Pregnant and Bedridden: Losing the Psychological Battle

            The pregnant and bedridden mental battle continued, and I was losing.

           

            A friend from church loaded me up with soothing, instrumental tapes, which actually worked wonders during some of the more protracted, boring afternoons and dark, ominous nights.

           

            But the breath-arresting panic attacks worsened, and I eventually worked myself into an abject terror of the choking darkness and alarm of confusion carried with it.

           

            In the darkness, the spiritual warfare intensified dramatically, assaulting my body with horrid physical symptoms I couldn’t control. The attacks seemed relentless, and deliberately destructive. As whacky as it may sound to many, I couldn’t dismiss the feeling that something was out to destroy me.

           

            I feared falling asleep, tearfully anticipating a rough awakening in the middle of each night, drenched in cold sweat, hyperventilating, my muscles contracted to the extreme. Every night it happened without reprieve.

           

            As nightfall arrived, I could almost detect a hideous laughter of preparation for the ensuing attack. And always I sensed I wasn’t alone in my room; that someone, or something, watched and orchestrated every move and every response. It seems impossible for me to adequately convey how intensely frightened I became of the consuming nightmare, how the anguish and anxiety completely overtook my physical body and senses. It was more than “simply” panic attacks, and they were so severe, I knew it could affect the outcome of the pregnancy. That only accentuated the fear.

           

            I considered calling Dr. Landry for advice or help. Maybe he could prescribe a sedative, if he didn’t first write me off as a nut. I wanted to tell Chris about them. Maybe he could protect me from them by spending the night in my room. I didn’t do either, because I was too humiliated and scared to disclose the horror to either one of them.

           

            I know many highly respected people say that the things like I experienced happen only by suggestion, but nothing had been suggested to me; I wasn’t watching any horror movies, and I’m not a superstitious person. Neither had I been reading anything that would have influenced me in the direction of being tempted or harmed by anything demonic.

           

            I tried to scare away the dark by illuminating the room and leaving a soundless television switched on, its black and gray lines wiggling frantically on the screen. (This was prior to round-the-clock television programming.) But the television seemed to be as confused as I was. And there always remained that irrational desire to bolt from bed and walk with steely, rebellious determination around the house, to prove to myself that I was still capable of independence and freedom.  Like a voluntary prisoner who could—just because she willed it—walk defiantly away from captivity, shaking her fists at anyone listening.

           

            “See, I wanted to yell, “I’m free now, and there is nothing you can do to stop me from leaving this bed. You have no power over me; it is only by my own will that I remained in your imprisonment. I can return to that bed any time I want to, when I am ready. You hear that!? When I am ready! I know being here is better for me. But right now,…I need a break. I do so need a break from this feeling of hellish limbo.”

           

            I pleaded with the Lord for a release from these torturous events, to allow comfort and peace to pervade me. I didn’t know the power I had in Christ, so I remained impotent against the attacks. I prayed for a miracle to repair my inadequate cervix. Day after day, hour after hour, I’d beg, “PLEASE, heal me, Lord!” I even regressed to imagery techniques, thinking and visualizing my body into healing itself. There I was, falling back into the familiar pattern of attempting to wish or talk myself into good health. You know: “I am, because I believe it and said it!”

           

            Yet, peace did swiftly follow my almost hysteric, beseeching prayers. Because of the once-nightly psychological and physical warfare, most of my nights were spent in conversation with God. And I had plenty of time to listen to His answers, or to His silence. He had a totally captive audience. And I was quickly learning to rely solely on Him, to surrender to His will and His way of working things out. I didn’t necessarily delight in His techniques, but an intense, twenty-four-hour-a-day course on maturation—of fully trusting His methods, and bending to them—began.

           

            My self was quickly running out. And that was the objective: Total relinquishment of self, through a cascade of perfectly orchestrated events. I was learning that His comfort is immeasurable and His security sure. If I were to succeed at this, and experience the fullness of joy He intended for me, it would have to be in His power, not my own. I would have to surrender all of that. Something I wasn’t likely to do when I was well, healthy and “managing” my life without someone’s help and guidance, thank you very much!

           

            It was absolutely necessary to dwell in the secret place of the Most High and abide under His shadow so I could confidently proclaim, “He is my refuge and my fortress; My God in whom I trust.” He was teaching me, with a firm, yet velvet-cloaked hand, that in the fierce clash of spiritual warfare, the battle belongs to Him. And He has already won.

