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| Our Tiny Dancer in person- 1 week old |
Saturday, March 14, 2015 marked the eight years anniversary out of a very dark cloud. Eight years past a battle for my life.
My pregnancy seemed normal enough at the beginning. A plus sign showed up in the “indicator window” of a home pregnancy test. We weren't trying for a baby and I hadn't really expected to see a plus sign. My husband Aaron, who was my boyfriend at the time, went into a daze and repeated several times “What do we do now?” He was so shocked that he tripped three times in about three minutes and cut his foot! We were pretty stunned, but our desire to have a child had been steadily increasing over the time we had been together, making the plus sign a happy sight.
In my case the nausea started at week five, around the middle of July 2006 but it seemed like normal morning sickness. We went on vacation around week seven. We cut our vacation short because I was so nauseated that I couldn't get out of bed. I attempted to go to work around week eight and didn’t make it through even one day. I was throwing up so much I couldn't drive myself home. I pulled over in a parking lot about two blocks from the office and had a friend come get me.
That was the last thing I did until October of that year. My life became nothing but nausea and vomiting. I couldn’t even hold down water. I lost over seven percent of my body weight in less than two months. I thought I might lose my baby. I thought I might die.
I think I am ready to write about it. I wrote about it while I was pregnant and then I stopped. After my daughter Aden was born, I didn't want to speak of it, write about it, think of it, or remember it. I wanted to have my baby in my arms, drink water, eat whatever I wanted and never, ever vomit again. My little girl turned eight this year. She is a beautiful, glorious girl. She is smart, sweet, athletic and the spitting image of her dad. We had a celebration with our friends and family. Aden was really excited because she had a pool party and her best friend was there. She didn't understand how much of a celebration this really was for me.
Not only was this a celebration of Aden's eight years of life, it was a celebration of living through the trauma that was my pregnancy. It was not just a celebration of creating life, it was a celebration of not dying and not losing my baby. It was a war against my body as it turned against me. Any joy and excitement was stripped, replaced with fear, nausea, vomiting, helplessness and grief. It was a daily battle to survive and grow a baby. This battle cost me 9 months of my life, $43,000 in debt, healthy teeth, the ability to eat entire categories of food, future children and a whole host of other things have been etched into myself.
It is eight years past Hyperemesis Gravidarum (HG). HG is a severe illness that strikes less than 1% of pregnant women. The Hyperemesis Education and Research Foundation describes HG as a severe form of nausea and vomiting in pregnancy. It is unrelenting, excessive pregnancy-related nausea and vomiting that prevents adequate intake of food and fluids. If this disease is severe or not sufficiently treated, it includes: loss of more than 5% of pre-pregnancy body weight, dehydration and production of ketones, malnutrition, metabolic imbalances and difficulty with daily activities. It usually resolves by the second trimester but often lasts the entire nine months. This disease received a much needed increase in awareness when Kate Middleton, Duchess of Cambridge was diagnosed. She suffered from HG during the first trimester of both her pregnancies. Thankfully her symptoms lessened during the second trimester of both pregnancies.
In the beginning, Aaron was the only light in the darkness created by HG. We had been together only a year when I got pregnant. He did the grocery shopping, cleaned the house, took care of the dog, paid the bills, took care of the details of my emergency medical leave from work, held my hair while I threw up, helped me take showers, and went to the store dozens of times a week to try to find something, anything I might hold down. He held me when I cried and cried and cried. When I joined an online support group for women with HG, I was shocked to find that many of these women were abandoned by their significant others; often emotionally and sometimes literally. I have very little memory of those first few months of my pregnancy other than unending nausea, vomiting and utter desperation. However, I did know that we would get through this dark cloud together.
Somewhere in the haze of the first trimester, when the disease was at its full power, we had an ultrasound. The doctor wanted to determine if I had a single fetus or multiples. Women carrying multiples have HG more frequently than women carrying single babies. This was not the case for me. I had one tiny baby dancing all over my womb. Aaron called it “Tiny Dancer” from then on. I hung on to the image of Tiny Dancer, because it reminded me I wasn't just sick, I was pregnant. I began to see a tiny sparkle of the silver lining.
