Happy Anniversary to Me

One year ago today, December 28th, is the day I sat down for dinner, got cold, and ended up in the hospital with my doctors telling me that my amniotic fluid was infected with a deadly bacteria and I would have to deliver my baby even though she was too little to live. Happy anniversary to me.

On that shitty day last year, I was exactly three weeks post-cerclage. Today I am three weeks and 1 day post-cerclage. I made it through yesterday, the crucial three-week mark without even realizing that it was the day. I thought it was today.

So here I am one year later with a three week-old cerclage and I just finished eating dinner and I’m not cold at all and it seems there’s a pretty good chance that I won’t end up in the hospital tonight. Tomorrow anything can happen but I feel safe for tonight.

In the weeks before disaster struck out of the blue, the only possible symptom that I clearly remember is a burning, bladder-infectiony type of feeling. It came and went and it was particularly noticeable on the 28th. I was about to call my ex-doctor about it but since I was supposed to see her anyway on the 29th, I shook it off. Turns out I did see her on the 29th but I was in the hospital and she was telling me that my baby was going to have to die.

Anywayyy, I’ve had a similar burning feeling off and on in the last week or two and it was particularly noticeable yesterday. I had my blood and urine drawn on Tuesday and so at least I could look forward to the culture results. They came back today, clean.

So does the bladder-infectiony type feeling mean that I am to come down with another untreatable infection? Only time will tell.

The fun never ends here nor does the suspense. At least I feel like I am going to make it through today.

LC’s birthday/deathday is December 30th. 5:36 p.m. We spent last New Year’s Eve in the babyless dungeon of the hospital in a state of complete and utter fucking shock, body and soul ravaged by the nightmare of the previous four days.

On the night of LC’s birth, the area we live in was also being ravaged, by the biggest flood in 25 years. There was landslide across the street from our house. Thousands of homes and businesses were destroyed. The storm seemed congruent with our personal disaster.

Good times.

I do have this to offer however. I am reading "The Birth House" by Ami McKay. This passage struck me last night.

"You don't gonna cry, neither.
You got to say a prayer instead.
We make our tears into prayers...
not to beg or plead with God,
but to remember the stuff we are made of."

I don't know what this means to me exactly. It does remind me that, even though I am a nervous wreck and I have a bad attitude, I am one tough mo'fo.

I survived the godawful year of the two deadbabydisasters and, occasionally, I am even profoundly grateful for the gifts I've been given.

Happy Goodbye 2006!

Terror, anxiety, insomnia, more terror, and finally some tears

Since my last post my emotions have run the gamut. Once I got over the flashbacks that came with the Christmas tree, I actually started to feel quite grateful for my two beautiful and healthy children and all of the riches that life has provided me with.

We were having a really nice Christmas day and I was feeling pretty good about everything until the contractions started. With each of my three pregnancies that lasted long enough, I started the Braxton-Hicks contractions at about 16 weeks. No idea why. But on Christmas day they came clustered closely together and were more intense than normal for such an early stage in my pregnancy (15 weeks, 5 days). Naturally, I freaked.

I had an ultrasound on the 26th and my cervix and stitch look fine. The guy who did the u/s, I’ll call him Al the Automaton because he displayed no evidence of having a heart or a soul, was a complete a-hole. (He did check the baby’s heartbeat which was 144, down from 166 last time. When I expressed concern about the drop, he repeated twice, “160 to 140 is considered the normal range.” I forgot to ask fancy doc about the drop so I’ll just have to assume that the drop is okay. I got my Doppler today and heard a heartbeat that seems to be in the 150’s by my count so I am pretty convinced that the baby is alive and has a normal heartbeat.) Anyway, the sound was off when Al the A-hole checked the heartbeat so I couldn’t even hear it. He reluctantly took a cursory look at gender and then snapped, “The legs are shut.” Fucker. Worst u/s tech I ever had and that’s sayin’ something.

Anyway, I saw fancy doc after the u/s and he was completely unfazed by the contractions. He seemed relieved that there was no damage to the stitch from the contractions the night before. I hadn’t considered that as a possibility so naturally that freaked me out a little especially since as I said he isn’t worried at all about the contractions. No need to take it easier, no need to drink some water and lay down (standard advice for the gazillion other b-h contractions that I had with other pregnancies). As long as the contractions don’t continue in the event that I happen to lie down, there is no reason to worry about them. He said if they become problematic, then he can put me on indomethicin. Now, I’m not dying to go on bedrest here but why in the hell would he put me on meds before suggesting that I lie the fuck down?

