There was nothing typical or normal about my pregnancy with Isaac. I suspect that things may have turned out better if I had not had prenatal care in
When Daniel and I became engaged, we had prayed to know when the right time would be for us to start our family. The answer we received was that we should start trying as soon as we were married.
We were married July 19th, 2002. Daniel and I both worked at that time, he at a garden center and me at Payless, and a short time later were both also back in school. Three months after the wedding we found out I was pregnant. I had begun to feel horribly sick, having nausea that lasted all day. At first I thought it was a virus, although in the back of my mind I wondered. It wasn’t long before I took a pregnancy test, and even before I could set it on the counter and leave the bathroom I saw it show the positive sign. Daniel and I hugged. I cried… I was so happy and excited. Dan was silent with shock written all over his face. We were going to be parents!
Somehow I managed to make it through my first term of school with a 4.0 GPA. I was terribly sick though. The nausea lasted all day long, and there was no relief. I was never told about pregnancy-safe nausea medicines. I had to brush my teeth before eating, to prevent losing whatever food I could keep down. I survived on crackers.
It was during this first trimester of pregnancy that two things happened.
The first was that Daniel had landed a job at
The other thing that happened was a dream I had. I had a dream that our child (we had a feeling he would be a boy) would be born on June 27th, 2003. I actually dreamed that date. I went to work and told my coworkers about it, and one asked, “Why that day?” I said I didn’t know.
About this time we also moved from our apartment in south
But it was shortly after I started seeing Kate that problems began to arise. I was rapidly dropping weight, and at one visit Kate told her assistant she wanted the scales checked for accuracy. They were accurate. I also began having problems with protein in my urine, and my iron was low. Kate began having me add more protein to my diet, and I started taking an iron pill. I had to stop the iron pill, even the one that was supposed to be mild for sensitive people, because it made me so ill. I was also spotting frequently, but they couldn't find a cause for it.
I began having severe pain and burning down the middle of my belly while at work. I mentioned it to my boss, and then to Kate. On examination she found that I had torn my abdominal wall from all the bending, lifting and reaching I was doing at work. I had to start wearing a belly brace because of the injury (but boy did it feel good!), and I had to quit my job. I cried when I put in my notice. At times I truly hated parts of my job and all the stupid things they wanted us to do. Our district manager was a woman who reminded me of a gay man trapped in a woman’s body. Fake. She had thought it would be a brilliant idea if we could ever sell beer along with our shoe merchandise. So yes, I hated my job at times, but I really loved the people I worked with. My boss told me I could take maternity leave, but I told her that since I wanted to become a stay-at-home mom, I knew it was time to quit.
I stayed in school, but that also became difficult. It was my second trimester and just walking across campus to my classes caused me to have horrible contractions that made me stop and catch my breath. They were so painful. I then had to take slow baby steps to finish getting to class, and prayed that I wouldn’t be late.
I had other pain as well. One night, in the middle of the night, I woke up screaming and sat bolt upright in bed. I had a horrendous pain in the calf of my leg. I developed a bright red welt there, but figured it was a Charlie-horse like I had heard about. By the time I saw Kate, I told her about it but the welt was nearly gone. She frowned and left the room to consult with another doctor in the office. After some time she finally returned and told me they think it may have been a broken blood vessel or something like that, and if it ever happened again that I should call them immediately. Scary.
We had our ultrasound and it was confirmed that we were having a boy! “There’s the boy part”, said the tech. There was no doubt we were having a boy either, because our little baby just put it all out there for the whole world to see. The ultrasound went smoothly and we quickly got all the pictures we needed. I believe it was the following evening we had the missionaries over for dinner, and Daniel was so proud to be having a boy that he had to show them the “hot dog” ultrasound pictures. He was one proud daddy!
My only food aversions during my pregnancy were to onions, broccoli and cauliflower, which were all fairly easy to avoid. But I had terrible heartburn and had to have a constant supply of Tums on hand. I didn’t really crave any foods, but burritos tasted better than they usually did.
I began to gain weight. At first that was a good thing because I had been losing so much before. But this weight gain quickly became alarming. One day Kate asked me what I was eating during the day, partly to figure out the weight gain and also the consistent problem of proteins in my urine. When I told her that at school I packed a peanut butter and jam sandwich, an apple, a pack of fruit snacks, and of course my handy water bottle, I’ll never forget what she told me. Of course she informed me the fruit snacks were all sugar so I shouldn’t eat them. But she also told me I should stop eating apples because they had too many carbs! She had me instead switch to protein snacks like beef jerky and nuts. In hindsight I realize she was basically putting me on an Atkins diet, a diet that at that time I didn’t know about but was quickly becoming popular. I knew fruit is good for you, but this was my first pregnancy and Kate had been to medical school, and I was scared with what was happening to my body, so I followed her advice.
