deluge

I’ve been absent from so many of my usual commitments lately. Friday homeschool group usually goes on without me, I unsubscribed from my old playgroup since I couldn’t drag myself there, even online I’ve been down and out – both in the very groups I moderate and on my own blog. First trimester exhaustion will do that to you.

Yep, that’s right. I haven’t told very many people. You all who did know, mostly I shared the fact on a need-to-know basis, like some secret FBI file. The information was just as well guarded with my family. With my first pregnancy, I was appropriately guarded with our little expectation. I waited until 8 or 9 weeks to share the news with people outside my friends and family. Usually, I was forced to share because the news affected them in some way or another, like when I told my boss I had to quit my job so I could get health insurance. Ha! Imagine that....I had to quit my $15/hour job so I could go on welfare to have a baby. Lovely system isn’t it?

With my second pregnancy, only having had a successful go of it before, I was wildly cavalier with my news. I think I shared it with my cashier at Kroger, you know, just so she’d know why I was buying 3 half-gallons of ice cream.

In a pregnancy after a pregnancy loss (or losses, even worse) it does become Top Secret information. I have tossed and turned, wanting to ask a friend a question about the ins and outs, no pun intended, of progesterone suppositories, but not wanting to increase my number of people in the know to the double digits. Eventually, it became a matter of fear. If I told, if I announced, I feared a jinx of some sort. Don’t we all have that sky-could-fall story of a friend of a friend who announced and then miscarried the very next day? Or is that just me?

The sky could be falling, it is true. But does it matter? If there is one thing I’ve realized through this burgeoning pregnancy it’s that the facts don’t matter – just our perception of them. It is this basis upon which all religions are built, I’m sure. After you decide it’s okay to not be certain, to not have the Facts, scientifically hypothesized and dutifully proven, then you find what’s left is Faith. Faith in God, if you would like, or faith in your instincts, or faith in your body, or faith in your baby. Faith in the process and faith in the stillness and faith in your oneness with what’s inside. You can keep chasing the Facts, or you can just accept the Faith. Your choice.

Once I chose faith over facts, things got a lot more fun. Facts make good police reports; faith makes good stories.

I had a dream about 8 weeks in. I was sleeping the kind of light, restless sleep you have when the early morning sun starts to peek in the corners of the curtains. In my dream, I was at a family party. I had my baby boy in a carseat carrier and he was asleep. I went to pick him up, because I detest carseat carriers and all they stand for, even in my dreams I guess. He wasn’t there. I went upstairs, to my sister-in-law’s apartment. I asked if she had the baby and she said she did. She said he had fallen asleep so she had laid him down. Jeff was with me, and we searched for him but couldn’t find him. I began to panic, just a little. I asked her three times where he was, and finally she said he was under the window. I found him there, wrapped in a blanket, crying. I picked him up and sat in an upholstered rocking chair. I began to nurse him and he quieted. And I felt our connection. I felt him in my arms, and I felt whole. I knew he did too. I looked at his dusty brown baby hair, more than Sassy had as a baby. I felt his personality. He was alert, smart, calm. Calmer than I, calmer than Jeff, calmer than Sassy. I started to call him by his name, but I couldn’t remember it. Then I woke up.

For 20 minutes, I laid still, awake, trying to call up his name. I mentally applied the names we’d been considering. Thomas. No. Finn. No. I tried other names on. Random names. Names I didn’t even care for. No. No. No.

By the end of the day, I knew his name. I asked Jeff, and there was a moment of pause, then a big smile. He recognized him too. Later, we compared our visualizations of the baby and were not all that surprised to learn they were exactly the same. We have no facts as to why, but our perceptions are solid. And the rest doesn’t matter, regardless of my public education and its emphasis on the proven.

When I started bleeding in Barnes and Noble’s bathroom on Sunday, I shook with fear. My successful drive to the hospital ER through the shaking and the hyperventilation was thanks to two well-timed cell phone calls. As soon as I started the car in the parking lot, the phone rang the first time. It was Jeff trying to see where I was. My “hello” was enough to let him know something was very wrong. I told him I was bleeding and I was driving myself to the hospital, and then hung up quickly. I couldn’t hold the phone through the shaking and staccato breathing and I couldn’t remember how to put it on loudspeaker. When I could see the ER just over the next hill, I started to hit some red lights and traffic, and frighteningly, started to feel the blood flow pick up. It was just this time that the second phone call came, from my friend Caroline, asking about prenatals and our truck. I was so glad someone got me through those traffic lights.

Even though I was lucky enough to have had a pad in my backpack to catch the blood flow, my shorts were soaked with blood between the car and the ER entrance. Yet another lucky coincidence was my choice of black shorts that morning.

In the ER, I remembered the important things, where I kept my medical card, what was my phone number and address and social security number, how far along I was, the name of my OB, how many miscarriages, how many live births, how many pads I’d soaked in what amount of time. I forgot everything else, like how to breathe properly, how to sit down in a waiting room chair with blood soaked shorts, how to make cell phone calls, how to stop shaking, how to use a vending machine. I was clearly at the mercy of those kind ER nurses with their pitying eyes.

