Life Part 3

I realize the last few posts may have been hard to read. The time was certainly difficult for me, and I have used this avenue to express my feelings about them. I thank you for allowing me to do it. I assure that happy times are indeed ahead, as these posts took longer to create than the events that inspired them, and life has moved on for the better in the interim.

Again, Thanks
-daniel


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Life, Part 3.


It was sunday, November 27th. A bright shiny day, the kind California is famous for. I woke up to my wife's agitated yells from the bathroom She was bleeding.

When you are pregnant, you are not supposed to bleed. It does happen, and sometimes it's ok. Mostly, it's bad. I rushed to the phone and paged the nurse on call. As we lay on the bed waiting, huddled against each other, we encountered a wave of sadness and doubt that i have ever experienced.
"Is this it? Is it happening?"
"I don't know?!"
"Oh God."
We cried in each other's arms. We told each other that if it was the end, we still loved each other, and that we could try again.

The nurse called, I gave the phone to Angela and she explained the situation. The nurse told us that, although it could be the "M", it could also be a myriad of other things. She told us to watch and wait for an hour, if the bleeding gets worse, come in to the hospital. But until it does, we would be more comfortable at home.

Great, more waiting.

We spend the rest of the day waiting in a zone of numbness. The bleeding actually trickled off and we felt a sense of maybe dodging a bullet. Angela called her boss and arranged to stay home until our wednesday appointment. I would go back to work, but be 'on call'. And that way, Monday began.

And ended in a blur. During this entire process at home, I was finishing an episode of my forensic show at work. By chance or by unconscious design, i was due to finish tuesday afternoon, with a co-worker to handle last minute notes on wednesday if they arrived. I spent the day in a disconnect, I simply would not think about what was happening at home, and focus on shaping the tragedy in front of me. It was a rape/murder case, but at least the guy was caught, so there was a happy ending. Still, the subject material doesn't exacty lend itself to cheering. I only told my producer about our vigil. She and I are close, and she has been very helpful during the entire process, handling my communications when we first had our ultrasound so I did not have to call multiple co-workers.

Tuesday went by quickly as well. Happily, the show as put to bed, and it looked like there would be no need for my or another editor on wednesday. Gladly, I went home and after dinner, Angela and I went to bed for our early morning appointment.

2am came and Angela shot awake with stabbing pains in her abdomen. I made ready to go to the hospital, but she stopped me. She said the pains were managable and she didn't want to wait for hours in an emergency room chair, we'd hang out until our 8am appointment. But the pains got worse and we packed it up for the emergency room. By 7am it was over. My wife was ok, but the baby had miscarried.

Now you can say that it was a natural thing, that the body knew something was wrong and took steps itself. Indeed it is almost overwhelming to see and experience your body working entirely of it's own accord. But still, we had made a place for our child, and now that place was unfilled. We said goodbye to the baby and held each other close. One day, we'll try again. Until then, we mourn the child that almost was.

Part Two

In my last post, we left off in the Ultrasound room of UCLA Medical center, where the High-Risk pregnancy doctor has told us that there are anomalies with our baby, though they can't get a good enough look to determine exactly what. We are told to come back in 3 weeks so they can look again, and in the meantime, it's not anything we did wrong, go home and act normally.

Yeah, Right.


Now talking about children is a very different thing from actually having one. Growing up, my wife and I have always wanted children. And we used to joke with one another about the impending day when we would be parents. However, once we discovered that children was no longer "some day", but "9 months", things started to change with us. On the outside, we prepared the home for a child. From small things like buying electrical socket protectors to silly new-age things like cleaning the counters with vinegar (no chemicals!) In the words of Billy Cosby, we also began to study how to do 'Natural Childbirth', (Bill Cosby Himself, the classic stand-up, now has an entire new appreciation by us). Angela was bequeathed a bevy of baby bibles from her best buddies, and I - not wanting to be left out of the fun - purchased my own book The Expectant Father, an excellent book by Armin Brott that truly is one of the few, and only, books on the subject for men.

More importantly, we began to create a space in our lives for the child. Angela and I have always been a happy couple. Sure, we have our ups and downs - heck, we argue constantly - but all in all, we were content with what we had in our lives. Now we had to make space for another, and we dove into it wholeheartedly. We would talk to the baby, ask it questions trying to find out by telepathy what sex it was, what name it wanted, whether it liked chinese....we'll maybe not that. But along with the baby's physical growing came an emotional growth into what we thought of as a family. We were creating our own, and we liked it. Angela began to feel a connection with the passenger in her womb and as she began to show, I knew the glow was not all from horomones. One of my most magical moments was seeing our baby kick its legs around in the ultrasound. We joked that it was already a dancer, having learned rhythm and dance from Angela's samba dances.

And now that was in danger.

Most writers will tell you there are two distinct fears: Fear of what's known and Fear of the unknown. Terror versus Dread. That day we experienced both. The terror of knowing that something was wrong, and the dread of not knowing what it was. And although knowing that 'there's nothing we did, or can do' makes us blameless, it also makes us helpless as there's nothing we can do.

