22 days OR MORE

NOW...

It's been a frustrating day. I took my weekly Tuesday trip down to antenatal testing. They do a biophysical profile on the baby each week to make sure she is meeting all the good milestones like "practice breathing" and making sure there is enough amniotic fluid etc. She - Philomena - always passes with flying colors, thankfully.

The torturous part about the trip down there is that they wheel you down in a wheelchair and park you in the hallway where you hurry up and wait for a tech to come get you. Can I just watch paint dry instead, please? My usual wait in the "chair" can be from 15 minutes to 35 minutes. One time "transport" forgot me and I sat there forever until I decided I would go ahead and take the elevator myself up to my room. Wheelchairs are not the most comfortable places to be when you are 8 months pregnant.

Philomena did well once again today, passing all her tests like practice breathing etc. The problem I am having is with the perinatologists in general. A perinatologist is a "specialist" in the area of maternal/fetal medicine. They get your chart and review your ultrasounds and try to give you their best medical opinion on how to manage your case. The problem is that these doctors never once will perform a hands-on exam. They only know you via your chart.

I have had three preterm babies all born at 36 weeks gestation. My last baby was born the day I turned 36 weeks. When the OB got in to do the c-section I had a dehiscence or "window" meaning my previous scar sites were separating to the point where at moment the site would have opened and we all would have had a real emergency on our hands.

A very real risk for moms who have had prior c-sections is uterine rupture. If your uterine wall separates (typically at the original scar site) the baby has nowhere to go except into your abdominal cavity where he or she has under 10 minutes to be delivered. There is a 7% mortality rate for the mother who will hemorrhage on the table with a uterine rupture. So naturally, my instinct and mother's intuition, which by the way means nothing to a "specialist" says don't go anywhere near 36 weeks. I base this instinct on the fact that I also rarely feel any labor pains until I am fully dilated and ready to be delivered, which in my case could prove to be fatal for me and the baby as laboring of the uterus would most likely cause it to rupture. Of course the group of perinatologists do NOT agree to take me at 35 weeks gestation primarily because of liability issues. So one of the docs got my Irish way up when he refused to hear my reasons why I don't want to go all the way to 36 weeks. I explained that I am not thinking only about myself and the great risk of uterine rupture that I run, but the 7 other lives who depend on me! I explained that I consulted with one of the Intensive Care Unit pediatricians who concurred that treating a 35 week gestation baby was not much different than a 36 week baby.

The perinatogists will hear nothing of it and the doc who was consulting with me actually stopped me mid sentence and said "we are not having this conversation. We will agree to disagree." I suppose I wouldn't mind as much if he just made some sort of sense; if his reasonings were consistent, but they were not. He contradicted his position and opinion several times, something that does not easily escape a person as skeptical as myself! He wouldn't allow me to call him on his contradictions either; it just annoyed him all the more.

I am not sure what God is trying to teach me other than to be still and know that He is God. Typically I am the type of person who plans way ahead. I am organized and I like to know exactly what is going on so having to just sit and wait to see if something catastrophic will happen is extremely unnerving to say the least.

Another aspect that is nerve wracking to me is the fact that I have lightening fast labors that are rarely painful until the very end. I mentioned the birth story of my first child yesterday. I believe my entire active labor was 5 or 6 hours, which is a pretty small amount of time for a first labor.

THEN...

We found out we were pregnant with our second child in January 2001. My oldest daughter had turned 3 that month. The pregnancy itself went smoothly. I was sick for about five months, but right away knew to ask for antinausea pills to avoid the complications we had with our first child. I had switched OB's and was now seeing a specialist in Center City Philadelphia. Other than the drive into the city with each appointment, all went well. I assumed that because I had preterm labor with my first that my second may come a little early. Her due date was September 29, 2001, the feast day of St. Michael the Archangel. I remember the fateful day of September 11, 2001. I was in my living room waiting for our new couch to be delivered when everything started unfolding in New York City. I was petrified! I kept thinking, "what if today is the day I go into labor? My child will be born on such an awful day in our country's history." Fortunately, our unborn daughter hung in there and decided to born on her date - a feat that would not happen again in any of my pregnancies!

