An unanticipated effect of these last few days/weeks: I'm starting to understand and forgive myself for not knowing when Elizabeth's cord accident happened. I have berated myself for almost a year and a half now, thinking I should have just KNOWN, felt the second her oxygen was cut off, sensed those moments when her brain was injured beyond recovery. But being here again reminds me that it is a constant guessing game - shifting and feeling and trying to figure out what is going on inside but never really knowing. There is nothing exact about this.
I do still have regrets about how we approached Elizabeth's pregnancy. I regret that my kick counts were so casual, not at the same time every day or recorded so I could refer back to them. I regret that I was so focused on
my upcoming birth experience, thinking it really mattered how she got out. I regret our choice to go with a midwifery model of care, which involved only a few ultrasounds and no NSTs until postdates (which we did not reach). We had lots of prenatal care - regular appointments, a perfect 20-week scan, and I was cleared for GD and GBS at the appropriate times. We thought we were being responsible without going overboard, but I wonder if perhaps a more paranoid OB practice would have done extra monitoring those last few weeks,
seen something early enough to prevent the accident. Perhaps. Perhaps not. I'm learning to accept the not knowing.
These regrets have also been tempered by this pregnancy, by my hyper-awareness of how things can still go wrong even while being watched so closely.
Of course, there are many things I don't regret about Elizabeth's pregnancy, like the way we celebrated her. We had a "reveal" party to let family and friends know that she was a girl. We read books and sang songs to her in utero, did a belly cast on Thanksgiving, went to classes where we thought about how we would parent and my husband really started to bond with Elizabeth, even though she was in me... I think if something happens to Dragon I may regret not doing more of those things with her. But if she's fine, I really don't think those regrets will be more than a passing thought. This pregnancy has been about survival, not celebration. Monitoring, not trusting that things naturally work out. Hoping, not expecting.
It is what it is.
We have done the best we can by both of our girls.
It's a relief to feel some of the guilt lift.
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| Pregnant with Elizabeth, trying out our new stroller. |
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| Pregnant with Dragon. |
Ginny-dragon has had a few challenges this week though (jaundice, not gaining enough weight, tiny bit of congestion) so we've been to the pediatrician twice and are on a stepped-up nursing schedule that as of yesterday includes some pumping and a few bottles of breastmilk too. We also have "tanning sessions" to work on the jaundice. 
