The
go-to-the-doctor-to-see-if-the-cerclage-worked day arrived.
My mother
chauffeured me to the doctor’s while I tried to relax in the front passenger
seat. It was the first time I’d sat upright in a car since coming home from the
hospital the week before, and I reclined the seat as far as it would recline.
Chris had already gone to work and planned to meet us there. I still felt
uncomfortable walking around, even though I’d enjoyed several showers and carefully
shuffled across our expansive tile entry for my once-a-day—doctor’s
limit—kitchen visit.
Even as my
heart sparkled with hope, it spasmed a little with trepidation.
Upon
arrival at Dr. Landry’s, Chris and I were quickly escorted to a room where I
was prepared for another ultrasound. Dr. Landry entered, offered friendly,
distracting conversation, and then flicked on the monitor screen. The amniotic
sac no longer funneled into the canal, and the baby’s head was disengaged from
the cervix, although it was still resting as far down as it possibly could in
my pelvis.
Everything
looked good to me, and my heart flip-flopped with excitement. Until I examined
Dr. Landry’s strained face and then turned my head to survey the top of the
cervix to which he was now pointing.
“Normally
after this procedure, the cervix will close and lengthen again, return to a
more normal position.” He took a very noticeable, almost anguished pause. “Yours
has not.”
My
flip-flopping heart slammed into a wall and lay quivering inside my chest. In
fact, my entire gut sank like an anchored weight. “You are still seventy-five
percent effaced, with just the amniotic sac and the sutures keeping this thing
closed,” he continued. “And since you were three-plus centimeters dilated in
the hospital, the amount of cervix I had available to sew together was about
the thickness of a thin piece of cloth.” He held up a paper towel to visually
accentuate his words. To give me a word picture.
Carefully
laying down the ultrasound head, which caused the screen to go abruptly blank
and my baby to disappear from view, he turned, carefully placed his hands next
to me on the table, slowly leaned toward me, and established intense,
unwavering eye contact with me. After a deep, prolonged breath, he continued.
“This pregnancy…is, at best…” He seemed to grope for the right word, or to even
utter a word. He stared at me, agonizing frustration contorting his face. Fear. It was written all over his
countenance and in his eyes. My doctor was afraid, and he knew there was
nothing he could do to make everything easier or better for me. For any of us.
That wordless conversation that passed between us happened in just a nanosecond.
“This
pregnancy…is, at best…”
“Tenuous,”
I completed his sentence for him as reality clobbered my conscience, and my
heart burrowed itself even deeper somewhere in my body, to hide from the truth.
“Exactly,” he nodded vigorously. “That is
the perfect word for it.” Another
brief, thick moment of silence passed. “You
are hanging by a thread! Our biggest concern now is the possible rupturing
of the amniotic sac, particularly with the increase in pressure as the baby
develops and grows. You will be completely
confined to bed, not even allowed to sit
up. If we make it until the end
of the month, (I winced at the accentuated “if”), we will be lucky. Every week
will be critical, but at this stage—if it were my baby—I would not have any
life-saving intervention, should delivery ensue before twenty-eight weeks.” Did he have to mention that now? I
thought. He thinks we’ve already lost.
He then
examined me internally to check the strength of the sutures. Why did he have to do that? I blinked at
him. Then he firmly told me that he did not know when—if ever—I’d be able to
return to light housework. “If you
make it to thirty-six weeks, I will cut the sutures and let whatever happens,
happen.” Why does he have to say “if” so
many times? I understood his point all too well, and painfully.
Thirty-six
weeks of gestation. Almost eighteen weeks away. Eighteen weeks of complete bed
confinement. No showers. No standing for more time than it took to use the
bathroom. No going to the kitchen. No sitting up. No holding Chris. No holding
Parker. No…anything! I listened
intently to his additional instructions and concerns and felt the familiar
survivalist, competitive armor begin to rise up and encase my body, mind and
soul. That familiar, invisible protective gear I slapped on when I knew I
couldn’t afford to let anything in, and I couldn’t afford to let anything out.
And I couldn’t afford to feel. When
any type of emotion is too costly. When any type of emotion might compromise
survival.
I think
that was the precise moment I attempted to divest myself of the love and
longing I had for my unborn child. It was too painful to bear or think about.
Oh, yes, I wanted this baby, but I felt as if the battle cry for war was
trumpeted, and I had convinced myself that excessive emotional
involvement—including love—would weaken our chances of survival. Though
determined to go the distance, to do whatever it took to succeed—without
overwrought sentimental investment cluttering the effort—it was easier to be
analytical and calculated about the situation and emotionally dead to the
horrible realities.
“I’ll do
whatever it takes, Dr. Landry. I know it’s going to be hell, but I will not look back on this as a missed
opportunity, with a lot of “what if’s” nagging me the rest of my life. This is
our last chance. This is our last child. I won’t jeopardize it.”
Dr. Landry
nodded, like a knowing father, who has more information than he’s willing to
unload, wordlessly nods to a young child in order to not upset her. Then he
prescribed cream antibiotics indefinitely, since the cervix’s protective mucous
plug seal had been lost. He also gave me a prescription for Terbutaline, (the
drug most commonly prescribed to arrest labor), with strict orders not to take
it unless I had continuous, consistent contractions for more than two hours,
and then not without calling him
first.
My head
spun. How could I keep track of all of those instructions?
Chris spoke
further with Dr. Landry in the hallway while I padded guardedly to the waiting
room, eased myself—half-reclining— into a chair next to my mother, and heaved a
disheartened sigh. “It doesn’t look good,” I mumbled, my eyes fixated on my
toes stretched out in front of me. My shoulders sagged as my head drooped in
defeat.
“Oh, no!”
she replied, and then grilled me about what Dr. Landry had said.
“He’s going
to try to receive authorization for home health care to prepare meals and take
care of my needs. He doesn’t even want me taking care of Parker.” My eyes
remained focused on my toes.
“You mean
he wants some strange person to come
into your house!?” What if they thieve
something!?”
You’ve got to be kidding me! My baby's life—your
grandchild—is literally hanging by a thread, and that’s all you can
think about? “That’s the least of my worries right now. I have a baby to
hang onto,” I said and then turned slowly to stare at her, to pierce through
her eyes and brain with a penetrating, don’t-utter-another-foolish-comment-like-that-again
gaze.
She didn’t
offer a reply.
I was too
tired, distraught, and scared to orally rehash the conversation with Dr.
Landry. And I internally wrestled with a sense that something was trying
to beat me into submission, something was trying to force me to condescend and
abandon the fight, right there, and right now.
From where is the energy going to
miraculously emerge to see this ordeal through until the end? I felt like
an arid well without any available water to reclaim, completely void of enough
energy to raise a cup to my parched lips and soul.
Only God
knew where I could get the water, and what Water had to be got. He knew precisely where I’d have to dip my empty
vessel—if my baby and I were to survive, emotionally, physically and
spiritually.
He was
going to take me to that well, whether I wanted to go there or not…
________________________________________
NEXT
WEEK: Embarking on my new, hanging-by-a-thread life….
________________________________________
Until next week,
Thanks for joining me!
Blessings,
Andrea
*For those of you who are still in the
childbearing years and plan to have more children, or those of you whose
children or grandchildren are expecting or planning to have children, this is a
must-read article for you, outlining the new guidelines on what doctors now
consider to be “full-term” pregnancies.
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