I found out I was pregnant on October 30th, 2011.
I’d had suspicions for a few days, for various reasons (I’d been feeling
nauseous for a few weeks, my period was late, my breasts were achy, etc), but I
finally decided to take the plunge and take an at-home test. I woke up early,
early in the morning so I was sure to use the test with my first trip to the
ladies room of the day (as recommended!) and waited the 3 minutes to see the
results.
I remember so well the feeling of knowing something nobody
else knew: the test was positive and I was pregnant. I walked around our little
apartment in Providence and hugged the news close to myself. It was
unseasonably cold that morning and it had snowed a little the night before,
something that felt like a present just for me. I probably waited a half an
hour before waking my husband up. “Hon?” I said softly, waiting for him to open
his eyes. “It might be nothing, but I took a test and…I think I’m pregnant.”
Kurt opened his eyes slowly, and took his time stretching
before responding. “Yeah,” he said. “It might be nothing.”
“…I would have stabbed
him,” my coworker Audrey said with horror when I told her this story a few
months later. “If that’s what my husband had done? I would have stabbed him.”
It wasn’t the all time best story ever, but to be fair, I
woke him up from a deep sleep and for some reason expected fireworks. Pretty
uncool of yours truly.
A few days later we were having lunch at a small café
between both of our offices downtown when I lost it. “I don’t want to be
pregnant,” I blurted out. “I don’t want to not be able to drink coffee for nine
months. I don’t want to not be able to drink
for nine months. I don’t want to be sick all day, I don’t want to get fat, I
don’t want to have swollen feet and whatever else happens.”
Kurt was understanding. “I know,” he kept repeating,
switching between rubbing my back gently and holding my hand. He was the one to
suggest going to the walk-in clinic, and he picked me up from work a little
early to take me. When I was called in, the nurse asked me the same series of
questions as always: what meds I was on, how my blood sugars were, and finally,
if there was a chance I could be pregnant. “Yes,” I grumbled. She had me give a
urine sample and then sent me back to the exam room to wait for the results. I
sat on the exam table and leaned back against the wall. The song Landslide by Fleetwood Mac played feebly
through the speakers outside the room and I listened as I thought about what
this all might mean. I’ve never really told anyone about the moments before the
nurse came back, but listening to that song, it felt like the universe was
promising me that everything was going to be ok. I decided to believe that
whatever happened, I was going to deal with it. When the test was ready, the
nurse peeked around the curtain of the room I was in. “It’s positive!” she sang.
‘Huh,” I said, nodding. “…Crazy,” I added after a beat.
“I…hope this is good news?” She asked awkwardly.
“Oh,” I said, still at a loss. “…Sure.”
Unimpressed with my unenthusiastic response, she left the
room.
I didn’t tell Kurt the results until a few days later. He’s
always been really good at not asking me about something I clearly don’t want
to talk about. And I didn’t tell him in person. Instead, I had a collection of
Dr. Seuss books sent to his office with a note attached, “Dear Sunshine,” it
read. “Guess what?...”
* * *
I’m not going to lie to you; the next few months were rough.
I had asked the doctor when I saw him at the clinic when one is supposed to
tell people about the pregnancy—I’d had two friends excitedly announce their
pregnancies in recent months, and each of them had miscarriages and had to tell
everyone about that. I didn’t want to get my whole world excited over nothing.
“A lot of people wait twelve weeks,” he advised. This conveniently put the
announcement at Christmas time, so Kurt and I resolved to wait until then to
tell our families. I confided only in my boss (after seriously freaking him out
when I left work early one day with a huge list of ailments making it
impossible for me to sit still and do work—I’m pretty sure he thought I was
dying).
I spent the next several weeks sick to my stomach and
exhausted. My doctor, the brilliant Emily Harrison, will not normally prescribe
medication unless she is certain there is something really wrong, threw caution
to the wind and gave me prescriptions for Tylenol 3 and Zofran. “Your body is going
through enough,” she explained. “If we can make anything easier for you with
medicine, we’re going to do it.” I flooded her with concerns about the health
of my baby, worries about being a pregnant diabetic, having a diabetic child,
about not being ready for a baby in the slightest. She did what she could to
talk me off the proverbial ledge, and gave me her email address. “Only pregnant
diabetics get this,” she warned me. “Use it wisely.”
I began going to see her once a week. I was told to test my
bloodsugar at least six times a day: fasting, 2 hours post-breakfast, before
lunch, 2 hours post-lunch, before dinner, 2 hours post-dinner, and bedtime. I
also had to keep my sugars between 90 and 120. I probably tested 10 times a day
most days. Every Wednesday, we would
review my sugars, change my insulin doses accordingly, listen to the baby’s
heartbeat (once there was one to hear), and talk about any questions or
concerns I had. Dr. Harrison was impressively patient and comforting, down to
making sure that, while she was out having knee surgery, I continued to be seen
weekly by a different doctor, Aaron Davis, who was also impossibly kind and
caring.
