J and I weren't planning to have more children. Not really, anyway. Sure, we'd left our options open after daughter number 2 was born, but it'd been nearly five years and zero condoms used, so we figured our fetile luck had run out. Not that we'd been very lucky as far as that goes, but that's another entry entirely. Years ago, when daughter number 2, who shall henceforth be known as Dee was closing in on 3 years old, I'd pulled a number from my ass and announced that I was closing up shop at age 34. There would be no more babies sqwuz (yes, sqwuz) from my vagina after my 34th birthday. I'd read somewhere that 35 year old eggs were really damn old and prone to problems, as opposed to the spring chicken, problem-less 34 year old eggs, so 34 seemed reasonable. J, my husband seemed amenable to the plan. Though he wasn't entirely opposed to a third child, he liked having two daughters. He felt complete, and he's one of those odd creatures who enjoys a great spread sheet, so in the spread sheet that was his life he had a definite end to the baby making. My birthday.
The years came and went, and when Dee turned 4 and my oldest, Bear, turned 6 I found out I was pregnant. I wasn't that far along, close to six weeks, but still, I remember being excited about the pregnancy and ensuing baby. See, back then I naively assumed that a pregnancy automatically equalled a live baby. Sure, I knew about miscarriages and stillbirths, but they weren't something that would happen to me. You know the drill, accidents happen to other drivers, right? Anyway, I'd known about the pregnancy for a few weeks and had geared myself up to campout on the couch for 3 months watching cable, feeling nauseated, and eating cheese-nips when one evening I realized that I didn't really feel pregnant anymore. No tender boobs, no aversion to all things edible yet demanding hunger, and I knew that I was going to miscarry. I handled that miscarriage pretty well. I was sad, but I wasn't devastated. I remember crying, but I was able to get out of bed and move on with my life. I had two beautiful daughters and life was good. I was content and coming to terms with my reproductive years sliding by.
Two years later, a few months after my 34th birthday (D-day, remember?) I felt a cold coming on and decided to take a pregnancy test before I overdosed on Comtrex and put myself to bed for the duration. I'm not sure why I decided to test, as I wasn't feeling particularly pregnant and the chances of me falling pregnant were slim to none given that J and I weren't exactly burning up the sheets with our lust, still, I bought a cheapy pregnancy test and went home and peed on a stick (POAS for all you gals in the know). Pregnant. Pregnant with a capital P and that rhymes with T and that stands for... well, surprised as hell. Somehow, J and I had slipped this baby in under the wire. When the shock wore off, I proudly and somewhat smugly proclaimed that this child had been meant to be. 34 was the cut off and by my calculations the conception had been around my birthday.
Now, with my miscarriage years behind me, I forged on with this pregnancy with a positive frame of mind. See, in my head I'd given the universe one baby, so I automatically got to keep this one. For 12 weeks I camped out in my bed watching cable (I'm big with the cable) and noshing and just generally being PREGNANT. I loved watching my body change and when I finally grew into my maternity clothes (which, after 2 kids and 3 pregnancies didn't take long) I celebrated with cake! We told our girls the good news and started another college fund. I'd started a list of names and already knew that I'd delay feeding this baby solids until at least 6 months.
Then at 14 weeks, I dropped Dee off at her pre-school and had such a terrible gas pain that I thought I'd need an epidural just to get through the bowel movement. That fucker hurt enough for me to clutch the tiny stall walls in the tiny pre-school bathroom and break into a sweat. I resorted to lamaze-like panting to work through it. But, because I'm an ass, when it passed I laughed it off and thought myself so very clever with the epidural reference and pushed it to the back of my mind. One week later, somewhere around nine p.m., I went to the bathroom and when I wiped I noticed that there was a pink tint to the mucus. Yes, I know it's kind of gross to admit that I am one of the many who examines the toilet paper after wiping, but it's what pregnant women obsess about. Anyway, pink tinted mucus, sooo light that I thought maybe I was imagining it. Still, it never hurt to check it out, so I called my doctor (who will get his own entry in the future) and he told me to come in just to be sure. He fired up the ultrasound after we heard nothing but static and gas on the doppler and I knew. I saw my baby on the screen, her perfect form, her still limp body, and absolutely no blinking heart, and I knew she was dead and I knew she'd died a week ago and I cried. I cried ugly and hard and when I was left alone to get dressed, I wrapped my arms around myself and slid to the floor and gasped for air and wondered WHY. Why again? Why this baby? And as nearly every woman who has lost a baby has thought at least once, Why Me?
Some day I'll tell you about the induction and all the spiritual and physical messiness that happened in the hospital, but not now. It's a place I don't care to revisit. What I will tell you is that I came home absolutely broken. I didn't want to die, but I sure didn't feel like joining the living. I mourned. I raged. I felt safest in my bed, hidden away from well-wishers and anyone else. We all mourned. I remember walking up the stairs when I got home from the hospital and hearing my 8 year old daughter crying in the phone to our neighbor and our best friend that, "Our baby died." Dee wrapped her arms around me and held me while she watched cartoons and I cried myself to sleep. J held me at night when it'd taken all I could give just to make it through another day and I crashed into misery, even though he must have been worn. And most of all, he let me talk about our baby. My two beautiful daughters and my wonderful husband protected me and helped me face the world again.
There was no question in J's or my heart that our family wasn't complete. And though it was a frightening prospect, the idea that we'd lose yet another child, we knew we had to try again. Old eggs or not, someone was missing from our family and we had to bring her home. Two months later we were pregnant again. Friends, you have no idea how shocked we were. We don't get pregnant easily. Yes, easier than some, but it takes a whole lot more than brushing by me in a hallway to get the job done. We were elated, we were terrified, but mostly, we dared to hope....
