My Pregnancy with Liam (At home) - Part 1

My pregnancy with Liam started really still feeling the loss and sadness from the miscarriage I'd had five months earlier. I took a pregnancy test thinking that I probably was since I had the same symptoms as the last time - painful breasts, missed period, and really exhausted. I brought the positive test out to Jay, who was washing his car. Trepidatiously I told Jay, who I could see felt as scared about it as I did, bu for altogether different reasons - he was scared to watch me go through the pain of it all over again. Last time, we had gone to Argentina on a family vacation so that I could introduce my family to him right after the miscarriage that had happened the week of finals in one of our graduate school semesters. This time, we didn't have anything to snap us out of it, should it happen again.

I convinced my doctor to do an ultrasound at 6 weeks to make sure everything was fine. But then at 8 weeks, I started spotting again. So immediately the doc examined me and it seemed everything was fine. I would just have to get used to it and see if it would stop. It didn't. We went on a family trip to Ohio to see my husband's family when I was 10 weeks and bleeding a lot. I was so scared. Every time I went to the bathroom I would make Jay come in with me in case this was the time when I found it in the toilet. Not to say how I didn't want to participate in anything.

Then at 14 weeks I went to NY City to visit my sister, who was in her second trimester of a great pregnancy. While I spotted off and on, we walked from the upper west side to the lower east, up one hill and down the other. Yes, I was still really frightened. Two weeks later I went back to help throw her baby shower and still bleeding, still very much scared.

At 18weeks, two weeks later, I went in for the ultrasound at a special clinic where the problem finally showed up. The baby was perfect. I just had almost no cervix, an "Incompetent Cervix" they call it. While I was not comprehending what was being communicated to me I was trying to tell the doctor that I had to go back to work. It was Friday, I'd take the weekend easy. It was so surreal, like if someone was speaking a different language in slow motion while their head was wrapped in a water bubble and all I heard was Blah, blah, blah blah, blah blah. Luckily Jay was there once again to be my rock when I couldn't be.

So I went home and straight to bed, until the next morning Dr. Jamison met me in the operating room and performed my cerclage. The whole time I had been telling him that woen usually have nine months to prepare for a needle going up their back, while he responded, "Well my dear, you have less than 24 hours, sorry." He was really wonderful with me. The cerclage went really well and we spoke the whole time. Although being a librarian, I'd gone home and laid in bed with the computer wildly researching cerclages - when are they performed, exactly the type of stitching with the best odds, the likelihood of going into labor from it, etc. The most incredible thing happened immediately following the surgery. While in the recovery room, the baby started to kick for the first time. The butterflies were real kicks now, small, but so sweet. That was all the impetus I needed to make sure this baby was born safely into the world. My world had just changed. I was no longer just me, he was no longer just my fetus. I allowed myself to love him, openly every second of every minute of every day.

The first two days of bedrest were hell. At the end of the third I made Jay take me for a drive until I felt guilty and afraid to lose the baby before insisiting he brought me home. For the next three weeks I waited. The doctor then said that my cervix had not fully stretched yet so I had another three weeks. Then another. Then another. The Fruitville Library was amazing. They found work that I could do from home on my laptop in bed - ordering all of the Audio Visual materials for two library, paper work that they didn't have time, extra research, etc.

The end result was that I ended up in bed the remainder of the pregnancy, full of contractions that came much too often. On the way to the bathroom, on the way back, while showering in a plastic chair in the bathroom before Jay came home, both being the highlight of my day. My mom was an angel, heaven sent. I learned then the love of a mother and why teh meditation of the love of a mother in the Buddhist tradition is my favorite, next to the one on death, both very important in my life during this time. She made my lunches, did our laundry, cleaned my house, kept me company while knitting next to my bed. Made our dinner sometimes so Jay wouldn't be so overwhelmed. An amazing woman with a lot of love. My dad would actually take lunch breaks a few times a week and come over, or on his days off and make me lunch and sit with me in bed watching traveling shows he didn't get at home. Jay did everything else, including, worry about me, the baby, go to school three times per week after working all day and studying for those crazy MBA classes.

But we pulled through, until the day that we had new carpets installed in the bedroom. That night, the contractions kept comig one right after another, they wouldn't stop. So as a precaution I asked Jay to take me to the hospital......Continue to My Pregnancy with Liam (in Hospital) - Part 2.