Despite this, I felt unable to bond with my baby. My version of bonding was ensuring that I didn't die, didn't lose the baby and didn't hate the baby. It is difficult to say which of those tasks was most difficult. No baby equals no illness. Many women with HG feel resentment and anger towards the developing baby. Then they feel horrible guilt because what kind of woman hates her own child? My strategy for dealing with this was to hate my body and my malfunctioning reproductive system instead. If my daughter could have been gestated in another woman, that woman would have only a 1% chance of being sick because it is the mother's biology that causes the problem, not the fetus. It was my body that had the problem. It was my body that responded to pregnancy hormones as if they were poison. It was my body that was not suitable. This strategy allowed me to keep the feelings of anger and desperation separate from my daughter.
Medication for pregnant women is a problem. There was no medication that was known to help this disease that the doctor could say was safe for my baby. But by the end of the first trimester we were desperate. My doctor prescribed Phenergan, a medication used to treat allergies and motion sickness and stated that there probably wouldn't be any side effects that would harm the baby. However, there could be harm to the baby if I continued being dehydrated and malnourished. We decided the risk was worth it because I truly believed I might die if I continued with such severe symptoms.
Blessedly, the Phenergan eventually stopped the vomiting. The only side effect for me was incredible drowsiness. I slept so much that I lost a few months. The only thing I remember is Aaron waking me up to give me medication and spoon some food into my mouth. The nausea also lessened several weeks later but only if I took my medication exactly on time, ate only “safe” foods and didn't overexert myself. While I was not completely well, I was able to gain weight and regain some strength.
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| Sonogram from October |
In October we had another sonogram to ensure the baby was developing normally. We received the happy news that not only did the baby look healthy, we were having a girl! The sonogram picture captured our baby girl's profile; she looked like her mama! And, I felt the baby move for the first time. There was a little bubble rolling back and forth across the inside of my abdomen. It was like a bubble of renewed hope and I caught sight of that sparkle again.
Glimpses of that sparkle is what kept me going. I carried wallet-sized pictures of the sonograms with me. I counted down pregnancy milestones such as having a “baby bump” or making it to 20 weeks. I celebrated small victories such as being able to sit outside or drink iced tea. I kept careful track of my baby's development and knew when she was getting eyelashes or developing hearing. Aaron and I became experts at manufacturing hope. I hoped that my symptoms would resolve by the end of the first trimester. When that didn't happen, I hoped that the medication would make me well again. When the medication failed to restore full functioning, I hoped what functioning I had was enough to get me through. I was simply determined to beat HG.
That was my life until my water broke around 6 am, March 14, 2007.
Had I not had HG, I might have contemplated alternative birthing options. HG removed all options, except delivering in a hospital. We thought I was strong enough to deliver without a Cesarean section, but that wasn't guaranteed. Many women with HG have C-sections due to weakness and malnourishment. I'd had 3 months to regain some strength after the worst of HG, but was by no means strong. I knew that HG would be directing my birthing experience.
Off we went, Aaron clad in his Homer Simpson pajamas. My contractions were slow to get going and after about 4 hours, we decided to administer Pitocin, a synthetic form of oxytocin used to induce labor. Then the contractions hit hard. I don't really remember much, except that all the information about handling pain I'd gotten from the child birth class was not enough to compensate for what my body had already endured. After an additional 6 hours of hard contractions, I had an epidural.
I started pushing at 11pm and I promptly vomited for the last time and cried. During the last part of my delivery, I said over and over “I am so done with this. I am so done with this. I am so done with this” as my mom, my mother-in-law and Aaron surrounded me. I was ready to have the final victory over HG and once they told me to push, I was going to push that baby out before the day was done. She was born 22 minutes later and the dark cloud we were living in disappeared.
Aden Elisabeth, born March 14, 2007 at 11:22 pm. 7 pounds, 7 ounces. 21 inches.
As I sit here writing this, I can hear the sound of my daughter laughing at silly cat videos on You Tube. Like her mama, Aden belly laughs until she can hardly breathe. When she is determined to solve a problem, she does not stop until it is done, just like her daddy. She loves hugs and hates washing her hair. She designs Lego projects in her imagination and makes them a reality. She loves science and nature.
It is hard to take a step back and see how this experience shaped me as a parent and shaped my relationship with my daughter. How much of my anxiety as a parent is because I almost wasn’t a parent? How much of my fierce protectiveness is due to the fierceness with which I fought for our lives? Are my hopes and dreams for her intensified because she is a battle hard won? I don’t have answers to these questions. What I do know is that this small girl, who was nearly the death of me, is now my life.
Watching her grow and develop into the amazing little person that she is today is a gift I didn't envision when I was fighting for our lives.
Best silver lining of my life.
