Bed Rest, Part Deux

Or, "Don't give up, don't ever give up"

"You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth of falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you. It is easy to say you believe a rope to be strong and sound as long as you are merely using it to cord a box. But suppose you had to hang by that rope over a precipice. Wouldn't you then first discover how much you really trusted it?" -- C.S. Lewis

This quote pretty much sums up my pregnancy with Caleb, particularly the second half of my bed rest when I really did feel like we were hanging over a cliff, clutching a rope and praying it would hold even as we watched it unravel strand by strand.

I left off the last post at 31 weeks pregnant. By that time, my routine had changed somewhat because it had gotten too hot in the house (we don't have air conditioning) for me to stay upstairs. So I relocated to the downstairs guest room and spent both day and night in the guest bed.

Up until that point, even though my cervix was slowly shortening, the FFN's continued to come back negative and I hadn't dilated yet. These were two very positive signs that I clung to for reassurance.

And then on July 10, the safety net evaporated. John was out of town for the week so my mom had flown over to take care of me while he was away. The second day she was there, I started having more contractions. They were stronger than before and the Procardia wasn't helping, so I called my doctor and he told me to come in. During the exam he checked my cervix, and then said softly, "Well, you've started dilating." The words fell with a thud.

I was dilated 1 cm and more effaced than before. Not. Good. I wasn't due for another FFN for several more days, but he said it was close enough that we could do it again. He warned me, though, that it was almost definitely going to be positive now that I had dilated. So he tried to reassure me that even if it was positive, a fair number of women with a positive result still don't deliver in the next two weeks.

That said, he recommended that I get steroid shots to speed up Caleb's lung development. At 31 weeks, a baby's organs are fully formed, but the lungs and digestive system are the last to mature, which is why breathing and feeding problems are two of the biggest concerns for premature babies. Steroid shots, however, have shown to really help speed up the process and give babies a fighting chance. As I've said, I don't like drugs, but I wanted to give my little fighter all the chances we could.

I've had cortisone shots before for other health problems, so I knew what to expect. If you've never had one, the best I can describe it is that it feels like liquid metal being injected into you. In other words, it doesn't feel good. For the baby to get the full benefit, the mother has to have two courses of the steroid. So I got one shot that day and if I didn't go into full blown labor, I would get another the next day.

I called John while my mom drove me home and we both agreed that he would fly home immediately. Then I crawled back in bed, rubbed my throbbing hip to try to make the medicine spread faster, and prayed. In the past I prayed for days, for weeks. Now I was praying for hours, for minutes. "Just get us to tomorrow, Lord, so we can get the rest of the steroid. Just 24 hours."

Strange as it may sound, this was one of the gifts the pregnancy gave me. I'm typically someone who lives more in the past and future than I do in the present. But through this experience I've learned to measure life by moments and to be thankful for every new day we are given.

John got home that night, and we waited for the call from the doctor. I wasn't as anxious about this call as I had been in the past, because we felt pretty sure we knew what the news would be and I wasn't looking forward to hearing it. The phone rang, and then I heard the doctor's voice telling me, with a bit of an incredulous laugh, "Well, Emily, I can't believe it, but the test was negative." Wait, what?! "How is that possible? What does this mean?" I asked him. "I don't know," he said. "I've never seen this happen before."

He said that we should be encouraged by the negative test, but that we could no longer count on it, because the fact I was dilating was an indication that the preterm labor was progressing. I asked him how much time he thought we had, and as always, he was reluctant to give me a definitive answer. But he said that if at all possible, John should stay home from now on, because Caleb could be coming at any time.

As a salesman, John makes his living on the road. But neither of us was willing to risk him being gone at this point, so he decided to not do any more overnight trips until Caleb arrived, trusting that God would provide for us. For someone who has a hard time trusting, I was certainly having to do a lot of it.

I think all parents have big dreams for their children. When John and I found out I was pregnant, we immediately began talking about what our child might be like and what we hoped for him. Would he be smart? Athletic? Musical? Artistic? Yet when faced with whether our child would even be able to breathe on his own, all those other things seemed inconsequential. So our constant prayer became, "Please, Lord, make him healthy and strong." But beyond even his health, we prayed most of all for his heart, that no matter what happened in this earliest stage of his life or any other to come after, Caleb would know God loved him and would love Him in return.

From bed to worse

We made it to the next day and I was able to get the second steroid shot. Every additional day afterward was considered a huge victory from then on. Meanwhile, my bed rest went from strict to absolute. I got up to go to the bathroom, but that was it. I took a shower every few days, because even that amount of time on my feet made me contract too much. So I ate in bed, most of the time laying down, which let me tell you, is an art that I never quite perfected. I was taking close to the maximum dose of Procardia at that point, every three hours, which meant setting an alarm through the night so I would be sure to wake up and take it (actually turned out to be pretty good practice for having a newborn!)