Naturally I didn’t get good and worked up about this until later, conveniently when Rocket Man and I were out for a rare dinner by ourselves. I am worried that fancy doc isn’t more worried about contractions at barely 16 weeks. He said, “Well that’s just your uterus.” Granted I have the very same uterus but my friggin cervix had a ¼ of itself lopped off and now it has a fucking bootlace holding it together so I don’t go into labor at 20 weeks like I was about to with LC. I don’t trust my cervix one bit or my uterus for that matter. Guilty by association the uterus is.

After the appointment I worried my self into a frenzy even by my standards and RM and I argued and it got ugly. I accused him of resisting the notion of bedrest partly because tremendous pressure will fall on him. He got mad. I went to bed upset. And terribly anxious. I couldn’t explain to him how completely and utterly petrified I am all the time that something is going to come out of the fucking blue again and that my baby will be torn away from me for the fourth and final time. I don’t know how I’d survive it. The aftermath of the infection/LC disaster was a big fat fucking nightmare and the wake of this summer’s disaster got almost as ugly in some ways.

With every ounce of my being I fear having to go through something like either of those again. I was human fucking pin cushion for four tortuous days in the hospital as they stuck things in nearly all of my orifices as they frantically tried to figure out what the hell was wrong with me, how to stop the contractions, how to start them again, how to induce labor, how to prevent another fever of 106.1, how to treat my infected uterus so I didn’t die from septic shock, how to keep my organs functioning as we waited for the baby, how to get my baby out for her to die so I could live.

I can’t ever do anything like that again. I think I handled the entire fucking nightmare pretty goddamn gracefully from start to finish. Then what happened?

I get pregnant again and my baby turns up dead at 11 weeks with out a single fucking warning sign and I have to wait 5 days for a D&C but I deliver, thanks to trusty misoprostol which was supposed to “ripen” my cervix, the baby in a horrific scene into the palm of my hand and then have to get a D&C anyway without any fucking anesthesia WHATSOEVER.

This is my LAST pregnancy. I’ve been pregnant six times in six years. I have two kids. If this thing goes south, the devastation will be complete and permanent.

The fear is so ingrained in me that I have lost touch with what is reasonable. I can’t separate paranoia from intuition or intuition from paranoia. In a way I feel like I’m walking through a forest in the pitch dark and I am straining my every sense to figure out where the danger might be coming from. My fear of being there in the first place is overwhelming my other faculties and I’m locked into a constant state of near panic. I am working so hard to depress the anxiety that I am barely functioning in life. I wish I could just curl up in bed and somebody wake me when it’s over. The fleeting moments of relief are so insubstantial in comparison to the fear that I don’t even think that I would miss much.

This morning I woke up at 4:15 and couldn’t fucking go back to sleep. Once I get up to pee, I am screwed. Insomnia seems like about the worst kind of torture that I could endure right now. I read until 6:30 when I finally started to feel a little droopy in the eyes. Then out of nowhere a stream of tears that eventually turned into a torrent. I guess the dam finally broke.

Most of the time my terror manifests as anxiety and depression, both of which can make me a little unpleasant to be around. I was kind of relieved and empty-feeling afterwards as if I’d just a gigantic pus-filled boil drained. I’m sure I could have slept like a baby for hours. It was a partly welcome relief to not just feel so bitchy and nit-picky and uptight and why-didn’t-fancy doc-do-this or-say-that and nothing makes me happy and my cleaning lady doesn’t clean under stuff and why are we doing this anyway. I could go on and on. Actually just quaking with sobs for our dead babies and my horrifying memories and my abject terror at going through anything like that again was a relief of sorts.

I realized why I was so mad at Al the u/s A-hole and it was because the u/s provides me with the opportunity for a brief moment of relief and joy and connection with the baby growing inside me. It’s a shred of hope and wonder amidst round-the-clock catastrophizing. It’s the only chance I get to feel connected to this baby and to the idea that this baby might actually live to be born, alive. I think that’s partly why I am so eager to find out if it’s a boy or a girl, that is so I can connect and imagine and fantasize a little.

After a whirlwind of emotions I am feeling a little more grounded. I checked the heartbeat with the Doppler twice today and it gave me some peace. After the first time, I felt a surge of an actual appetite. Small wonder that I’ve had no appetite. Being completely fucking petrified and depressed is not so conducive to hunger, at least for me.

