The Story of Keira, part 1

I've wanted to write out Keira and Brianna's birth stories for them for quite a while now, but with the imminent approach of Bebe'#3's arrival, I've realized that it didn't seem quite right to have her birth story written out before Keira and Brianna's. So, the next few weeks or so will be me writing out my girls' stories.

I had no idea how treasured a birth story was until I had my kids. But I know now when they snuggle in next to me and ask me to tell them about how they were born what a very special thing it is. It is THEIR story, and it is not exactly like anyone else's. Also, birth stories unite mothers in conversations the world over, and I just love that about them. 

Me, a few weeks before Keira was born.

This is Keira's story. 

Her story spans about the period of a month-just a bit less all total. And my plan is just to write it out from start to finish. It will be long and detailed and wordy, and no one should feel that they must read it. :-) It's for her, first of all.

When I think about it now, (It happened almost 8 years ago! How is that possible!!??!)  I realize how much growing Garrett and I did in that month--how dramatically we were thrown into the world of parenthood, how much God carried us through in so many ways. 

So much of it is a fog for me. Possibly a very self-centered one, if I'm completely honest, since I was miserable or at least very uncomfortable for a lot of it. I remember it with those moments of stark clarity that come in times of crisis or of beauty--that brilliantly seep through the cracks in the fog and shed a golden, lovely glow over it all. The things that memories are made of, where the fog fades into the background as a secondary part of the memory and the clear images of the moments become your recollection of the experience.

The time before her birth story starts takes on this rosy hue in my memory. Obviously, it's not like life was perfect. We still had jobs and bills and the usual stuff that every normal person deals with. But, in a "calm before the storm" sort of way, it was a time of fun, and anticipation and innocence. Realistically speaking, the pregnancy was relatively easy. I loved it. We were so excited and thrilled to start the adventure of parenting. We'd bought a condo before we knew we were pregnant, so the months of pregnancy were filled with moving in and getting settled. I had the additional stress of Type 1 Diabetes, and it definitely wasn't fun, but it was manageable. My office building was across the street from my diabetes nurse, and her and I got along great. So once a week I would pop over with my lunch and we'd eat lunch and go over my numbers and adjust as needed. I had AWESOME medical insurance through my job, so I had no co-pays for those appointments, and never once saw a bill for any of them.

As with every pregnancy after 30 weeks doctor visits become more frequent. For me, that meant that I was moved to twice-weekly non-stress tests. Weight, blood pressure, quick ultrasound for checking amniotic fluid levels, then a half hour with a heart monitor on the baby and a little clicker for me to record her movement on the same chart as her heartbeat would print out. These were also across the street from my office, so we set them up for Tuesdays and Fridays at lunchtime, and three times a week I'd eat my lunch whenever at my desk, and then head over for my non-stress tests or take my lunch to my diabetes nurse appointments. My boss was a really great guy. I loved working for him, and he was completely easy-going about me doing whatever I needed to do for these appointments. 

My due date for Keira was November 4, 2004.

My Friday-Before-Labor-Day non-stress test at 31 weeks,  1 day was textbook perfect. I had gained 16 pounds total--that becomes an important fact a little later in the story. :-) Labor Day weekend was fun. It was hot and beautiful, and we had friends visit from out of town with their two cute kiddos, so it was a lovely weekend. I may have felt a little weird here and there and my feet got a little swollen, but I brushed it off. I was pregnant after all, and it was warm so discomfort was bound to happen. 

Tuesday morning after Labor Day dawned sunshiney and beautiful. I was one of two Home Equity Loan Processors for a Credit Union, and we were wrapping up our CRAZY time of year, our Summer Loan Promotion. In preparation for me taking maternity leave in November, my co-worker was taking the week after Labor Day off, so I was on my own for that week. We were the only two people who knew how to do our jobs, start-to-finish.

