Pregnant and Bedridden: Teetering Atop the Roller Coaster, Awaiting the Ride Down

           

            I love roller coasters.

           

            Well, at least I used to love them. Not so much anymore. My arthritic neck and back can’t take them now. So, I have a choice to get on and get hurt, or to sit on a bench and watch screaming humans get tossed, looped around and nauseated. For fun!

           

            This ride I’d been on for three months, I chose to get on. Set my face like flint to ride, get walloped around and live to tell about it.

           

            Just because it was voluntary didn’t make the end ride any easier.

           

            I thought I'd been chucked around pretty good up to this point. 

            But the death drop was just beginning.

           

            The final days of January and first several days of February brought a sweltering heat wave, turning my south-facing room into an oven. The air conditioning brought some relief, but by six in the evening, I was damp, drained and eager to extinguish the lights. With such an early retirement, I awakened in the earliest morning hours, conceding to banal television entertainment with its insomniac lineup of pocket-draining infomercials and worn-out talk shows. Eventually, even the local station couldn’t justify transmitting any longer and vacated the night airways.

           

            I more frequently listened to Christian radio, opened my Bible more often to study it, wrote letters, filled my journal and signed checks for the constant supply of bills streaming into the house. I also played with Parker—to the best of my limited ability—and managed to crochet two baby afghans, one for my baby and one for a friend’s. Unfortunately, the latter one was lost in transit to Chicago. (I could only hope the unintended owners appreciated my labors.) The liquid diet continued, except for the moments when I broke down and treated myself to solid food—then wished I hadn’t been so foolish.

           

            I imagined that as the March date of thirty-six weeks approached, time would pass more quickly.

           

            I was wrong. It only seemed to slow down.

           

            Tick…Tick…Tick...

           

            A friend happily surprised me with several cuddly receiving blankets, which elevated my hopes that I might actually bring a new baby home to wrap them around. Tucked among the blankets were a bath sponge and gel, for me! For the time when I’d be able to soak luxuriously in a tub brimming with steaming water and vigorously scrub my skin into a shiny pink glow. Dr. Landry expected me to come to his office for weekly visits beginning February 8, providing mini-goals that I cheerfully anticipated would eradicate the creeping clock.

           

            By February 8, I was more than ready to complete the pregnancy, though. I actually had visitors, which meant welcome conversation and companionship, but the animated socializing also delivered unwanted fatigue and contractions. On Saturday, the contractions were so numerous and consistent that I needed to finally break down and ingest some of the Terbutaline, Dr. Landry’s “Vitamin T.” Then I had to maintain a subdued, sequestered afternoon. Sunday brought more inconsistent uterine activity, making it difficult to discern whether I was having Braxton-Hicks or bona fide contractions. My forehead’s worry creases deepened.

           

            The examination at Dr. Landry’s the following morning told the story: my cervix was rapidly deteriorating—thinned to the thickness of a paper towel—with an effacement increase to ninety percent.  

           

            “I don’t think we’re going to make it another two weeks,” he pronounced. “I’m going to begin steroid injections today to enhance the baby’s lung development; home health will come out to your house tomorrow, then again next Monday and Tuesday to administer more injections. I do not want you to come in next week; you need to stay in bed. And you need to be taking your “Vitamin T,” he finished with a smile. 

           

            My head swirled. Ninety percent, hanging by a thread paper-thin cervix, steroid injections… I tried to focus and nod, like I was following along. Good thing Chris is taking all of this in.

           

            There was one redeeming aspect to the visit: my baby was doing well. “Looked beautiful,” according to Dr. Landry. Doing all of the things he expected a baby to do in the womb at that stage, and the lung development was good. Good weight gain, good growth, strong movement.

           

            Impending childbirth.

           

            Suddenly, the clock seemed to have accelerated.

           

            Tick. Tick. Tick.

           

            I had spent so many weeks, days, hours, minutes and seconds in bed, I wasn’t sure what to think at that point. Lying flat and confined had become “normal.”

           

            But maybe it’s finally time to pick out baby names and prepare a hospital overnight bag, I thought.