I’m still worried that fancy doc is being a bit blasé about the contractions. I feel like I am worrying more because he isn’t worrying. I think he solves problems when they become problems and I’d very much like to prevent a problem. Not sure where I’ll come out on this one but I can see the issues a little more clearly after my big cry. Even on five hours of sleep.

boringness

I have nothing to post about and no energy to come up with something. I have no news. My next doctor's appointment is next week on December 28th. I am worried all the time about coming down with a fever and then an infection that can't be treated. Basically my understanding is that if I get another infection there will be no way to save the baby.

I was thinking of asking my doctor if I could go in once a week, to their satellite office that is near my home, and do a heartrate check and a urine sample. But their local office is closing so I'd have to go into the city every week to do the heartrate/urine sample thing. I already go every two weeks for a cervix check.

My thinking was this: my neighbor is a doctor and she said that generally babies don't just up and die all of the sudden but rather that their heartrate first gets slow or fast and from that you can ge a clue about something going wrong. I took that to mean that maybe we could see from the heartrate if something like an infection is starting to brew and affect the baby. The urine sample could also provide a clue by checking my leukocytes to see if white cells are elevated which would be another clue about a brewing infection.

I really hate the idea that I can't know anything about what's going on in there and that an infection won't be obvious until it's too late. For clarification, the type of infection that I speak of is the kind that I got last time. It was in my amniotic fluid (it's called chorioamnionitis) and couldn't be treated because the antibiotics don't go through the placenta. It was too late anyway.

I got the infection because of the cerclage so naturally I worry that it could happen again. A cerclage at 13 weeks is safer than 19 weeks as far as infection is concerned but there is still a risk. I am putting acid jelly up myself every night to help keep the vagina more acidic and less hospitable to an infection. I am taking acidophilus. I am trying to avoid sugar although I am not sure if sugar actually does encourage infection.

Basically as December 28th (the day last year that I went into the hospital with a bad fever at 22 1/2 weeks) approaches, I am getting more worried and more depressed under the weight of it all. It came COMPLETELY out of the blue so it's hard to feel secure that this all won't go to shit in the space of time that it takes me to get a raging fever. I wish I could just get a fucking grip and enjoy the baby that is presumably trying to grow in there. But I'm still just miserable.

I guess I did have something to post about after all.

Oh and there's this; Does anybody have experience with renting a Doppler? Did having it do more harm than good? Did you nearly drive yourself crazy with it or was it helpful?

Here's a dilemma: What to say on the holiday card

Oh what to say on the holiday card. Do we just say "Best wishes for the new year" as suggested by shutterfly? One lesson that I have learned this year is that in some cases it is better to just not go there. Clearly the holiday card could be one of those times.

But there is a part of me that wants to say "Hope 2007 doesn't suck as much as 2006." Naturally I won't go there. I hope Santa doesn't bring you a year full of dead babies. Not great for the holiday card.

I am now trying to think of a creative and a little subtle way of saying something that reflects the trials of this year and the hope for the coming year. Last year we announced that we were expectign a baby in April. Not going there.

Somebody posted about a writer's take on finding grace during shitty times. I thought his name was John Caldwell but a blog search doesn't help me. Does anybody know what I'm referring to?

I don't have much time for this because we want to send the card today. I'll probably just go with shutterfly's suggestion.

By the way, thanks for the help with the ticker. Sorry if I seemed a bit slow. I thought that posting html code in a post would just end up with the code in teh post. I should've tried it. Thanks for being patient with me.

I just couldn't do the ticker that was white and cheerful. I should put it back up so you can see how wrong it was. I also couldn't keep a ticker that ran to the end of the pregnancy. That's way too remote to set my sights on. The Level II u/s seems like a manageable goal.

I hate this ticker

This ticker sucks, as far as I'm concerned. It just falls so completely short of capturing the situation. I liked my "walking on eggshells until the end of the first trimester" but I didn't like that you couldn't see those words. The words are black so they don't show up. Ticker factory doesn't seem to have a white background option although I don't even like the white background. It's way too... white.

What I need to do is put the ticker in a post that stays at the top of the page. Somebody's blog had a ticker in a post that stayed at the top. Who was that and how did you get that post to stay at the top?

I'd like to do a "walking on eggshells until this baby is in my arms alive" ticker but it has to be in a post in order for the words to be seen. Can anybody help me with this?