I went in for my Tuesday 31 weeks, 5 days non-stress test at lunch time.  My blood pressure: alarmingly high--135/85. My blood pressure is ALWAYS freakishly low. (Last appointment I had it was 100/68. This is in the normal range for me. It really freaks nurses out.) I'd never seen a number like that before and couldn't really wrap my head around it. The nurse gave me a concerned look, and started asking questions. Am I swollen? Have I had headaches? Am I stressed? Did I just run? I explained that I was on my own at work this week--maybe that could account for it? I hadn't thought myself stressed, I thrived on the pressure of it all, but maybe it was affecting my blood pressure. We agreed to do the rest of the non-stress test since it consisted of me resting in a dark room, and check my blood pressure again afterwards. The second blood pressure check was the same. The nurse took my charts and printouts and everything to a doctor on duty, and within just a few minutes he was sitting next to me. He explained, very seriously, that I needed to go on bed rest immediately. Also, he was ordering a battery of tests for me, and we were going to get the results back and send my file for review down to St. Vincent's Hospital in Portland where they have teams of Perinatologists. 

I'm spluttering at this point. BED REST? Seriously? I am THE ONLY PERSON who can do my job (properly) this week. My co-worker is in the middle of the Cascade Mountain Range somewhere with her dirt bike, no way to contact her whatsoever, and I have an entire large credit union of loan officers and their customers banking on me getting their loans processed and funded. I can't NOT work this week. Just the thought of it is sending my blood pressure skyrocketing. He patiently listens to me, and says, "Well, this is your health, this is your baby's health. This is what you have to do. They'll have to figure something out. I'm giving you an HOUR, NO MORE to get whatever straightened out at work, and then you go home and lay down and don't get up." I'm in shocked disbelief. Since the pregnancy had been mostly stress free so far, nothing had prepared me for this. I feel fine, I'm not really comprehending it, and all I can think about is my job--not doing it is the only thing that stresses me out, and I'm in a complete panic over it. How in the world am I going to tell my boss? I walk out of the office in a daze, and head for the lab.

They draw 9 vials of blood, a new record for me. Yes, I do keep track. You get enough blood drawn in your lifetime, after a while odd things amuse you. I take home a red bucket--I'm officially instructed to start collecting my pee immediately for 24 hours to test my kidneys.

I go across the street and into work. I have an hour, and quite frankly that is such a ridiculous period of time for my current workload, I don't even know what to do with it. I go into my supervisor's office, and sit down, and explain, and watch as the horror creeps across his face and he starts scratching his head, and looking at my workload for the week and doing his best to formulate some sort of plan. We head for my desk to attempt to figure out how to do it all, and he calls in a very knowledgeable loan officer who knows our Home Equity Product as back-up. He doesn't know anything about our process on the back end of the loans, but with his experience on the front-end of them, and the help of everyone else hopefully he can muddle through. I'm so thankful for my boss. He is absolutely supportive of me and wants me to make sure to take care of myself, and says nothing to make me feel guilty about it, but I feel like such a worm. 

I do the best I can to get them situated, and then I head home. Yoga pants, a drink, a few books, my phone, and my bed.

I feel like a twitchy idiot, laying down in the middle of a sunshiny day when I should be at work. I stare at my phone, WILLING it to ring, and resisting the urge to call work. If they're calling me about a file, they won't be screwing it up, I figure. I lay there and stress. I will myself to relax, but all I can think about is my lovely, orderly stacks of files, hundreds of them in different stages of completion, and people who don't really understand all that goes into the process or know it well enough to keep the files audit-worthy with their fingers in them. I know they will all do their best, and I feel horrible for them and the situation I've put them in, and so crazy to be laying there doing nothing. 

Tiny, tiny baby. 

As the day wears on, I get a headache. A really, really bad one. I call the advice nurse, and she tells me to stop stressing about work, drink some coffee and take some Tylenol. If the headache doesn't go away then I need to immediately go to the hospital. I don't have any Tylenol because I hadn't needed it up to this point, and I'm forbidden from going to the store to get some myself, so shortly after I talk to the nurse my mother-in-law calls to see how I'm doing, and I explain, and she brings me Tylenol. I attempt to rest, but I'm fidgety, and crazy and I can't focus on reading or anything. The Tylenol doesn't seem to help as the evening wears on, and I'm starting to get this sick ball of dread in my stomach. This really is happening, and I really need to focus on making sure I'm doing everything to keep me and Keira healthy.  I can't shake the headache, in fact, it's getting worse. I call the advice nurse again, and she emphatically says, "GO TO THE HOSPITAL RIGHT NOW!" Garrett was working nights--so I call him at work, and he comes home and gets me and takes me to the hospital in Vancouver.

