"A Rainbow Does Not Negate the Ravages of the Storm"

Warning: This one is scary.

My new doula sent me that quotation last night. She had heard it on NPR, I think, and it made her think of me.

The ravages of the storm got to me last night when I had an unexpected complication with this pregnancy.

First, let me remind you that so far everything has been normal skewed toward good. My numbers were strong from the start. My genetic testing came back with no additional risks detected at 11 weeks. My anatomy scan looked good at 20 weeks. My glucose test came back normal at 25 weeks. On Monday, I hit 28 weeks--the official start of the third trimester.

Last night (Tuesday night) I was finishing up a normal day. David was late because of interviews and I had just put the girls to bed when he got home. I lay with them for a little while, idly scrolling through my phone, and then decided to go take a shower and lie down in my bed to do a kick count.

The one hiccup with with this pregnancy has been that my anterior placenta has made movement really hard to feel. It's driving me bonkers, honestly. Kick counts take much longer than they ever did with Zuzu or Coco, and she tends to be most active just before bedtime (9-10pm). I usually have to be lying on my side to really feel movement, and I can basically tell the size and shape and location of the placenta because I mostly feel her around the periphery.

I was feeling okay last night, mostly because I'd had a doctor appointment yesterday morning. My regular (beloved) OB is out of the country on a vacation in India, so I saw his nurse practitioner. I was a little anxious about this (unlike other patients, I don't rotate through every doctor in the practice. I only see Dr. W. I am very much a Special Needs Patient in this regard.) But anyway, I'd rather see someone random than miss an appointment, and I couldn't really ask Dr. Wasserman to schedule his international vacations around my doctor appointments (I mean, I wanted to but some part of me remains rational). As it turns out, the nurse practitioner was great. She was familiar with my history even though I'd only seen her one time before--during my pregnancy with Eliza. She was kind and reassuring and answered all my questions and validated my anxiety and made me feel better.

I've been fixated on a worry about placental abruption. I've recently met a baby loss mama who lost her baby to a sudden placental abruption with no known cause at 36 weeks, and that's probably why it's at the forefront of my mind. But I also think the anterior placenta has made me more anxious--if I bump into something, or one of my kids uses my stomach to push off of and launch themselves off the couch, I get freaked out that I've just broken my placenta. Anyway, she told me that there is no evidence that the position of the placenta has any bearing on the likelihood of an abruption, which I found comforting.

But last night when I got out of the shower, I realized I was bleeding. I wasn't in any pain. I wasn't having contractions. But there was bright red blood trickling down my leg. I was 28 weeks (and 1 day) pregnant. I was panicking. The truth is, I've been looking for blood ever since I got a positive pregnancy test. It felt like a fulfillment of my greatest dread. (The shittiest thing about anticipating disaster and then having that disaster actually occur is that it doesn't even feel like a victory when you end up being right--it still just feels like a living nightmare.)

I yelled (quietly because the girls were sleeping) for David and told him we needed to go to the hospital. David called a neighbor to come stay at the house with the girls (who were asleep and had no idea we we even left). We drove to the hospital. It took maybe 15 minutes and I didn't feel any movement the entire time. I sobbed my story to the nurse at the desk and she took me back immediately and starting asking for my information and trying to take my blood pressure and pulse.

I was shaking uncontrollably at this point and could hardly catch my breath. I kept saying, "Oh my God. What if there's no heartbeat?" She wanted to see how much I was bleeding and she FINALLY (it really was only a few minutes but it felt like forever) took me back and hooked up the Doppler monitor. I was still shaking so hard it took a second before the machine could pick anything up, but then the baby's heartbeat blipped on the screen and I was able to calm down enough that they got a good read on it. It was totally normal. Which of course made me start crying all over again.

By this time the bleeding had already let up a lot. Another nurse came in and asked me a bunch of the same questions, and then a nurse practitioner came in. Everyone was very kind. I was totally wrecked--my hair was still soaking wet from the shower, I was crying off and on. But I got an ultrasound (baby looked perfect), a cervical exam (totally closed), and the baby was monitored for about two and a half hours (no decels, heart rate normal).

I finally started to relax after the ultrasound when they put the Doppler back on. I had stopped bleeding by then and I could just listen to the galloping rhythm of the baby's heartbeat as I lay on my side and sipped cranberry juice.

The nurse practitioner did a swab when she did my cervical exam and she determined that there was a pH imbalance. This minor infection can apparently irritate the cervix and cause a blood vessel to break or rupture. It is unusual, but slightly more likely to happen when taking blood thinners like a daily baby aspirin. That seems to be what happened to me, as there was no other source of bleeding they could find and the bleed had totally resolved within an hour.

They let us go home around midnight, with lots of reassurances and invitations to come back anytime I feel worried or concerned. Once I got home, I collapsed into that exhausted but jittery kind of sleep and then had one of my recurring nightmares about driving a car off the edge of a cliff because my psyche likes to work through SUPER OBVIOUS METAPHORS when I am stressed out.

Today I'm not having any bleeding (checking obsessively) and I have a prescription to fix my imbalanced pH situation. I'm feeling some movement as I sit on the exercise ball at my desk and I have an appointment to see my doctor as soon as he's back in town (not soon enough, but I'll take it).

I still feel so shaky and vulnerable, though. As we drove to the hospital, the night that we went in unexpectedly early with Eliza because I was having contractions was vivid in my mind. The major difference wasn't fear--I was scared both times. But with Eliza, I thought it was going to be okay. I thought they were going to fix it. I went in innocently assuming that whatever was wrong could be made okay again and maybe I was looking at a c-section and a premie.

This time I went in knowing what it felt like to get the very worst news. This time an emergency c-section and a super early premie felt like my best option, and I didn't think it was possible. I expected them to say there was no heartbeat because I'd heard those words before. I was not a naive mom, pregnant for the first time and confident the doctors could fix anything. I was feeling every bit of that previous trauma. Having had two successful pregnancies since then did nothing to negate the ravages of my grief. I know too well that there is nothing to prevent that tragedy from revisiting me. Statistics don't keep me safe. Lightening could strike again just as it did in the first storm of grief. We could go home from the hospital empty handed.

I really didn't need that brutal reminder--I'm already well aware that the odds being in my favor is no guarantee. But I'm so grateful that this time we got a different answer. This time, that teensy little four chamber heart was beating away in there. This time we get to hold onto hope.

I texted my doula an update on everything and she responded and then sent me the quote about rainbows and storms. It was exactly right. Even coming out safely twice doesn't make me feel like the storm never happened. It just makes me feel like somehow I got away with something, and I'll have to get really lucky (and be really vigilant) if that's going to happen again.

Now if you're looking for me, I'll be spending virtually all my free time between now and the end of May lying on my left side doing kick counts.