Resnična zgodba – 5 dni nosečnosti
Zgodba mi je padla v oči na nekem ameriškem forumu in jo moram deliti z vami. Je resnična. Je izpoved očeta, kako je nekega dne izvedel, da je žena noseča, čez pet dni pa je že bil očka.
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You could say Kim had something to tell me. I laughed later when I saw the phone bil: three calls to my voice mail between 3:46 p.m. and 3:51 p.m. last May 8, before I finally answered attempt number four. “Can’t talk, Baby”, I barked. I had an important caller waiting on the other line. “Oh, no you don’t”, my wife snapped back. “I’m pregnant”.
Pregnant? How could that be? Seventeen years ago Kim, 37, had been diagnosed with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS), a little-recognized disorder that affects up to 10 precent of women of childbearing age and almost always causes infertility. Over the course of our 12-year marriage we’d made an uneasy peace with the diagnosis. Even so, for my 40th birthday, when Kim said she wanted to buy me a convertible, I told her I really wanted a Volvo station wagon. We both knew what that meant.
But in our wildest dreams we never expected our wish to be granted, especially under the current circumstances. Just the day before, Kim’s doctor had been puzzling over her. Her ankles had swelled to the size of tree trunks after a plane ride back from a business trip in April, but the tests for diabetes-his first thoguht-had come back negative. Still, her blood pressure was sky-high; her cholesterol was through the roof. At a loss, the doctor administered one more test, because blood pressure medication can cause birth defects.
Surprise! But the real punch line was the part we didn’t find out until later that day: Kim was 7 months pregnant.
I’m sure you’re wondering, how could we not know? Easy. No periods? PCOS does that. Morning sicknes? Nada. Weight? Kim had just lost 70 pounds, putting some back on didn’t surprise us. Weight swings are another part of PCOS anyway. Baby kicking? Well, you’ve got us there. Would you believe we were so coviced we couldn’t conceive that we attributed Kim’s stomach movements to gas?
“Wait, Kimmie”, I said as she began to hang up. “Remember: This could be a really good thing. We’ve always wanted this.”
“I know”, she said. “But I’m scared”.
Tuesday, May 8
Still under the impression that Kim was only a few weeks pregnant, I considered the math of the coming months on the train ride home. Forty more pounds. Kim’s blood pressure plus 50 points. How much could she take?
I loved that baby already, but there was no doubt whom I needed more. Kim and I complete each other. Our life was full without children: strong families, enough friends, interesting careers. Yes, the baby issue was never dead. Still, we’d hesitated to pay the price of treatments that might fail, of birth mothers whose whims could turn us inside out.
Now with Kim’s health possible in jeopardy, that price looked higher than ever. At 6 p.m., I arrived at the ER at Overlook Hospital, in Summit, New Jersey. We quickly assumed our roles: Kim, nervous, but mostly thrilled and embarrassed; me, acknowledging her chagrin-I was the genius who’d blamed the baby’s kicks on Indian food-but too overwhelmed to care. A nurse asked if I wanted to hear the heartbeat.
“It’s so fast”, I said.
“Fetal hearbeats are like that”, she replied.
“What does it mean”?
“You’re twenty-two to twenty-four weeks.”
“Oh, my God,” I howled, so aghast I had to laugh. “I’m so unprepared!”
We waited three hours to have an ultrasound confirm her theory, and amid the cold tile effieciency of the ER, Kim and I took stock of the luck that brought us to this. Kim toted our mistakes: no prenatal care, offhand diet, overwork. I reminded her: You barely drink, don’t smoke, usually eat what you should. We’ll get through this, whatever happens, we decided.
then the ultrasound technician finally came and said he’d measure the femur to dtermine fetal age. “Do you want to know if you’re having a boy or girl?” he asked.
“No,” said Kim firmly. She’d always said there are so few surprises in life and that, if our turn to have a baby ever came, she’d save that one. I knew her rule, but, silly me, I thought we’d already had about as many surprises as we could stand.
“No,” she repeated, “and don’t look, either”.
“Thirty-one weeks,” the tech soon pronounced.
“Uuuuuuuhhhh,” said Kim.
“That’s the kind of pregnancy I want,’ the nurse joked.
Then, all the horrible thoughts that came to me on the train were erased. Kim’s blood pressure had probably spiked as much as it was going to. She wouldn’t be gaining another 40 pounds. We were past the worst of prematurity.
Kim was going to be fine. We were having a baby.
Wednesday, May9
“My job is to keep you pregnant.” Amen to that, we told Kathy, our nurse in the labor and delivery unit. Without ceremony, she laid out the program.
Kim had preeclampsia, a constriction of blood vessels caused by a defective placenta. it can have nasty effects, including stroke, convulsions, and depleted kidney function. Here’s what I knew about preeclampsia: One episode of ER included a preeclampsia patient, and Dr. Mark Greene botched her treamtent and killed her. But preeclampsia signals when it’s getting dangerous. Sinc Kim was admitted for the duration of the pregnancy, our nurses could catch complications easily. We hoped she’d last 3 weeks. The prescription: no stimulation, few visitors, lots of monitors. First, though, we needed a more sophisticated ultrasound to tell how pregnant we really were. This brought the count up to 33 weeks.
Back in Kim’s room, we had just a phone and a bizarro story to tell our friends and relatives. Suck up the embarrassment; tell the truth, we decided. My buddy Al Szabo’s insults made me laugh so hard, the nurses came into see what was wrong.
Thursday, May 10, through Saturday, May 12
Other people take nine months to name babies. We had more like nine minutes.
“Schuyler, if it’s a boy,” I said.
