The nurses helped clean me up, then put me back in bed. The bleeding had stopped pretty quickly. But then, a few hours later, I had a bigger bleed. This time, sitting on the toilet, I couldn’t do anything to stop the blood that gushed out of me. I was terrified. If I lost too much blood, they would have to make a transfusion and possibly deliver the baby. As the nurses tried to help me, I started crying hysterically. “I don’t want to lose my baby!”
A nurse tried to calm me, but she didn’t seem very hopeful. They started me on steroids, to help build the baby’s lungs in case I had to deliver. When Dr. Silverman did a scan it showed that everything looked the same. The placenta had not moved—it was no better and no worse. He told me he didn’t think that I would have to deliver right away and that he was hopeful that I could stay pregnant for four more weeks. If I made it to twenty-eight weeks, the baby would still be very premature, but his chance of survival without long-term effects would increase dramatically.
By the time Dean arrived, the doctors had left and I was alone. I saw his concerned face and just started bawling. My single purpose was to protect this baby, and my body wasn’t cooperating.
“Why?” I said. “Why is this happening?”
Dean looked helpless. “I don’t know,” he said. He held my hand as I cried.
A doctor from the NICU (the neonatal intensive care unit) came in. Now that I was twenty-four weeks along, it was hospital protocol that they apprise me of the reality of my situation. (I guess before this point the baby’s chances of survival were too slim.) They told me that although the baby was viable now, at twenty-four weeks, if I gave birth the baby would be a “micro-preemie.” His chance of survival if I delivered today was 30 percent, and the baby would need respiratory support. He would be at risk for several other conditions. The doctor also told me that if the baby did survive, there was a chance that he would be in terrible distress. We might have to decide whether to keep my baby on life support. I couldn’t imagine having to make that call. The baby could have long-term health issues, but if all went well, he could be fine.
Until then, I guess I’d only heard what I wanted to hear. When they told me that if I made it to twenty-four weeks, the baby was viable, I took it to mean that it’d be fine. But now I understood that twenty-four weeks marked the earliest point at which they would make an effort to save the baby.
After the NICU doctor left, I lay there, too scared to move.
All was quiet the rest of the day, except my nerves. I was a wreck. When Dean left in the early evening to put the kids to bed, I called Mehran. I didn’t want to be alone. For the first time in my hospital stay I had a feeling that I might lose the baby, and it might be tonight.
“I’m sorry,” I told Mehran, “but I’m too scared to sleep alone. Can you please come over?” Mehran, who is truly the best friend a girl could ever ask for, said he would come to the hospital right away.
That night, at three thirty A.M., I started to bleed again. I got to my commode and passed a huge blood clot the size of a giant guinea pig. It was dark red. Fortunately, at this point I was overly informed about the form and quality of the blood that came out of me—for once my overattention to my own shit had a useful application—so I knew that even though the clot was huge, the dark color meant that it was old blood, which was good.
A nurse and two residents came in and started poking at the clot and arguing about whether it was part of my placenta. I snapped a picture and sent it to Dr. J. After he texted me that I was okay, he and I started joking over text about the size of the clot. I sent him a picture of Bigfoot and said, “They’ve located Bigfoot. He’s in my commode.” I’ve gotta hand it to Dr. J. He found this amusing—or pretended he did—at four in the morning.
Mehran and I tried to go back to sleep. When I woke up, I passed another smaller clot. This time for comparison I texted Dr. J a picture of Mr. Hankey the Christmas Poo (from South Park). Gallows humor? It should be called bed-rest humor.
In the next couple days I had another bleed, and when they took my blood count they found that I was now slightly anemic. If my hemoglobin level dropped one more point they would have to give me a blood transfusion. I tried to remain calm, but I could see what was happening here. We were on the road toward my baby’s premature delivery—all we could do was postpone the inevitable for as long as possible in order to give the baby a chance to grow. Even Dr. Silverman seemed a bit sad and resigned. He usually kept a doctorly distance, but this time when he checked in with me, he said, “I know this is a nightmare.”
