Kids
Kids are great, aren't they? They drive you crazy, and keep you sane all at the same time. Today the boys have been busy doing both, and I thank whom or whatever is responsible for bringing them into my life for doing it. It's been a rough day, euphemistically speaking, and I know that if I didn't have the two most beautiful boys in the world to slap me upside the head and get on with things I would be a bigger mess than I am. To explain further:
My water broke on Tuesday. Nothing earth-shattering or new to the world, but the fact is that I was only 20 weeks and a couple of days pregnant at the time. Bad news, yes. I spent 3 days in the hospital, where Paul and I were told that although the baby was actually fine just where it was for the time being, there was a snowball's chance in hell that it would "survive to viability", or anything over 24 weeks' gestation. In my case, there was no remaining amniotic fluid, and even if I was put on COMPLETE bedrest (no getting up PERIOD, not even for the toilet), with no fluid for the baby to practice breathing with there was about a 95% chance that the body would quickly outgrow the lungs' capacity to supply oxygen, and that even after birth the baby could slowly and painfully begin to drown. So they gave us a while to make a decision: try to hold on for 4-6 weeks, praying for not just one miracle, but a series of them, or induce me, and have the baby now. I was not really concerned with the possibility of harm to me-- an open uterus is a primo numero uno place for bacteria to flourish, especially for diabetics who have a higher risk of developing infections anyway-- but it was a large enough consideration for it to be mentioned to me several times by different doctors and nurses.
We talked to two doctors, a social worker, all the nurses who were assigned to me, and each other. We cried a lot, and wondered why this was happening AGAIN (I had miscarried a 4-week fetus in November), and had no answers for that one. We held each other and hugged Colin and Riley more than they wanted us to, and made the decision to go ahead with the induction. By that time, the hospital was overcrowded with Maternity patients, so they suggested I go home and said they would call me when they had time and resources to do the induction; they had already cancelled 3 other ladies who had been scheduled on that day, due to the high volume of ladies showing up (inconveniently for us) actually in labor. At least it gave us the opportunity to get some preparations ready: a fetus over 20 weeks is considered a stillbirth rather than a miscarriage, and requires a legal burial or cremation, so we had some phone calls to make.
We went home Thursday afternoon, and were called back Friday evening, arriving at the hospital at around 8 pm. I had the same room again, by luck or coincidence. By 9:30 I had been poked in the right arm for the lab tests, poked in a finger for a meter calibration test (even though my glucometer had been checked prenatally and also during my previous stay 3 days before, they wanted to be extra sure it was accurate because I was not allowed to eat during the induction and my blood sugar was to be tested every hour until delivery), poked twice in the wrist for an IV line (they were using my left hand again, which had been used for my previous visit, and the vein disappeared during the first attempt) and poked in the vagina to check my uterus. I had been having inconsistent cramps at home, and back pain since Wednesday, and the doctor on duty that night told me that the baby was partially in the cervix already. I believe that my body would probably have started labour soon on its own, so even had we tried to hang on for a month or more with bedrest, it would have come to the same result; Paul agrees that we made the right decision.
Unfortunately for me, the on-call endocrinologist was nowhere to be found, and at after 10pm on a Friday night none of my own doctors were anywhere around. Eventually someone dug up my chart from the day before and saw that some orders had already been placed preparatory to the induction, and I was poked again (same wrist, different spot) with a second IV line for an insulin pump. The OB arrived from down in Emergency (she was on call that night, the only one!) and inserted a small tablet into my cervix to start labour; she warned me of the possibility of surgery if my premature placenta did not detach after the delivery. In a full term birth, the placenta will prepare itself to detach from the lining of the uterus, and almost form a lip, but with me being so early it was not the case. She said that if the placenta did not deliver with the baby, the best course would be to just wait a while and allow it to come out on its own, unless there was tearing or significant bleeding. If that was the case, I'd be off to surgery.