One down, one hundred to go

My first post-cerclage check-up went well. The stitch looks good, my cervix is nice and long, and the baby is even alive and appears to be well.

Once I saw the live baby, albeit very briefly, I relaxed a little and the tech moved on to check my stitch. She freaked me out when she said she needed a little help evaluating the stitch and then she left to “go get the doctor.” Naturally I was suspicious and I was even more worried when she returned with not one but TWO doctors. That’s two high-risk perinatalogists for chrissake. Swear to God. (The last time I had two doctors brought in to an u/s they both ended up frowning at my dead baby.) But apparently there was no cause for concern and everything looks fine.

Turns out fancy doc filled me up with some sort of foaming gel that stays in for a few weeks so that’s why the tech couldn’t make sense of all the “foreign bodies’ that she was seeing. Whew.

Another little surprise was that my bladder has been stitched into place. Its place, apparently, is covering my cervix. A diagram would be helpful here but I’ll just leave it up to the imagination. I don’t quite get the layout either. But at least now I think I know why I’m still in pain.

Something fun and wildly original to look forward to: the bladder stitches will start to dissolve and they’ll come out looking like pieces of angel hair pasta. I do appreciate that heads-up from fancy doc. No chance of mistaking bladder stitches for cervical stitches because the latter look just like his thick, brown shoelaces. Ouch.

That’s enough imagery for today. Oh and the tech said it’s too early to determine gender. She said 16 weeks would be the earliest. My next check-in is in two weeks but it’s with fancy doc only so I doubt he’ll be investigating for me on his crappy little machine. I’ll certainly pester him to check it out for me, for what it’s worth.

For sure (well almost), we’ll see something at the Level II ultrasound two weeks after that, around January 12. In the meantime I’ll explain why I care so much and I’ll be busy getting used to the idea that the baby is going to be a girl. Actually that would be the baby is already a girl. Me, the mother of two girls. I think I hear the swamps of hell starting to freeze over. More on that later.

P.S. I will be deeply and completely thrilled with a healthy baby, boy or girl. I just need to get over the shock of having two girls.

P.S.S. When the tech was measuring the baby who was frolicking around adorably, I was busy talking to fancy doc about the cerclage and our game plan for the next 26 weeks. She finished looking at the baby right when we finished talking so I missed my chance to really connect with the notion of the little tyke's actual existence. I did get some good pictures, which is nice.

Baby drama Tuesday

It wouldn't be Tuesday with out a trip to see fancy doc. Tomorrow I'll have my stitch checked out to see how it is looking. I have a real u/s scheduled as well, not just the five-second there-don't you-feel-better crappy u/s that fancy doc does. He wonders why I don't feel better after a five second look at the baby. I need it to sink in. I have to process a wide range of emotions as I work my way towards real relief and joy. Anyway, I should get a decent look at the baby although the purpose is to see my cervix and the stitch. I am eager, to say the least, to find out about gender so I’ll be asking about that. Anybody know when gender can reliably be determined from u/s?

I am half-expecting some sort of bad news, just out of habit really. I am still quite uncomfortable from the surgery, more so than last time. I am afraid that I am going to hemorrhage any minute now, even though I haven’t been bleeding much at all. I am afraid that the stitch has slipped or that my cervix just didn’t take it well. It’ll probably be fine.

After his exam, fancy doc will pronounce his opinion on what my activity level should be. This is no small deal considering that I am full-time mom to two small children. There is a lot of schlepping, carrying, walking up and down our stairs, bending over 1000x a day involved with their care. It just doesn’t feel right for me to be doing all of those things. Even if he says resume normal activity, I am too paranoid to do so. Maybe it’s paranoia, maybe its intuition. How the hell do I tell them apart?

Christmas is depressing

The main reason I feel so depressed is that this time last year the biggest and most utterly devastating disaster of my 36 years was about to happen. I was 20 weeks along in an ill-fated pregnancy.

Last year, I had a cerclage put in on December 8th and then three weeks later, 3 days after Christmas, I came down with a fever. I was minding my own goddamn business, eating some fucking ghoulash THAT I MADE, and I got COLD. Then I got really cold and started shaking. I went to the hospital. I came home four days later, on Happy Fucking New Year’s Day. My baby stayed behind, in the morgue. She had a heart-shaped face, like her big brother. Christmas was retroactively ruined. I can never eat goulash again even though I love it. Life as I knew it ended with that fucking bowl of stew.

