Bed Rest, Part 3

Or, "Do you believe in miracles?!"

So I left the last post off at 32 weeks, when things started getting really unpredictable and we thought that Caleb was likely coming any day. Before I get back to the story, I want to emphasize something. I don't know why God chooses to do what He does, or in some cases, doesn't do. Like why did He enable me to carry Caleb to full term, while allowing many other babies to be born prematurely or with devastating disabilities, despite their parents' fervent prayers to the contrary? Why does He allow my mom, the saintliest person I know, to suffer from so many health problems? And why did He choose to take John's one good parent, his incredible mother, after a long, terrible battle with cancer, despite her heartfelt prayers for healing so she could stay with her children?

My list of "why's" could stretch for miles. But it just so happens that God doesn't answer to me, though sometimes I really wish He did. So I will admit that I'm not sure where my belief in the power of prayer fits into my belief in God's sovereignty. Yet I am convinced nonetheless that one of the reasons God chose to perform a miracle in this situation was because of the prayers said for me and Caleb. I'm certainly no mystic, but there have been a handful of times in my life when I've almost physically felt the prayers being said for me. This was one of those times. So once again, thank you to all those who prayed for us during that tumultuous time. I really believe you made all the difference for us.

So now, back to the story...

Deja vu all over again

On July 19, a week after my midnight hospital trip, while my mom was still in town and John was away on a day trip and my dad was headed over to stay with us for a few days before taking my mom back home, the contractions started getting stronger again. And once again, the Procardia wasn't stopping them. So that afternoon my mom took me back into L&D. The doctor on call was one I hadn't met before (although by the time this was all over I think me and my cervix had met every OB/GYN in that place) so she checked my cervix, said it looked a little more effaced, about 70 percent, but that I was still dilated about 1 cm.

So once again, I got to meet the business end of a Terbutaline shot. By the time the contractions died down, both John and my dad had arrived at the hospital. So we all went home together. My parents stayed a few more days, my mom continuing to make her home cooked meals to fatten me and Caleb up, and my dad doing various home improvement projects around the house. Thank God for grandparents.

I had a doctor appointment on July 23 (I was having them weekly at this point) and the doctor told me I wasn't dilated more but had progressed to being 80 percent effaced. And then the night of July 26, a few hours before we hit 34 weeks, yep, you guessed it, the contractions started getting worse again and the Procardia wasn't working. So once again, we made a late night trip to L&D, and thankfully my doctor was the one on call. At first he didn't really believe me that the contractions were so frequent, but when he hooked me up to the monitors and saw the jagged line, the nurse next to him said, "Wow, that's a really irritated uterus."

So once again I got a Terbutaline shot (I'd like to say I handled them better each time, but I didn't) and once again, the labor stopped. At 11 p.m., my doctor said, "Well it looks like you're going to make it to 34 weeks!" And then a little after midnight, the nurse came in to check on me and said I should feel very good about making it this far, but that "it would really be better if you could make it to 35." Every time I made it to another milestone, I never had long to celebrate, because I was told that we still weren't out of the woods yet. It was very frustrating, partly because I just wanted to be told that I had fought the good fight and could lay down my sword, and partly because I knew they were right.

I told my doctor I really didn't want to keep having to go back to the ER every week, which seemed to be the pattern that was developing. He agreed it would be better for me to be able to stay home, so he prescribed oral Terbutaline to take only as a last resort when the contractions got really bad and the Procardia wasn't working. Typically oral Terbutaline isn't prescribed anymore because of its risks for the mother, but I wouldn't be taking it routinely, so I decided to go ahead with it.

People have asked me why they didn't just let my labor continue and allow Caleb to be born, since "they can do so much for preemies these days," and "babies decide when they're ready to be born." It's true, they can do a lot for preemies now. But unless a baby's or mother's life is in danger (and our lives weren't), a mountain of evidence shows it's best for a baby to remain in its mother's womb for as long as possible and ideally, the full 40 weeks. So that's why we kept fighting to keep Caleb in my belly day after day, week after week.