I had 4 hours of slowly increasing labour pains, finger poking, temperature and blood pressure taking, and then the OB came back to insert another tablet. She checked me again and said that the baby was halfway through the cervix, and the second tablet should do it. A little over two hours later, at 6:37am (Thank You, Paul, for noticing; I was a little busy at the time) our daughter Amy Norah was delivered. She was cleaned off and weighed, footprinted and photographed. Paul and I held her, and showed her to her brothers. She was tiny and perfectly formed, sort of purplish red in colour because her skin hadn't finished growing and it was so translucent I could see every vein on her body. She had no hair on her head but she did have visible fingernails and toenails. She had recognizable features inherited from both of us: Paul's lips and his ears, my hands and the Ely nose. Her eyes were still sealed, so I don't know what colour they would have been.
As the doctor had predicted, the placenta didn't arrive with the baby, but with the application of some good drugs and a bit of very painful fingers-where-you-never-want-them poking (it hurt more than the labour and delivery), it came out and everything was just hunky dory. Unless you count the fact that we left the hospital minus one baby. We were given the quilt she had been wrapped in and a very pretty little box of mementos: a tiny doll-sized gown that she never actually wore, a wrist band that never touched her wrist, a silly pink preemie bonnet that would have been too big for her and a plaster cast of her feet. That is the only thing that actually means anything to me, because it really represents her. We will be getting a CD of the photos when they are ready, but because she was so small (310 grams or 11 oz) the funeral home said it was not uncommon to have no remains at all left over after the cremation, so those photos, the trinkets, our memories and this journal entry will be everything we have to remember her by. Both the major and minor discomforts that my body went through during the last day and a half will have long healed before the pain of losing her heals, if it ever will.
And so we come full circle again. The boys were perfectly behaved at the hospital during both my stays there, to the point where staff went out of their way to say so, and to compliment Paul and me on their politeness and good manners. As soon as we got home, however, they were back to their old selves again, neither listening well nor doing what we told them, and stirring me from my despondency with cries of "Mummy I'm hungry!" and "Riley hit me!" Simultaneously I want to scream at them for not allowing me time to mourn and to thank them for giving me a reason not to sink into the deepest pits of depression. I am glad that I have Paul to be strong when I need him to be, and I can be strong for him when he needs me to be. As long as we take turns, we'll be fine. And if we both lose it at the same time, there will be one boy yelling because his brother drank all the juice and another one who is too busy watching TV to put his toys away, and I'll look at Paul and say "I love you honey" and get up to deal with them.
I love you, boys. And I love you too, Amy.
My water broke on Tuesday. Nothing earth-shattering or new to the world, but the fact is that I was only 20 weeks and a couple of days pregnant at the time. Bad news, yes. I spent 3 days in the hospital, where Paul and I were told that although the baby was actually fine just where it was for the time being, there was a snowball's chance in hell that it would "survive to viability", or anything over 24 weeks' gestation. In my case, there was no remaining amniotic fluid, and even if I was put on COMPLETE bedrest (no getting up PERIOD, not even for the toilet), with no fluid for the baby to practice breathing with there was about a 95% chance that the body would quickly outgrow the lungs' capacity to supply oxygen, and that even after birth the baby could slowly and painfully begin to drown. So they gave us a while to make a decision: try to hold on for 4-6 weeks, praying for not just one miracle, but a series of them, or induce me, and have the baby now. I was not really concerned with the possibility of harm to me-- an open uterus is a primo numero uno place for bacteria to flourish, especially for diabetics who have a higher risk of developing infections anyway-- but it was a large enough consideration for it to be mentioned to me several times by different doctors and nurses.
We talked to two doctors, a social worker, all the nurses who were assigned to me, and each other. We cried a lot, and wondered why this was happening AGAIN (I had miscarried a 4-week fetus in November), and had no answers for that one. We held each other and hugged Colin and Riley more than they wanted us to, and made the decision to go ahead with the induction. By that time, the hospital was overcrowded with Maternity patients, so they suggested I go home and said they would call me when they had time and resources to do the induction; they had already cancelled 3 other ladies who had been scheduled on that day, due to the high volume of ladies showing up (inconveniently for us) actually in labor. At least it gave us the opportunity to get some preparations ready: a fetus over 20 weeks is considered a stillbirth rather than a miscarriage, and requires a legal burial or cremation, so we had some phone calls to make.
