Being Pregnant - Part Two

Being Pregnant - Part Two

At about the 15th week of pregnancy, at my doctor's appointment, I was told about a test called an APF, which is a test that measures certain hormones and proteins the baby is producing.  I was told it was a test that is commonly given to all expectant mothers.  This test would be able to tell the whether the baby had Down Syndrome, and other possible problems.

But of course, because of my age, they recommended I have an amniocentesis. With this test, a needle is inserted into the amniotic sac, and fluid is drawn out and tested for abnormalities   

I had told the doctor from the beginning that having an "amnio" was out of the question. This test can bring about pre-mature labor, and with my history, that was last thing I needed.  But the APF was just a blood test, so I thought I would have that.

When I told Tony this, he couldn't understand why I would have the APF if I was not willing to have the amnio.  They would both the same kind of test, really, right? One was just less evasive than the other.  Not to mention the APF was notorious for false positives. Besides, what would I do if I got a positive result from the test? What if the baby had something wrong with it? Was I going to have an abortion?

Well, no, I would not have an abortion. Why would I have one? Nothing was going to be wrong. So fine, I thought I won't have any tests.  All those things did was make you worry; and spoil your enjoyment of the pregnancy. 

So we did nothing.  Everything was going to be fine.

Or was it?

In the back of my mind, there was this little voice, saying "but what if?' 

I knew very little about Down Syndrome.  The only exposure I'd had was from a co-worker whose daughter had it.  She had brought the child to the office a few times.  She was a sweet little girl. 

But I knew, also, some of the agonies my co-worker suffered.  The little girl ended up having a hole in her heart, a very common anomaly with Down Syndrome children; that is, nearly 50% of children with Down Syndrome have a heart defect.  She spoke also about  the little girl having hypotonia, which is a lack of muscle tone, another very common anomaly.  This causes delays in the child walking, among other tasks that are fundamental.

Worst of all, she talked about the heartbreak of it all.  The grief; a grief that never leaves you for a second.

Heartbreaking. 

So all I knew was that having a Down Syndrome baby was not a good thing.

I had purchased a copy of the famous pregnancy book, "What to expect when your expecting."  There was a short section on Down Syndrome in the not much bigger section on mothers over 35.  It said:

"Mothers over 35 face a somewhat greater chance of having a baby with Down Syndrome.  The incidence increases with the mother's age: 1 in 1,250 for 25 year old mothers, about 3 in 1,000 for 30 year old mothers, 1 in 300 for mothers at 35, and at 45, one child in 35.  It's speculated that this and other chromosomal abnormalities, though still relatively rare, are more common in older women because their eggs are older.  Every woman is born with a lifetime supply of eggs that age along with her.  These eggs, over the years, are exposed to such things as drugs, x-rays, infections, and so on."

The expectant mom

Shit.

This didn't sound good at all.  I felt numb.  This couldn't mean me, right?

I didn't read that section of the book again.  I didn't want to know anymore.  But throughout the pregnancy, it would cross my mind, just for a moment.  But I would shut it out, and go on. 

But I was about to have bigger problems.  One day in May, just short of my 20th week, I was standing in the line at the bank, and I felt a sharp pain in my belly.  It was like my stomach was pulling into a knot.

It nearly knocked the wind out of me.  I knew what was happening; it felt exactly like it did 11 years ago when pregnant the last time.  By the time I got up to the teller the pain had passed, but I was so frightened I burst into tears. 

They sat me in New Accounts for a few minutes, till I could regain my composure.  I tried to calm myself. Maybe it was just me over reacting.  Maybe it was too much lunch.  Maybe it was gas. 

When I felt better, I drove over to my husband's office.  He tried to reassure me. 

"Could it be those Braxton-Hicks contractions?"

"Could be," I replied.  But I knew I wasn't far enough along to have Braxton-Hicks contractions.  I knew in my heart I was having the same premature labor I'd had with Jared.

I was right. I started getting pain all the time.  I went to the doctor, and he gave me pills to take to relax the contractions.  He told me to drink water and stay hydrated.  "

And he put me on bed rest.  I was relegated to my bed, told to lay on my right side, and to stay there.

After a while, I finally got some relief.  The contractions got to be less.  But they never went away. 

As any women knows who is put on bed rest during a pregnancy, your world becomes very narrow.  My once active life, filled with friends and social events, came to a halt.  My entire world became my bed. When friends did visit, they sat with me in the bed.  I ate in the bed.  I read, talked on the phone, played with the dog, and parented my son in the bed. I got up to go the bathroom.  That was it.

And it's a good thing the bathroom wasn't far; because I drank so much water I could have re-floated the Titanic.  Every time I went to the doctor, they would ask "Are you hydrated enough? Are you drinking enough water?" I would say "Yes, for heaven's sake; how much damn water do I need to drink? They kept inferring all this water drinking would slow down the contractions.  In the end, they turned out to be wrong about that.  Needless to say, I'm not a big water drinker anymore.

I acquired some rather strange pleasures.  One of them was an addiction to Soap Operas.  Now, as a child, all the women in my family were avid fans of these "stories."  I grew up with all the famous soap operas of the 1960s, like "Love of Life," and "Search for Tomorrow."  My mother, aunt and grandmother would talk about the characters in these programs as if they were family. "Did you see what Joe did to Ann, why, what a sonofabitch he is," and "I sure hope Joan can get Don away from that hussy Mary."

Giving these TV characters real personas drove my father crazy.  He thought it was idiotic. "They're TV characters, for chrissake," he would say. "There's not even real." I remember as a kid I thought it was pretty funny.  And when these programs were pre-empted for things like, the Watergate Hearing in the early 1970's, everyone was mortified.  "I so sick of having my stories interrupted for this Watergate crap," my mother would say.  "Who cares about Nixon and all his cronies?"

