Out of Nowhere

The other night T and I sat down to eat dinner and enjoy one of our favorite shows According to Jim. This particular episode included the birth of Dana's baby. Her water broke while sitting at the kitchen table and Jim had to take her to the hospital. My first complaint was that she grabbed the top of her belly when her water broke. It may not be the case with everyone, but when my water broke I felt it MUCH lower. My second complaint was the fact that when she walked toward the door, she looked awfully dry for someone whose water had just broken. T and I exchanged a look remembering the giant gross puddle I ended up sitting in when my own water broke. I know some people feel a trickle, mine was a "massive rupture". I forgave the show quickly however when they had Jim slip on the "wet" kitchen floor, but that is probably just my own sick sense of humor.
So there they were, at the hospital, Dana in labor, stuck with her BIL instead of her husband or sister for support. T said things were turning bad, very bad, and he may not want to watch the rest of the episode. They didn't actually show any part of the pushing or birth, but it put us right back to our own experience last year. Last February. Almost a full year ago now. (How did that happen? My how time flies when you spend a full quarter of the year in the hospital with your baby!)
We discussed it a bit. How on that Monday I had suffered from back spasms which I thought were due to the long car ride home from our Valentine's Babymoon weekend up north. I called T at work and told him that a co-worker was taking me down to L&D just to be on the safe side. I told him to stay at work and I would call if he needed to come down. I was given an Rx for Vicodin and told to call my doctor if I felt regular contractions or had bloody show, etc. and I went back to work the rest of the afternoon. That same evening T and I went to our follow-up ultrasound to check the volume of amniotic fluid. It looked just a bit high, not bad. Oh, and by the way, the baby was head down. (I actually thought how strange it was that the tech pointed this out, we still had 16 weeks to go, the baby will surely flip and move quite a bit before we need to worry about her being in the correct position. No?)
I never filled the script for the Vicodin and by Wednesday the back spasms were completely gone. I remember because I had a massage that day and I was telling my massage therapist about them but that they were better.
Thursday afternoon I started feeling menstrual type cramps. I remember feeling rather horrible all evening. I propped myself up on the couch to rest my swollen feet and worked on organizing my new and improved filing system for bills, etc. I slept like crap that night because I was constantly getting up to pee and could not shake the pain in my bladder. Ugh!
Friday morning I listened to Azure's heartbeat (which was just fine) on the doppler since I was concerned there wouldn't be enough room for her in there with all the added pressure in my belly from what I thought was my first ever bladder infection. (I kept repeating to myself that UTIs are common in pregnancy.) I went to work.
We were busy and short staffed that day so I put off calling the doctor until a more convenient time later in the morning. My friend at work told me I looked like I was either sick or in pain. I said, "Yes!" I finally decided after yet another trip to the bathroom that I couldn't put it off any longer. They told me to go down to L&D to get a urine test, again, just to be sure. The same co-worker offered to drive me down to the hospital again but as I was actually feeling BETTER than I had on Monday with the back spasms and I didn't want to end up at the hospital without a car again I convinced him to let me drive myself. To this day I do not think he has forgiven me for this. He feels so incredibly guilty for letting me go off on my own. What if...
I called T on my cell as I was pulling out of the parking lot and told him I was on my way back downtown. He said if it hadn't been the second time that week he probably would have stayed at work again. Thank goodness he didn't. If he had waited there would not have been time for him to get there for the birth once things started to happen. If he hadn't been there already he probably would have gotten a call from a nurse saying I was in labor and he would have killed himself in a high-speed crash on his way. If, if, if...
As we were rehashing all of these details, sitting snuggly on our livingroom couch, I began to shiver. I actually got the shakes just thinking about it all again. I am talking full-body shakes that made my voice quiver. Recently, I had been thinking about posting about how I thought I was over the trauma of Azure's birth. About how I can go pick up her prescriptions from the hospital pharmacy and look up at those windows on the 8th floor, and know what is happening behind those panes of glass with their partially drawn vertical blinds without feeling sick. About how well I am doing now. I guess I need to qualify that with mostly. I am mostly over the trauma, I am mostly doing well. It is just every once in a while something like a TV show, or a comment, or a glimse at an early picture can send me right back to where I had been.
The thing that is helping me the most is Azure's continued progress. She had her check up with the early intervention nurse yesterday who had given us a test to complete with her. I was concerned only with the communication since she is not saying the ma-ma, da-da, ga-ga sounds they asked about. The nurse told me this was no problem since she is quite verbal and saying the vowel sounds (vowels are more important than consonants apparently). She said, "She isn't delayed in anything!" My beautiful, brilliant, getting-more-mobile-every-minute daughter no longer needs early intervention services because there is nowhere to intervene. She is right on target for her corrected age. Could she need help in the future? Sure, maybe. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Right now, she is perfect. I keep telling people she wasn't premature, she was advanced placement! (She IS descended from a Nobel Prize winner afterall!)
She is helping me to heal. She is saving me yet again.