We went home Thursday afternoon, and were called back Friday evening, arriving at the hospital at around 8 pm. I had the same room again, by luck or coincidence. By 9:30 I had been poked in the right arm for the lab tests, poked in a finger for a meter calibration test (even though my glucometer had been checked prenatally and also during my previous stay 3 days before, they wanted to be extra sure it was accurate because I was not allowed to eat during the induction and my blood sugar was to be tested every hour until delivery), poked twice in the wrist for an IV line (they were using my left hand again, which had been used for my previous visit, and the vein disappeared during the first attempt) and poked in the vagina to check my uterus. I had been having inconsistent cramps at home, and back pain since Wednesday, and the doctor on duty that night told me that the baby was partially in the cervix already. I believe that my body would probably have started labour soon on its own, so even had we tried to hang on for a month or more with bedrest, it would have come to the same result; Paul agrees that we made the right decision.
Unfortunately for me, the on-call endocrinologist was nowhere to be found, and at after 10pm on a Friday night none of my own doctors were anywhere around. Eventually someone dug up my chart from the day before and saw that some orders had already been placed preparatory to the induction, and I was poked again (same wrist, different spot) with a second IV line for an insulin pump. The OB arrived from down in Emergency (she was on call that night, the only one!) and inserted a small tablet into my cervix to start labour; she warned me of the possibility of surgery if my premature placenta did not detach after the delivery. In a full term birth, the placenta will prepare itself to detach from the lining of the uterus, and almost form a lip, but with me being so early it was not the case. She said that if the placenta did not deliver with the baby, the best course would be to just wait a while and allow it to come out on its own, unless there was tearing or significant bleeding. If that was the case, I'd be off to surgery.
I had 4 hours of slowly increasing labour pains, finger poking, temperature and blood pressure taking, and then the OB came back to insert another tablet. She checked me again and said that the baby was halfway through the cervix, and the second tablet should do it. A little over two hours later, at 6:37am (Thank You, Paul, for noticing; I was a little busy at the time) our daughter Amy Norah was delivered. She was cleaned off and weighed, footprinted and photographed. Paul and I held her, and showed her to her brothers. She was tiny and perfectly formed, sort of purplish red in colour because her skin hadn't finished growing and it was so translucent I could see every vein on her body. She had no hair on her head but she did have visible fingernails and toenails. She had recognizable features inherited from both of us: Paul's lips and his ears, my hands and the Ely nose. Her eyes were still sealed, so I don't know what colour they would have been.
As the doctor had predicted, the placenta didn't arrive with the baby, but with the application of some good drugs and a bit of very painful fingers-where-you-never-want-them poking (it hurt more than the labour and delivery), it came out and everything was just hunky dory. Unless you count the fact that we left the hospital minus one baby. We were given the quilt she had been wrapped in and a very pretty little box of mementos: a tiny doll-sized gown that she never actually wore, a wrist band that never touched her wrist, a silly pink preemie bonnet that would have been too big for her and a plaster cast of her feet. That is the only thing that actually means anything to me, because it really represents her. We will be getting a CD of the photos when they are ready, but because she was so small (310 grams or 11 oz) the funeral home said it was not uncommon to have no remains at all left over after the cremation, so those photos, the trinkets, our memories and this journal entry will be everything we have to remember her by. Both the major and minor discomforts that my body went through during the last day and a half will have long healed before the pain of losing her heals, if it ever will.
And so we come full circle again. The boys were perfectly behaved at the hospital during both my stays there, to the point where staff went out of their way to say so, and to compliment Paul and me on their politeness and good manners. As soon as we got home, however, they were back to their old selves again, neither listening well nor doing what we told them, and stirring me from my despondency with cries of "Mummy I'm hungry!" and "Riley hit me!" Simultaneously I want to scream at them for not allowing me time to mourn and to thank them for giving me a reason not to sink into the deepest pits of depression. I am glad that I have Paul to be strong when I need him to be, and I can be strong for him when he needs me to be. As long as we take turns, we'll be fine. And if we both lose it at the same time, there will be one boy yelling because his brother drank all the juice and another one who is too busy watching TV to put his toys away, and I'll look at Paul and say "I love you honey" and get up to deal with them.
I love you, boys. And I love you too, Amy.