Baby Mine III

Friday morning.  The last day of round the clock, nausea inducing antibiotics.  A week since it began.  I woke up to an odd feeling.  It was early, around 5am, and I thought maybe it was that I needed to go to the bathroom, but then I realized that my pad was soaked, and the fluid wasn't stopping when I stopped urinating. (Sorry for TMI, this is the whole story.)  In confusion, I put on another pad, and went back to bed.   I still felt strange, so I rolled over to get comfortable and immediately sprang out of bed with a full-on gush of liquid.  Now that, I knew was not supposed to happen.  I changed, woke up Nate, and we called the midwives.  One answered the phone, half- asleep, and told us to go to the nearest ER, and let her know what happened.

She did say the nearest ER, so we got in the car and drove north.  How many times I have wished we had gone south.  Not that anything would have changed, necessarily, but the whole experience, the whole demeanor of staff and personnel probably would have been different.  Oh, well.  We drove north.

There were no contractions on the way there.  I wasn't in pain, I wasn't sick, but I remember sitting as still as I possibly could, not even praying that the baby would be alright as I had the other times, just asking, "Please, be with us! Please, help us!"  As if by not moving, I could keep the future from happening.  We arrived in the beautiful July sunrise, a hot and humid Florida summer day already foreshadowed by the feeling in the air, and walked into the deserted ER.

I will say this - if you have to go to the ER, 6am is a way better time than 6pm, or even 12 midnight.  No one was there.  An oldish EMT with stringy red hair and a few missing teeth helped us with the intake.  He looked a little sketchy, but he was the nicest and most professional of any of the people we interacted with that day.  There was no wait, since we were the only ones there, and they immediately took us back.  By this time, contractions had started up a little, but not seriously and not regularly.  It was obvious by their questions and attitudes that they didn't think my water had broken.  They kept implying maybe I had just wet myself...you know, its ok, pregnant ladies do that sometimes.  Right.  I kept insisting I had not.  A doctor walked in, and without as much as an introduction, did a rough internal exam and told us that there was no dilation.  They checked the baby's heartbeat.  It was extremely elevated, and the baby was very active, causing them to lose it several times.  An ultrasound was ordered.

The policy at this medical center was to put in a catheter for all ultrasounds.  (At least that's what they told us.)  We tried to explain that I had already ingested over a quart of water and not urinated in the last several hours, besides the fact that I was recovering from a UTI.  Nope.  No excuses, in it went.  OH MY GOODNESS!  It was agony. Of course, the nurse says, "Does that hurt?  It shouldn't hurt.Anyway, it won't when you get all filled up." No, of course it doesn't hurt - why do you think I am gasping and tears are rolling out of my eyes? Why do you think I just started to cry? But you're the professional, you know what you're talking about, what you're doing... If this will help my baby, do whatever you have to.

The doctor and nurses left the room, and Nate and I were alone.  Peaceful music was playing from our computer, which Nate had thought to bring. (Several ER visits in one week have a way of letting you know you had better bring lots to do if you're not the patient, or even if you are, because you are definitely going to be waiting.)  The contractions started up again, in earnest, getting stronger, more intense, closer together.  The catheter was agony.  I lay flat on my back, still as possible to avoid the pain that came from jostling the catheter, and tried to relax through the contractions.  At some point I began moaning, loud through the pressure, and then dwindling to soft in-between. It was the only way I could think of to deal with the intense and even overwhelming sensations flooding over me, all the while lying perfectly still on my back.  Nate rubbed my feet, not sure what else to do.  He later told me I made less noise during Eden's labor and birth than I did than.


Eventually, a lab tech showed up.  She was young, and somewhat brash, and informed us that Nate couldn't come.  It was against "policy."  That was enough to make me take a break from my moaning and gasp out a plea for him to come.  She didn't say anything to that, but Nate just stated that he was coming, and he'd wait outside the ultrasound room if he had to.  We wheeled through the halls; my eyes were mostly closed as I tried to hold it together, but I saw the looks on the faces of nurses and people in the halls as we passed.  "What is wrong with her?!"

Sure enough, there was plenty of room in the lab, and faced with a very present and calmly decisive Nate, the actual ultrasound technician let him in with no problem.  She began to "fill me up."  We assured her that it wouldn't be necessary.  I think I actually said, "I don't think I can hold anymore!" and when she checked, sure enough, there was more than enough fluid already in my bladder to see clearly.  I began to feel some relief, as if the contractions had stopped.  As I lay there, eyes closed, trying to regain my equilibrium, I was vaguely aware of her taking measurements, looking at the screen, and then suddenly stopping the ultrasound. Without any explanation, we were rushed back to our ER room, and I mean rushed!