           

            Juxtaposed among the happy feelings of having a new baby to bring home, though, were feelings of having a tiny, fragile, premature infant in neonatal intensive care for an indefinite amount of time. It was a given. At this stage of development, the baby would be too small to come home, and I’d be released from the hospital long before the baby would be. Even though the baby looked strong in the womb, any number of problems could develop in the ICU, leaving him or her with permanent, physical damage.

           

            We had made it so far, and even though the survival rate placed us high on the statistics chart, there was no guarantee the baby would survive. There were still an unknown number of pregnancy days remaining, and then the actual delivery. Even a perfect nine-month pregnancy could end with debilitating problems. Or death. Experience told me nothing—absolutely nothing—could be taken for granted. There were no guarantees.

           

            Call it knowing too much. Stubborn doubt and fear clouds remained parked over our heads. Parker managed to sum it up in profound, child-like fashion. “You’ve been pregnant  a l-o-n-g time,” he observed following that doctor visit.

           

            Oh, Sweetheart, you have no idea. It feels like a lifetime!

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NEXT WEEK: The ride down begins…

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Until next week,

Thanks for joining me!

Blessings,

Andrea

             

Pregnant and Bedridden: Relishing Life’s Simple Pleasures

           

            

            Life's simple pleasures.

           When you’re pregnant and bedridden—flat on your back, with nothing to do and nowhere to go—simple pleasures are few and far between. When they do come, they become so much more than simple.

           

            The final Sunday of January, 1997, promised to be a good, light-hearted day, as Chris and Parker propped their big yellow San Diego Chargers bolt on the entertainment center and initiated a tiny, robust cheering section in a corner of my room. Even though our beloved Chargers had a rough Super Bowl appearance, the game excitement elevated my spirits. Immensely. So immensely, in fact, that I was actually concerned about exciting myself right into premature labor, since I can view a football game with as much intensity and emotion as any die-hard Green Bay Packers’ fan. (Well, maybe not quite that much intensity, but you get the picture.)

           

            The Chargers’ performance waned—as did our rural television reception—and I was saved the emotional and physical agitation of a good, head-to-head clash. Instead, I was relishing the delicate warmth of sunlight spilling through the open door, and the cool January breeze drifting tenderly across the room, its alighting fingertips awakening my famished skin. I think I lay slumbering comfortably before the final clock minutes fizzled out.

           

            With the door open, I could finally view the rolling landscape beyond our home that proudly displayed glistening green lushness recently acquired from the winter showers. Oh, how I longed to stand outside with my face turned toward the sun, with its warmth infusing and recharging my stiff, brittle body. How I ached to run through the glorious panorama, hair flying, liberated and unconstrained.  

           

            But I wasn’t physically liberated or unconstrained. Not yet, anyway. The romp through the harkening vista would have to wait. For now my imagination had to suffice.

oOo

           

            The following day found the intermittent periods of pelvic pain and weekday loneliness return. And it continued. Often, having exhausted all of my daily activities, I’d lie in bed feeling lost and alone, staring catatonically at the silent radio or a blank television screen. Eventually, though, I started sleeping better through the night, and the anticipation and fear of darkness-driven panic dissipated. I thanked God profusely for even the tiniest bit of relief from the nightly horror.

           

           Then came a another godsend of blessings. My friend, Nancy, initiated foot massages during her noontime cleaning and feeding visits. Besides helping me relax, I can’t tell you what kind of effect simply being touched had on me emotionally, physically and spiritually. Forget the fact that one of my major love languages is touch. Just having someone’s hands contact my body in a gentle, loving way was medication to my soul and a barbiturate to my strangled nerves. Such joy!

           

            The skin on my legs and feet had developed a malnourished, reptilian appearance, and my feet had long since gone numb and tingly from the lack of stimulation. My legs no longer resembled the carefully trained, shapely limbs of an athletic woman, but protruded like skinny sticks encased in excess flesh. Dr. Landry had prescribed lying prostrate toe pointing to avoid blood clots. Absolutely NO leg lifts. Just toe pointing. The only time I lifted my legs was to scour them with my electric razor—a practice that became increasingly difficult as my pregnancy advanced and the razor’s blades dulled. Even the vibration on my thighs started irritating my uterus. So, to alleviate unnecessary irritation, leg shaving had to be conducted in little blocks of time on small patches of leg. My lower appendages started feeling more like partially used sandpaper sheets than silky smooth gams.

