Suspension

I'm sorry for the lack of posting. Here's why I've been unable to write recently.

For the last week and a half or so, I've felt suspended. Like I was running on a treadmill and somehow I got pulled off and remained stopped, hanging in the air above the still-moving treadmill. Frozen. Not twisting and turning, not moving at all, just- suspended.

Thursday before Labor Day, we went in for the ultrasound follow up that I wrote about a few weeks ago. We saw the baby duly wiggling around, and the doctor came in and looked at it, and then said, here's a towel to clean up, and when you're ready, come sit in this office next door so we can discuss your test results.

I was happy and bubbly, excited about having seen the baby move around so much, marveling about the way we could see tiny hands and feet. Bruce was more nervous and I kept telling him to relax. Finally he started to make me nervous, and so we waited anxiously for the doctor.

The doctor came in and began talking, and it was a bit of a blur thereafter. Something about abnormal blood work. The hormones they had tested for- one was far too high, one was far too low. The numbers he was quoting jumped out at me. Normal chance of having a Down Syndrome baby for someone of my age and no risk factors: something like one in 450. Based on my blood, Segundo's chances of being a Down Syndrome baby: one in 5. You don't realize how 80% can fail to comfort until you're in that scenario.

I asked some questions and probably looked fairly composed as we discussed the options for further testing to get a definitive diagnosis. Then I went back to the office and started reading about Down Syndrome, and the testing, and people who had terminated their pregnancies for medical reasons. I started to cry, thinking that I was being selfish for not wanting to have a Down Syndrome baby, but remembering the way I saw its legs kicking on the ultrasound that morning. If we chose to terminate, I couldn't deny that I was killing a living baby, one with tiny feet and hands and a beating heart.

I pulled myself together and resolved to think about it no more until a diagnosis was received. After all, I was imagining killing my baby after having only heard odds, odds that objectively weren't that bad. It was no more than numbers. Cross the bridge when it is in front of you.

Bruce and I discussed our options for testing and decided to have a chorionic villius sampling done, rather than an amniocentesis. Despite a relatively higher rate of miscarriage from the test, we went with CVS because it would be done more quickly. As I lay in bed that night after having had the initial testing, I told Bruce that I could feel myself pulling away from the baby, resenting it even, at least trying not to think about it too much. Amniocentesis can't be done until at least 16 weeks, and I was only 13 weeks. I didn't want to spend that kind of time feeling so alienated from Segundo. Also, and this is terrible, but if the news was bad and we decided to terminate, I wanted to be able to do it before I could feel the baby moving regularly. I know: I'm a coward.

Not that we had decided anything. No matter how much we talked about it, I knew I would only be able to truly decide when faced with the actual situation. We had our ideas, our theories, but I knew that I would not be fully committed until I knew what I was committing to.

The CVS was scheduled for last Friday.

We went out of town over Labor Day weekend, to Gatlinburg, Tennessee, after first dropping Caetlin off with my parents. I stayed nauseated the whole three hour drive to my parents' house, my stomach roiling. I ate little when I got there, and the next morning, breakfast didn't go down well either. We had a two and a half hour drive to Gatlinburg, which ended up taking 6 hours because of a wrong turn that sent us an hour out of our way. And then because of the traffic around Sevierville and Pigeon Forge. As we crawled along at 5 miles an hour, we looked at all the flashing signs, the tourist traps, the ticky tacky. We had no idea it was a countrified Las Vegas. We hated it.

We finally got to the bed and breakfast where I collapsed, grateful to be lying on something that wasn't moving. We went out to dinner, crawling along Gatlinburg's ridiculously crowded main drag. We had a 45 minute wait for dinner, during which time we window shopped but really I went from bench to bench, trying to avoid the cigarette smoke and the smell of food. I made it three bites into my salad before leaving to go lie across the back seat of the car. I had Bruce wrap my food up, convinced I was just having some severe pregnancy issues. I ended up throwing it away two days later.

I spent the next two days trying not to barf with mixed success, sleeping a lot, and occasionally sitting on the toilet and feeling my insides empty out. I got to read a lot, which was the only benefit of the "vacation." Jello and crackers became my only real sustenance (I weigh less now than I have in the past three years). Yes, I had the same intestinal bug that made Caetlin have runny diapers and no appetite for a week. And made Bruce ralph for about 24 hours and also do the toilet thing for another few days. The timing was impeccable.

I was feeling a bit better on Monday morning as we made our way back to my parents' house to pick up Caetlin, and then back to the ATL. However, not the kind of better that 5.5 hours in the car couldn't take care of! Bruce and I had dinner plans on Monday night that we scrapped, mostly because I couldn't face getting back into the car. Even without the illness, we did a lot of driving over the weekend and I just reached my limit.

The week passed in a fog, waiting for the CVS. I arranged to take Friday off, since I knew rest would be recommended. I continued to improve, but I still, even now, don't have a great appetite. I moved through my routines as if they had suddenly been drained of color. It didn't help that I had next to nothing to do at work. I spent my time alternating between reading about CVS (odds of miscarriage from the procedure varied, but my doctor had given them as 1 in 150) and trying to think of anything besides pregnancy, Segundo, CVS, miscarriage, the whole shebang.

Friday we drove to the clinic, and I showed up with a full bladder, as instructed. After a lengthy ultrasound, in which the tech determined the baby wasn't too big to do the test, during which we watched the baby wiggling, and spinning and kicking, and showing us hands with 5 fingers and feet with 5 toes, the doctor pronounced that I needed to let my bladder fill a bit more. And then it was time.

I was undressed from the waist down. The ultrasound transducer was on my stomach the whole time. When the doctor pinched my cervix open, it hurt, sharply, stung enough to bring tears to my eyes. The catheter through that opening into my- Segundo's- placenta felt like nothing while I tried not to watch the wiggling baby, who appeared curious about what was going on, turning its head toward the cervix and the invasive catheter. The doctor grabbed a sample of the villius- small fingers of flesh on the surface of the placenta- and then I had my body back, intact, and could empty my filled to pain bladder. I had to get a shot, something to do with Rh factor in my blood versus the baby's. We were told to expect preliminary results late Monday or Tuesday, provided Hurricane Hanna managed to miss the lab in Tampa.

I was told to watch for spotting and cramping, and that a little of both were normal, but a lot of either was pretty bad. I spent the day in bed, working, since the only time I could manage to get anyone in the firm to pay attention to me was the day I just wanted to hibernate in bed.

The weekend was pretty normal, except that I spent as much time as I possibly could in bed. I still had that feeling of almost sleepwalking through everything. Caetlin was pretty needy, in part I'm sure because she had to go to daycare for the first time on Friday (her nanny had the day off Friday and Monday), and she had been not a little freaked by the whole thing. (She had a much better day on Monday.) We did the usual- park, out to breakfast, more park. Sunday we went shopping. And we waited.

All day Monday, every time Bruce saw me, he asked me if I had heard anything, because of course I would keep it all to myself. I was oddly calm when the phone rang and I saw the clinic's number pop up.

It was the same tech who assisted with the procedure- I remembered her name, since she had been so nice. When we hung up, I walked down the hall to Bruce's office on tottering legs, with shaking hands.

Everything's okay, I said. And it's another girl.

And with that, suddenly I dropped back onto the treadmill and began to run again, unaware of how I had been suspended until I no longer was.