would like us to address, please feel free to email us at hw@healthfulwoman.com. Have a great day.
The information discussed in “Healthful Woman” is intended for educational uses only. It does not replace medical care from your physician. “Healthful Woman” is meant to expand your knowledge of women’s health and does not replace ongoing care from your regular physician or gynecologist. We encourage you to speak with your doctor about specific diagnoses and treatment options for an effective treatment plan.
