 | Diary Navigation:
|
July 17, 2001
I didn’t see the car accident coming at all. This was primarily because we were rear ended at a stoplight, but also because most people, me included, go through every day life without worrying about those kinds of things until they happen. The hit was a pretty good jolt - the car that hit us was probably going 15 or 20 mph. We pulled over right away, the driver of the other vehicle right behind us. From the impact I had expected our bumper to be pretty much totaled. It surprised me when it wasn’t. We have a 2000 Saturn, and the bumpers are supposed to withstand a fairly good-sized impact. This one had done its job, showing only two small dents and a long scratch.
One of the hitches, though, was that this guy was uninsured and had some language barriers. We tried to communicate with him, but it soon became obvious that he wanted to give us $100 and call it even. $100 wouldn’t repair the bumper, I was pretty sure of that, plus we needed to get both car seats replaced (car seats, regardless of how minor the impact is, can be structurally damaged and should ALWAYS be replaced. Most insurance companies will cover this under collision coverage). That alone would cost us $300. Unfortunately, the guy refused to give us his name or driver’s license information, and we decided to leave before things got weird.
Truthfully, I had only briefly thought of the baby immediately after the accident. The impact was pretty minor and my neck or back didn’t hurt. The kids were fine and so was John, so I had decided that, at 7 weeks the baby would be protected by enough “maternal padding” that he or she probably didn’t even notice. We had been on our way to the local kiddie ride park with a picnic lunch so we decided to go ahead with those plans since we were all fine.
About an hour later, while watching Chloe on the Merry-Go-Round, I had a cramp. It was severe and sudden and it caught me off guard. Another followed. And then another. By the time I had walked over to the nearest bench, I was in pain. When sitting didn’t work we decided to head home. The cramping intensified as we drove, and the minute we were in the driveway, I was out of the car and heading towards the house. Maybe a nap with my feet up would help.
I didn’t even get to sleep. The cramps turned into one long continuous nightmare. Emotionally I thought I was doing okay until I called Amika, one of the midwives, in my practice. The minute I heard her voice I started crying. She was absolutely great. She managed to calm me down by giving me a list of things to do and herbs to take. She talked to John and had him go off to Nature’s, a nearby store, for the herbs. I was to get in a warm bath and try to relax, and then lie down, feet up.
We followed her instructions to a “T”. John took the kids and left, I got into the bath. I didn’t feel right, so I got back out and got into bed. John came back and I took some of the herbs and then got back into the bath. The cramping was slowing down, but I was shivering. John took my temperature. It was 101. He called Amika back and told her about the fever. She told him to take me to the ER, as it sounded serious.
John packed the kids back up in the car and took me to the closest hospital. He dropped me off, and then drove the kids over to my aunt’s house. He joined me in the ER within an hour.
The doctor on call was a perfect jerk. He gave me a rough pelvic exam with his gigantic hands, and then topped off my evening by insisting that an ultrasound was a “waste” because even if I was miscarrying, there was nothing anyone could do. Hello?? Routine lab work showed that I didn’t have an infection, and that my hcg counts were actually pretty good.
All in all, it wasn’t what I wanted, but I went home hopeful anyway.
Three days later, I was back in the same ER, again with bleeding and cramping. The kids were back with my aunt and John was there, right by my side. It was like I reliving some weird nightmare over and over again. At least this time, the doctor working the ER was much more sympathetic. He ordered the same lab work, and then insisted that I have an ultrasound. In fact, I later overheard him in the hallway outside of my room, asking a nurse who had been there on my last visit why I hadn’t had an ultrasound then. “What if it’s ectopic?” he said.
Quite actually, everything turned out just fine. We had an ultrasound, and the baby was dancing around looking quite perfect, even being barely 8 weeks old. My lab work was fine, and so I was sent on my way with instructions to stay in bed until the bleeding stopped.
And it did stop. For an entire week and a half it stopped. And then in early May, I awoke to cramps, and bleeding. Only this time the bleeding was worse, much worse. And while during the previous ER visits I had been cautiously optimistic, this time I was filled with a sense of dread.
