[This week marks the anniversary of my pregnancy saga, so for the next few days I'm going to take some time to reflect on what happened last year and how it's affected me since.]On Friday I wasn’t scared, but I didn’t enjoy being poked for an IV. And I didn’t like it when they started the magnesium sulfate drip. It shot through my veins, hot and sharp. And I really didn’t like the steroid shots. I knew they were necessary to help build up my baby’s lungs in case she came early, but oh my good gracious, those puppies hurt!
On Saturday I wasn’t scared. When I looked up at one point and saw my husband freaking out on too much caffeine and my parents hugging and crying, I almost laughed again. It’s not like I was unconscious – I could see them! I could see them being scared and sad.
And then the cavalry arrived – my cousins, my aunt, my brother all the way from Iowa. And they sat in my room, talking in hushed murmurs and staring. Staring at me and staring at the monitors beeping my vitals for the world to see.
On Sunday I was a little scared, because they began giving me Pitocin, a drug used to induce labor. Labor! That excruciatingly painful process I’d read about and heard my friends describe and was terrified to experience myself! But as the special, fancy consultant doctor had explained the day before, the only cure for my condition was to deliver my baby. 7 WEEKS EARLY. And the worst part in my mind? We hadn’t taken a childbirth class yet! It was still two weeks away!
I shouldn’t have worried. The magnesium (used to prevent seizures, but also often used to halt pre-term labor) overpowered the pitocin. Though my family stayed glued to the monitor that day, waiting for contractions, nothing changed. Including my frighteningly high blood pressure. So the doctors scheduled a C-section for Monday morning.
Later that evening, the magnesium began making me a little loopy. I was out of it enough that I asked my nurse and my mom to help me take a shower, since I didn’t know how long after surgery before I’d take another one. For those of you who don’t know me, I’m extremely self-conscious about my body and would never, under any other circumstances, have allowed – much less requested – someone to see me naked.
After getting me into bed that evening, my parents decided to head home, promising to be back bright and early the next morning. But shortly after that, the heartburn came back. I’d learned my lesson and this time, I told Mark to get the nurse. That nurse, Kristina, got my doctor to stay (she’d been headed home, too). And then they decided to deliver. Right then.
Mark called my parents, and when I asked him if my mom started crying, he said, “No, I did.”
And then I got scared.