I went home in the wee hours of that Friday morning, incredibly happy to have reached 34 weeks but also completely spent. You know how I said that being strong was really important to me? At this point, I had absolutely no strength left, and I had no idea how I was going to continue to carry this baby, even as I prayed that I would carry him six more weeks until his due date. But somehow, God kept giving me just enough strength to reach the next day. So while I used to think of weakness as a flaw, I started to see why God always seems to choose the weakest among us to display His power. Because it's in those instances that His power is most obvious. Truly, as I got weaker, He got stronger.

Hollywood starlet? No, bedridden mama trying to forestall delivery.

Burdened

The following Monday, July 30, I went to my next doctor's appointment. At this point I couldn't walk without contracting so I had to be wheeled up to my doctor's office from the parking lot. This appointment brought my final FFN test (they don't do them after 34 weeks because a normal pregnancy can come back positive at 36 weeks). I felt like I was leaking fluid and he wanted to rule out the possibility that I was slowing leaking amniotic fluid so he took a sample. Thankfully I wasn't. "Just urine," he said. Sweet. If I didn't feel enough like an 80 year old before...

He examined me and he said I had progressed to being dilated to 2 cm and was still 80 percent effaced. I forgot to mention earlier that for the past four weeks Caleb had also been head down and at a 0 station, meaning he was positioned right at the entrance to the birth canal, which normally doesn't happen until you're in the actual birthing process. This explained why my bladder was always leaking and why I felt such tremendous pressure in my pelvis, as if a giant bowling ball was hanging between my legs. To get a better understanding of birth stations, here's a diagram. (Some of you are probably thinking, "Seriously, as if she hasn't painted enough of a graphic picture already?")



I asked the doctor how in the world the FFN tests could still be negative when I was so progressed. He said, "It means the baby isn't the one doing this." The words twisted inside me, because this is what I had feared all along. People had joked that maybe Caleb was just too eager to get out into the world. But deep down I had always known that this was probably my doing, not his. It was the ultimate act of betrayal by a body that wasn't just failing me this time, it was failing my baby. Talk about mom guilt. So along with enduring nearly unbearable physical pressure, I also strained under the weight of a tremendous psychological and emotional burden. Because I knew the doctors could only do so much. When all was said and done, Caleb's fate rested on me and me alone.

I went home after that appointment feeling very heavy-hearted. There weren't a lot of distractions I could use to take my mind off things, since I couldn't hold up the trusty iPhone anymore. I could listen to music and watch movies on my laptop, or I should say parts of movies, since I had developed early stages of bed sores on my hips by that point and had to keep my belly propped up by a pillow and constantly rotate from side to side, like a giant rotisserie chicken, to alleviate some of the pain.

So I had a lot of time to think and pray. I couldn't talk much without contracting, but I talked to Caleb as much as I could, and sang him songs ("You are My Sunshine" was a favorite of ours...he started kicking whenever I sang it to him). And as I sang, I prayed that God would also whisper words of comfort to his strong little heart.

And as I stared at the closet door in front of me that day, memorizing the grooves in the wood, suddenly in my mind's eye I pictured Jesus standing in front of me, while water swirled beneath my feet. It was like I was in the Apostle Peter's shoes, when Jesus told him to get out of the boat and walk on water. That's when I understood that if I was going to get through this, I was going to have to stop looking at the water swirling below--all the scary statistics and labor indicators--and instead fix my eyes ahead on Jesus and just keep putting one foot in front of the other, trusting that He wouldn't let us sink.

And then the phone rang. It was my doctor. The results from the final FFN test were in, and guess what. It was negative. Negative! Caleb was halfway through the birth canal, and somehow, we were still getting a negative result. We couldn't completely rely on it anymore, but in the face of all the bad signs, it was a very encouraging one. A completely unbelievable blessing.

Still in bed, but smiling. Thankful for one final negative FFN!

