Chapter 225: June 4th
June 4th Jimmy and Breena had their Nuchal Fold test
scheduled for the late afternoon.
Tim and Abby took off for it, too.
If there was bad news, they wanted to be there, able to
comfort right away.
And if it was good news, well, that's even better when shared.
 |
| Same place/different place |
So, instead of sitting in their own OB's office (next
appointment, tomorrow afternoon) they're in a different OB's office.
Tim's thinking there's got to be a warehouse somewhere that
sells OB office waiting rooms. The shape's a little different, and the colors
are taupe and mauve instead of taupe and cream, but this is pretty much the
exact same place, down to the same magazines.
"You'd think an OB's office would have better
chairs," Abby says to him.
They're on this little sofa-like thing. It might be a love
seat or a settee, Tim doesn't know precisely what the difference between those
things is. She's sitting next to him, back to him, as he rubs gently over her
low back and hips. They've been hurting on and off all day, and usually sitting
down helps with that, but today's just being obnoxious and it's not really
helping at all.
It felt like a lot of waiting. It always does.
"You think they're okay?" Tim asks her.
"Yeah." She squeezes his hand, and maybe she's not
sounding all that certain, after all, it didn't seem like it took this long
when they got their Nuchal Fold test done, but…
They've got to be okay. They just have to. Please!
When Jimmy and Breena came out, all smiles and soul deep
relief, Tim felt the grin spread across his face, and saw Abby hop (well, if
she was less pregnant it would have been a hop, it was more of a lurch) up
enthusiastically to hug them both.
When they got home, after a very happy, very fun, almost
giddy dinner out, she flipped on the TV and settled in front of it, kneeling
behind the exercise ball, leaning against it, rocking gently.
"I just can't seem to shake this," she said,
forearms crossed over the top of the ball, her head against them. Yes, dinner
had been a blast, but her back just kept aching. Not all the time, but enough
so that it was really annoying.
"You're pregnant."
She just looks up from the ball at him, flashing her so done
with you look. "Thanks, that's something I somehow wasn't aware of."
Tim realized that might have been unnecessarily poking the porcupine,
so he retreats. "Sorry. Captain Obvious here. You want me to get you some
Tylenol?"
"Yes."
He was back a minute later with a glass of ice water and two
Tylenol. "What do you want to watch?"
"Don't care. Just want to veg."
"Okay. Want me to rub your back some more?"
"Please."
He sat cross-legged behind her, pressing his palms into her
sacrum.
She sighed. "That helps. It's been coming and going all
day."
"Umm…" He's not really listening, just hearing her
voice, paying attention to his hands on her skin, finding the tight spots and
working on them.
"Like…" Her voice trailed off as he hit something
especially good. "Oh, that's nice."
He smiled, happy to have found a good spot.
"It's not like it's knives in my back or anything. I
mean, when I'd get working or paying attention to something else, it'd kind of
go away, but it just kept coming back."
He nodded. He'd had that kind of pain before. Low grade yuck
that you can banish to the background by keeping your brain busy and then as
soon as you don't have something else to pay attention to it jumps back to the
foreground.
"A few times, I'd be loading up samples, and I'd have
to stop for a minute, but then it'd ease up, and I'd go back to it… Oh, holy
shit…"
"Abby?" He was getting a little worried because
that 'Oh, holy shit' didn't sound happy.
"I am too stupid to let out of the house. I'm pregnant.
With low back pain. That's been coming and going all day."
Tim's eyes went wide as what that was dawned on him.
"You mean contractions."
"Yeah. Sometimes you feel them in your low back."
"Well, how many, how long, when?" He sounded
awfully panicky as he says that.
"I don't know. All day?"
He leaped up, getting ready to grab the go bag and head
directly to the hospital at whatever the highest rate of speed his car can
obtain is.
"I don't think we need to race to the hospital this
second."
He looked at her like she's insane. "I think we do. I
think we need to be there right now!"
"You remember Dr. Draz saying that eventually I'd start
to get some contractions, and that that was when we should make sure that we
had an appointment for the next day?"
