Mommy Guilt

Almost six years ago, I was blessed to find out I was expecting. After several miscarriages, I was elated, to say the least. I was in school during the day and working overnight and trying to juggle being a wife, sister, daughter and friend.

As the weeks progressed, I started feeling sharp pains that were short in duration. At first I ignored them but as I got further in the pregnancy, I felt them more frequently… sometimes when my bladder was too full or maybe as I went up and down the stairs. I remember asking my obstetrician about it and was told that it’s probably round ligament pains from the stretching as the pelvis gets ready for child birth. Shrugs. Ok, what did I know?

Fast forward to my anatomy scan at twenty weeks…. My life was forever changed. There I sat in the dimly lit examination room laid on my back on the cold leather table, pants slightly over my hips, belly exposed. The ultrasound tech plopped the warmed gel onto my tummy and swiftly placed the probe into my lower abdomen. I laid there in anticipation as I loved seeing the images of my little me. She sat there taking measurements, clicking away in silence. Being a naturally inquisitive person, I asked “what’s that?” after each change in the probe’s position. As she came to the end of her measurements her silence suddenly became loud. Painfully so. She was looking at my cervix. I asked her was something wrong, she didn’t reply. She concluded her exam and instructed me that the doctor would be in shortly. What’s shortly? It seemed like forever. The doctor finally comes in, shoulders down subconsciously taking on the burden of bearing the bad news….

Seeing his demeanor as he walked in and sat slowly onto the backless stool in the corner, I started to sit up. He quickly told me to lay back down. He pulled out a blank piece of paper and started to illustrate how the cervix usually looks then how MY cervix looked…. After blabbing on and on, he finally said, you’re 3 centimeters dilated. As I heard the words, I realized that my baby was in danger. I tried the hold back my tears as they welled up in my eyes. I looked away trying to hold onto hope. He gave me a moment of silence then urged me to go the hospital for further evaluation.

As I anxiously drove to the hospital, it were as if time stood still. I still remember being able to hear my own heart beating in my ears. I remember the dry mouth and sweaty palms. I remember being wheeled down the cold, long, yellow hallways… once I arrived to the antepartum unit, I was greeted by the nursing staff who had been expecting me. I forced a weak smile and was led to my room. Shortly thereafter, the physician and his team of residents came in. They introduced themselves and started their exam. They left the room and came back in with their prognosis…. I had three options. Have shirodkar cerclage that likely would fail, terminate the pregnancy, or go home and do nothing.

Talk about the hardest decision I had been faced with! After prayerful consideration and feeling defeated, I went home on bed rest. I remember laying in the bed with tons of pillows under my legs with books, magazines, crosswords and my favorite Sodoku puzzles all over the bed. All my meals and beverages were delivered to my bedside, I only got out of the bed to go 6 inches to the commode. I tried to keep myself busy, but I started going down the rabbit hole, learning everything I could about my cervical insufficiency. Was it something I did? Didn’t do? I found myself calling the doctor daily with requests for progesterone suppositories and anything else I could find from my hours of research. After two weeks, as I was getting up to go to the commode, I felt a very distinct POP. There it was, my water broke….

I was rushed to the hospital literally dripping through the emergency room, they didn’t have wheel chair available and things were so heightened that I don’t think I would’ve waited anyway. Yup, my water broke. Preterm delivery…. 19 hours of labor I delivered a little boy at 22 weeks… he didn’t make it. At that very moment, I wished I could’ve traded places with him. It was then that I knew you could, in fact, die of a broken heart.