With my continuing to have bleeds, Dr. Silverman thought it was unlikely I’d make it to thirty-six weeks, which would have been considered nearly a full-term birth. Instead he thought it might help to give me a more modest goal. “Let’s just get to thirty-two weeks,” he said. “You can do it.” I wanted to make it to his goal and beyond.
A few days later, after another major bleed, as I lay there waiting to find out if the baby and I were okay, I suddenly smelled pipe smoke coming from my left. I swear it was the same smell as my dad’s pipe. I’m all about the visits from beyond, but this was insane. Never, since his death, had I felt my father’s presence! I had to be imagining it. Then a nurse came in, and I asked her if she smelled something.
“Yes,” she said. “It smells like smoke.”
As quickly as the odor came, it disappeared. Later, when I mentioned it to my brother, he said that once, when his daughter was a newborn, he went into her nursery and smelled Dad’s pipe smoke.
“I had to tell him he couldn’t smoke around the baby,” my brother joked.
I felt completely sure that my father was there, watching over me and the baby, and reassuring me that it was all going to work out right.
On Patti’s visits she told me not to think about stopping the bleeding. She didn’t want me to focus on the bleeding at all. Her prescription was for me to say, twice a day, “My body is strong, healthy, peaceful, loved, empowered, and living in harmony.” Dr. J thought Patti’s work was total malarkey, and he didn’t like the way my contractions increased when she was visiting me. He worried that they could throw me into early labor. But when his colleague Dr. Mandel came to fill in for Dr. J once when he was out of town, and I told him how much I wanted to go home, he said, “Make it happen. Envision it.” Dr. Mandel told me that they’d done a study of gold-medal Olympic athletes, and many of the winners said that they had envisioned themselves up on that three-tiered platform wearing the gold medal. So I pictured myself healthy and pregnant, out in the backyard with Hattie crawling across the grass into my arms. I pictured Liam perfecting his break-dancing moves to entertain us while Stella crafted by my side. And I pictured myself holding a cherubic new baby. My psychic Fay had told me she had a dream that I had a boy with blue eyes and soft light brown curls. He was dressed in a soldier’s uniform. I asked if that meant he was going to be in the military. She said, “No, it’s metaphoric. It shows that he’s a fighter.” It gave me hope, and it also gave me inspiration for the Little Maven fall season: military-inspired jackets. But in the moment, that was beside the point. The baby I pictured looked right into my eyes and gave a happy smile that said, “We did it.”
Milestones
On Stella’s fourth birthday, in my hospital room, out of nowhere she said, “Remember when I was sleeping with Mama and there was blood?”
I knew what she was talking about. The bleed when I’d had to wake Stella to get Dean. Had it scarred her?
Liam said, “When? When I had a bloody nose?”
Stella said, “No, when Mama bled from her vagina and she called out, ‘Stella! Can you go get Daddy?’ and I did. Remember?” My heart broke for my daughter.
Liam said, “Yeah, I was two.”
I said, “No, baby, that was right when Mama came to the hospital. It was a little over a month ago. I haven’t been here since you were two.”
Liam was oblivious, but I worried that Stella had been traumatized. She had told me that she never wa
nted to get married. When I asked her why, she said, “Getting married means having babies and I’m not ever having babies.”
“Why?” I asked.
“I don’t want to bleed,” she said.
“I had three great pregnancies before this one. What’s happening to me isn’t going to happen to you,” I told her. She wasn’t convinced. I tried to remind myself that eventually she would see me completely healthy again and that we had years to work through this, but I couldn’t help worrying.
When it came to Hattie, there are so many milestones in a baby’s first year of life. I was really sad about missing them. One day Dean came in and said, “I want to show you what Hattie started doing this morning.” He spread a blanket out on the floor and put her down on it. Hattie pushed up from her stomach and started to crawl on all fours. I was so proud, but it was bittersweet. I’d missed her first crawl, I’d missed her first words—she said “Dada” and I wasn’t there. I’d missed her first tooth coming in. My littlest baby, my sweet Hattie, was growing without me. I remembered how the day before I’d come to the hospital I’d been so determined to take her swimming for the first time. It was as if I’d known that I had to grab those milestones while I could.
