Fourth trip to L & D

Yep we're back here again! Possible rupture of membranes. I thought maybe I was leaking a bit this morning but it was so minor...and then stopped altogether. I mentioned it to nurse Marybeth at our NST this morning thinking I would be told to just wait and see if it happened again/more. Nope. Instead I was sent over here to have some kind of swab test done. Fluid levels look fine but I guess there is risk of infection. More tests = perfectly fine with me. I don't know if this would mean just antibiotics or an imminent c-section. My regular OB is out of town until tomorrow so that part is a little worrisome. I have had two clueless nurses so far though... "Is this your first pregnancy?" and "Why are they having you do so many NSTs?" Read my chart please.


Here is baby dragon giving the peace sign!


UPDATE:  The swab test came back negative and I came home after about two hours :) That's a relief. 

Right Where I Am: One Year, Two Months, and 16 Days

Last year when Angie at Still Life with Circles started the Right Where I Am project, I was a lurker around babyloss blogs.  Our only daughter Elizabeth had died two months earlier, just short of her 3 month birthday, because of severe brain damage from a cord accident in utero.  I was pregnant with a spark of hope we called baby Bean, who it turns out didn't quite survive the first trimester of pregnancy.  I read hungrily the stories of people at all stages in their grief.

This time, for Right Where I Am 2012, I have been blogging for 8 months.  I rely every single day on a community of women like me, who lost babies a year or two ago and are in various stages of pregnancy and post-pregnancy.  I am almost 35 weeks pregnant with a girl we call baby Dragon.

The path I continue to travel with Elizabeth's memory and the path I am traveling with baby Dragon feel separate, but they inform each other intensely.   I don't confuse my two girls - they have such different spirits and personalities.  One's story has been told, and I am still trying to come to terms with it.  One's story is just beginning, I hope. I hope I hope I hope.

Nothing feels guaranteed or even likely.  Is the next chapter of our lives another tragedy? or perhaps a triumph?  I live most days in a state of semi-terror that baby Dragon will not make it out of me alive and healthy, that she will be terminally tangled in her cord like Elizabeth was or succumb to another mortal danger of pregnancy or birth.  Today is no different.  The doppler is never far from my reach.

My grief over the loss of Elizabeth has evolved over the past year and a half.  It has softened and become a more integrated part of who I am.  I can often remember the good times without tears; I can love her in this unconventional way that babylost mothers do.  Grief is never static or predictable, though.  Sometimes it still attacks with a vengeance and I wail and scream and feel burning anger and pain.  I suppose that will never stop completely. 

There is an overwhelming numbness to my interactions with the world right now.  That and impatience with people who try to sugar-coat our situation.

Trying to kindle dreams of the future just brings up more anxiety, so we focus on the now.  If baby Dragon comes out safely - if she cries and opens her eyes and wants to nurse, I think my heart will break wide open with joy, but until then I feel numb, and anxious.  And I miss Elizabeth, always.

When grief attacks

Random, stupid stuff went wrong all morning.   By lunchtime I was in tears.  And I thought, what is wrong with me?  Why can't I handle life right now? 

Well, I'll tell you why.  Today is Elizabeth's 17 month birthday.  Today is about a year from the last time we heard Bean's heartbeat.  Today is one month until our scheduled c-section with baby dragon.  Today feels like the one millionth day of grieving my firstborn daughter's death and everything else.

So I took out Elizabeth's photo album and looked through the entire thing.  Sometimes I look though it with joy and nostalgia, just to feel close to her again.  And sometimes, like today, I do it with pain ripping through my heart and a pile of used kleenex building beside me, missing her, missing her so much. 

When grief attacks, sometimes it's best just to let it drown you for a little while.  Fighting it off just makes everything worse in the end. 

Black Humor

Our local hospice support group facilitator left this winter.  We have been underwhelmed with the way hospice handled the transition.  The new facilitator - we'll call her S -  waited several months (!) before starting up group again, and then invited only a selection of the former group members via snail mail and phone (the former facilitator used email).  I heard about group re-starting second-hand, the day before the first meeting.  Supposedly there was no intention of leaving people out, but the new facilitator didn't use the email contact list that several of us offered.  Very strange. 