Today we went to a tree farm to cut down our tree. We did that last year. Last year at the tree farm we got a cute picture of the four of us. I was visibly pregnant. We put the picture on our holiday card that announced we were expecting a baby girl in April. This year at the tree farm I didn’t feel quite as cute and pregnant. I felt a grim reminder of the disaster that was about to unfold last year at this time.

Every year when we put away our Christmas stuff, I write a letter to myself to be opened the following year. This year I opened last year’s letter. It was a sad letter as it had been written one week after the BFN (Big F*cking Nightmare). I closed the letter with “I’ll always remember this year as the Christmas that took my baby away.” Sadness. The reminders are everywhere and in everything.

I suppose I should be grateful that I am pregnant again. I am grateful. But. While I was moping over my dinner tonight, Rocket Man asked how I was. “Contemplative” was my reply. “About the past, present, or future?,” he asked. “It’s thinking about the past that makes the future so scary which is why I can’t enjoy the present.” Therein lies my dilemma. I can’t not know what I know. I could get another infection from the cerclage and it could happen too early for my baby to live.

At the same time while I am writing this I am reminded that I don’t want my whole pregnancy to suck because I was terrified the whole time. What if everything turns out fine? I will have ruined it all by obsessing just like I did with my living daughter.

Before I stop obsessing for the night and repair to the couch for a few belly rubs, there is the matter of another reason I am depressed by Christmas. Somehow this reason isn’t as present for me as the spectacular disaster of last Christmas. I almost, not quite, have to remind myself. Oh yeah, I’m also miserable because I was supposed to be due in 5 weeks with the baby that I lost this summer. Oh yeah, that little boy that I held in my hand after birthing him in my bathroom. I should be washing baby clothes for him. Except that his ashes are in my kitchen cabinet. I would’ve been almost there and instead I’m here. Waiting. To see if the other shoe is going to drop.

27 weeks to go. Today it hardly seems possible.

it's over, the cerclage that is

The cerclage is over. I'm HEAVILY medicated and super-dizzy. It went well. The anesthesiologist is my new best friend. I was out cold for 2 hours and don't eevn remember my legs going in the stirrups. I was numb in the heels and butt, from the epidural, for about five hours which seems like a little much. i'm pretty damn uncomfortable and heading straight back to the couch. Thanks for checking in on me. I got home late yesterday and was way too uncomfortable and not feeling good to uppdate my blog. I'm so glad it's over. It was an emotional day.

Good news, weird dream

Last week when we decided not to do the CVS, Rocket Man and I did go ahead with having our blood drawn for chromosome mapping or whatever it’s called. The genetics counselor called this a.m. to say that everything looks perfectly fine. One of fancy doc’s colleague’s suggested, because of the two 1st trimester losses, that we do the chromosome thing to see if we have an unbalanced chromosomal translocation. I didn’t really understand what we were looking for and now I don’t have to. Whew.

Lat night I dreamt that fancy doc and I were trying to start a fire in a stainless steel stock pot with coconut husks. The fire wouldn’t start because the husks were wet. Then fancy doc stuck his face under my chin and sniffed me, slowly, all the way to my belly button. Then he sniffed me again from the back of my neck down to my hips. Then he said, “You know what they say about infections?” I looked at him expectantly and he said, “They smell.”

The implication was that he could smell that I had an infection. I had an instant of horror and terror for the baby and then mercifully I woke up. I think it scared me so badly that some automatic shut-off switch in my subconscious just ejected me right out of the dream. I couldn’t go back to sleep and it was 4:45.

The smelling thing in the dream is interesting because after we found out in the hospital that I might have an infection in my amniotic fluid, I had an amnio to withdraw some fluid for testing. Fancy doc held up the shotglass size cup of fluid and smelled it. He said that often infected fluid smells infected. Mine actually didn’t smell infected.

Not sure what to make of this dream. It actually doesn’t freak me out much more than I am already freaked out. I think I’m at some kind of a freaked-out plateau. Who am I kidding? If I really thought about it, I think the dream would scare me even more.

Tomorrow morning we’ll get up at the crack to be at the hospital by 7:20. I’ll have a quick ultrasound right before the surgery so we can make sure the baby is still alive. I won’t even go there right now with what might happen if the baby is dead. Hey I guess I could get a quick D&C since the OR will be reserved. Perhaps I could just have my tubes tied right then and there. Enough, ENOUGH.