The hardest milestone for me to miss was Liam’s graduation from preschool. It took place on a Friday in mid-June. Dean, Stella, Hattie, and Patsy were there. Also the Guncles and Grandma Jacquie. Dean and I set it up so that I would be on FaceTime for the ceremony. He would hold up his phone the whole time.
That morning my computer wasn’t cooperating, so Dean and I connected by phone. A nurse came in to take my morning vitals and check on the baby at the same time the graduation was starting. She went about her business as I clutched the camera, focusing on that tiny screen.
The class of 2012 walked out. There was Liam wearing the outfit I’d picked out for him from my hospital bed: a seersucker suit and a bow tie. As soon as I saw him, I started bawling. I didn’t want them to see me crying, so I turned the phone at an angle, hoping that if any of my family glanced at Dean’s phone, all they would see was the blinking monitors, although my hand was shaking so hard I’m sure those monitors were just a blur to them.
Every member of the class of 2012 came up to the microphone to say what they wanted to be when they grew up. Liam said, “When I grow up I want to be a basketball player.” That just made me cry even harder. When you’re four years old, you believe anything’s possible. I loved that he was setting really big, unattainable goals. So innocent.
I apologized to the nurse. She said, “Don’t be sorry. That’s your baby. This is important.” She handed me a box of tissues. I grabbed a ball of tissue and used it to muffle my cries, but this was no everyday sentimental glistening. I’d rarely cried that hard in my life, and not for a very long time. Maybe when my first pet died when I was eight . . . or when I first watched The Bodyguard on the night it was released. Nothing really compared to this. I was truly heartbroken.
Each child was called up to shake the teacher’s hand and receive his or her diploma. This was Liam’s first time walking across a stage all by himself. I was so impressed that he knew where to go when they said his name. What a big boy. He crossed that stage on my fuzzy little iPhone screen smiling so big and proud. When he got to his teacher, he didn’t just hug her. He threw himself into her arms for a great big bear hug.
By the time my little graduate returned to his seat, my vision was so blurred with tears I could barely see the screen. This was Liam’s beaming, proud moment, and I wasn’t there.
Another nurse came in. By way of explaining my condition I said, “My son just graduated from preschool and I missed it.”
She said, “This is just the first of many. You’ll be there for all the rest.”
“I know,” I said, “but I missed this one.” That was the low point of my time on bed rest. I couldn’t see the glass as half-full right then. Liam wouldn’t remember or care, but I would always know that I’d missed my first baby’s preschool graduation. I’d never see it. It was over. I longed to be home with my babies, making up for lost time.
There was an upside to the end of the school year, and it brightened my days immediately. Now that it was summer vacation, the kids and Dean could move closer to the hospital. We had rented a two-bedroom apartment nearby. It happened to be in the Marlowe, the same apartment building that Dean and I had lived in together when we first met. They would come to the hospital every day from now until the baby was born.
THEN, A FEW weeks later, a miracle happened. When Dr. Silverman finished scanning me carefully, he said, “We have good news here.” The placenta had moved! Dr. Silverman was very pleased with what he saw. He said that if everything stayed quiet for the next few days, if everything stayed the same, I could go home.
Three days later, Dr. Silverman released me, on one condition. He wanted me to be within fifteen minutes of the hospital at all times. He said that I should stay in bed and make sure not to move around too much. He would see me in two weeks and reassess whether I could go back to our house for the rest of the pregnancy. Dean and the kids were already in the Marlowe, ten minutes away! I was all set.
After fifty-five days in the hospital, I was released. I was thirty weeks pregnant.
ALL OF US and Patsy were squished in a two-bedroom apartment. Liam and Stella slept on a mattress right next to our bed. I was happy. On the Fourth of July, we wrapped a bandage around my ankle so it looked like I’d hurt myself, and Dean put me in a wheelchair and wheeled me down to sit poolside. The Marlowe wasn’t exactly a family destination. The pool was full of singles in bikinis drinking margaritas. But I sat in the sun in my wheelchair, with my fake sprained ankle, watching our kids frolic. Being free from the hospital was a great way to celebrate Independence Day. Our family was together again.