We took the rest of the day off to ride the emotional roller coaster. We'd read of complications, even heard about them, but this was not a lottery we thought we'd win. The next three weeks went by in a tense daze. There were good days, where the roar was kept shut out of our minds, and we could forget by throwing ourselves into our work. There were bad days where my wife would cry from nowhere and I would just shut down. I played the 'strong family male' type. 'Defending the cave' is how I would describe it to friends. Basically by making sure my wife had a secure place to be, I could move on with life. I'd deal with the emotion later, once the danger had passed. I'm sure some ancestor years ago survived a wolf attack because of this, but the only teeth were in my head and I was not a happy person. (My boss's boss commented that I was 'distracted' around the office. Well, wouldn't you be?)

Thanks to the glories of the internet, we researched every possible angle. Hoping to discover what it could be, and very thankful for what it was not. One of our symptoms was a low level of amniotic fluid, (the 'water' in the womb) and possibly a lack of fetal nutrition. On the advice of a family friend nurse, Angela began downing 4 liters of water per day, restricting her activity, and eating upwards of 60 grams of protein per day. All the hopes that it would find its way to the life inside.

Support began to pour in from our friends and family. Everyone we told was praying or sending happy thoughts our way. One of Angela's dance instructors, a very spiritual woman, told us to make a place for focusing on our child, a place to pray for it and to it. We make an altar near our bed where we placed the ultrasound pictures, a candle, and a book to write to our baby. We were waiting till we learned the sex to finalize a name, but a pet name was had was 'Charis' (karis), which is Greek for 'Grace'. Thus we would light our candle every day and talk to the baby. Hoping and wishing it to be safe. And in the tradition of every Religious dark comedy, we came back to church, looking for guidance and hope in this.

Back in life, the clock was ticking as 12/1/04 was the day we both feared and anticipated.

Life, Part 1: Ups & Down

There has been a lot going on these past weeks at LoydLand. So much in the last 4 that I've often been stuck deciding where to begin in posting them. That's probably a reason why I never posted before and now have to start at the beginning, where it all began.

My wife Angela and I traveled to China in August for two weeks. I've posted some of my daily journal entries here, and continue again. Soon after we returned to the States, we found out that we brought a souvenir back with us. We were pregnant! Made in China, born in the USA. Needless to say, we were thrilled. We had also wanted children, and were somewhat 'planning' to try in 2005. We figured God and/or the body decided to up things a bit, so firmly registered in the 'pleasant surprise' category, we dove head first into becoming parents.

Various books suddenly appeared at the side of my wife's bed. From the 'manuals' of 'What to expect when you're expecting', to more esoteric tomes like 'Birthing from Within'. Not wanting to be left out or thought uninterested, I bought my own copy of 'The expectant father', and 'Father for Life'. To paraphrase Bill Cosby, my wife and I were intellectuals and we were going to study as much as we can how to do something that is going to happen anyway.

We decided to try being as natural as we could. C-Sections were frowned upon, Episiotomies something to be feared. Epidurals only if truly necessary, and I wanted to catch the baby. Yes. Not only did 'Male' want to be in the delivery room, I wanted to squat with a medical catcher's mitt and catch the kid as he came out. We found a program we liked at UCLA Medical Center, locally in Westwood that combined a midwife program within the support of a medical hospital. We could have it both ways. We had a great initial consultation with the midwives who answered nearly every question we had with the answers we wanted to hear - the initial consultation is part consult, part interview. They scheduled our 1st trimester ultrasound and screening for 13 weeks. A tad early, our best friends Joe & Aimee had theirs at 15 weeks, but UCLA is a teaching hospital, and their Ultrasounds look newer than the 'scrubbers' in 'minority report'.

The ultrasound practitioner was sick the day of our appointment, but we came in to meet with the midwife anyway, rescheduling our ultrasound for the next morning. The appointment went swell and after a scary moment where they couldn't find the heartbeat on their walkman-sized 1986-era fetal heart monitor, they drafted the doctor on call to operate the ultrasound for us. There, in GE glory, was our baby. He/She (too early to tell) looked happy, bundled up in a ball, actively kicking his legs around for the delight of all of us - Angela is a dancer, so to see her baby dancing already! The heartbeat is beating happily away, and we get to see and hear it go.

(I had a geek moment here. Unhappy with just receiving one printout of the ultrasound, while everyone left the room for Angela to dress, I start fiddling around with the machine, discover that it records the last 30 seconds of every scan, and in a few minutes, start manipulating the trackball to choose 4 shots I was really happy with. Yep, editing on an Ultrasound. All hail, King of the Geeks!)

Thrilled with multiple pictures of the baby, we go back to work and spread the happy word. The next day, we go back to the hospital for our true ultrasound checkup. The nice practitioner starts the ultrasound and begins to measure the baby from multiple angles, comparing the relative size of the head, abdomen, femur and humorus (thigh and upper arm) to statistical counts in the computer.

There's a problem.

The head and femur are registering at 13 weeks, but the abdomen and arm is not. They're registering around 11.5 weeks. Well, can it be late? Probably not. The head and abdomen need to be developing at the same time and not, it's an indication that something is wrong...

Something is wrong.

She starts looking for the problem.
"It usually is a defect in the abdominal wall." She says.
"What's that?"
"It's where the abdomen has a hole in it and all the insides are outside."
"That can happen?"
"Yes, but it's not happening here."
"Oh, thank god."

Meanwhile, my wife gets to lay at the mercy of the machine as more time passes and more horrible things are described, then ruled out. The practitioner finally says that she's not qualified to interpret, and makes an appointment for us to meet the High-Risk pregnancy doctor.

High-Risk Pregnancy Doctor.

Can we come back, today, in 4 hours?

Phase 2 of our pregnancy has begun.

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