Then she finally (more than a month after group re-started) sent out this email today, which I forwarded to my husband:

Hello friends,

My name is [S] and I am now facilitating the Living With Loss group following [old facilitator]’s recent transition. I would like to welcome you back to participating in the group if you are still in need of supportive services. We are meeting the first and third Thursdays of the month from 6:00pm – 7:30pm at [local hospice]. Our next meeting is tomorrow night, May 17^th. If you prefer not to receive email reminders, or your situation has changed, please let me know so I can remove you from the group email list. 

Thanks,

[S]

My husband replied (just to me) with the following:

umm.. That reads like such a shitty email to me...
especially these two parts.
if you are still in need of supportive services???
and
your situation has changed (OMG she's back from the dead!!! yes we love our little undead and our situation has changed)....

Maybe you have to be a bereaved parent to appreciate that humor, but I laughed so hard I almost cried.

Happy some-kind-of Sunday

So, Mothers Day wasn't too bad.  As in, I didn't ever leave our front gate and pretty much ignored the holiday as planned.  My husband checked with me several times during the week about his role.  He seemed to think it was a trap..."So, you want me to NOT get you a present or flowers or a card?  Are you saying this but hoping I'll get you something anyway?  Are you sure?"

Understandable, since two years ago, newly pregnant with Elizabeth, I insisted that it was my first real Mothers Day and informed him that I expected flowers and a card and general recognition from the entire world.

He finally realized I was serious about this year.  Flowers would have just made me cry in a bad way.  But here's what he did do:  made a lovely weekend breakfast, worked on home improvement projects with me most of the day, did the grocery shopping and dog walking so I could stay away from the general public, and cooked a fancy dinner for us while I was taking my afternoon rest.  I think he might have been the reason I didn't get a series of awkward phone calls all day, either. 

I didn't even know he was cooking the dinner - I wandered out into the kitchen and dining room to see what he was up to and what I should do to help, and there was the table all set and full of good food :)  We sat down and he toasted "Happy some-kind-of-Sunday" and smiled at me.  It was actually a happy some-kind-of-Sunday, and I felt very thankful for my good marriage, lovely home, and loyal little dog.  We spent the evening cuddled on the couch watching a movie.  When I said my goodnights to Roo, I thanked her for making me a mother.  My sweet, sweet little daughter.  I miss her so much.

Sweetpea and her daddy.

In other news, I'm still pregnant, still working to control the anxiety, still holding my breath in general.  Tried to get a little bit of baby stuff out of the garage yesterday, just to have a going-home outfit in our hospital bag and a few clean blankets and things around.  That didn't go very well.  Maybe I'll try again in a few days.

Baby dragon is using my ribs for a jungle gym today.  33 weeks tomorrow! 

Link for donations to Liam and Evelynn's family

We're all aware by now that lightning can strike twice, and that it recently did for a babylost family in our blogger community.  Here is a way to help Liam and Evelynn's parents start covering the costs of medical care and surrogacy:

http://www.giveforward.com/fortheloveofbabysliamandevelynnrasmussen

Please help them if you can - even a little bit.

Oh, goody. Another pseudo-Mothers Day.

With my two girls.

I'm counting down until Mothers Day is over this year.  Good riddance, sappy commercials and emails telling me to buy flowers.

Don't worry, I made and sent a lovely present for my own mother and also took care of the cards to my husband's mother and grandmother from us.  That's not the issue.

The issue is that this is my third Mothers Day in a row pregnant (two years ago, we were publicly pregnant with Elizabeth and last year we were secretly pregnant Bean) and my second as a bereaved mother.  In other words, yet another pseudo-Mothers Day where the lovely people in my life do what they can to recognize me, but Hallmark doesn't exactly make cards for this crap.

What would such a card say?