America was hanging in the balance.  But "As the World Turns," was not on, so the things were just not right with the world.

Funny thing is, during my bed rest, "As the World Turns," became pretty important to me.  I couldn't wait to see if Carly was going to stay with Jack, or if Jack would go with the good  girl, Julia.  Or if Lily would stay with Holden, and who was sleeping with whose husband, etc, etc.

As I said, your world gets a little narrow. 

My brain just didn't work the same way.  I was always a voracious reader.  But the only thing I could read was stuff that had to do with having the baby. My focus and concentration were not there.  I couldn't think about anything else.  My entire being was consumed with holding onto this baby.

One of the things we spent time trying to figure out is what most expectant parents usually spend a great deal of time on, that is, figuring out what to name their child.  I used to think if I ever had a girl, I would name her Michaela.  I had a friend years ago, who had a friend with this name, and she pronounced it "Mish-slay-la."  I never forgot that name, and really wanted to give my daughter that name.  But when I started to think about it, I thought maybe this wasn't a great idea.  I am not one that believes in these overly unusual, weirdly pronounced, oddly spelled names.  When you consider that a person has to go through their entire life on a daily basis using a name, calling them things like "Apple" or "Moon Unit" are just fundamentally wrong.

I was worried people would be struggling with the pronunciation, calling her "Michael a" or "Mick kay la" or just constantly not getting it right.

So I was beginning to lean toward something simpler; something people would have no trouble with. "Emma" was a name I always loved.  So I considered that for a while.

Then I had a brainstorm.  It was in the spelling.  If I could figure out how to spell it in such a way that people could easily pronounce it, maybe that would work.  So I got out a pen and paper, and tried to configure all these different spellings.

I had forgotten that I had done this before with my own name when I was 13 years old.  The name on my birth certificate is "Cynthia" and my parents spelled my nickname "Cindy."  At 13, I saw it spelled "Cyndi" in a book.  So I took it a step further, and made my name "Cyndee." I started writing it on my papers at school.  All was well until Mr. Mortensen, my eighth grade math teacher, who lived down the street, happened to mention to my mother he had a new student in his class.  There was no more "Cindy," but there was a "Cyndee."

This created a small scandal in my family.  My mother wasn't happy about it, but she didn't tell me to quit doing it.  So I kept it, and it stuck.

So like I did with my own name all those years ago, I played with the letters. Finally I had it.  The name was essentially "Mish-shay-la." Mishayla.  That was it.  I had the name!!

Also, we were working on a nursery.  I still had Jared's crib stored in my ex-husband's garage.  It was a white canopy crib.  I purchased this crib before Jared's birth, during the period when we were all certain he was girl.  It would certainly be more appropriate for Mishayla than it was for Jared.  Of course, all these things are for the parents anyway.  What does the baby really care? With a crib was a white dresser and changing table.  Perfect.

Then there was the matter of the theme in the room.  I had wanted Babar the elephant.  Babar had been my childhood favorite.  I had hours of enjoyment with those books, and I thought it would make a great nursery. But at that time, there didn't seem to be a lot of things to purchase for a "Babar" nursery.

But then Tony suggested a  Peter Rabbit theme.  He had found one of Jared's picture books on Peter Rabbit, and said he could paint it.  Being the extremely talented scenic artist he is, I said great.  I knew anything he did would be awesome. What an amazing gift to your child; to have a nursery created for them by their parent!!

In June, we got the terrible news that Tony's father, who had a stroke in April, had taken a turn for the worse.  James Andrew Moore passed away June 11, 1999, at the age of 62. He left behind a wife, five children, and at the time, 9 grandchildren.  He would not live to see our Mishayla, or another eight of his grandchildren come into the world.  He would have loved them all!!!

There was no way in my condition I was going to be able to fly, so Tony went back to Minnesota, and I stayed home.

I don't know whether it was all the stress, but suddenly the contractions got worse.  One afternoon, they were a few minutes apart.  Oddly enough, some friends, who were just out driving around, stopped by the house to see how I was doing.  When they knocked on the door, I was there with my purse.

"Take me to the hospital," I told them. "I don't think I'm gonna hold this baby any longer."

By the time I got to the hospital, the contractions had ceased, but I was admitted to the hospital anyway, and triaged.  Of course, my doctor wasn't on call.  I was greeted by a Dr. Vora, who I'd heard about from friends was quite a character.

She didn't disappoint.  She had an accent I couldn't identify.  But her English was clear.

"You're beginning to efface, and you're 1 centimeter dilated.  You must stay in bed.  And you no sex."

Me no sex? I thought.  "Don't worry," I told her.  "That's about the farthest thing from anybody's mind at the moment."

So my friends took me home, and I went back to bed.  My husband buried his father, and came home.

June turned into July.  We finished the nursery, and I was doing better as far as the contractions went.  But I still spent a lot of time in bed resting, drinking my water, and waiting.

I was hanging on.  The last week of July, at 32 weeks, I had an appointment with the doctor.  "You're hanging in there," he said.  "If we can just get your to 36 weeks, we will take you off the medications, and let the baby come."

So I had to make it four more weeks.  I was feeling positive, like maybe it could happen.

On the evening of Sunday, August 1, I went to bed around ten.  I woke a few hours later in a flood.  It reminded me of  taking a gallon jug of milk when it was full, and turning it over.  I had never seen so much water.  There was only one thing that could be.

I called the doctor, getting the answering service. I was told to get to the hospital right away.  I was 33 weeks into the pregnancy.  Once again, I would deliver a pre-mature infant.

Little did I know, prematurity would be the least of my troubles.