Photoessay #1179 - Surprise!

Because of the snow, my GAB (Guided Autobiography group) and Memoir class met on the same day. I suggested 'Surprise!' as our next topic. As I walked out of Third Place Books, I decided that I would write about the huge surprise regarding pregnancy with Naomi.

That night, we got an assignment to do some mini-workshops, some shorter pieces. The first one due quite soon. I'll do the same piece for both.

WARNING: There are some OB/GYN references in this piece. So don't read it if it's going to make you uncomfortable.


Surprise!

I glumly sat in the clinic waiting room squirming in my uncomfortable chair barely glancing at the magazines with news about the Berlin wall falling and Roger Rabbit on the cover. My husband, Dennis was with me. They had told me to bring somebody to drive me home. My 3 kids, ages 3, 4, 7 were at my neighbors. I had been bleeding weird, I knew it wasn't a period as I generally was amenorrheic. Something just wasn't right.

We just had returned from a vacation to California. If you can call taking 3 little kids on a road trip in the heat of summer on a very limited budget a vacation. The doctor said that if the bleeding didn't stop, I needed to come in for a D&C. I was a little vague on what that meant but it sounded painful.

My husband's good about this sort of thing. He would do whatever I asked. For me. For any of the kids. Soon they called me in and they gave me one of those printed cotton gowns. You know the ones. You had to take everything off and put them on, never quite sure if they tied in front or back. Either way was lousy. Just part of the deal, I told myself.

The nurse did the preliminaries, the doctor came in. So, here we go. My feet were in the stirrups, the doctor's in place, her hands were raised, ready to go.

Something was on my mind. "Would this make a difference if I was pregnant?" I asked.

She immediately put down the instruments. "Yes" she replied, "It would make a big difference. Are you pregnant?"

"I dunno," I mumbled. And I didn't. But I just had this feeling.

She picked up the chart and scanned through it. "You did have a pregnancy test a few months ago and it and the results were negative,"

Yes, I did remember that. My husband and I spent a fair amount of time doing infertility treatments. Dennis, himself, is an adult adoptee and he felt good about adoption as an option for family building. We looked into it and our first two children, Danny and Susanna were infant placements from Korea. In some kind of crazy (so we hadn't really figured it out, ok?) turn of events I had unexpectantly become pregnant with Ilana right when Susanna turned a year old. And we were so busy with three little kids and, since I was still largely in denial about that whole first pregnancy, we really hadn't been paying attention to that birth control thing. Because it would never happen again.

But that spring, I had felt funny, the same way as when I was pregnant the first time. Since I didn't have periods, I couldn't use that as an indicator. I had even packed up the younger kids and gone to the neighborhood clinic for a blood test. Results: negative. No problem, I thought, I'm just out of my mind.

"I know, I know," I answered the doctor. "But my stomach is kind of sticking out."

"I'm thinking," said the doctor pausing "why don't we do another pregnancy test just to be sure."

"OK, yeah, I think that's a good idea", I answered beginning to feel a little worried. "My husband's already here and we already have a babysitter, so why not?"

So I peed in the cup and everybody went away leaving me alone in my freezing gown sitting on the hard metal table. The linoleum floor, the counter with medical supplies, the fan whirring.

After quite a while, the doctor (along with the nurse, the med tech and who knew who else) burst into the room. "LOOOK!!" she screeched, "Look at this!" and she put some round thing in front of my face. It had a 'plus sign' on it.

"What? What does it mean?" I didn't know what I was looking at.

"You're PREGNANT!" she shouted. "You were pregnant this whole time! I am SO glad that we found out!" Me too. Later I will realize that we were seconds away from an unintended second trimester abortion.

Somehow Dennis was in the room now. Everybody talking at once. I stared at the round pregnancy test. That's one thing I'd learned about having lots of kids, your affect went way down. You didn't even notice most things. Who had time? Who cared what you thought anyway?

The doctor considered "But how far along ARE you?"

"I must have been pregnant when I took that test. It doesn't make any sense for me to feel pregnant enough to take the test and then get pregnant later" In my world, this seemed logical.

"If that's true, then you would be more than 4 months along!" she sputtered. "And why are you bleeding?"

The doctor's now thinking referrals; ultrasound, high risk pregnancy, the works.
Medical issues aside, now I'm pregnant? Of course, I was pregnant before I walked into that clinic. Dennis and I were going to have a fourth child? We're stunned but happy maybe. On the way home, Dennis kept mumbling "Where can I get a car that seats 8?"

The following day I did go have the ultrasound. Indeed, I was in my second trimester. I could see the baby on the imaging machine.

Shocked, I talked to that tiny image. "I didn't know, baby! Really I didn't know you were even there!" I didn't want to think what would have happened if I hadn't stopped the process, don't EVEN go there.

Eventually they decided that I was likely bleeding from an abruption and I would either miscarry or not. Go home and rest, they said. Right, what about the three other children?? But I did and I delivered my youngest, Naomi 3 weeks early (though nobody really knew the due date, did they?) on December 16, 1989.

No first trimester problems for me. I just spaced the whole thing out.

I should have known though. I'm not that fond of peanut butter but during my first pregnancy I ate it by the spoonful. And recently that darn peanut butter looked so so good.