Happy Bittersweet Mothers Day!  

Elizabeth would have been able to say "Mommy" 

and color you a picture this year 

if she were alive and healthy. 

At least there's a baby in your tummy again.

How's she doing, by the way?

Here are some extra batteries for your doppler.

That seemed more appropriate than flowers.

31w5d

Completely routine NST this morning - in and out in less than half an hour.  Practice breathing, accelerations, everything.  Whew!

Also baby dragon has moved head down, which is waaaaay more comfy for me (and for her?) than the various breech and transverse positions she had been trying out.  I'm feeling calmer than I have in weeks.  However, writing that feels like tempting fate, so I think I'll just stop now.

Our babies' names

"Does your baby have a name yet?" each new nurse asks me.

"We call her baby dragon," I reply.

Cue strange look.  Perhaps I should explain a little more about all of our babies' names.  And since this is another night of third-trimester insomnia, I think I'll tell the long version of this story.   Mostly for my own records. 

In April 2010, we found out we were pregnant for the first time.  Right on time.  We had been married for not quite a year and trying to get pregnant for a few months.  We played the naming game on lazy weekend mornings.  Elizabeth was an easy choice for a girl - I love all classic Jane Austen names, and my husband loves every nickname that might come up:  Liz, Beth, Eliza, Liza, Lizzy, Z.  (Notice that her actual nicknames turned out to be Roo and Bunny, but that's another story.)  A boy name?  Much harder!  My husband vetoes nearly every one.  "I knew this kid in Little League with that name..." 

But no matter what we chose, we knew we were keeping it to ourselves for the duration of the pregnancy.  Our secret, to use sparingly in private, to whisper at my belly with hope and love, a secret only we knew.  It's just how we like to do things.

But what to call the baby in the meantime, out loud, to other people, while we were pregnant?  At our first ultrasound, baby looked straight out of a sci-fi movie, so for weeks we called her either space-baby or alien-baby.  We got a few strange reactions, but mostly amusement.  Then at 20 weeks we found out she was a she and instantly her name turned into baby girl.  Everyone called her that.  Not "the baby girl" or "a baby girl" but just baby girl.  It was her pregnancy name.  I remember being at a party in the fall, when I was huge and pregnant (and therefore about to head home by 9:30) and one of my friends yelled across the room, "I can't WAIT to meet BABY GIRL at Christmas time!!"  Elizabeth was so loved and anticipated.

Fast forward to the following spring.

In April 2011, a month and a half after Elizabeth died, we found out we were pregnant for the second time.  We were bereaved, broken.  It seemed out of the blue since I hadn't even had a period after I stopped pumping milk.  We had assumed my body wouldn't be up for it for a while, but we hadn't had the heart to actually prevent it.  We hadn't exactly followed doctors orders.  The news started to bring me back to life in a new way, though.  A small spark of hope ignited in my heart.  We played the naming game a little, tentatively, with no real decisions.  Again, the first ultrasound gave us a pregnancy name.  He was our little baby bean.  He would be our rainbow baby.

Near the end of the first trimester, Bean's heart stopped beating and he joined his big sister Elizabeth.

Fast forward to the fall.

At the very end of October 2011, ten months after Elizabeth was born, we found out we were pregnant for the third time.  This time we had obeyed doctors orders and waited three cycles after losing Bean before trying again.  My physical and mental health needed at least that much.  We were still bereaved, still broken, but healing.  Again, a girl's name came quickly to us, almost immediately.  And, no, I can't tell you what it is yet!   But I promise you will love it :)  No boy's name, once again...maybe that was a sign?

But again, we needed a pregnancy name.  They had come so easily the first two times, but this time around we were stumped.  Nothing would stick.  At various times, she has been baby belle, baby bubbles, baby sister, little sister, baby hope but nothing felt natural.  Half the time, we would just gesture at my tummy and say something like, "this one."