Around this time, we had an ultrasound done in which the
baby flailed about impressively. “He looks like he’s doing karate chops,” Dr.
Harrison observed. From that point forward, the baby was dubbed, “Ninja.”
When Christmas 2011 rolled around, we sent a framed
ultrasound picture to Kurt’s parents, and a book inscribed “To Grandma, from
Kurt, Sarah and Baby.” For my mother, and stepmother Lisé, we inscribed similar messages
inside our favorite books from childhood (Kurt’s, Babar, and mine, Goodnight
Moon). “Oh shit!” Lisé shouted when she saw it. “Oh shit! …Oh shit! Sorry!” She clapped a hand over her mouth and hugged us both.
My mom just cried. “Happy tears,” she assured us.
Once people knew, it was easier, but the second trimester was not the
energetic time I had been promised. I was still exhausted, achy, and
increasingly moody. Dr. Harrison was on the case immediately, prescribing
something to help me get to sleep at night and advising that I go home during
my lunch break at work to take a nap every day. My boss and I reduced my time
to 80% and he helped me get a parking pass for my building so I could easily
leave and come back in a two-hour window during the day. I became very popular
among my office friends as I could now rescue them from long walks in the cold
and snow to the satellite lots where their own cars were parked.
On another snowy day, January 19th, Kurt and I went to have
an ultrasound. “I might be able to tell what you’re having,” the tech told us
excitedly. “Maybe,” she was quick to
clarify as she smoothed the gel on my stomach and started running the sensor
over it, staring intently at the screen. “It’s still pretty early, I can’t
always—it’s a boy,” she interrupted her own disclaimer. “It’s a boy!”
“Are you sure?” We asked.
“Definitely.”
We each returned to work with the news. Kurt bought a blue shirt to
wear proudly back into his office. I went straight to the floor of my building
that all of my friends worked on and told them the news. I posted an ultrasound
picture on Facebook with the caption, “It’s official: we’re having a boy!” It
was the only thing I had said on social media until that point about my
pregnancy and I got many excited and alarmed responses, including a voicemail
from my friend Stacey in which she hissed, “You just posted something very
cryptic on Facebook and I need you to call me back and either confirm or deny
my suspicions that YOU ARE PREGNANT?” After we spoke, she followed that call up
with a lovely bouquet of flowers delivered to my desk at work.
* * *
As I began showing more, people began stopping by my desk to ask
questions or offer advice. I was still completely exhausted and to be frank,
felt like crap pretty much all day long, and my lack of enthusiasm to the most
frequently asked question (“Are you so excited?!”) left many fairly
underwhelmed. To be honest, I was terrified. I knew nothing about babies, and
one uncanny trend among women, upon spotting a pregnant lady, is to immediately
unload every horror story about pregnancy ever heard or experienced. I was
asked extremely personal questions in a very public place. I was warned about
sleepless nights, painful contractions, endless labor, and a whole host of
other worrisome information. At least it was all coming from a place of love.
Nothing brings an office of basic strangers together like a baby! Both of my
bosses, on the other hand, were amazing. Chris gave me advice about daycare and
constantly assured me that things would start looking up. “They should make one
of those it gets better videos for
pregnant women,” he joked. Don made plans to fit a pack and play in his office
so he could watch the baby while I worked, just so long as I promised to take
him away once he started being able to talk back. And a handful of coworkers
really did give me great advice. Upon finding out I was not particularly
enjoying pregnancy, Cathy told me that labor would be absolutely nothing for
me. “By that point, you will have gone through 40 weeks of awfulness. Even if
it lasts more than 24 hours, after the hell you’ve gone through, it’ll be a
breeze.” Lisa assured me that it was ok if I didn’t “fall in love” with my baby
“at first sight.” “Most people don’t fall in love with anybody at first sight,”
she explained, “and for some reason they expect women to feel it right away
when the doctor hands them this baby they don’t know. I didn’t feel it when my
son was born, and I felt like a failure, but now he’s the thing I’m most proud
of in my life. It just takes time.” A professor I barely knew came into the
office one day and asked me, “Are you nervous?”
“Yes,” I replied, then laughed. “Thank you fort asking that. People
keep asking if I’m excited, and then being unimpressed with my lackluster
response.”
“Well of course you’re not excited,” he exclaimed. “You’re about to be
exhausted and broke for 18 years! That’s scary stuff!”
In March, I told my coworker and friend Jessica that I was sad that I
probably was not going to have a baby shower because all of my girlfriends were
either extremely busy, or currently living in other states. The next day, she
showed up at my house with a balloon and a card, inviting me to a shower she
would throw for me with the help of my mother and husband.