My mom stayed for a couple of weeks so she could help take care of me and help John take care of the house and set up the nursery. It was hard for me to not be able to do that myself and get into nesting mode, but I was thankful for their help. Although in the back of my mind, I thought it wasn't really going to matter much because if Caleb was born he was going to be spending his first few months in the NICU, not in his nursery. But it was still comforting to be able to do something to help prepare for Caleb's arrival, since everything else was out of our control.

My mom stayed in bed with me, since I was using the guest bed, and it was really comforting to have her by my side during those long nights. The weather was getting increasingly hot and even though I was in the basement it was getting harder to keep me cool. I had like three fans blowing on me and a cold pack on my neck, but as I got hotter, the contractions grew worse.

Even though it seemed it would be impossible, I was praying we would make it to 32 weeks, which is a major milestone in a baby's development, because statistically, babies born after 32 weeks do better than those born earlier. Although each additional day in the womb is vitally important, for preemies there are certain milestone weeks you really want to hit--27 weeks, 32 weeks, 34 weeks, and 36 weeks.

My world had come to revolve around these milestones, and I had become obsessed with the statistics--35 percent of babies born at X have Z, 50 percent of babies born at Z have X, and so on. I think with medical issues, in particular, it's easy to get caught up in the stats, because they seem like the only concrete thing you have to hold onto. But as we continued to rack up more days we weren't supposed to have, defying all the odds, I came to realize that ultimately, my son was not a statistic. And neither was I. Because we were under the care of a God who is greater than the odds, who can do the seemingly impossible.

Midnight rider

Then on the night of July 12, the day before Caleb would reach 32 weeks, a thunderstorm rolled in and the weather grew unbearably hot and humid. The contractions were getting worse and not letting up, so I called L&D and my doctor turned out to be the one on call, which was an unexpected blessing. He told me to come in because with me being dilated, we couldn't take any risks. So at around 10 p.m., John, my mom and I piled in the car and headed to the hospital.

Even though I had gone to the bathroom before we left, about five minutes into the journey I had to go again (I told you I had bladder problems!). So there I was, hugely pregnant and peeing in the bushes next to the car under the light of the moon and the occasional lightning bolt. As a car full of stunned-looking teenagers drove past, I thought, "Well, there went the last shred of my dignity." I got back in the car and John said, "You'll laugh about this someday." I gave him a look that said that day was a long way off, and we kept driving.

After I got to the hospital they put me into bed and hooked me up to the monitors, which confirmed I was having constant contractions, and my doctor checked my cervix. Thankfully I wasn't dilated further yet, but the contractions weren't letting up. Since the Procardia wasn't working, he said the next step was Terbutaline. This was the drug they used to use all the time, before they knew about Procardia, but it has worse side effects for the mother so now they only use it as a last resort. I again found myself between a rock and a hard place in weighing which was worse for the baby, drugs or possible prematurity. So I agreed to take the Terbutaline, which they administer via a shot in the arm.

Let me tell you, now that I've had both, I would take a steroid shot over Terbutaline any day. It feels like a thousand bee stings as it's being injected and for a while afterward, and you feel like you're having a heart attack. I was shaking uncontrollably, which my doctor said was normal as he sympathetically layered warm blankets over me.

Thankfully Caleb was doing just fine during all this. I asked the nurse to turn up the volume on the monitor that recorded his heart rate. As the sound of my strong-hearted baby's steady heartbeat filled the room even while my heart raced, I laid on my side, clutched the bed railing, and looked back and forth from the monitor to the clock as lightning flashed through the window in the dimly lit room. Shortly after the clock struck midnight, my doctor came in and said quietly, "Well, congratulations, you made it to 32 weeks."

My contractions went away completely after about an hour. They kept me under surveillance for a few more hours, then the doctor said I could go. So around 4 a.m. we went back home and I once again crawled back in bed, just thankful that we had turned the page on another day, reaching another seemingly impossible milestone.

Happy to have made it to 32 weeks. Every new day a gift.

With 32 weeks behind us, we started praying for 34, even though none of us, including my doctor, thought we'd get there.

So that's where I will leave things for now, and will pick up again in the next and final bed rest portion of this story. In the mean time, here's the song I played a lot during this time. It's called, "Restless," by Audrey Assad, and it seemed tailor-made for me and my situation, since I was on bed rest but feeling far from restful.