My appointments with Kate became a bi-weekly to weekly thing far, far sooner than the average pregnancy. One day I knew I had made a mistake by choosing Kate as my doctor, but I didn’t know if I could or even should make a switch because I was already in so deep with medical problems. That day I had been allowed to squeeze in to Kate’s schedule because of a severe migraine I couldn’t break, and being pregnant the only thing I could take was Tylenol. I was sitting in the exam room waiting for Kate to come in (Dan also came with me to nearly all my appointments), and then I heard Kate outside the door lift my chart up and examine it. She then let out a groan and began complaining, probably to her assistant, that I was there again. Obviously she either didn’t realize I could hear her or she didn’t care. The tears I’d been holding back from the pain came out, and when she walked in the room Kate quickly became the Good Doctor. She figured I was crying only because of the amount of pain I was in. I don’t remember how that migraine was treated, but I’ll never forget that office visit and how much it made me dread future visits.
My weight gain was rapidly increasing, and every week I averaged a seven pound gain. My blood pressure was also steadily increasing and I had horrible swelling. I felt like I had absolutely no control over my body. I was having numerous blood and urine tests done. Kate told me if my weight and blood pressure didn’t become stable, they would put me on bed-rest. But she never once mentioned a cause or a diagnosis. This tight-lipped behavior would become a pattern in the months that followed. By this point I cried at every appointment since all I heard was bad news. Kate told me that at the weekly meetings all the doctors have together, one other woman and I were their top concern among their patients. On one visit I was standing in line in the lobby waiting to check in, and became so dizzy I had to sit down otherwise I knew I would pass out. I ended up waiting in the lobby for quite a while before I was finally called back to the exam room. The nurse took my blood pressure and frowned, and asked if I had been in a hurry to get to my appointment because my blood pressure was so high. I told her no, about how dizzy I was and how long I had to wait in the lobby before she called me back.
I was seven months along when I was put on bed-rest. That meant I was laid up on the couch with my feet propped up on pillows, and I could only get up to use the bathroom and get something to eat. Sitting up felt terrible on my legs and feet anyway, so being on the couch was the most comfortable place for me anyhow. I spent my time working on my studies, catching up on crafts, and most of all working on a cross-stitch baby blanket for our newborn son. My school classes had to be completed online, and I’m grateful the instructors were willing to work with me around my medical problems. In addition to bed-rest I also had to start collecting urine samples at home. This involved huge red cylinders that I had to keep cool. To do this, we kept a bucket of cold water in the bathroom next to the toilet and stored the cylinder there. After one was filled, I had to seal it off in a plastic bag and (yes, this is beyond gross) store it in the fridge until I had a complete 24 hour sample. This involved a total of 3-4 cylinders, and then my husband making trips to the hospital to drop them off at the lab. I had to do this quite a few times.
I had another migraine, this one that landed me in the emergency room. I was given a shot of morphine, which scared me for the baby’s sake, but I was in so much pain. During this time they monitored me and the baby closely, with one of those big straps across my belly. We were there for hours and were finally able to come home in the wee hours of the morning. We were exhausted and I was oblivious to the world, so Dan had to call in to work and let them know he wouldn’t be in that day.
Kate was still monitoring my food intake and trying to get me to still decrease all my carbs and increase my protein even more. One day I managed to do it. I had a day that was virtually carb-free, including eating homemade tuna fish salad rolled up on lettuce leaves as one of my meals. I felt so sick. When I told Kate about that day, she was glad I had reduced my carbs so much. When I told her how sick I felt, she told me our bodies do need some carbs. I felt like no matter what I did I couldn’t get it right. I cried more.
The bed-rest did help my blood pressure, although it still remained too high. I continued to gain weight, but it wasn’t quite as rapid. The bed-rest also helped with the swelling, but not much. I will never forget the sensation of walking across the room and actually being able to feel the skin on top of my feet jiggle as I walked. It was a horrible, sick sensation.
Emotionally, I was a wreck, but I didn’t recognize the symptoms of depression at the time. I just knew I had frightening thoughts, I felt like I had lost complete control over anything that happened to my body, and I would wake up in the wee hours of the morning and sit at the kitchen table and just cry.
The time finally came for Kate to leave for her vacation, and she told me that with the doctor I would see in her place, she would induce me if they felt it was necessary. My next appointment was scheduled for the morning of June 26th, and because of the dream I had had about six months earlier, I knew it was time.
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