            I was coming face-to-face with God's sovereignty and my puny humanness...

oOo

           

           

            I did enjoy one daily highlight, however: my friend’s arrival home with Parker and the mail at lunchtime. Eventually, though, it was just the lunchtime visits and the mail that brought relief. Parker needed more activity and attention than I was capable of giving, so he began staying at pre-school all day rather than come home to a mom needing relative quiet and rest.

           

            Parker appeared to confront the circumstances with maturity well beyond his four-year old years. He knew Mommy would have to stay in bed if he were to have a little brother or sister. He also knew that even if I stayed in bed, there was a possibility that he would again have neither. He was concerned, patient and a tremendous comfort and source of joy for me; he always wanted to make sure that he did everything possible to “take care of Mommy.” We attempted to alleviate the pressure on him, but we wanted to be honest in all aspects of the pregnancy and my chances.

           

            But he spent so much of his time playing alone, anxiously awaiting the moment Chris arrived home so he could latch onto him at the door. Sometimes they’d pile like playful kittens into my bedroom and watch one of the videos friends had delivered for amusement—the only time I could view them because I wasn’t allowed to get out of bed to navigate my way to the tape player (VHS days) to put one in to watch.

           

            Parker appeared to be handling the stress so well, and we were proud of him. But now I know he felt his solitary existence as acutely as I did my solitary confinement.

           

            What we would discover much later, was that he protectively blanketed his emotions for my protection, and his fragile, sparsely woven little protection blanket would eventually unravel and disintegrate in one significant moment. 

           

            My precious four-year-old son would have a nervous breakdown…

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NEXT WEEK: Finally learning the meaning of unfathomable, sacrificial, saving love and just how far someone will go to give it…

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Until next week,

Thanks for joining me!

Andrea

Pregnant and Bedridden: The Psychological Strain Begins to Take a Toll

            By God’s mercy, I—and my cerclage—made it through the first month, and I managed to coerce Chris into decorating for Christmas.

           

            A shrieking horn and deep rumbling noise jolted me awake. The sound—emanating from the living room—grew steadily louder and louder.

           

            “What in the world is that?” I mumbled. Then I remembered the battery-operated aircraft carrier I’d ordered for Parker. and I smiled.

           

            It’s Christmas morning.

           

            The carrier must have been a hit since the blaring noise filled the house throughout most of the day. I almost regretted making the purchase! Luckily, (for Chris) I had shopped before Thanksgiving and mail-ordered the remainder of the toys so Chris was divested of any harried, last minute buying. Parker immersed himself in his bounty while I spent the day in bed, after managing to briefly and gingerly relocate myself to the living room couch for one brief hour of festivities.

           

            Most of that Christmas Day is a hazy memory, aside from Parker’s milestone of learning how to snap his fingers and pucker his lips for a perfect whistle. And he played until he dropped from exhaustion. Literally. By the afternoon, the countertop basketball game and Thomas Tank Engine toys littered my sleeping quarters so Parker could “entertain” me, “because Mommy didn’t get any toys for Christmas.”

           

            The holiday week swiftly disappeared, and Chris and Parker gathered in my room in front of the television to watch the New Year’s Tiffany ball drop in Times Square. Within an hour, Parker was asleep on the floor, and Chris snoozed next to me on the pullout bed, until I jiggled him awake for the big moment. So much for exciting events in the Owan house. At least we had the Rose Bowl game to look forward to later that day. Having both graduated from a Big Ten university, the game highlighted the collegiate football season for us, and we rarely missed the televised game.

           

            Chris stretched and yawned in accentuated boredom before kissing me goodnight, and then scooped Parker from the floor and packed him off to bed.

           

            Left alone in the dark, I prayed that the New Year brought joy—not familiar sorrow—to our family.

                                                           

                                                            oOo

                                          

                                           I am weary with moaning;

                                                Every night I flood my bed with tears;

                                           I drench my couch with my weeping.

                                          My eyes waste away because of grief,

                                                they grow weak because of my foes (Psalm 6:6-7 NRSV).

           

           

            It was getting tougher by the day.

           

            On January 6, I started a journal. That daily ritual developed into a valuable catharsis for the release of my emotions. My journaling was initiated early that morning, at 2:30 AM to be exact, when I suffered my first full-blown panic attack, awakening abruptly with a terrifying and maddening impulse to leap from bed and sprint through the house. Overwhelming urges to flail my arms and legs and scream wildly for Chris escalated rapidly. I felt insane, desperately craving human companionship, some inane reassurance that I wasn’t utterly deserted.

           

            I was terrified.

           

            Claustrophobia engulfed my body as my heart rate soared and my lungs suffocated from hyperventilation. Cold sweat beads erupted on my forehead, and my pajamas clung to my dampened skin. My thoughts lashed around irrationally and uncontrollably. I knew I couldn’t stand it any longer; I was dying in that bed!