I will get an epidural for the procedure to answer one of your questions. To answer another question, I have to have the cerclage but I didn’t have one with my son or daughter’s pregnancies. My cervix has been deemed incompetent.

After the procedure I’ll be in recovery until I can move my toes. Last time I had a cerclage put in, I was in a lot of pain afterwards and asked for more pain meds. The meds that they gave me caused my bladder not to function so I couldn’t pee when the time came to pee. My bladder filled up from the IV fluid and caused a great deal more pain. They gave me more pain meds not realizing that the pain was partially caused by my distended bladder. The cycle continued and I was EXTREMELY uncomfortable by the time, about six hours after the surgery, that they put a catheter in and drained a liter of pee out of me.

I am usually fairly tolerant of pain I think but man that really sucked. I plan to try to deal with the pain on my own as much as possible because THE LAST THING I want to happen is to have another catheter. In my mind, catheter = infection even though the doctors don’t think that my infection came from the catheter. Why take any chances? It is well-documented that catheters introduce infection. I’ll be peeing as soon as possible unless of course fancy doc nicks my bladder which is one of the risks of the surgery. I’ll ask for a squeeze bottle and we’ll pull out all the stops to get the pee flowing.

Enough about peeing already. I should be out of there by 1 p.m. or so. There’s a 5% chance that I’ll be kept overnight for observation. Naturally I’ll be eager to get the f*ck out of there ASAP. Less time in hospital = less exposure to funky hospital germs = less chance of another infection that forces the premature delivery of my perfectly healthy baby.

Unfortunately it seems that I’ve also equated cerclage with dead baby. I know that I need to have one or I will surely deliver too early which will equal dead or severely premature baby. I’ve considered just going on complete bed rest and not having a cerclage at all but the numbers look really bad in that scenario. My doctor has put in 2,000 cerclages in 20 years and he’s seen an infection like mine happen one other time. Those numbers look pretty good except that I was one of the unlucky ones.

Doing a cerclage this early in a pregnancy is much safer than doing one at 20 weeks, where I was last time. My cervix is nice and long and will be less susceptible to infection. The acidophilus will help restore my good bacteria after 5 days of antibiotics plus a mega-dose in the hospital. I’m pretty conflicted about the 5 day course. The evidence says that it doesn’t help. I personally don’t like the idea of wiping out my beneficial bacteria, hence the acidophilus. Is there a doctor in the house who cares to weigh in on the topic?

Now that I’ve whipped myself into a frenzy, I’ll sign off. Thanks for listening. I meant to spend this time writing about how I got into this mess in the first place. Some other time.

Coming soon: A trip down memory lane

I haven't been posting because I've been either away, catatonic, at the friggin doctor's office waiting 45 minutes for a 5 minute appt., or feeling overwhelmed by the bigness of what I have to write about. For now suffice it to say that on Thursday I will be getting my cervix stitched up.

The last time I was fully spread-eagled in the stirrups, my cerclage was being taken out so my perfectly healthy baby could be delivered to her death (at 22 1/2 weeks gestation). That ill-fated cerclage, that caused an infection in my amniotic fluid, was put in on december 8, 2005. thursday is december 7th. my doctor wanted to schedule it for the 8th but i opted for the 7th. my trip down horrifying memory lane will start almost exactly one year later. can't wait. i've asked to be put under general anesthesia for the surgery but fancy doc said no.

i'm probably not making sense here. it feels like time to share what happened with the cerclage/infection disaster but that feels like such a huge undertaking. i never even managed to tell the sad, gory tale of this summer's deadbabydisaster. i'll probably never get around to deadbabydisaster #1.

For now the good news is that we had yet another ultrasound on thursday. i went in for a "pre-op" visit, which consisted of fancy doc listening to my hear and lungs. since i was there, we took a quick look at little sprout who was, mercifully, alive especially since my 5-year-old son was with me. Where I got the balls to bring him INTO the room is beyond me. Perhaps I was feeling confident since I had seen a live baby 48 hours earlier. This is the kid who said the other day, "We already have two babies that died. I hope this baby doesn't die because that would be bad." I wish I could protect him from this but it is not possible. Two weeks ago a four-year-old girl at his preschool said, "Are you having another babeeeeeeeeeee?" When you are getting outed by a preschooler, there is little chance of your own kid not noticing your protruding belly. He's making plans, big plans, for this baby so I might as well start too. We are "all in" here.

Next step: Get my cervix stitched up and try, for 27 weeks, not to come down with an infection that nearly kills me. Baby steps.