Okay, yeah, he did remember her saying that. And they do, in
fact, have an appointment for the next day. But he was under the impression she
meant something different by 'some contractions' than what Abby's been having,
so he says, "Yeah. Braxton-Hicks contractions. That's like one here, one
there, maybe a few more and then they stop. Not on and off all day."
Abby thought about that for a second, and seemed to be
focusing on how long she's been feeling this way. "Okay, good point, help
me up."
"Thank you."
They live three miles from St. Francis Hospital. Normal
drive time (assuming you follow the speed limits) is about seventeen minutes.
Tim got them there so fast Abby hadn't even gotten off of holding for the OB
that was on call with their practice.
So, it was about nine seconds after walking in that chatting
on the phone became something of a moot point, because they were able to see
Dr. Draz face to face.
"Lucky thing I'm on call for tonight. Tell me what's
going on."
So Abby did.
"How often have they been happening?"
"I don't really know. Didn't put it together until five
minutes ago. But, maybe three times an hour for like the last eight hours,
maybe all day."
"Okay. Let's get you in a gown and checked out."
This time Dr. Draz did the ultrasound herself, and a quick internal
exam as well, took off her gloves, then spent another moment feeling Abby's
belly.
"You're at negative two station," she said as she
helped Abby sit up. "Which means Kelly's as far away from the cervix as
she can get. Half-way effaced, so that means your cervix is thinning out, and
you're one centimeter dilated. My guess is this is just the starting round.
Sort of like when you turn the key and the engine revs a few times but nothing
happens. Your placenta is still right near the cervix." She checked her
notes. "You're at thirty-five weeks and four days right now, and we'd
really like to see Kelly stay in there until thirty-seven weeks, thirty-eight
is better."
"Well, yeah, it probably is, but Kelly seems to have a
different opinion about that," Abby said.
"And well she might. But my guess, having seen this
roughly seventeen thousand times, is that this is going to peter out. Tomorrow
there'll be no contractions. Usually the baby's all the way down before your
body gets really serious about trying to get her out. This is just a warm up
round."
"So what does that mean?" Tim asks.
"It means you're going home. It means you're going to
go to sleep. It means…" she flips through her calendar, "that unless
the contractions pick up before then, come 8:00 AM on June 18th you two are
going to come in here, and I'm going to deliver Kelly."
"It means a c-section," Abby said, very sad.
"Yes. She's probably about four, four and a half pounds
now, and your placenta hasn't moved. It's not going to. With where your placenta
is, this kind of warm up labor isn't a major risk for hemorrhage. Real
contractions, the kind you need to push a baby out, they are."
"Okay, what else?" Tim asked.
"Pelvic rest from now until then. No sex." She
looks at Tim and decides that extra clarification is probably in order.
"No orgasms at all. No strenuous activity. No mildly exerting activity. If
you don't have to do it, don't do it."
"Can I work?"
"Can you do your work sitting down? You don't have to
spend all day, every day lying down, but I don't want you up and walking around
all the time, too. So, it's an honest question, if you go to work, will you
stay sitting down? If you can say yes to that, then you can go to work."
"How much walking around can I do?"
Dr. Draz thinks about it, realizing that if she comes up
with a specific number Tim will get Abby a pedometer to measure it, making sure
she takes not one step more than that, but if she's vague about it it'll just
panic them worse. "Call it a thousand steps a day, give or take a bit. And
the lower you can get that number the better, and no, days aren't cumulative.
You do seven hundred steps one day, you do not get to do thirteen hundred the
next.
"How about the pool?"
"If you mean, 'Can I go to the pool and lay around in
the water feeling cool and not hurting?' Yes. Go, do, enjoy. Anything that
helps you stay comfortable is a good thing. If you mean, 'Can I dive and swim
laps,' no.
"If your water breaks, you come in. If you have more
than three hours in a row of contractions every ten minutes, you come in. If
you start bleeding, you come in, immediately."
"Okay."
Dr. Draz checked her calendar again. "We've got an
appointment tomorrow afternoon. We'll cancel that. We'll schedule for the 8th,
if that works for you?"