           

            Struggling to prop myself on one elbow, I battled hard to control my breathing, deliberately and instructively talking to myself and to God as I tried to sedate my raging, hyper-polarized nervous system. Simultaneously I reminded myself that if I absolutely had to—in an emergency—I could bolt from bed and get out of the house. My confinement to bed wasn’t permanent.

           

            Thank God!

           

            I thought once again of the quadriplegics who face a life of nearly complete immobility, as well as victims of body-wasting neuromuscular diseases who feel like prisoners in their own bodies. And how did prisoners of war, confined to tiny, solitary, bug, urine and feces-infested spaces—for months or years— survive psychologically, or physically? I started regarding their fortitude and circumstances with awe. I started feeling thankfulness for the reasons in which I had, essentially, elected this current confinement.  

           

            The reality settled in that no situations exist in which God cannot sustain and comfort us, where He cannot be our All-in-all, especially when we need the supernatural power to survive. There’s no wall He can’t penetrate, no evil He can’t conquer, no wasteland He can’t penetrate and revive.

           

            My flesh might have been prepared to wave the white flag exuberantly, but as Paul told Timothy in his second letter to him, “the spirit of God gave to us a spirit of power; not one of cowardice, but one of love and self-discipline. (2 Timothy 1:7, italics mine).”

           

            Oh, how I needed that power. And I was finally realizing it. God was driving the point home. My spirit was so willing, but my flesh did feel so very weak, and vulnerable, and fragile.

           

            As the days wore on, I found myself searching and praying more frequently for that sustaining supernatural power; that power only God can provide. My sustenance requirement climbed exponentially with every passing day.

           

            And those passing days bled slowly into one another as I lost all sense of time.

           

            I wrote out a little calendar of dates, (I could have easily asked Chris to purchase one for me, but I needed the activity), which I kept propped aside my bed, to mark and celebrate when another week elapsed. The baby’s survival rate soared with each seven-day passing.

           

            And God and I were starting to get pretty close.

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NEXT WEEK: It doesn’t get easier, spiritual attacks increase, and I rely more and more on God…

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Until next week,

Thanks for joining me!

Blessings,

Andrea

            When I experienced this first panic attack, I didn’t know what it was. I thought I might be having a heart attack. The terror accentuated the panic, and the snowball effect careened forward.

           

            Then I remembered a woman I’d encountered years earlier in a posh Santa Monica, California shopping mall.

           

            As I was approaching the parking garage elevator to enter the mall, a woman exited it. Two steps into the garage, she abruptly stopped and stared wild-eyed into the maze of cars, her head whipping from side to side as she tried to orientate herself.

           

            In a split second, she pivoted and reached for me, panicked words spilling from her lips like a water torrent. “Where am I? Where’s my car? I don’t know where I am! Oh, help, me!”

           

            Being young, self-centered and clueless, I thought she was nuts. What’s the big deal? I thought. Why can’t she just pull herself together? And how could you possibly forget where you parked your car?

           

            As I stepped toward her to help (I didn’t know what I was going to do), a security guard appeared out of nowhere. He carefully took her arm, focused on her eyes and spoke gently, soothingly, asking her what her car looked like and if he could help her find it. She calmed down enough to nod her head in a jerky manner and take shaky steps forward with him. I studied her for another couple of seconds and then pivoted and entered the elevator.

           

            I’m embarrassed to say I was not overcome with sympathy for her.

           

            Not then.

           

            Now I have buckets of sympathy for people who suffer panic attacks.

           

            And, as is so like God to do, He brought me full-force into their reality and disabling nature, just so I could develop that sympathy. 

oOo

For those of you who experience panic attacks and anxiety, please read my previous posts discussing these issues and how to overcome them.

Pregnant and Bedridden: The First Month Post-Cerclage

            I sat in silence for most of the car ride home following the depressing post-cerclage news. Somehow I had to psychologically adjust to strict bed rest—and the prospects of spending Christmas in a prostrate position—in the guest bedroom.

           

            I wanted to lounge in the living room in front of our Christmas tree, fully enjoying Parker’s descent on toys and opulently wrapped packages. But I had to force myself to examine things pragmatically and dispassionately, as a model stoic, afraid to laugh, sneeze, or weep because of the pressure they’d place on my stressed uterus and my “hanging-by-a-thread” cervix. I was already trying to protect myself by cruising into emotionless mode.

           

            Two months earlier a friend said I was “heroic” to attempt another pregnancy. “Either that, or I’m an idiot,” I’d quipped. Back then I could afford to be quippy.

