“Come on baby, wake up. Time to get that pretty girl ready to go.” I flip on the light switch and pull the covers off my baby girl. She is in third grade, eight years old and from birth she was exceptionally pretty. Time would pass and she only became more beautiful. This was a blessing on her. I could never find any resemblance between me and her. She looked just like my husband and he is beautiful too. The lucky ones. She moved around, but made no effort to awaken. “Wakey, wakey.” I said. There she goes. She’s up. Tori is up.
I move to the next room. “Baby boy, time to get up”. Harrison just opens his eyes and lies on his back. He is always calm like that. I reach in to pick him up He is three and a half and I still have him in a crib because we just never had money to buy a bed. Besides, the new baby would be here soon and we could move him into a bed then and make a big deal out of it.
I packed backpacks with snacks and clothes and I packed my lunch. I got everyone into the car and remembered that I had a doctor’s appointment that afternoon. Great. More time off of work. My firm would love that. I work for a great firm. They are very generous and I love the people. I feel guilty when I am not there. Oh well, this day will work itself out. No need to worry ahead of time about making up an hour or two. After dropping one off at school and one off at day care, I go to the office. My husband is in his second year of medical school and he has been gone since dawn. We agreed that I would be a single parent until he was done!
I love babies, but I hate being pregnant. Everyone I see has to comment that I look “ready”. I am not ready. Not for four, almost five, months. I am huge. Just in the stomach though. I guess the two babies prior to this one wreaked havoc on the abdominal muscles and I just don’t have any. I scoot into the elevator with a girl who works one floor above me. We are the due at the same time. She looks tiny, not even pregnant at all.
“So, how you feeling?” I say in a cheery voice.
“Well, I have been throwing up for three months straight and I sleep all the time, but okay” She says this with a giggle.
“I am lucky, none of that. Even if I am sleepy, the other two don’t understand this.” She giggled again.
“I hope I have three kids. My husband said two is good, but I kind of want a big family.” She said this lovingly rubbing her belly.
I laughed out loud. “In Alabama, three is a starter number. You’ve got to have at least four!” She laughed too. We were both in Iowa at this time and everyone is focused on careers here, not families.
I didn’t even remind my husband that I had an appointment with my baby doctor. It was routine. Dean never went with me because I had a knack for changing my appointments and it was just easier to handle myself. This is a bad habit. Handling every by yourself. My boss knew about it before I even reminded him. My boss, John, was so good to me. I pretended he was my dad sometimes because if I had a functional one, I would want him to be just like John.
“John, I will run to my appointment and be right back. You won’t even have a chance to miss me!” I joked with him.
“Take a car, it’s faster” John said as he walked into his office. He was chuckling at a seriously old joke and I had to laugh too.
“But I can deliver this baby faster if I run it. You think?” I finished my pile of work and phone calls and left for my appointment.
Two miles away from my office, and my home, is one of the best hospitals in the United States. I would deliver close to home and pray that my husband could handle the other two for about three days until I could get home with the new baby. I knew my husband could handle anything. Dean is a soldier, a medical student and a great husband, but busier than anyone I know. He started college late and had to prove he could get through it to me, and the world. I understand this. It is our agreement. I will run the kids, the house and the job until he graduates and then I can do whatever I want to do.
I took a little more time than usual walking to the doctor’s office. The day was gorgeous and warm and I walked slow letting the sun shine on me as long as possible. When the shadow of the building blocked out my rays, I felt instantly sad. Four floors up and fifteen minutes and then back to work. No free time. No quiet time. Ever.
“Hello Doc!” I said when my short, fuzzy, little doctor entered the room. I really liked him. He is fast and honest and very, very smart.
“Hello to you!” The doctor looked at me and said “Let’s measure you.” He took out his tape and measured my belly. He wouldn’t look at me. Something was up. Something was wrong. “How have you been feeling?” He said as he made some notes.
“Fine. The usual, tired.” I looked at him scribbling. He said nothing.
“Why?” I said this a little loudly. The nurse entered the room and stood there.
“I want to see the baby. You are measuring ahead of schedule and we might have miscalculated. I’m going to send you to a specialist upstairs to take a look and I will see you back down here afterward. Okay?”
