Skipping Town

My C-section was scheduled for 7:30am on Thursday, October 27. Andrew got to the hospital at 5:00am, and we sat on my hospital bed, whispering while we waited in the dark, trying not to wake my roommate. I’d gotten an IV for hydration the night before and was wearing a hospital gown for the first time since checking in on October 2. After what seemed like a long wait, I was wheeled down to triage, where I’d wait for the surgery, Andrew following behind with my suitcase. We waited in triage for a long time. I got a second IV—the worst-case-scenario IV, inserted so they’d be ready for anything in the OR. The surgery was changed to 8:00, then 8:30, as the various anesthesiologists and doctors tried to get coordinated. Finally, my doctor came in, wearing scrubs and a plastic mask over her face. “We’re walking,” she announced, and took my IV bag down from its hook. We walked down the hall to the OR. Andrew began putting on his surgical outfit while my doctor took me inside. It was a real OR...

View from my room 36 weeks, 5 days 36 weeks, 6 days (day before C-section) Visit from Lucia (Tuesday) Visit from Lucia (Sunday) Visit from Lucia (Sunday)--Lucia is dipping a coffee stir into the cream cheese from a bagel and licking it off. Hospital fun!

In fifteen hours, we’ll be meeting our new little one; by this time tomorrow, I’ll be recovering from surgery and—I hope—nursing a tiny, shocked newborn. By this time tomorrow I’ll be off the antepartum floor and onto the floor where babies are crying and new parents are happy. I can’t wait. The baby seems excited, as though she knows something’s about to happen. She’s been more active than usual, flipping around determinedly; her heartrate tracings during today’s non-stress test were filled with dramatic peaks. The nurse monitoring me said my baby always has the best tracings—“shows up all the other babies” were her words. Eager as I am to have this pregnancy over and done with, part of me does feel sad that this baby is missing out on three weeks in the womb. But all this was not up to me. She can take it up with the placenta. By this weekend, I’ll be home. The very idea of it fills me with relief and calm, even though nothing about my homecoming is going to be calm. I’ve never had a...

First, my C-section has returned to its originally scheduled date of October 27, 7:30am. I am disappointed, but since my time slot on the 26th was at 4pm, I’m reminding myself this is a difference of just 15 hours. Time has slowed down considerably now that the end is in sight. For me, anyway. Andrew is running around like crazy, trying to get all the last-minute baby-coming-home details taken care of. But here in the hospital, my days are inching by. The problem is that I have left Forks: the world of the Twilight books. Terrible as they were, they were utterly absorbing, and I enjoyed both reading them and texting amusing-to-me academic-essay topics to Molly (“Bella is willing to become a vampire but not a wife. Discuss in the context of gender roles and the Facebook generation.” “Neither Edward nor Aro can read Bella’s thoughts. Discuss what this implies about the efficacy of prayer.”) But now I have finished books one, two, and three, and the final book is swimming in the postal sy...

Astute readers will notice that we’ve skipped a day in the countdown. This is not a mistake—my C-section has been moved up one day, to Wednesday, October 26, which means my hospital adventure will come to an end one day sooner. The change has nothing to do with anything medical; just my doctor shifting around her schedule. (And she assured me there was nothing problematic about my already-large baby.) So the end is truly in sight. I am more ready than ever to get home. Lucia has a cold, and I want to be there for sick-baby snuggling; she visited today and spent most of the time just sitting on my lap, playing with her Minnie Mouse, not even venturing closer to our other visitors, a friend and her two-and-a-half-month-old baby. And I’m ready to get off the 14th floor—Antepartum—where my condition, though technically high-risk, pales in comparison to what I’ve been hearing about the other women. I haven’t had a Big Bleed, I’m otherwise healthy, and the health and well-being of my baby ha...

I had an ultrasound today to check the baby’s size, and I was stunned: she is currently an estimated 7 pounds 2 ounces. If I were carrying this baby to term, does this mean she’d be a gigantic baby? At first I was relieved that she definitely won’t be a tiny preemie when she’s born; but later in the day the high-risk doctor who checked in said size really won’t make a difference in whether her lungs will be okay. I’ve learned to take these statements calmly. When I talk to my doctor or the doctors in her group, they all are much more certain that all will be well; I think the high-risk doctors just have a more…high-risk view of things. But I am anxious to ask my own doctor if I need to be concerned about my new baby’s surprising chubbiness. Lucia, though far from chubby, has reached a milestone: she’s surpassed the tenth percentile for weight! Andrew took her to her two-year checkup today, and she weighs 23 pounds, putting her in the twelfth percentile. She’s in the fifty-second percen...

If you calculate my remaining hospital time in a generous way—not counting today or the day of my C-section—then there are nine days left of this maddening in-betweenness. In nine days, we will have another baby—and even though there are three more nights of recovery after that, it will be different from this waiting period, this state of quasi-life. Nine days till we can finally meet this new little one and make our grand entrance once again into sleepless, chaotic, all-encompassing Newborn Land. Two boxes of newborn-size diapers arrived last week, giving Andrew a little jolt—those diapers are unbelievably tiny. He brought some to me in my hospital bag, and they look like something we should be putting on Lucia’s stuffed animals. Today I asked my doctor whether there was any chance of making it to 38 weeks if I didn’t have a Big Bleed; she said she would never allow a patient with CPP to go beyond 37 weeks. I have no desire to stay an extra minute in the hospital, but of course I want...