* * *
The plan all along had been for me to go through labor. When I came to
my doctor with a questionnaire I’d filled out about making up a birth plan, she
patiently went over it with me, and then explained, “The reason women make
birth plans is because doctors used to treat pregnancy like it was a disease.
They wouldn’t ask women what they wanted, and so a plan can be a very good thing
for a woman who wants to know what to expect. Pregnancy is not a disease,” she
went on, “but diabetes is. So, there are some things you won’t really have a
choice on.” She went on to explain that I would be induced one week early, because
“diabetics have big babies.” I would be allowed to push for 4 hours, and then
she would “go in and get him.” We did go over my birthing plan, which I would
explain here, but there’s not much to explain, “Nothing gross,” was a big theme
on the questionnaire. It was a big theme in my entire pregnancy, in fact, and
Dr. Harrison understood that. “Why is my leg falling asleep all the time?” I
would ask. “Why does my side hurt?” “Why are my feet so swollen?” She would
look at me carefully and ask, “Do you really want to know?” and, when I said,
“No,” she would shrug and say, “it’s the baby.”
* * *
As my due date grew closer, I started having trouble with my vision. I
won’t really go into much detail about that here. I spent most of the last
month of my pregnancy lying in my bed, wearing sweatpants and listening to
episodes of The Office and How I Met Your Mother on Netflix (listening because
I couldn’t see well enough to watch them). My brother, Tan, and his girlfriend,
Michelle, came to visit a few days before my due date, and with my mom and Lisé they cooked
and cleaned and helped set up Ninja’s nursery while I sat around miserably. The
day before my due date, my mother set up a coffee date with my boss, Don, at a
local bakery. “So, when does the baby come? Next week?” he asked.
“No, tomorrow actually,” I replied, and he jumped.
“What!” HE exclaimed. “What are you doing here?! Shouldn’t we be
boiling some water or ripping up some towels or something?” I explained that
the plans had changed due to my recent eye surgeries; Baby Ninja would now be
born via caesarian section.
That night, I sat on my bed with my husband and my cat, crying
quietly. “What’s wrong?” Kurt asked. I blubbered something about how it was
never going to be the same, never just the two of us again (the three of us if
you counted our cat, Hermione). “Yeah, but guess what?” He asked.
“What?” I asked pathetically.
“This time tomorrow, you won’t be pregnant anymore,” he offered. I
burst into fresh, though this time happy, tears.
We checked into Memorial Hospital at 8:30 on the morning of Thursday,
June 21st. My mother and Lisé joined us while a staff of cheery
nurses helped me into a room, into a hospital gown, and into a bed. Doctors
Harrison and Davis came and checked on me, and assured us all that everything
would go smoothly. I was given an IV and wheeled down to the operating room at
10:30. As the stretcher rolled through the doors, a cell phone alarm sounded.
Dr. Harrison reached into her pocket and turned it off. “It’s time for Ninja to
be born!” she announced.
I won’t go into too much detail about the procedure of the C-section.
Here is what I will say: I was terrified. The spinal tap for the anesthesia did
not feel good. As I cried into Dr. Harrison’s shoulder and repeated, “I never
want to do this again, I never want to do this again,” over and over, she put
her arms around me and said, “Just one more minute and you never have to.” Just
before the procedure started, Dr. Davis came around the curtain and took my
hand. “I know you’re scared,” he said. “But you don’t have to be. You know both
of your doctors, that almost never happens. You know how much we care about
you. We’re going to take care of you like you’re family.” I will forever be
grateful for those two. They took care of me in every way they could.
* * *
Liam Palmer was born at 11:01 am that day. He weighed 6 pounds and 11
½ ounces. I had never seen anything so tiny. “He’s perfect,” Dr. Harrison told
me. They brought him up to the nursery so the others could see him. The nurse
who wheeled me up to my room laughed as she told me about everyone looking
through the window at him. “Their pupils are all shaped like hearts,” she
joked.
Recovery from the section wasn’t easy, but it wasn’t any different
from anyone else’s. My mom, Lisé, Tan and Michelle came to the hospital every
day. Carol, Kevin and John visited. I heard from all of Kurt’s family and most
of mine. Kurt stayed with me in my hospital room all four nights and on the
fifth afternoon, we strapped our tiny baby into his car seat and drove him
home. That was the first night we slept in shifts (in the beginning, Kurt took
the first one until 3 am, and I took from then on—we switched when he went back
to work a week later). I remember sitting with Liam in the rocking chair in his
newly decorated nursery. Although it was late June, it was cold with the air
conditioning blasting throughout the apartment, and so we huddled under a soft
blanket and I sang every song I could think of quietly into his little ear. I’m sure at the
time I was tired and cranky and stressed, but in retrospect it is the sweetest
memory.
There’s nothing like a baby.
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