“Okay. Do I need to call my husband?” We didn’t have cell phones.
“I can schedule it for this afternoon if you want him to come see the baby. They have better imaging than I have in my office.” He said.
“Yes, please. I have to get in touch with him at school.” I had to call the school and find him. I was very excited that I might be further along than the doctor thought. I was ready to be skinny and not pregnant.
I called my husband and my boss. I told my husband that I needed him to be there with me. He was busy, but would be there. I told my boss that I would finish my work before my appointment this afternoon and I went back to work.
That day would prove to be one of the most emotional days of my life. I saw my son. The baby is a boy. My husband saw the anomaly at the exact same time that the specialist saw it. I laid on a table with wet, ultrasound gel all over me while this man that I didn’t know told me that my baby had no esophagus, no stomach, no thumb and would be chronically mentally retarded. The tears were silent. My husband didn’t even realize I was crying. This doctor didn’t know who he was talking to. This baby picked the right momma because his life would be as great as I could make it. I also had too much fluid, stretching my stomach past it’s limits and tearing my body up.
“I’m so sorry. You will have to stay in bed until delivery. Your chances of having a miscarriage with this pregnancy is incredibly high and every minute you can give this baby in the womb is time to grow and develop. Polyhydromnious can be treated if we drain some of your fluid off, but one of the possible side effects is a miscarriage.” The doctor needed a response from me.
“No. I will lie down and wait.” I said. No laughter. No conversation. Numbness and no one knew what to say. Not even my husband.
I couldn’t believe this. I had two incredibly healthy pregnancies and nothing like this ran in either family. How? I am of the opinion, and have always been under the opinion that everything is a lesson and we learn from it. This was a lesson and I was paying attention. I made a phone call to my boss and cried into the phone all of the information I had. He agreed to my bedrest and because I still needed the money, he would let me work from home if I could. I told you I had a wonderful boss.
Bedrest didn’t work for long. My husband was in school and I had two little ones at home. Because we lived in a different state, I didn’t have any relatives or friends to help me. My mom came to help me, but it wasn’t long after she arrived that I went into labor. It was fast and scary. Too much fluid meant he might choke to death being rushed to the opening of the womb. Someone had to hold his head while the fluid dispersed. If you don’t understand what I just said, someone had to shove an arm into my body and keep it there until he was delivered. Uncomfortable on so many levels.
Less than an hour later, I was having a c-section. There were so many curious med students and specialists ready to see my baby. He was so rare. As he was born, I was crying. I never got to hold him. They showed his face to me as they rushed him to surgery. Apparently, he would not be able to swallow without drowning without this first surgery. Esophagostamy, then gastrostomy, then gastric fundiplication, chest tubes, central lines and a tiny backpack to wear the fluid in. I got to know all about how to care for each of these. In the middle of it all was my child though. He was not going to be a victim. I was not going to be the “punished”. Our family would be normal.
My son, Noah, was kept paralyzed for three months. The first three. I taped our family days and played them for him while he laid in that bed. He had nothing to do but listen. I talked to him and he followed everyone’s faces. When he left the hospital, he seemed to notice everything all the time. My baby, was not slow in any way. He said his first sentence at six months old. Shortly after that, he was hospitalized for the final surgery.
The final surgery failed at four weeks out. The tissue in the neck died after the fundiplication was finished. The doctor had to do a fifteen hour surgery to move the good tissue to a good blood supply so that we could try again. Then he developed a virus. He weighed about 11 pounds now. This was bad. However, he did overcome this stay and they inserted a central line in his leg and gave him a little back pack to wear around. Then they sent us home to wait for the next surgery.
Three months later, the surgery was completed and we stayed in the hospital for 9 weeks. He was in surgery for sixteen hours. He left there a happy little boy with a gastro button for nutrition. He kept it until he was three. I am not going to pretend that he had no problems. Pneumonia being the worst and most often of them, but the main thing is, he is now healthy and smart and happy. Normal. Our goal all along.
You have to accept the good and the bad in life. I wouldn’t trade my experience because it would have meant a different child altogether. I know that there are so many people out there waiting for a diagnosis, something to blame for their plight in life, but don’t make your child a victim. That one decision is optional.
tinanaden 