At 18 weeks we found out she is a she.  A couple of times after that, we accidentally called her baby girl, but that usually made one of us cry.  That was Elizabeth's pregnancy name.  This little one really needed her own pregnancy name.  We came closer to having one when I realized that (best-case scenario here!) I will hopefully spend almost 21 months of our first three years of marriage pregnant.  That's enough to make a baby elephant.  So the name baby elephant stuck around for about a week.  It just seemed wrong, though. 

Then around 26 weeks, I remembered a comment my cousin made, about it being the year of the dragon, a good year to have a baby (my cousin's mom - my aunt - is Taiwanese).  And, inexplicably, the name baby dragon stuck instantly.  It's her pregnancy name.  Maybe - hopefully - someday we will know why it's such a good fit.  I feel like she chose it herself.

And that is the name story so far...

P.S.  (added later) It's really fun hearing other people's pregnancy and baby name stories in the comments - thanks :)

Home again

Man, those steroid shots felt like a punch in the ass.  Literally.  I'm home again and resting.  Baby dragon passed several NSTs in the hospital with flying colors, so that's a huge relief.  I'll go back to the perinatologist on Monday for another.

Thank you all for your comments and support - it makes me feel so much less alone and scared.

I get the idea that our doctors have taken it as a bit of a personal challenge to deliver baby dragon alive and healthy and keep me from going crazy in the process.  Also, they have figured out that anything smacking of false reassurance or head-patting will not fly with me.  I appreciate their approach right now.  And while I don't look forward to the medical bills, I refuse to let that affect my decisions.  Luckily, my husband is 100% on the same page.  Of course, we could use a few more days at home and a few less days camped out in L&D.  And a few more weeks of healthy growing before delivery day.  Sound good, baby dragon?
                                           
                                                              ***

I posted once about my friend's daughter Elly.   I was really touched to get this card in the mail last week from her (she's 5 now), and wanted to share:

The drawings are:  baby Elizabeth, Elly, hearts, and flowers.  The message is just so honest.  Unbelievably sweet.

Third trip to L & D

Really wish I were kidding about this. I hadn't intended to make this into a regular series. Baby dragon did not pass her nonstress test this morning. The perinatologist decided that enough weird things have happened now that we should be on the monitors for a few hours today and start steroid shots. I might stay overnight again or nor depending. Again I was basically told that we are taking the most conservative approach possible because of what happened with Elizabeth, which I appreciate. Nobody seems overly concerned so I'm feeling pretty calm.

No more hospital pictures of me but here's our dog asleep on the couch yesterday with his new favorite toy - a pig from angry birds - thanks to my mother in law :). I wish I could have the dog with me here in the hospital!

Third trimester mentality

I can admit here what I can't say in real life right now - I'm not really coping very well. 

I spend much of each day, and often parts of the night too, paralyzed by fear.  It's all just one long kick count - doppler check - nonstress test - check for more spotting - monitor the BH contractions cycle.  This hyper-vigilance is exhausting.  I can't focus on other things very well.

So much feels out of my control, but I cling to the idea that if something starts going wrong and I catch it quickly enough, maybe the worst can be averted. 

31 weeks.  Baby dragon is viable now.  Soon her lungs will even be developed.  I know to the rest of the world, she is in the safest place, but to me she is in the war zone where my precious Elizabeth was fatally injured.  All it takes is the cord in the wrong place at the wrong time.

My husband has a slightly different set of fears than I do.  He wants to wrap me in bubble wrap.  I sat up on the kitchen counter this morning and he kind of freaked out.  What if you fall?!  he said.  We are so on edge.

I cry many times every day, from grief and fear and sympathy and exhaustion.  

She will be born soon (although it doesn't really feel that soon to me) and maybe things will be good and maybe not, and I just feel like I am waiting on this edge of a cliff and I don't know how the world will tilt or which way we might fall.

But oh my are we lucky to be here - pregnant, third trimester, baby dragon kicking away.  I try to focus on that, I really do.  On the hope and the planning.  But that just reminds me of the hope and planning of this time with Elizabeth, and I go into a tailspin of missing her.