           

            One weekend morning I allowed myself a risky, resplendent luxury, though, when I allowed Chris to fill the bathtub with warm water and place a chair next to the tub so I could briefly languish with my feet and ankles soaking in the warm, soothing liquid. My atrophied legs shook as I carefully—manually—lifted, then lowered one foot at a time into the placid water. Five short minutes was all I allowed myself to splurge. Five minutes.

           

            It seemed more like a glorious hour.     

           

            After the soak, Chris gently scrubbed my toes and calves with a sponge, returned me to bed, then carefully dried and lotioned my flaking limbs. (Yes, I was in desperate need of an industrial strength exfoliation!) For a brief thirty minutes, I felt as though I’d been airborne to heaven. “When I hit that thirty-six week mark, I’m going to treat myself to a shower,” I proclaimed to Chris with confidence. 

           

            “Whenever you think you want to try it, I’ll help you,” he responded with a smile.          

            His heart and attitude appeared to be softening. Maybe that’s because he’d gotten a really good look at my withering legs for the first time in three months!

           

            At that moment I was deeply grateful for the simple feet and toes stimulation.      

           

            And the heavenly pleasure of my husband’s warm and gentle touch.

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NEXT WEEK: Perched at the top of the roller coaster, awaiting the drop…

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Until next week,

Thanks for joining me!

Blessings,

Andrea

Pregnant and Bedridden: Weekend Diversions and Chipping Away at Pride

           Another month was about to go into the history annals. As the last weekend in January approached, my excitement meter ticked higher. Even though I was usually still by myself in the bedroom on Saturdays and Sundays, the weekends became pleasant diversions from the boring weekday routine. I guess it was just nice knowing that I wasn’t alone in the house, and those voices filtering through the house and ringing off the walls soothed my psyche.

           

            Parker, never a Saturday morning cartoon-type, would bound downstairs and snuggle next to me to briefly watch the latest in floozy entertainment and junk food commercials. It was the commercials to which he seemed most attracted. The commercials displaying epicurean kiddy goodies that never passed through the doors of our home. Goodies he convinced himself he’d perish without.

           

            Fortunately, he disliked most of the animated shows, because they were “too strange and scary,” and he eventually grasped the sales pitch formula after my repeated explanations about their motives.

           

            After an hour or so, back upstairs he’d bound to resume his intense marathon bouts of constructing Lego airports, fire trucks, buildings, and innumerable creations tumbling uninterrupted from his imagination.

           

            Being the sensitive, concerned type, I think he really only came down to keep me company for a while. And I was grateful.

           

            Sunday mornings were highlights of the week, when I’d watch the morning lineup of television evangelists, particularly Dr. Charles Stanley. I so very much missed attending church services and felt guilty about not being able to maintain weekly, corporate worship. But Dr. Stanley and his messages brought me renewed hope and promise, and He introduced me to a God I hadn’t heard about in a very long time. (Or if I had been told about Him, I hadn’t been listening very well.) A God with perfect ideals and lofty expectations for His children. He introduced me to a loving, uncompromising God who is always there for me. A God who never forsakes His own, who is eternally and perfectly faithful, and intensely personal—if one allows Him to be Lord over their life.

           

            I started to learn my way around the Bible, and one day I “happened” to swivel my radio dial to a local Christian station. Some of the programs I found offensive, since I wasn’t in the mood, or ready, to be “preached at.” I certainly didn’t think I needed anyone telling me how I should be living my life. Although I didn’t need “saving,” I certainly needed the next step in discipleship: biblical instruction on godly living.

           

            I was still picking and choosing according to my comfort zone—like a child carefully examining a candy display case, thinking, counting out his limited pennies to spend, carefully selecting and pointing out his choices. My flesh wasn’t yet ready for all the truth. And the term “lordship” rankled my pride and stiffened my neck hairs, not to mention what the terms “submission” and “denial of self” did to me.

