The next few days were kind of a blur. Jamal and I took lots of naps and walks and watched a lot of movies. I was completely exhausted both emotionally and physically. It felt strange going out anywhere. In a way I felt like I was walking around with a tattoo on my forehead. I am certain no one could tell but it felt strange and I felt different.
Friday morning I woke up to find that my milk had come in. This was by far the most difficult part of everything we went through and I felt very emotional about it. With being 5 months pregnant I was kind of at the cusp of this happening. Some women do and some women don't. They didn't tell me to expect this in the hospital and I definitely wasn't expecting it.
I decided to go back to work on Monday because unfortunately the day that I found out was the first day that my spring intern had started. I had left her at a school when I ran over to my doctors appointment the Tuesday before and I never went back to pick her up. Luckily my amazing boss figured it out and rescued her but her car keys and phone were locked in my desk at work. I had the keys around my neck at the hospital. I felt like I needed to go back to help direct her and make sure she was having a decent learning experience. I also was looking forward to returning to some sense of being normal and having a structured schedule. In retrospect I shouldn't have gone back so soon.
Tuesday we went in for our follow-up appointment with my midwife. She checked me out and made sure that everything was going back to normal. She had also gotten ahold of the pathology report from the physical examination of the body and gave us a copy.
Our baby was a little boy. Neither Jamal and I thought about or cared enough in the hospital to go exploring. Our little baby was so sweet and delicate I didn't want to start pulling it's legs apart and seeking out information that didn't really matter. He had no physical abnormalities whatsoever however the pathology report did indicate that the placenta had some features which maybe indicative of a "Partial Molar Pregnancy." (This is very different than a plain old Molar Pregnancy) They decided to go ahead and do a ploidy study which figures out how many sets of chromosomes the baby has. We had to meet with the OB Gyn in order to get the information from that test. It felt really nice to have some answers.
On Thursday I spent the day at work feeling extremely ill. I could tell something was up but didn't really know what. When I got home I took my temperature and it was 99.4.... and hour later it had jumped to 100.9. My discharge information from the hospital said that if I have a temperature over 101 degrees I needed to go to the ER immediately due to risks of infection. Because I am stubborn, I decided to call instead. They transferred me to three separate people who all agreed that I needed to go in ASAP. So I cried and we went. I got poked and prodded by everyone and their uncle in the ER that night and had just about as many pelvic exams as a normal lady has in her lifetime. They also did chest x-rays and drew about a quart of blood.... well maybe not THAT much ;). They checked for everything and it came back normal. The only thing that was low was my potassium level. I was discharged around 1:00 in the morning and we got home and to bed around 2:00. I took that Friday off and made an earlier follow-up with the OB Gyn on Monday morning.
I spent the entire day Friday and Saturday fighting fevers of 103+ and a massive headache. They told me I only needed to come back to the ER if they stayed elevated with Tylenol or if it went up to 104. I just slept and slept and slept. Sunday I was feeling better.
Monday morning we went to see the doctor. She had the results from the ploidy study which we were very excited to hear. The baby had three sets of chromosomes rather than two. There was two from Jamal and one from me. This is the diagnosing feature of the "Partial Molar Pregnancy" that the physical exam results had indicated could have been the problem. My egg was fertilized by not just one but TWO sperm. In order for this to happen, it has to happen at the same exact instant because as soon as a sperm penetrates the egg it causes a chemical reaction which is supposed to prevent that from happening. The pregnancy was actually doomed from the start and there was absolutely nothing that would have prevented the outcome we experienced. Most of the time the pregnancies will end on their own earlier because the babies have severe abnormalities as they develop and the body recognizes it. Fortunately (or unfortunately) and our baby showed no signs of abnormalities and the placenta was almost normal except for the maternal side that had a few abnormal attachments to the uterus. Ultrasounds can normally pick up on the fact that something is wrong because the baby is abnormal and the placenta has cysts on it. That was not the case for us.
The baby tricked everyone. :)
Evidently the baby grew perfectly despite having multiple sets of directions until a point where either the baby's body realized or my body realized that something was not right and the directions were screwed up.
When Jamal and I were first married, I used to become paralyzed with fear over the fact that inevitably we would be separated at some point in our lives. One of us would die before the other one and someone would be left behind. I carried around a lot of fear of the potential grief that I might experience someday until one day I realized that despite the potential for loss and grief, I would never give up things we were experiencing in that moment. Would losing him make the time we spent together not worth spending? Absolutely not.
I say that only because I would not go back and change this experience. Does losing the baby make any of the excitement and joy we experienced null and void? I say absolutely not. I only had a finite amount of time being this baby's mother in this world. In the few short months we spent together, we worked two jobs, went swimming, hiked, played with his cousin Eliana (and her bunny Sugar), laughed with our family, played games, went for walks, was greeted by fifty 5 year olds screaming, 'Ms. Black is having a baby' as they attacked me in order to feel my tummy, visited all of it's living great-grandparents, listened to it's daddy play the guitar, and ate yummy food. We lived. Am I completely sad that things didn't turn out differently? Absolutely! I would have chosen a different outcome if I could create my own reality. Have I cried until my eyeballs felt like they would explode? Absolutely. I feel sad because I miss the baby and I realize I will never experience the physical relationship that I expected... not because I feel a desperate sense of loss. I don't feel bad for myself or Jamal because there are many people that have gone through similar situations or far worse. I never had to make a decision about terminating a pregnancy or carry around the stress of knowing that my baby would be born with physical or mental abnormalities. I never had to watch my baby die. I feel so incredibly grateful for the way things played out.
I don't know how else to say it....
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