Baby Mine

I think the primary emotion I felt during that time was anxiety.  Fear.  Fear that this long-awaited miracle would somehow not work out, fear of the medical establishment, fear of each new and strange change that came physically (is this normal? is something wrong?), fear of being told what to do, fear of not being listened to, fear of not making the right choice.  Yes, I was excited to be pregnant.  Are you kidding?! I was happier to finally be expecting a baby than I had words to express.  I think that is part of the reason that I was so anxious - this was the one thing that I had dreamed of, thought about, read about, and longed for literally all my life.  Seriously.  Since I was a little girl, I had wanted to be a mommy, and had known it.  I had played at being pregnant (my mom must have had a little laugh over that one!), borrowed every baby I could get my hands on, mothered my younger siblings til they probably were somewhat sick of me, and known, my whole conscious life, what a blessing and privilege and sacred responsibility motherhood was.  And what a miracle.

So, finally, here it was.  And what if I messed it up?  Those who have waited years for pregnancy might shake their heads ruefully at a wait of 11 months, but that was a hard year for me, doing everything right, watching for a sign, waiting for that elusive plus... and finally, on Nate's birthday, when it came, I was so overwhelmed that I was shaking.  So excited, and so anxious to do it all right.  Midwife, or doctor?  Hospital, or home, or birth center? What do I do about throwing up, about losing weight, about not having the energy to be the wife and housekeeper and just person that I have been?  Is this discharge normal, or should I be worried?  As someone prone to UTI's, every little twinge was cause for doubt and consternation.  Yes, I was so happy, but I was a bit of a basketcase, too.  Shortly after finding out we were expecting, I woke up in the middle of the night, frantically searching the bed.  Nate laid me back down, patted my tummy and said, "Its ok! The baby is right here still!"  Soon I was too sick to think about much except finding a way to eat, or not throw up what I had just eaten.

Somehow I got through the first trimester.  I told myself my fears were irrational and silly and tried to put them away.  My sweet husband did his best to reassure and comfort me.  I was beginning to recover from the horrible nausea.  We had a few appointments with midwives to choose - I was adamant that I wanted a midwife.  The first was a homebirth lay midwife.  She was kind and seemed competent, but Nate especially was not comfortable with that idea, so we drove about an hour away to a birth center to meet with the staff there.  I was a bundle of nerves, defensive as a porcupine, and more than a little on edge.  The midwives were not particularly personable, but they were nice enough and, again, seemed very knowledgeable and competent. The birth center was lovely and very comfortable.  We decided that this would be the place.

Hearing the heartbeat for the first time was incredible.  A peace, a tangible relaxation came over me, and the look on Nate's face was priceless.  They showed us a little rag doll the approximate size of our baby, and Nate just held it and looked at it in awe.  "There really is a baby in there!" he said.  Ya think? ;)

We talked about it all the way home, and all the sickness began to seem worth it.  My fears were eased.  We were well out of the first trimester, it seemed that nothing could stop us now.  I began to feel what I realized after I no longer felt it was the baby squirming around.  I'd lost 15 pounds, but was slowly feeling up to eating again.  For about two weeks, life was really good.  My back started to hurt, and I couldn't get comfortable at night, but everybody says that's normal when you're pregnant, so I just shrugged it off.

When doubts and fears and questions surfaced, I did my best to push them down.  After all, we were safely out of the danger zone, weren't we?  I didn't want to make trouble or inconvenience anyone, especially since it was probably nothing.  Other women I asked seemed to not really remember, or not know what to tell me, or be a little embarrassed at discussing intimate pregnancy details.  Professionals seemed a little impatient and dismissive.  I was surely just a paranoid first-time mom, right?

Wrong.  So very wrong.  There's no knowing if anyone would have noticed the infection sooner, if anything could have been done, if my baby could have pulled through...but looking back I would have told myself to not worry about the others - they could take care of themselves.  I was the only one who could take care of this baby at this point, and if it took inconveniencing and pestering and demanding - if I felt something was off, I had every right to be taken seriously.  But how could I know?  How can you tell when you've never been through it before and you have never had to demand or inconvenience or put your foot down on something you might be wrong on that costs time and money and ....

So I didn't.  One evening, after hosting a wonderful and fun baby shower for a dear friend, my back just ached terribly.  Everyone went home, and we went to bed.  Nate was working morning shifts, so he was exhausted.  I woke up in the middle of the July night, shivering so badly I could hardly move voluntarily.  I rolled out of bed, literally stumbled to the dresser, and after fumbling with the drawer for several minutes because my hands were shaking so badly, pulled out a pair of socks and put them on.  I grabbed a quilt from the closet and made it back to bed, where I huddled under it, shivering and quaking, teeth chopping together, shaking the whole bed with my involuntary movement.  I couldn't get warm, so I woke up Nate to snuggle and help the process.  He was so confused and kept telling me to just relax and stop shaking.  I was doing my best, but I couldn't.  Finally he woke up enough to realize that I wasn't just cold, and got a thermometer.  My temperature was soaring.  He called the midwives, and one of them sleepily recommended I take some ibuprofen or tylenol or something like that to bring down the fever, and call back in the morning.  (I think.  I must admit, I was a little out of it at this point.)  He got some pills and water, and after a while, the shaking stopped and we both went back to sleep.  We deduced fairly quickly from the combination of back pain and fever that it was probably a kidney infection from an undetected UTI and the next morning got a prescription of antibiotics to fight it.  They said it should be fine, wouldn't hurt the baby.  Keep the fever down with round the clock doses of whatever it was I was taking.  Call them back if we needed anything else.  And that was supposed to be that.