They took me straight back. 5 minutes standing in the waiting room (I couldn’t figure out a way to sit down), 5 minutes standing in triage, explaining my problem, then right back to a room, to a bed, lined with chux pads, and warm blankets. And I waited.

The next 6 hours were an emotional roller coaster. First, they drew blood. Then they informed me I’d have a pelvic exam. I anticipated none of this! I wanted an ultrasound. In my experience, the baby dies, then you miscarry. Your body doesn’t miscarry a living baby. An ultrasound would tell me all I’d need to know. ER doctors don’t think like that. Ultrasound techs are hard to find on the weekends. There are better clinical signs. Is your cervix open? What is your HCG level? What is your rH factor? How much have you been bleeding? Are you cramping as well?

We finally received an opinion from the ER doc on call. “I believe you are having a miscarriage. Your cervix is open. Your HCG is 106,000. I have spoken with your OB and we would like to do an ultrasound to look for fetal demise. If there is no longer a viable fetus via ultrasound, we can check you in here for the night and perform a D & C.”

We waited another hour and a half for an ultrasound. During this time, I decided I would definitely decline the D & C. I called a doula. I wanted labor support during the miscarriage this time.

When I finally got up to the ultrasound room, the technician was cold and distant. I asked her if there was a heartbeat. “I can see a heartbeat,” she said.

“What is the rate?” I asked her.

“I will measure it. Right now I am doing other things. It is all protocol.”

20 minutes later, she said, “I’m trying to measure the heartbeat, but your baby won’t be still.”

All those damn warnings about ultrasounds from too much time spent on natural parenting boards were sounding in my head, getting louder and louder with each passing minute. I was angry that my baby had to go through all this. I put my hand on my belly, as close as I could get without interrupting “the protocol,” and internally spoke to it.

“You need to be still. I know you are scared. It must be very frightening for you. It will be okay. Be still. Here, I’ll hold you.” And in my mind’s eye, I held it, rocked it, and sang it a lullaby.

By the time I was done with the lullaby, she had measured the heartbeat. Why was it finally still for her? It is scientifically irrelevant, but for the first time in the hospital, I could hear my instincts tell me it would be okay. The baby was okay.

Another 25 minutes and a pushy, but ultimately declined, attempt at a transvaginal ultrasound later, I was sent back to my room. When I next saw the ER doctor, he had changed his mind. “The baby looks good. The heart rate is good. I don’t think a miscarriage is inevitable.” And with that, I was released.

Later, on the phone with my OB, I learned that mine was a textbook example of a burst cervical blood vessel. “Only time will tell how this will play out,” he said, “but I believe your bleeding was cervical. If the bleeding was coming from the baby, even a small amount of bleeding – not like what you described – would have put the baby in severe distress and we would have seen a significant drop in the heart rate. I think that your miscarriage rate is now the same as any other second trimester pregnancy – less than 2%.” He also informed me that all women who have had previous births have a cervix that is slightly open and that it can’t be used as a diagnostic tool for miscarriage.

Now the healing begins. I’ve been prescribed a week of bed rest. Last week, I was dreaming of spending my days napping. Now, though, I sit with an empty house and a strict dependence on other people to fulfill even basic needs. Sassy has been gone with Nana for three days and isn’t supposed to return until tomorrow. It’s been good for my healing process, since I can spend the time caring only for myself. But this is not who I am anymore. I care for my daughter. I am still me, the me I’ve always been. I write. I cook. I require an exaggerating and tangential sense of humor in a partner. I like exercise only if there’s a point to it. I enjoy projects and learning new things about people. I care more about your feelings about something than I do what is actually happening.

But there’s a new one now – I care for Sassy. Day in, day out, she is with me. She is the last thing I see before going to bed and the first thing I see in the morning. She is often how I gauge my own days. “Oh, we’re doing great! Sassy’s in a really good mood!” My relationship with her and with Jeff comprises the bulk of my sense of success or failure at any given time.

I miss her in the same way I miss the use of my legs right now. I don’t have either.

It has been interesting, being a bed-ridden invalid. If I forget that it’s temporary, I can feel the mixed emotions of the invalid, part immense gratitude, part guilt, and part total supplication.

I’ve always enjoyed thinking about worst-case scenarios. What would I do if the food supply shut down? What would I do if our water was contaminated by radioactive fallout? How could I make our cold room into a safe room to fend off rioters when the world goes boom?

