Are The Chosen Ones OK?

I got an e-mail from a reader last night who asked me how come no one is asking why the hell Angelina Jolie is in the hospital? I presume it is because to speak to Angelina, one must first be blessed, but it could be because no news is just that, no news.

This is really more for all of you because, frankly my knowledge of pregnancy began and ended with the story of the stork. Oh sure, I know the basic theory and all that, but theory is all it is. Add that to the fact that I can just drive by a hospital and pass out and I'm not much help.

To get the conversation started about whether Angelina or her chosen ones are in some sort of mortal peril or just enjoying hospital food is the original e-mail from the reader, who also happens to be a nurse. She makes great points. So speculate away as to why the tabloids have been so quiet about this.

Oh, before I turn it over to the reader. How about this little extra piece of conspiracy. Is everyone convinced that the photo above is really Brad and Angelina?

********What brings me to write, though, is something that's been bothering me for a couple of weeks now. I cannot be the only medical person in the entire universe that knows that there is no way that Angelina is in the hospital because she had a previous c-section.

There is something wrong, either with her health or the babies' health. Everyone acts as if that French doctor is the Pope of Doctors or something. He said that she's in the hospital a few weeks (or a month) before her due date because she had a previous c-section, so it must be true.

Uh, excuse me? How many women, even divas, do you know that just hole themselves up into a hospital for a few weeks or a month before they have their kid? Hospitals are no fun. They're really no fun for me, because I work in one, but they're even less fun for the patients. Being pregnant and in a hospital is the pits. Even if you're rich and have your food brought in, and your servants cater to your every little need, hospitals are no fun. They are especially no fun if you love your four other children and would like to be a parent to them, instead of laying around in a hospital bed, pregnant as a cow, waiting for the day when you can bring your two new progeny into the world.

My job is to run the hospital on a day to day basis--I basically troubleshoot operational problems. I hear about every unit in the hospital, including labor and delivery and High Risk Maternity, and I've never heard of a mother checking in a few weeks or a month before her due date, unless she and/or her babies were sick--no matter how rich she was or how spoiled. Even moms who can and would pay for months and months of private hospitalization wouldn't do that because NO ONE wants to spend their pregnancy in a hospital. So I can't believe no one has brought this up.

Either no one is willing to say the Empress Has No Clothes or no one has figured it out, or there's some reason that no one wants to tell what is obviously the truth. I don't wish Angelina any harm, nor her babies, obviously, but it does seem odd that no one wants to point out the obvious. Either Angelina or her twins or all of them are sick and require hospitalization. It could be something as innocuous as premature contractions or early ruptured membranes to something as serious as pre-eclampsia or placenta previa, or oligohydramnios (low amniotic fluid) or God forbid, hydrops (the baby gets fluid overloaded and could die from that) or some congenital anomalies. Any multiple pregnancy (twins, triplets, quads) increases maternal and baby risk factors, so it isn't unusual for this to happen. What just seems downright weird to me is that no one is even talking about it.