           

            Now, I wasn’t feeling heroic, like an idiot, or like a heroic idiot. I wasn’t “feeling” much of anything.

           

            Except lonely, vacant, and scared.

           

            My mother battled guilty feelings for leaving me to vacation in Germany, despite my assurances to her that there was really nothing she could do for me. Actually, I was relieved when she left. I needed to be left alone to rest, and rest was not something I would likely get with another person in the house.

           

            I was more concerned about Parker, who once again appeared agitated about my health and new confinement, and who manifested his fear in a show of disdain and rebellion for his grandmother’s new position of authority. My mother frequently visited my room to insist that I mediate issues between them. That was one thing I couldn’t afford to continue. And I knew it.

           

            A week later, Chris drove her to the airport on a beautiful Saturday morning. By Sunday, the church had organized a squad of people who could bring meals to the house on a rotational basis, take care of Parker, pick him up from school, and be called upon in an emergency. They now seemed determined to correct the lack of support in the past—during Victoria’s death—and rallied together to provide whatever they could.

           

            By the following week, I’d arranged for a friend who lived in our community to come in twice daily to prepare meals for me and to drive Parker to and from school. Our insurance company had flatly denied home health care for me, calling it a “social issue.” Somehow, I didn’t quite understand how needing to eat while bedridden was a “social issue,” but being unwilling to subject myself to the emotional strain of trying to get them to change their minds, we decided to pay my friend for her mileage, home care and housekeeping services. And she seemed pleased to have the work. She provided great conversation and cared for Parker like a member of her own family, even taking him to the doctor on one occasion and transporting my dog to the vet.

           

            She also gave tremendous foot massages, which I relished, and needed. Without her selfless sacrifices, we wouldn’t have made it through the second week.

           

            By December, Chris had acquired the beeper and given me explicit instructions one morning to call him sometime during the day to see if it worked. Dutifully, I dialed the pager number and awaited his call. Unfortunately, my poor, distraught husband forgot that he’d given me those instructions, and I answered the phone call of a panicked man, panting heavily from the sudden adrenal jolt and sprint to the phone. He’d abruptly left a meeting in terror, certain that I’d gone into labor. I thought it was rather amusing. He was just relieved that I was okay.

           

            I don’t think he ever got used to that pager going off, but I enjoyed the comfort of knowing I could reach him any time of the day. His co-workers, however, also wanted to be able to reach him at any time through that beeper, but he solidly refused to relinquish the number. Some of them couldn’t understand why he got to have a beeper and they didn’t. Some things you just can’t explain to people if they don’t want to understand.

           

            I quickly became an expert on side-lying food consumption and realized just how grateful I was to the bendable straw inventor. My days revolved around meal times, until my digestive system decided to shut down just two weeks into my confinement. Former scrumptious delicacies were replaced by liquid fare consisting primarily of prune juice, or a tomato and sauerkraut juice mixture, apricot juice, vanilla Ensure, and an occasional evening snack of canned spinach.

           

            But all embarrassment and modesty had to be laid aside because my system would just not cooperate. Sitting patiently in the bathroom, absorbing arresting reading material wasn’t an option. I couldn’t risk any possible increase in pressure on the cervix. So, every other day, my patient, loving husband rose to the occasion to administer an enema to me. Thankfully, the little squeezy bottle contents did the trick, and I’d be good for another forty-eight hours.

           

            Although, instead of gaining weight, I rapidly lost muscle tissue and bone calcium. The baby took everything it needed, while I received leftovers. Within two weeks, the novelty—if there ever was any—was over, and boredom set in. I searched continuously for reading material and radio programs to whittle away the creeping hours and minutes. Afternoons—the very worst part of the days—seemed to stretch endlessly before me. The mere anticipation of Chris’s arrival caused time to dawdle lethargically forward, and the monotonous stream of talk shows and soap operas blabbering from the television dulled my senses. With cable unavailable in our remote farming community, and only two channels from which to choose, I could only flick back and forth between limited miscellaneous airway litter.

           

            This was going to test my fortitude.

           

            Christmas. There was always Christmas to look forward to, when Chris would be home for a week, and Parker would be on vacation from school! There was always the hope of Christmas! If I could just motivate Chris to put up a few decorations and a Christmas tree—despite his ever-increasing cranky and ambivalent attitude—we might enjoy some of the season’s spirit and salvage the holiday.

           

            But that was looking like a big “if.”

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NEXT WEEK: Christmas…and daily survival…

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Until next week,

Thanks for joining me!

Blessings,

Andrea