“Why?” Kim wanted to know.
“We can call him Sky. As in, I fell from the…”
“Very funny,” said Kim, threatening to throw the baby-name book at my head.
We settled quickly on Graeme for a girl. The boy name was more difficult.
“Samuel,” I said. “Hebrew for God listens.”
“He does,” said Kim. “Look at us.”
My sister, Kathleen, later e-mailed: “You must know the story of Samuel, born when Hannah prayed for a son after years of barrenness. Pat,” she wrote, referring to her husband, “says you’re not that biblically attuned. If he’s right, I’ll fall over. It’ll be another miracle.”
Pat was right.
From there, it was a waiting game. Kim’s blood pressure declined by Friday. On Saturday night, we watched the Orioles play the Yankees. Then I went home. Our sheets in the wash, I crashed in the guest room, leaving the phone on our unused bed.
At the hospital, Kim made a point of ordering a Sunday lunch I’d like.
Sunday, May 13
The phone began ringing around 2 a.m. I answered at 4:56
“Tim, it’s Kathy,” our nurse said. Kim’s liver function had nosedived, and they had already started inducing labor. I took so long to hear the phone muffled in our mattress, Kathy had almost called the police. “Don’t panic,” she said, “But get her.”
Don’t panic? I got dressed panicking in full. Liver failure? What day is today, anyway?
Sunday.
Mother’s Day?!
I laughed out loud. No one was going to die on Mother’s Day. I relaxed and headed to the hospital. By the time I got there, they had determined that the induction didn’t work-and Kim’s blood pressure was soaring. Joseph Barresi, M.D., the ob/gyn on call, introduced himself and began an exam Kim preferred I didn’t watch.
One quick tour of the neonatal intensive-care unit later, a plan was in place: cesarean. I’d sit by Kim’s head, a sheet shielding her abdomen. The NICU team, led by Gaines Mimms, M.D., would treat the baby. I’d follow the baby as Kim went to recovery.
Kim’s parents, with us for hte lbessed event, and I placed last-minute bets.
“Girl,” said her mom
“Girl,” said her dad.
“Boy,” I said. “Four pounds three.”
As long as it’s healthy,” said Kim.
Then 12 years of waiting ended in maybe 12 minutes. At 10:52 p.m., Barresi crowed, “It’s a boy.” I felt like I’d been shot. This very acute sensation hit one tiny spot in my chest, then joy exploded through me as the “bullet” blew apart.
“How does he look to you?” Mimms asked me.
“Great! Huge!” Actually, Sammy was tiny and translucent-skinned-3 pounds, 15 ounces-with reddish-blond hair and blue eyes. “You guys prepared me for much worse,” I said, then counted everything in sight. Then, two. Ten, two. I slipped my finger in his tiny hand, amazed by its delicacy. Sam made a fist-hard, his conviction surprising me for the first time, but not the last-and I was a goner. We introduced Sam and Kim, then raced to the NICU, where he stayed for 12 days before coming home.
I met Kim in recovery around noon. As she slept in the dark, I ate the lunch she ordered Saturday night. Over corn soup and hot turkey, I wept.
Epilogue
people ask two question: What was it like, and hasn’t your life change totally?
It was nuts-obviously-but romantically nuts. It made people go out of their way for us: No one wanted to be in our shoes, but everyone could put themselves there. The carpet for Sam’s room arrived in three days; the painters came in two. As people saw us having a ball, even The Home Depot joined in.
But I don’t know if our lives changed any more profoundly because Sam was the Five-Day Wonder Baby. He’s amazing: jolly, healthy, always game. He relaxes us pervasively: When Kim was laid off in December, for example, we just moved on. But is that because no surprise throw us now, or is that just how having a kids is?
To know how Sam changed us, consider this scene from Father’s Day: Sam was screaming, and the song that calmed him best was Pachelbel’s “Canon in D” (aka the movie theme from Ordinary People). In the middle, the instruments diverge. The violins soar, as if reaching for some unknowable fate. The cellos and bass in habit the background, letting the violins be the show, sounding rich and content.
What happened to me in five days?
The violins became the cellos.
That’s how my son changed my life. Isn’t that pretty much how your child changed yours?
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UPANJA TI NE MORE NIHČE VZETI.
Maša
Res prisrčna pripoved in krasna vzpodbuda za vse, ki tako težko čakajo dve modri črtici – tudi čudeži se dogajajo!
Kljub vsemu kar ne morem verjeti, da nista opazila nosečnosti, res neverjetno. Je pa možno.
Podobno krasno zgodbo sem sodoživela pred kratkim – prijateljskemu paru, ki je deset let vsak mesec doživljal travme razočaranja in kjer je bilo upanja zelo malo, tudi IVF je bil nekajkrat neuspešen, se je rodil sinko. Hura!
Kako si rekla, Maša? Upanje vedno ostaja, nihče ti ga ne more vzeti. Prav gotovo.
Lenja
Zdravo!
Prijateljica moje mame (takrat je bila stara 44 let) se je nenadoma začela rediti. Bila je uradno neplodna in sta z možem že zdavnaj odpisala, da bi imela otroke. Ko bi ve vedele, kaj vse je ženska počela, da bi shujšala! Pretekla je 10 km na dan, dobesedno stradala… Zanimivo je to, da sploh ni imela trebuha, ampak se je zredila povsod. No, po vseh neuspešnih poizkusih hujšanja, se je ženska le odpravila k zdravniku. Ko ji je povedal, da je noseža 7 !!! mesecev je baje zdravnika nosila po ambulanti od samega veselja.
Kaj vse se človeku ne zgodi!
LP Mateja