Ode to a hot male nurse

I need to take a time out here to give a shout out to my hot male nurse. It's a good thing John's love language is acts of service, because he was doing a lot of them for me. (He also got to go play golf several times, leaving me with a sack lunch and some movies on the bed, so don't feel TOO sorry for the guy... and yes, I told him I was going to throw him under the bus on that one). I always knew the measure of the man I married, but this situation brought out further depths of John's servant's heart as he waited on me hand and foot. He was my short order cook, my walking cane, and my ghost writer (by this point I couldn't even type without contracting so he sent all my text messages and posted all my Facebook updates as I dictated them to him.)

Heck, the guy was even my beautician. I wasn't able to shave my legs since I could barely even stand long enough to take a shower, and I was really embarrassed about it. So the night before my next doctor appointment (the only time me and my hairy legs were seen in public), he placed a bowl of water on the bed, arranged a towel underneath me, and gently shaved my legs (and didn't nick me once, so maybe I should have him do it more often!) My curly head of hair was also basically in dreadlocks at this point since I couldn't brush it, so on another day he doused it with detangler and spent over an hour carefully combing through each kink and knot.

This might sound strange, but to me these were some of the most romantic things John has ever done in our eight years together. There's a passage in the Bible that talks about husbands washing their wives with water and presenting them radiant and clean. I know there are a lot of ways to interpret that text, but the words came to mind while John was giving me my own personal bed rest spa day, because his actions struck me as a very literal example of what I think those verses are talking about--a husband who treats his wife with care and respect. Tenderness is an underrated quality in a man, if you ask me, and I don't take for granted that I have a husband who displays it daily.

My trusty bed rest side kicks

But enough of the mushy stuff, am I right?

Thanks to the oral Terbutaline, I didn't have to go back to the ER when the contractions got bad again, which they did several times in the next few weeks. At my 35 week appointment, the doctor examined me and told John he should stop traveling altogether, because although he hoped Caleb would stay put for another week, he was most likely coming any day.

And yet, one week later, there we were, back at his office on Friday, August 10, all of us shocked we had made it to 36 weeks. They typically take women off bed rest at around 36 weeks, even though the baby hasn't reached full term, because the benefits of the mother having a little time to regain some of her strength tend to outweigh the risks of the baby being born at that point (although he told us that Caleb could still have some minor breathing difficulties and some jaundice and feeding problems, which didn't sound too bad compared to the worries we had before, but did turn out to be worse issues for Caleb than we expected in the weeks after he was born).

Our doctor was going to be out of town that weekend, and our five-year anniversary was the next day, so I decided to still take it easy and continue taking the medicines until Monday. Traditionally for our anniversary we have stayed overnight in a nice hotel to celebrate, so we decided to go ahead and keep with tradition. Let me tell you, it was so weird to go downtown after being shut in for 12 weeks. It was like I had been in a cryogenic chamber and had emerged to find the world had kept turning, had seen an entire season come and go, while for me time had remained frozen in place.

I mainly stayed in bed during our getaway, but at least it was a different bed! And I was able to watch the Closing Ceremonies of the London Olympics, along with recaps of all the competitions I had missed. John kept wanting me to get up and walk around downtown, because he was anxious for Caleb to be born so we could meet him. But for one, I was hugely, uncomfortably pregnant and didn't feel up to waddling around downtown on atrophied legs. And for two, I felt it would still be better for Caleb to get closer to his due date (for the record, I turned out to be right).

Monday, August 13, came, and I stopped taking the medications and started trying to move around more (I still spent a lot of time on the couch, though, because it was so painful to move). As my contractions started up, we expected me to go into labor any minute.

And then...I didn't.

Two weeks notice

As we kept waiting for me to go into labor and I experienced nearly constant contractions, my back and hips started hurting worse and worse, and one night I even called L&D because it got so bad I was screaming and writhing in pain. The nurse condescendingly told me it was normal to feel "some stretching" at that point in the pregnancy, but I knew this wasn't normal. My doctor was on call and he got on the phone and told me I should probably come in to make sure everything was okay, but I was sick of going into the ER and I decided to just tough it out at home. (A few months after Caleb was born I found out why I had been in such terrible pain after I started seeing a physical therapist to try to repair the damage that had been done to my pelvis).