They parked the bed back in our tiny corner room and left, without a word.  A nurse came in and for the first time in my life I really, really wanted to swear.  "Get this (bleep) catheter out of me!" was what was on the tip of my tongue, but thankfully habit protects even in times of great stress, and what I actually said was minus the profanity.  She didn't say much and went about her duties without any explanations.  Although I had a pretty good idea of what she was doing, I felt as if I were supposed to be ignorant and silent.  Any comment, question, or even wincing and crying out were met with a critical and somewhat exasperated attitude.  I felt completely disempowered, if that's a word.  There was instant relief when the catheter was drained and removed, and the contractions had stopped, but I felt an odd pressure.  Hoping against a pretty clear idea of what was really causing that, I told the nurse I had to go to the bathroom.  I mean, honestly, what was I supposed to say? "Um, I think my baby's going to come out now?"

She brought in a commode, basically a grown-up potty chair, and left us alone again.  I climbed off the bed and sat on the commode.  Within a short time, with no real effort I can remember, our tiny little baby slipped out.  Disregarding the mess of blood and fluid, I knelt on the floor and scooped up my little baby, cradled the tiny body in my hands.  It was perfect.  Beautiful.  Not weird and alien-looking like some illustrations make fetuses look.  It was our beautiful, fully formed, just-needed-a-little-more-time baby.  The little legs were curled up, and from head to little bum, it fit snugly in my hands, filling them from fingertips to wrist.  The amniotic sac and placenta were still wrapped around like a protecting blanket, and we didn't know if we were supposed to change anything.  We didn't know if we were supposed to even touch and hold our own baby, let alone remove anything, so we didn't.  We just marvelled at the perfection.  One tiny arm was thrown up over the head.  The tiny mouth was slightly open and the other hand half covered it, as if in mild surprise at the way things had suddenly gone wrong.  Tiny perfect hand, just the size of my thumbnail.  Too soon, we felt constrained to replace the little body, still warm from mine, so recently alive, in the pool of blood, and climb back up where I "belonged."  A nurse and the doctor came in.  In some awkward way, they told us that our baby was not going to make it, that the ultrasound revealed that the heart was no longer beating.  Um, thanks for letting us know.  (When we got the records, we found out that the tech had actually seen the baby in the cervix, and that was probably why she had stopped the scan so abruptly.  No one wants a dead baby born in their lab!) We indicated that we knew and that the baby was in the commode.  I think then they felt super awkward then, because I don't really remember them saying anything else meaningful before they left.  The nurse began to tidy up, and suddenly the door opened again, and a social worker walked in, holding up a baby blanket and saying that someone told her we might need this...

Up to that point I had been so overwhelmed, so exhausted, so absorbed in dealing with the intense physical sensations and uncomfortable psychological situation that I literally felt very little.  I was absolutely in the moment, dealing with whatever came as it came.  I felt wonder and awe at the perfection of that tiny body, and a kind of disbelief and inability to comprehend what had happened, but when that baby blanket was held up, I suddenly was totally engulfed in a wave of the deepest sorrow I have ever known.  It was as if every fiber of my being was overcome with grief.  I covered my face and the tears and weeping poured out of me. It would not be stopped.  I could not stop it.  Even writing this now, going back to that moment in my mind, tears prick my eyes and my throat aches.  I cannot put into words the depth of pain and grief I felt, even more extreme than at my own brother's death.

They lifted our tiny baby's body into the blanket, and wrapped it up a little, and then handed it to me.  It was all I could do to curl up on my side around my baby on that hard, narrow hospital cot and mourn.  Everyone again left us, and Nate and I stayed there with our little one for nearly an hour.  My crying stopped, and I just talked to that little one, telling him/her how very much we had loved and wanted and waited for their precious self, how sad we were to let them go... Somehow it was a comfort to just lay there with my baby, even knowing that he or she was not really there anymore.  We said a prayer together with our baby cradled between us, a prayer so heartbroken and grief-heavy, so raw and painful and utterly submissive and crushed.   And then it was time to leave.

Thankfully there was a nurse who was willing to hold that precious bundle as we walked out the door of that room.  I don't think I could have left if we'd had to just leave our baby there on the bed.  Even so, as the door shut behind us, I couldn't help it - I just broke down weeping and wailing again.  I heard one of the nurses murmur something about me "sure taking it hard." Yes, I was.  I definitely was.  But there was nothing to be done.  We had to leave.  Empty womb, empty heart, empty arms.  Empty.