As we're walking into the hospital we meet some friends of ours in the parking lot.  They are expecting their first child too, a few months ahead of us. Turns out this is the night for them to deliver, and she is in labor.  We are so excited for them, and that's a happy spot in our little dark cloud of an evening.

We go into the maternity area, and we haven't even pre-registered yet, so they have no clue who I am. I start filling out paperwork and explaining what's going on, and they get me settled in a room. My blood pressure is high--I don't remember the exact number but it was definitely higher than it was earlier in the day. They monitor me for quite a while, give me something to bring my blood pressure down, run some additional tests and a doctor comes in to talk to us. He seems to think that it's no big deal to have high blood pressure during pregnancy. He goes on an on about me needing to eliminate stress in my life, and take it easy, and whenever I start to feel stressed I should rest in a dark room with maybe a small lamp on... literally. This is what he says. I'm annoyed, because he makes it sound like I'm a basket-case who gets stressed out at the slightest thing. I don't, I'm not the panicky-stressed-out sort of person he seems to think I am. He prescribes Percocet in case I get any more bad headaches and encourages me to keep calm and soothed. What he's saying isn't really making sense to us. On one hand it's nice to be talking to someone who isn't treating this like it's a huge, horrible emergency. On the other hand, since all the other doctors and nurses I've spoken to ARE treating it like it's a big deal, he sounds like an idiot. We go home puzzled.

Our beautiful girl.

The next day is nothing short of completely tortuous. Laying around all day is NOT my style. I normally have no problem burying myself in a book or even reading magazines... nothing doing this time. I can't focus, I can't sleep, I'm a twitchy, fidgety, worrying mess. This was pre-iPhone era for sure, haha!  Garrett carpools to work with a co-worker in the late afternoon, and I resign myself to another evening of annoying the crap out of myself and generally going insane.

The phone rings at around 10pm. It is the doctor from St. Vincent's.  And, over the years I've gotten any number of calls from nurses. No big deal. That's what they do. But, I'm here to tell you that if the actual DOCTOR is the person who is calling you, you suddenly stand at attention and start listening--I've never talked to a doctor on the phone before. She tells me that she's reviewed my file, and looked over my test results. I need to come in immediately. At this point you'd think I'd be immune to surprising news, but I'm not really believing I'm talking to the actual doctor at this point, number one, and number two, it's 10pm in the evening, and it's not like I'm bleeding profusely or anything. Seems weird. I realize she's serious pretty quickly though, she gives me instructions on where to go when we get there and lets me know they'll be expecting me. I let her know it might be a while, because I've got to figure out how to get my carpooling husband from work. She forbids me from driving and tells me she'll be waiting for us. 

So I call Garrett and let him know what's going on. For the second night in a row he leaves work--this time a co-worker of his drives him back up to our place. Meanwhile I've packed clothes for both of us. I don't really know what or how to pack. I don't have any sort of newborn baby stuff yet, and it seems a little premature to be packing that, so I decide not to worry about it yet. By the time he gets home we're pretty much ready to go--he changes and moves his Mustang to the front door so I don't have to walk too far.

It's odd, those moments that are so clear in one's mind. I remember grabbing a sweatshirt last minute in case I got chilly. I remember throwing my backpack over one shoulder and walking down the stairs, and looking around my house and being irritated because it was cluttered and messy, and I couldn't clean it, being on bed rest and all. I remember calling my parents as I walked down the stairs, opening the front door and going from the perfect, chilled air conditioning to a blast of heat--even so late at night, and looking at my sweatshirt draped over my arm, and feeling silly. I walk to the car, and Garrett grabs the bag off my shoulder and puts it in the back. He's on the phone with his parents, and we are simultaneously talking to our parents, explaining what's going on, and where we're headed. He runs around and opens the car door for me, and I climb in. I'm in a state of shock, moving slowly and numb, and it's the first time I've been outside all day, and he's a tightly coiled spring, moving at the speed of light and taking care of every little thing. This is completely out of character for both of us, like we switched places, so I'm mildly amused. It smells like exhaust, and the sexy, throaty rumble of his Mustang echos through the corridor of garages in front of our condo. We are quiet as we drive towards the hospital--we are not sure what to expect when we get there, and we've already talked it all over so much, we don't have anything else to say. So we just enjoy being together.

Little do we know, I won't come home again until after I've had Keira--and when I come home, she won't be with us.

Part 2 can be found here.