I went in for my next doctor's appointment on August 17, happy to be able to walk in instead of arriving in a wheelchair. When he saw me, my doctor said, "You know, I don't normally do this, but I was praying you guys would make it to this point, although I have no idea how you did it." I told him, "It was your prayers, and a lot of other people's." He said, shaking his head, "It must have been, because there's no other explanation for it."      

He examined me and said I was 3 cm dilated, 90 percent effaced, and Caleb was now at +1 station. How in the world he was still staying put, none of us had any clue. The doctor said he wouldn't be checking my cervix from then out out, because it didn't really matter. And then we scheduled another appointment for a little more than a week out, since he was going to be on vacation the next week. After she put it in the schedule the receptionist said, "I'm thinking we won't see you for this one, but that's what I've been thinking every week for the past two months, so we'll see!"

As the days unbelievably went on, people asked me if I had really needed to go on bed rest if I was now off of it and still hadn't delivered Caleb. But I truly believe, as does my doctor, that if I hadn't gone on bed rest and taken those medications, I would have delivered Caleb weeks, if not months, earlier. The months on bed rest had bought us the time we were now spending off of it, as Caleb continued to get stronger and gain weight the closer he got to full term.

Me and Caleb, hanging out (literally), at 37 weeks

It was really hot that week, so to cool off we decided to go to the outdoor pool at our gym. I sausaged myself into my two-piece and asked John, "Does this make me look fat?" (As I have done on countless other occasions, although this time it was a total joke because the answer was self-evident.) "It looks fine," he lied as he hustled me out the door to get to the pool before it closed.

When we got to the pool and I took off my cover up and slowly eased into the water, I could feel the stares from my fellow pool-goers as they took in the sight of a whale-woman carrying a baby at +1 station into the shallow end. Finally one guy floating near me couldn't help himself any longer and said, "So...are you going to give birth right here?" I laughed and replied, "Well he's supposed to come any time now, so I just might!" He tried to hide his horror, and then, to his credit, waited a few minutes to try to make it look less obvious when he paddled toward the wall and got himself the heck out of Dodge. (We took a picture on my iPhone to document the outing, but it's too National Geographic for even me, the TMI Queen, to share with everyone, so for now it will stay between me, my family, and probably some poor unsuspecting SOB at the NSA.)

The following Friday, August 24, we hit 38 weeks and Caleb officially reached full term (babies are considered full term at that point, although it still really is best if they're born around their due date). We went out to dinner to celebrate, and as I walked back to the car, I really did feel, as I had felt for weeks now, that he was about to drop right out of me.

Since I had been off bed rest, I had moved back upstairs because the weather had cooled down some. I still wasn't able to sleep in my own bed, though, because for some reason the couch was more comfortable for me, although I still had to get up every few hours to switch sides because of the bed sores.

That night, we followed our now usual routine where John would help me get comfortable on the couch and then kiss me goodnight and head to bed. Every night we wondered, "Will we make it to another day?" But since we had been through this for two weeks at that point, I kind of figured we would make it to another day. John had put sheet protectors on our bed in case my water broke during the night, but that night I joked to him that we should probably put something down on the couch since that's where I was sleeping. We both laughed, and he said, "We'll take care of it tomorrow."

But that chance never came, because at 2:30 a.m., I woke out of a deep sleep with the feeling that something had just punched through me. It literally felt like a water balloon had popped. Fluid gushed out, and there was no mistaking this time what it was. I laid there in stunned silence for a second, and then yelled, "John, my water broke!"

And so, after 38 weeks and one day of pregnancy, 12 weeks of bed rest, four hospital visits, and two unbelievable "bonus" weeks, D-Day had arrived. Caleb was coming!

In the next post I'll tell the birth story, which was an experience unto itself. In the mean time, here is the song, "Never Once," by Matt Redman, that became my theme song during the pregnancy. If you listen to the lyrics I think you'll understand why.