It hadn’t helped much that the past two weeks were filled with the worse nausea I have ever felt during any pregnancy. I “refunded my lunch” (or breakfast, or dinner, or snack) an average of twice a day. Sometimes even after I was done “refunding” everything, I heaved for 4 or 5 minutes. The sickness was so severe that I ended up losing 10 pounds those first three months. The stress of the bleeding episodes didn’t help much either, I’m sure.
So that morning in May when I noticed the bleeding, I felt sure I knew how this was all going to end, and it wasn’t in December with a baby. There was a part of me that felt a twinge of guilt. I had, after all, doubted our ability to parent a third child. I had been vocal about my fears and regrets surrounding this pregnancy. But it didn’t mean that I wanted things to end like this, or at all for that matter.
But I was convinced that this was the end of the road for this pregnancy, and so I decided that I wasn’t going back to the first hospital I had gone to for the previous two ER visits. Instead, I drove the 30 minutes OHSU, what is widely considered the best hospital in the area.
Immediately upon arrival I was given an IV. A few minutes later I met my ER doctor – a young woman who was kind, gentle and funny. She and I talked about our husbands, who both majored in Philosophy, how much we both disliked pelvic exams, and about our favorite food, pizza. A pelvic exam revealed that my cervix was closed shut and looked perfect, but that there was a lot of blood. The Dr. ordered an ultrasound and an HCG count. She patted my leg as she left, and said she’d check in soon.
Soon a nurse’s aide came to wheel me to ultrasound, two floors up. I got right in, and the sonographer fired up the machine. This was the moment of truth; would everything be okay? The damn screen wasn’t facing me on purpose, I’m sure. Warm gel hit my belly, and then the tech put the wand against my skin. She frowned. Then she pushed really, really hard. Then she frowned again. A lump caught in my throat. Why the hell was she frowning? Why can’t I see the screen? The tech kept pushing on my stomach and frowning more, and I sat there numb.
Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore, and I demanded to know why she was grimacing and not saying anything. “Oh,” she replied, “your baby is moving around so much I can’t get a good measure of it’s heart rate.” Then she turned the screen towards me. “See?” she said. The baby, oblivious to the outside world, was doing flips and cartwheels, and basically acting as though my uterus was a circus tent. I studied the little jellybean for a few seconds and sat back, trying to keep from crying. What I was sure to be the ending of all of this had suddenly changed, for the better. Relief seemed to well up in me and flood over my body, and I felt my fingers and toes tingle. The baby’s okay, the baby’s okay, the baby’s okay. They could have said anything else, stuck a thousand needles in me, and I would have smiled. The baby’s okay.
The radiologist did come in and say that she saw some tissue at the bottom of my uterus, towards the opening of my cervix. This could be extra tissue, she indicated, that needed to be sloughed off – perhaps bruising from the car accident? Or, it could be “Vanishing Twin Syndrome”. She went on to explain that sometimes two eggs are fertilized, but one never develops correctly, and stops growing very early on. Then this tissue has to either be absorbed or sloughed off. This would explain why I had horrible, wretched morning sickness this time (which was why I haven’t written in over a month). The radiologist really could not offer any exact reason why, but did say the baby looked perfect.
I was wheeled back down to my room, the IV removed, and my discharge papers handed over. My Dr. came back, and she looked genuinely happy to see that everything was okay. And that was it.
Within 12 hours the bleeding had slowed considerably, and within 36 it was gone completely. I managed to not completely turn into a neurotic toilet-paper-checker, but I was really getting close there for a few weeks.
After week 9 I had no more bleeding or cramping, and while still having severe nausea, I felt surprisingly happy. At 11 ½ weeks, my midwife heard the baby’s heartbeat - loud, clear and strong at 170 bpm. By 13 weeks, the all day sickness had tapered off and I was actually beginning to gain weight. By week 15, when we heard the heartbeat yet again, I let myself begin to imagine the baby again. I hadn’t let myself really think about her (I think it’s a her…) for 6 or 7 weeks in anything but an abstract sort of way. I was afraid to get too attached and then lose this precious babe. But now, we were out of the woods.
Heather r
 |  |
|
want to keep a diary on iParenting?
Authoring a diary on the iParenting network allows you to chronicle your family's story, preserving it for years to come. It's also a great way to get the most out of the iParenting community. Click here to start...
|
The iParenting Media Awards program helps parents find the best products for their families. 