           

            Denial of self! As a competitive athlete, I’d been trained to apply heroic efforts to positioning, validating and asserting my self! And to compound that, I’d grown up in the have-it-your-way (actually, fight vehemently for your way), and feed-your-ego-and-bolster-your-self-esteem-any-way-you-can generation. We didn’t possess a techie Gen X, Y, Z or Millenials moniker. We were officially christened “The Me Generation,” and there was a good reason for that title.

           

            And, as so many believers still nursing on spiritual baby food, I was content to suck on that bottle and mix it with the flavoring of the world’s wisdom.

           

            I did manage to read some Christian books my dad shipped to me, about the history of Christianity following Jesus, but that lying-on-my-back-holding-a-heavy-book-over-my-head-to-read act never lasted very long. My arms always gave out. Even lying on my side and propping the opened book up next to me sent my eyeballs into figure eight patterns.

           

            Yet slowly, consistently, the dormant desire for more knowledge of the faith I professed to hold—and the cornerstone of that faith, Jesus Christ—wormed its way to my heart’s surface and my soul’s core. The world of complete truth was opening up to me, like a curtain slowly gathered back to let the sunshine in. And it was now uncluttered by the “truth” of my Jehovah’s Witnesses friends because their visits had to be canceled due to my precarious condition.

           

            The brilliant silver lining of my existence: Just God and me in His classroom.

           

            Truth. Real truth. That’s what I needed. And I now know that I wouldn’t have gone searching for it unless I wasn’t prodded firmly into a position—through utter weakness and surrender—to seek it.

           

            As I’ve stated so often, God had me right where He wanted me, right where I needed to be for Him to get my undivided attention and shape me into a vessel the way He wanted to shape. To slap my human clay on the spinning pottery wheel, stick me in the fire to burn off the dross and shape me into something beautiful, something He could be proud of. Something He could hold up and say, with a satisfied smile, “Well done!” Something that perfectly reflects Him.

           

            Slowly, methodically, day by endless day, He was dismantling that stubborn Me Generation pride, without me even realizing it.

oOo

           

            Have you ever wondered what’s going on in your life? Especially when not-so-great things are happening? When life gets tough. When the bottom of it has dropped out. When there’s no crack in the clouds that seem to stretch endlessly permanently on in the dark sky.

           

            I’ll give you an early heads-up on what I learned from all of this mental pain and physical torture: God’s in the vessel shaping and pruning business. Neither of which are comfortable.

           

            Ever watch a master jeweler shape a gorgeous piece of jewelry? A one-of-a-kind masterpiece? The metal doesn’t look like much when he starts. First, he sketches a design on paper or computer. Then he makes a wax model or mold for a template. He melts, fires, bends, (often with sharp, needle-nosed pliers) and snips, shapes and grinds and polishes, removing every nick, burr and flaw. Then he applies a brilliant rock that’s also been cut and highly polished. He's meticulous in his work. It’s labor intensive, time consuming and often slow. But the result is stunning, and often worth millions.

           

            It’s priceless.

           

            Just like you.

           

            What I learned was to ask, especially in the middle of pain, heartache and the unknown: “What are you trying to teach me here, God?” What do you want me to learn from this? Teach me now, not later!”

           

            I’ve learned to lean into whatever’s going on, to pick God’s brain for answers. To reason with Him, as He calls us to do. Instead of resisting and fighting, I want to walk right alongside Him on the journey, stuck to His side. Learning, growing, becoming one with Him. Absorbing His knowledge and wisdom like an ocean sponge soaks up sea water.

           

            It’s not always easy. There’s so much that gets me, and my mind, sidetracked.

           

            But living that way helps take my focus off of me and lay it squarely where it should be—on God.

           

            And that reminds me on which piece of the jeweler’s loop I’m stationed.

           

            And that quickly reminds me that He is the Master Craftsman.

           

            And His designs are always original and precious.

           

            And exquisitely beautiful!

           

            Like you.

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NEXT WEEK: Superbowls and simples pleasures…

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Until next week,

Thanks for joining me!

Blessings,

Andrea