Two weeks later, when I saw Dr. Silverman again, he had more good news. The placenta had moved completely. He, and later Dr. J, was completely amazed. They’d seen placentas move slowly out of the danger zone, but never so far, so completely, so fast. It was unheard of. Dr. J actually said it was a miracle.
He told me that my pregnancy was no longer high risk. It was completely normal. I could deliver at thirty-seven weeks. He gave me my final shot of steroids and sent me back to Westlake Village. As we left the office, Dean was pushing me in a wheelchair. Dr. J said, “You can walk out of this office.” I stood up, then realized I had to lean on Dean because I was weak from bed rest. Who cared? I was going home.
During that last month of pregnancy, I decorated a nursery for the baby. I did the walls in the same bright turquoise wallpaper I’d had in my hospital room. Scout was skeptical. Did I really want a long-term reminder of my time in the hospital? I did. That wallpaper was my bright spot in the hospital. And now that it was over, I didn’t see the hospital as a nightmare. I’m not an independent person, and in the hospital I was on my own for a long time. It was just me and the baby. That period had bonded us. I wanted to preserve the best of that experience, and I wanted him to see it when he was out in daylight. That paper wasn’t the hospital or my high-risk pregnancy. It was us. Me and Finn (because that is what we would name him). Even now, every day when I walk into that room I look at that paper and smile, because I remember the journey we went through together and how much it means.
Dr. J told me that we had to schedule my Cesarean right away—the hospital would book up. He suggested August 29, but as it happened I had a personal appearance—a charity event for Lunchables—scheduled for that day. It had been scheduled long ago, when we thought the baby was going to be born the third week of September. I hadn’t worked for so long—I didn’t want to give it up.
So now I had to pick another day. I put Patti and Fay on it, asking both of them what the most auspicious dates for this baby’s birth might be. It was psychic versus psychic. They came back with September 7, but Dr. J wasn’t willing to wait that long. Then they wanted September 3, but that was Labor Day. September 1 was no good—Sa
turdays are too busy at the hospital. August didn’t seem right to me, but I had run out of options. Finally Patti and Fay told me that August 30 was the perfect day for this baby to be born. Frankly at that point I think they were just trying to make me feel better.
I made it to thirty-seven weeks. Finn was born on August 30, full term, weighing six pounds, six ounces. Liam, Stella, and Hattie came to meet him the night he was born. There were no reality cameras this time. The moment was all ours.
I’ll never forget the first moments of Finn’s life. They placed him in my arms and I held him close, my tears moistening his perfect new cheeks. Here was the baby boy whose image I’d envisioned for all those months. He had asked for my complete love, and I had given it. I had devoted my whole heart, soul, and body to keeping him alive, and now here he was, his little heart beating quick and strong. His fingers curled into sweet fists. A miracle. I nuzzled him and whispered, “We made it.”
The Fourth Hole
Two days after I got home from the hospital, when Finn was only five days old, it was Orientation Day at Liam and Stella’s new Westlake Village school. It was a small, quaint school where all the kids wore uniforms. Both kids had orientation at the same time, so I went with Stella to her new preschool class while Dean went with Liam to kindergarten.
I sat through the review of the daily schedule and pickup/drop-off procedures, but when the teacher said, “We have class parties for every holiday. You can sign up to bring food,” I immediately perked up. This was my domain. There’s nothing I love more than bringing homemade, theme-appropriate, kid-friendly food to a holiday party. The memory of store-bought hummus and crudité platters at the kids’ former preschool still gave me nightmares, but this was the start of a new day. As soon as the teacher finished talking, I made a beeline for the sign-up sheets. I reminded myself that I had a newborn at home. Best not to overdo it. I would only sign up for Halloween and Christmas. And maybe Valentine’s Day. And definitely Dr. Seuss’s birthday. I mean, I had to make my green deviled eggs and ham.
Spelling It Like It Is Page 14
