Graceful Parenting in Austin

It feels strange to check-in at the Labor and Delivery nurse’s station when you are just 18 weeks along. It is like a horse jockey walking into a Big and Tall men’s shop. It’s not like the sales people would be rude, they would just think that, most likely, he was lost.

I’m not really showing yet. Well, maybe I am, if you know me and I wear the right shirt. But otherwise I look pretty normal so when I asked where to check in, I felt the nurses look at me, you know, like I was lost.

The nurse asked how far along I was and I told her 18 weeks. She hesitated. She said women who were less than 20 weeks along usually went to the regular ER. Only women 20 weeks along or more checked in at Labor and Delivery. This might seem like a procedural detail, but it felt like a lot more to me. It felt like she was saying that if something was really wrong, there was no chance this baby could live, not at 18 weeks, so I don’t really need Labor and Delivery…

I imagine she is an experienced nurse because she sensed my uneasiness and said she would work it out so they could check me in here. I do a lot of paperwork and answer a lot of questions. When the nurse asks about my previous pregnancies, she gets confused, since I delivered Grace at 19 weeks and Baby Girl at 31 weeks, but I was only pregnant once before. It isn’t a typical story, I don’t think.

Sean is acting different. When I felt something was wrong before, also at 18 weeks, he was calm and said it was probably nothing, to be comforting. This time, when I told him I felt symptoms similar to when my cervix started to dilate with Grace, he got very serious, he wanted to know details, he wanted to drive to the hospital right away instead of paging the doctor, he called his sister to have her on stand by to watch Baby Girl.

We both know it is different this time, I had surgery to stitch up my cervix. It seems like a primitive solution, but it’s pretty effective. So it is different in both ways, more serious because we know what complications can mean and less, because I’m stitched up tight. But I feel pressure low, like I did before, it felt just like before.

This whole week felt like before, week 18. I was just starting to wear maternity clothes, trying to find something that wasn’t too big but made room for my new waist/belly. It was the time when I was having more good days, able to eat more kinds of food and throwing it up less. It was the time when I started getting more, well, irregular, in an uncomfortable way. And now I feel the pelvic pressure.

My Ob/Gyn is the doctor on call that night. He is there already for a delivery and we have to wait a while for him to finish. I watch Baby Girl play, she is getting tired, her Aunt will take her back to the house soon. What a miracle she is. To see her all grown up, well 15 months grown up, in the hospital where they told us she wasn’t going to live. She is so precious.

My Ob/Gyn comes and we see our sweet baby on the sonogram. The doctor shows me all the things I want to see, a heartbeat, plenty of fluid around the baby, head down, but not too far down. Then he checks my cervix and it hasn’t dilated and the stitches are in place. Everything looks good.

We make it home before too late. Baby Girl’s Aunt had put her to bed, now she was going to head home. I go to bed after a while and stare at the ceiling. I’m glad to know everything is all right. I don’t want it to be week 18 anymore. I don’t want to be reminded of what happened. I want it to be week 24, when we started to get more hopeful about Baby Girl. Or week 28. We had a party at week 28, we were so happy to get there.

But for now, I’ll take this time to remember Grace. Then I lay my hand on my belly and say a prayer for our new baby. We’ll go back to Labor and Delivery, hopefully in about twenty weeks, when the nurses won’t think I’m lost anymore.