Royal Blood

Thursday night I got home from work and had a cryptic letter from KI in the mail. (KI is the big uni hospital here in Sthlm). The letter says "your baby is Rh positive and you are scheduled for anti D profylax"
Rh-WHAT? Profy-WHAT?

I tried to get a hold of someone at KI and my midwife but of course no one answers their phone and no one calls back to explain anything.

THANK GOD for Google!!!!

The only thing that makes sense is that I must be Rh negative as my blood type, though no one has told me this despite of leaving a million blood samples before even choosing a donor for this baby.
15% of the worlds population is Rh negative, the rest is Rh positive. They call it "royal blood" since it's most common within the royals courts of Europe (in-breeding is what I'm thinking!). It is also called royal since the blood type is the most sought after in blood donations, since it doesn't react with either Rh neg or Rh pos blood in donations. Meaning it is safe for everyone to use.
Rh pos blood is not compatible with Rh neg blood. So if you are Rh neg you can only have Rh neg blood transfusions, with Rh pos it's either way.

And if you are a Rh neg mother and carry a Rh pos baby, you are in big trouble.

This means my body can react to my babys blood, possibly form anti bodies against it and kill my babys blood cells. Leaving the baby w anything from mild jaundice to severe anemia which will kill her.

Both my parents are Rh positive, so I must be a strange mutation of recessive genes.

I, OF COURSE, thought of blood type when choosing a donor and our donor is a regular O positive, like most of the worlds population. I thought that with a common blood type, you can't go wrong.
Not knowing that I had a rare one.

What a Shock.
And what a shocking way to find out, I didn't even know this existed, or that the blood that was drawn from me at the midwife was for this purpose. I was in the dark and had no idea what that impersonal note form KI meant. I thought my baby had some weird disease. (While actually, she is normal, and I am the odd one).

And we were so careful in choosing donor, and I tried to think of EVERYTHING to make the best possible decision for the baby, to give her the best start in life. And then I, and my blood, turned out to be the biggest threat to her.
Had I known about this possible complication, we could have just chosen a Rh negative donor and there would have been nothing to worry about.

I read book after book on how to chose a donor, and there's not a word about this anywhere. Something that's potentionally LEATHAL to our baby. There are however 100 pages on how to, as a lesbian, "become friends with the sperm" to concieve more easily. Give me a break!

Anyways, now the worst shock is over and I can actually sleep at night, and not just cry til 3 in the morning, feeling like I'm killing my baby w my stupid blood type.

From what I can find out by googling, the Anti D profylax is a sort of "vaccination" apparently, that will help my blood to not form anti bodies to my baby. So hopefully everything will be ok.

This has not exactly made me trust the healthcare system more. I didn't think my scepticism couldn't run any deeper, but apparently it could. What else are they not telling me that might harm or kill my baby? What other questions do I not know to ask that would give me crucial information concerning the well being of our baby? And I feel so STUPID for not just googling " blood type, pregnancy" before choosing a donor. It would have been so easy. And I would have had this info. Instead I figured anyone would TELL me, when I asked if there was something to consider besides the things we already thought of.

Anyways, I'll get the Anti D shot, hopefully there will be no complications and the baby won't notice a thing, except for having a hysterical mother with ruined nerves that behaves like a lunatic every other day.