They both nod. Like either of them is going to say,
"Nope, too busy. We'll just skip it and hope for the best."
"We'll do another one on the 12th, and one more on the
17th, and if everything remains on track, 'round about 10:00 AM on the 18th
you'll be holding Kelly."
That takes Tim's breath away. Just that level of specific,
this is going to happen when and how, hit him really hard. He's holding onto
Abby, and squeezes her tight while inhaling fast.
"Wow."
Dr. Draz grins. "Yeah. So get dressed. Go home. Rest.
Come back if the contractions get regular. It's not likely, but it's possible
this time tomorrow we'll have Kelly out."
The ride home is quiet. Very quiet.
They get to a stop sign and Tim gently strokes her face. She
turns into the caress and kisses his palm.
"How's your back feeling?"
"Just regular sore right now."
"Okay."
Two more minutes and they're home. He crosses to her side of
the car to open the door for her and give her a hand out, but leaves her
maternity bag in the car, not feeling very certain about the whole go to sleep
and everything will just keep going on like before thing.
By that point it really was go to bed time. So they headed
to their bedroom, and started the traditional nightly routine of settling down.
He knows this flavor of silence. She's scared. Really
scared.
They get into bed and he curls around her, holding her
close, her back snug against his chest, his arm under her neck, and his other
hand resting on Kelly's baby bump. "Talk to me?"
"I'm so scared."
"I know." He kisses her shoulder. Having a pretty
deep basket of irrational fears of his own, he's not about to call her out on
hers. But he doesn't want her panicked, either. "But it's going to be all
right."
"You don't know that! And even if it is 'all right,'
we're still defining all right as Dr. Draz slicing me open."
"I know."
There's anger and irritation under the fear when she says,
"And look, I know why we're doing this. I get it. I understand that it's
safer to go in, get her out, and get everything taken care of fast. I get not
wanting to have uncontrollable bleeding. Okay, I get it. I do. But I'm still
scared. And I hate being scared because it's stupid, but I'm still scared and
it's still my body that's going to get cut open. It's my spine they're going to
shove a needle into. Something goes wrong with this, I may never walk again,
may never feel anything below my chest. Lots of women end up with pain shooting
down one leg for the rest of their lives after a slightly messed up epidural
and a really messed up one..." She shakes her head, and he squeezed her a
little tighter.
Tim thought for a moment, holding her, stroking her stomach,
chin resting on her shoulder. "General anesthetic?"
She sounds annoyed, not at him, mostly at the idea that
there really isn't a better option than an epidural. "More risk for Kelly.
The epidural is safer for both of us, and I'll come out of it faster… I know
that… But I've still got to sit there and let them shove a needle into my
spine. And if I'm not perfectly still or if something gets messed up…"
"I'll be with you."
"Not for that part. Before and after, yeah. But they
don't let the Dad in for the epidural."
"Oh." He hadn't known that, and the idea of having
to sit out there and wait while someone sticks a needle into Abby's spine hits
him pretty hard, too. He's realizing that's not going to be a fun couple of
minutes for either of them.
She seems to understand him finally really getting that and
says, "Yeah."
He's not sure what to say, so he holds onto her, snuggling
her close to him, and hopes his touch is comforting.
"At least we know what's going to happen."
She shrugs at that. Yes, that's a bit of a comfort. Instead
of a huge host of unknowns, for example trying a vaginal delivery and ending up
hemorrhaging is now off the list of potential outcomes, there's a pretty
specific list of unknowns, and a good, hard deadline two weeks from now.
"And we know it's not going to happen any later than
the 18th."
She nods.
"Get to see her in not more than two weeks. This time,
two weeks from now, we'll be in the hospital, holding her. Maybe you'll be
nursing. Maybe we'll be snoozing. But this time two weeks from now, she'll be
out."
That gets a little smile. "I know. And I want it. And I
can't wait. And I'm still scared."
He kisses her again. "I'd make it better or take it
from you if I could."
"I know."
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