To my great relief, all signs are pointing to the happy possibility that Lucia will not be scarred for life by this extended separation (or by her delayed birthday celebration). So I thought I would devote a post to how brave and flexible she’s proven to be over the past few weeks. I expected her visits here to be wary, tearful affairs, but they have proven to be anything but. I usually hear her saying “Hi! Hi!” before she even comes into the room, and she eagerly hugs me hello—then heads straight for the huge bag of books, coloring books, and markers we keep here. She generally sits right down in my lap for a reading of our favorite hospital book, Kitten’s Winter. She has a set of little medicine-dosage cups she always plays with for a few minutes, and she generally indulges in many, many snacks—usually a bagel and/or muffin that Andrew and Mom get on their way over. On the days when I don’t have a roommate, she loves to run around the room-dividing curtain, hiding and then reappearin...

Here on the hospital’s antepartum floor, there’s no talk of natural labor, or water breaking, or going into labor, or anything at all not having to do with a C-section. The precise timing of these C-sections is a regular topic of discussion among the high-risk doctors, who, I’ve gathered, regularly meet to discuss the case of each woman on the floor. My doctor stopped in this morning and told me there had been some discussion over whether my C-section should still happen at 37 weeks or should be pushed up to 36. The consensus was that as long as I’m in-house, we should hold out as long as possible (up to 37 weeks); if something happens, they can always just section me. “Section” me. This is the lingo in the world of complicated pregnancies, a bizarre and somewhat violent-sounding verb that makes what’s happening sound a lot more aggressive than the alternative, “do a C-section” or “have a C-section.” “We’ll section you”—it sounds like something Solomon would propose. A C-section is a n...

Ha. “Finally, time to read!” is one of those things I always assumed I’d feel if I were placed on bedrest. It seems logical. I have nothing to do—every single hour of my day is free, and I’m not allowed to move anywhere but within this room. Reading seems the logical—the glorious!—way to pass the time. The problem is that I cannot concentrate. At all. And everything I do manage to read, I hate. I can’t get into anything, can’t lose myself in books like I’ve always been able to, in pretty much any other circumstance. Long plane rides. Long airport waits. Long waits for anything. Subway rides. Long spells when Lucia was born and napping long infant naps in my lap. But here, at the hospital—it’s not working. I’m away from home, away from my husband and child, and though I’m not exactly thinking about anything else, my mind is so scattered that I simply cannot remember what’s happened from the top of the page to the bottom. I have some things to try. I’m awaiting an Amazon order with two P...

A happy follow-up: Andrew unexpectedly returned tonight, bearing dinner made by Mom and a chocolate milkshake. And so the day ends pleasantly. Seventeen days to go.

Today was not a good day. Andrew, Lucia, and Mom came to visit, which was both great and awful, because seeing Lucia just makes me frantically want to go home. I was so miserable after her departure that my pulse went up enough to alarm the nurse, who advised me that getting so upset was not beneficial to me or the baby. Not good. Then, on a day when Andrew brought breakfast but I had no outside (edible) food coming to me for either lunch or dinner, the selections were the following: a hamburger for lunch (completely inedible, so unappetizing I had to cover it up on the dish) and a chicken breast dry enough to be a scouring sponge for dinner (75% inedible—I had to eat something). Not good. I was weighed this morning, and I’m teetering on the edge of a New Frontier: 149 pounds. Not good. (Actually, in truth, this is neither good nor bad, since that’s only 29 pounds total so far. It just shocked me.) Then, this afternoon, I had an eensy bit of spotting; however, on a floor where bedbound...

This morning, at 6:00, I was woken from a sound sleep with this greeting: “Good morning! I need to draw your blood.” Lovely. I asked her to draw it from my hand; she agreed, and stabbed me painfully, but then said she was sorry but she had to stop because the vein “blew up” and she didn’t get enough blood. So then I had to have it in my arm. And my hand, six hours later, is still sore. A pretty much fantastic way to start this Sunday. The sky wasn’t even light yet. It’s been a week, and I’m tired of being here. I feel like being here is pointless. Nothing has happened since Sunday, my non-stress tests all come out fine, and other than some uterus “irritability,” which I’m assured is normal, I’ve been as fine as I would have been had I never bothered to come in last week at all. Meanwhile, my new roommate with marginal previa has been bleeding constantly for the past twelve hours, and timing regular contractions—she should definitely be here. Me, I’m not so sure. But every time I ask a ...

So I think this new little one might just be the athletic daughter Andrew is hoping for. Each morning when I go for my non-stress test, whichever nurse is watching the heartbeat has just one comment: Your baby is so active! Yesterday, each time she moved (which was pretty much all the time), her heartbeat went up to 200; she was described as getting “overexcited.” Today wasn’t quite as dramatic, but it was still high, into the 180s. They’ve been keeping me on the monitors a few extra minutes to make sure the baby gets back to a normal baseline (around 150-160), which she always does. I really imagine this baby coming into the world with bright, curious eyes and kicking, excited feet, ready to squirm out of my arms and start exploring. She just has to quiet down a bit for the weekend. Andrew left today for Florida for Katherine’s wedding, and having the baby while he’s away seems like a pretty ridiculous prospect. So for the next two days, my goal is modest: keep calm, stay still, drink...

That’s right: This is my fifth day in the hospital. This week has been more than a little surreal. After our lovely pumpkin-picking day on Sunday, and a relaxing, normal evening, I found myself talking to Andrew on the couch one minute and frantically calling my doctor the next. By 10:00pm, I was at the hospital; later that night, I was admitted. And it looks like I am here to stay until the baby is born, which will be on October 27—37 weeks—as scheduled, or the minute I have any other bleeding, which could be anytime. Though we had high hopes that our planned ultrasound on Monday would show a miraculous migration of the placenta, this was not the case. I still had the ultrasound on Monday, but I was wheeled down in a wheelchair, wearing a hospital gown; and the scan still showed complete placenta previa. Sunday and Monday nights, I got steroid shots to bulk up the baby’s lung development in case she was born sooner rather than later. But since Sunday, I’ve been fine—no contractions, n...