I have been having trouble with depression recently. For anyone who knows me this should be no surprise. Less than nine months ago I began a whirlwind that began with an unintentional complicated pregnancy which progressed at lightning speed to a shotgun wedding and culminated with the burial of my daughter.

It's odd when you can summarize nine months of your life in a dismal sentence.

So what does that leave one with? I guess I just need to think things out and suss-out what happened to me. I feel first that I had no choice or control over anything that has happened to me in the past few months.

My daughter was born on Sunday, Feb. 13, 2008 at 8:00pm at a teaching University Hospital. I was in labor from about 5pm that Wednesday before and stayed in labor and deliver until early Monday morning. The time, which added up, ends up being 72 hours of labor 96 hours in labor and delivery. I can’t remember. My math skills are poor to begin—the haziness of my memory plus the narcotics administered to ease my (mental, assuredly) pain hasn’t helped me reconstruct what happened.

This is what I remember.

In June I went to my younger sister’s baby shower for her soon-to-be-born son. I also went to a distant cousin’s wedding in Alexandria, Va. Between those two events I conceived Sophia.

I didn’t know anything was going on at first. I had changed birth control brands because of television marketing (look! This brand will help my skin problems! Stupid. I am far removed from adolescent skin problems.) I had irregular stuff going on and it didn’t surprise me that I was having light periods.

I made an appointment with my GYN because of some unrelated stuff. Just for shits and giggles I took a single-girl’s pregnancy test. You know, the just-in-case-one. Surprise.

Sophia’s father was my year-old broken up boyfriend. I loved this man with every ounce of my person but couldn’t stand to be around him for any length of time. He had some growing-up issues and some ex-wife issues and some financial issues. We had broken up a year and a month before. It was one of those relationships that you have as an adult that you have no intention of getting married because of bad behavior on someone’s part and a general reluctance to do the right thing, or the wrong thing, or whatever. We had the same group of friends. Even though we weren’t living together anymore I still talked to him and saw him socially. It was evident we weren’t going to get away from each other any time soon. He got his act straight: got a good paying job, bought a vehicle, played nice. He went down the imaginary arbitrary list that I had made for next-boyfriend.

We tumbled into bed with each other and Sophia was conceived.

What’s the logical next step?

I had two thoughts: one would have been pragmatically easier than the other.

Abortion. That’s right. I’m a grown damn woman who wasn’t taking adequate care of myself. I can’t imagine anything worse than bringing an innocent person into this life and not being able to take care of her/it. I made the decision to have an abortion when I was nineteen. I vowed I would not use it as birth control again.
Have baby. Have I mentioned that my parents HATED him? He had four years of financial irresponsibility under his belt. They bailed us out so often it became a constant source of embarrassment. He had spending habits unfit someone of his income level. He lived outside his means. I’ve had my job continually—the job preceded him. In December I’ll have been here 10 years. He couldn’t do 10 months at one place.

Because I loved him, I kept the pregnancy. I am diabetic. This entire situation was pretty bad because of my general lack of control. My doctor warned me that because of my health conditions, the baby had a better chance of heart defects. But she assured me that diabetic moms have healthy babies all the time. I would need to do exactly what I was supposed to and everything would be fine. We would do all the early-detection tests and examinations. What’s a little sonogram between friends? Babies with heart conditions are born in 1 of 10 pregnancies. Sophie, we learned, was 1 in 40,000.

My pregnancy progressed. My blood sugars were in recommended ranges. While I dieted and lost weight overall, Sophie gained it in utereo. Everything was looking tenuously good. I went to take the second-trimester early screening test. We saw that Sophie might possibly have an AV Canal defect. Because it was so very early and her general reluctance to be examined, they went ahead and scheduled an appointment with a Pediatric Cardiologist. They explained while making the appointment that since she was just so small we’d go ahead and make the appointment because by the time she was bigger they’d refer her there anyways. So we did.

Meanwhile, I planned a wedding in 90 days. I don’t suggest anyone do this ever. I found a chapel, got a big ‘ol dress, picked out flowers, sent invitations. I was 5 months pregnant. It ended up being a pretty wedding.

Two days before the wedding we went back to the Cardiologist and we found out that Soph’s definitely got an AV canal defect and they’re not sure if they could see the second aorta that carries blood to the rest of the body. The aorta that carried the blood to her lungs was intact and visible. The doctor assured me that she probably was just in the wrong position and all her parts were there. Just in case the doctor discussed what kind of surgery Soph was looking forward to. It didn’t sound good, but it didn’t sound bad either. I was told that I had to leave my cozy-familiar hospital and my doctor and go to scary-big-teaching-hospital. I was displeased but wanted to do best for Soph.

I started to look on the internet at the American Heart Association stuff. I re-read What to Expect When You are Expecting. I went to the mountains for three days for our honeymoon. We came home.

December I was hospitalized for blood sugar control and ketoacidosis. I had, to supplement my raising blood sugars, ceased eating correctly. Ceased eating at all. New teaching-hospital-doctor told me I was eating insufficient calories for baby and self. Saw nutritionist that let me eat more than one/two carbohydrates a meal. Spent a week in the hospital. One morning during the usual testing, Soph had “decels” on the monitor. I was rushed to a delivery room in case they would need to deliver her prematurely. While she was there Sophie’s heart beat like there was no problem. There was an exploratory sonogram that noticed she had a little bit of fluid around heart. Assumed this was result of known heart defect, nothing to get excited about.

January 10th rolls around. I am 31 weeks pregnant exactly. Accompanying me to the doctor’s office is my husband, my sister the nurse. The Cardiologist beings the sonogram. We see a baby but no heart beat. Sophie is gone. To my layperson eye it looks like there was no heart there at all. It was just an expanse where that tiny muscle should be.

Although I don’t remember her moving much earlier that morning, I do remember her kicking the night before. I had felt some tightness in my abdomen. The tightness had been around for a while, maybe about a week. I just thought I was having round ligament pain. Maybe this was cramping. I don’t know. It wasn’t labor. It wasn’t painful.

I was admitted and induced. They told me not to expect this to be a quick process. I would be in labor for at least 24 hours. I would sleep through most of it, they would see to that. I would labor in peace.

Posted by Lux on 29 February 2008 at 4:05 PM | Permalink