I was cooking a lasagne in the kitchen. Everything was done. While cooking I had felt a lot of braxton hicks contractions (painless tightening of the uterus). When they started to become a little painful I put the calls into my husband, OB and sister. How fortunate we were that my sister and her husband were scheduled to have dinner in the city that day! My husband came home and picked me and my daughter up and off we went. As we drove the contractions became very much more painful, but I still thought I had a lot of time. I remember sitting in city traffic only blocks from the hospital and pounding on the car window to get out because the contractions were coming on fast and strong at that point. It hadn't even been two hours yet.

We got to the hospital and were rushed up to labor and delivery. I was almost fully dilated. I remember the nurse saying, "I am not sure how fast anesthesia can get here. You may have to go without pain relief." She might as well have said I was sentenced to die by lethal injection! I was to hear those words with my next child as well, but we'll leave that for tomorrow's entry. Fortunately, the anesthesiologist was readily available. While waiting on him my water broke and I thought I would die from the pain. Remember what a baby I am with physical pain. I got the epidural and immediately starting pushing and within minutes we knew something was not going right. My primary OB was not on that night. This was a different OB from the same practice and sweet as could be, but the look on his face towards the L&D nurse told my husband and I something was wrong. I was told to stop pushing and the OB got the vacume out. I asked what was wrong and he said my daughter's heart rate had dropped very low. Isabella Rose was born after two and a half hours of labor from start to finish! She had the cord wrapped around her neck two times. It took a minute or two to hear those wonderful cries every parent waits for, but she eventually did cry. She was having a little difficulty regulating her breathing so it was a tense first few moments.

My sister and her husband had rushed to the hospital in time to pull my oldest daughter out of the room. Jordana adored Isabella from the moment she saw her.

I later found out that the OB who had delivered Bella was not a pro-life OB like his partner. This OB who delivered this beautiful life to us would also stand in that same room and perform an abortion on a woman if she so chose. I felt sick when I learned this. I didn't even know that an OB, whose primary job is deliver life would on the same day destroy a tiny baby's life without giving it a second thought. A friend of mine had just casually asked me if I knew if my OB was pro-life. What a peculiar question I thought.

We went home after two days in the hospital. Bella had relatively few problems in her first year. She started sleeping through the night at about two and a half/three months. She did not tolerate milk, but did take soy and did well. We only had one real scare with her. When I took her for her 4 week pediatric visit, the pediatrician paused as he examined Bella. He palpated her belly a while and said she had a double hernia that would need to be repaired through surgery. He would schedule it for the following week. My brain could not absorb what he had just said. All I could think about is that my little 5 week old baby was going to be put under anesthesia and have to have abdominal surgery. You could probably ask my husband for his account of the day of surgery, but I guarantee he will have blocked it out of his brain. He is incredibly strong and calm in moments of panic and pressure and is a considerable source of strength to me, but when it's all said and done, I think he just erases the pain from his mind to better cope. I do remember going into the hospital's pseudo-chapel and praying the rosary during the surgery. One of the hardest moments of that time was not being able to feed my daughter. She had to be fasting for something like 6-8 hours before surgery. What could be harder for a mother than to deliberately NOT feed your own child and listen to her cries of hunger, yet I know there are millions of mothers around the world who hear that cry everyday because of poverty and circumstance. God have mercy on those mothers and bring them comfort!

Bella came through the surgery just fine and did very well. The only other issue that arose with Isabella that first year was that she had to be casted on her legs. She was bow-legged and this needed to be corrected by placing casts on both of her legs. This happened at about 7 weeks old. She didn't seem to mind and adjusted quite well. The rest of her first year went so smoothly, thanks be to God.