It Wasn't Indegestion

A week in the hospital – extreme boredom like I’ve never experienced. I read Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre (for the hundredth time), start Atlas Shrugged. Old book friends to keep me company when Scott can't be there. The hospital gets about 20 channels on TV, most of them news or sports, yawn. Most of the time I turn on the TV, there are babies and pregnant women everywhere, so off goes the TV. I play Zelda, look forward to my daily shower (how pathetic is that), talk to the nurses, sleep. I never use my nurse call button, which makes them like me. Scott takes me outside in a wheelchair once a day – it’s the highlight of the whole day, even if the view is of the murder capital of the country. I tell myself, I want this awful boredom to last for the next three months, if it means my baby lives. I’ll willingly spend all summer in a cold, sterile hospital room. I’ll give up the trips to Key West and Virginia. I’ll give up hiking trips, and beach trips, and beautiful lazy days spent reading out on the lawn. I’ll give it all up, happily, if it means my baby survives. I’m so fucking stupid, I keep hoping.

On Sunday night my chest starts to hurt. I think maybe it’s indigestion. Try to ignore it. Eventually, it’s pretty obvious it isn’t getting better, so I call the nurses, who give me some Maalox and tell me to wait it out. I wait for two hours, it’s even more painful than before. I tell the nurses again, who call the doctor, who takes blood and tells me my liver function is up. This is a bad thing, especially when your platelets are low, which mine are. They tell me I have to deliver the baby, and move me to L&D. I call Scott and tell him to come right away.

I know I’m not a horrible person, but there is a huge part of me that regrets thinking the way I did at the time: Scott and I agreed that we would not allow any intervention above-and-beyond what was traditionally done. We didn’t want a severely handicapped baby. Not only would it not have been fair to us, being such active people, it wouldn’t have been fair to the baby – Scott works every day with severely handicapped children, and sees the kinds of lives they live, which aren’t much to speak of. And they know it, these kids. They know they’re not “normal”, and that sucks. Of course, having ultimately lost the baby, I feel wretched for even thinking I wouldn’t want a baby, any baby, no matter the condition. I wish I had been given the opportunity to choose to keep my baby alive by cutting my own hand off; I’d be without a hand right now, but I’d still be holding my baby girl.