I think of personal things too. When Sassy was a baby, I imagined what I would do if someone broke into the house with the intent to kill us. I imagined I would roll over onto her, keeping myself elevated so as not to smother her, just to protect her. If they killed me anyway, I would remember not to fall dead on top of her, but to the side so as not to smother her. If there was a fire, I would lower Sassy down to the ground in an old backpack carrier kept upstairs for that very purpose. Then I would tie a sheet around the bottom frame of the bed and lower myself down. I’ve thought about what I would do if I found out Jeff was having an affair (shut your mouth, play your hand, go ballistic on your own time until the game is up). And of course, I’ve also thought about what I would do if I were an invalid. Or if Jeff were an invalid. I’d stick it out if he were an invalid, of course! I would never leave just because he was stuck in the bed. If it were me? I’d rise up against the challenges and become the best damn invalid I could be, writing a novel from my bed, still powerful, never depressed.

Now, I can say to my daydreams, HA! The invalid road would be much harder than I ever imagined. Jeff has been an attentive and intuitive primary caregiver. He brings me special things I haven’t even asked for just because he knows I could use a lift. He spends time in this boring-ass room just so I don’t feel lonely. He makes sure to keep my cell phone handy and to let me know I shouldn’t hesitate to call him on it if I need anything. He makes multiple trips up and down the stairs with food he’s cooked for me, books I want to read, my computer, my computer cord. He travels to the library, to Blockbuster, to the grocery store. He brings me endless water and follows my elaborate instructions about how to find and care for my things. And perhaps most importantly, he lets me be when I want to just be.

But like every relationship, we are our own people with our own opinions about things. Should you put wheat or white flour in the gravy? Should you mix the beef with the mashed potatoes? Should you leave the surround sound speakers on at night or turn them off? Dozens, hundreds actually, of little things that we might do differently if we were doing them for ourselves.

Typically, I voice my opinions. My vehemence differs depending both on Jeff’s pre-existing mood and on the importance I give to the subject at hand. But I am not the girl who bites her tongue. The insides of my cheeks when I’m nervous, perhaps, but my tongue speaks its piece. The invalid in me doesn’t feel comfortable speaking my piece. The invalid in me is grateful and guilty for any attention she gets. She pushes away first her desires: a new book, the mail we received today, a phone number to look up. Next she pushes away her needs: food, water, company. Eventually, she deadens herself to the world around her to block the sense of abandonment she feels from everyone continuing to live their lives around her.

I like this. I like that I can feel this. When I tried to explain it to Jeff, he first put up his defenses. His posture stiffened and I imagined the roughly shaven hairs on the back of his neck rising. I reassured him I was simply feeling out the life of an invalid. What would it be like to be bed-ridden? How would it affect your relationships, your confidence, your sense of self? Next he tried to jolly me up. It’s just a week! You’re so strong! I know it’s hard, but you can do anything for a week. For the baby.

I know that. I also know how to jolly myself up if I need jollying. But just as my baby may or may not be same little dusty-haired boy that starred in my dream, with his total sense of calm, his message of “It’s okay,” the facts don’t matter. My perception of them matters. And in this case, my perception allowed me to see that life.

The life of my ex’s mother, whose degenerative rheumatoid arthritis worsened while she was pregnant with him, leaving him nearly motherless as a child. How did she deal with that? How badly did she want to care for him? Every hormone in her body probably craved her baby, and the only way to deal with the pain, the loss of her son to be cared for by his siblings, was to deaden herself. She probably had to deaden herself to his cries coming from inside her own home, as she was powerless to get up and nurture him. She eventually must have deadened herself to his toddler giggles, since her heart must have broken watching her older daughters, friends, and other family members play just the games she would have wanted to play with him. And if she did build those walls, out of necessity for her mental health, were they then reinforced when someone placed that giggling toddler in her lap and he just tried to wriggle away, as no toddler likes to just sit still?

The life of my uncle, who lived for exciting things in exotic places – fishing excursions off the coast of Alaska, farming goats in the mountains of Hawaii, drawing up self-taught architectural blueprints, then building multiple homes from them with spectacular views of the ocean and the volcanoes. How did he feel after the car accident that paralyzed him waist-down 8 years ago? Why did he stay with the woman he had been dating who continued to stay, but went on living her own life without him? That was the burning question at the time, but what choice did he have? In the grips of his depression, did he see himself as a pale imitation of the man he used to be? Was he grateful to have anyone at all? Was he afraid that if he stood his ground to her that he would have no one to bring him food and water at all hours of the day? No one to be there at night lest someone break into the house? No one to call emergency services if he fell, leaving him to choose between a caregiver who had once chased his love, but whose face now showed only pity, and the risk of lying on the living room floor, helpless, by himself, waiting for someone to find him?

There are times to cut the worst-case scenario thoughts. There are times when they infest the mind with worries and nighttime hallucinations. There are other times that it’s okay to let your mind follow the thoughts where they might lead, down one road, turn left, down another, relationships this way, self-esteem that way, depression straight ahead.

It’s been three days now on bed rest. In my case, it’s likely temporary. Cervical bleeding. Unrelated to baby. Those are the opinions of my doctors – the probable facts. But the facts hold a dim light to my perceptions of them. Those are much more interesting.