From the start, I confidently said we’d be scheduling the c-section for the first week of August from the first heartbeat we saw in January. Now, my pregnancy has now become like most women’s where they aren’t totally sure when the baby will come. We knew that any pregnancy would result in an early c-section way back before we even started trying to conceive, the surgery we had in 2015 to take out my fibroids meant that the muscle of my uterus wouldn’t perform labor. When we confirmed viability of our sweet boy the delivery date went from a projected 38 weeks to a more realistic 36 weeks gestation. At 20 weeks we saw on the anatomy scan that my placenta had been built in a precarious way, and at 24 weeks it seemed that it was going to stay that way, and at 28 we were sent to a specialist in Eugene to confirm what we were seeing on the ultrasound was correct. The confirmation meant that we will now deliver at 34 maybe 32 weeks depending on how the condition progresses. That is one tiny baby coming 6 or 8 weeks early, it means words like preemie and NICU are now part of our reality.

If you want to look it up it’s called vasa previa with velamentous cord insertion and also just for fun I have placenta previa too. It means the umbilical cord was built in a “loose wires ” kind of way as opposed to a strong thick cord going from placenta to baby. It’s much like the electricity in my ’70s house: it still gets power where it needs to go but no one can believe someone built it this way. Dr. Bob, the NICU Dr we chatted with, called it “the architecture of my womb” that is dictating our delivery schedule. Isn’t that lovely? It makes it sound like I am a cathedral! It reminds me of my pre-embryo-transfer acupuncture appointment where she called a point on my belly “child palace”. Much to the annoyance of Josh and Schaan, I would announce in any conversational silence “I am a child palace”. It felt like a way of confirming my pregnancy to myself in the early days before we were sure if we were going to get to keep this one. Dr. Bob said it wasn’t anything I did to make a precarious placenta sometimes these things just happen, google says 1% of pregnancies have this situation.

A drop of spotting had me call my OB and landed me in the hospital for monitoring for 24 hours (28 if you want to be exact, which I think I do) we had to make sure this wasn’t going to be a lot of spotting. Four days later another bout of spotting appeared and bought me 8 days in the hospital with constant monitoring. I refer to this as “doing time” I am now on probation at home as I have not had any more spotting. I have to be vigilant about what is happening with my body because the vasa previa could change at any moment for no explainable reason and then we have to deliver IMMEDIATELY. I did not love my time in the hospital because wearing an IV is not comfortable, not going outside for 8 days is terrible, and not sleeping in my bed with Josh and Pony is sad. I had visitors and snacks and was given flowers and books and food from the outside world so it went by pretty fast. It alarmed our moms and dads and we tried to relay to everyone that it was mostly precautionary as Ace and I were both looking very good on all the measurable accounts. I have my very long cervix to thank for my release *tosses hair* I guess it looks pretty strong compared to other people’s cervix so I’m pretty proud of myself there. (no clue what a long cervix is.)

These developments are a lot to hold in my one body, especially because I am holding Ace in here too. I have not been able to communicate very well with everyone and have limited who I share this with until now. Living this reality and trying to understand it has taken all my brain space, I’m sorry to anyone who feels like I didn’t keep them in the loop. It’s scary and it’s not how I envisioned the last month of my pregnancy going. I have been grieving the loss of normalcy and having to cancel my fully booked July massage schedule. We’re trying to manage the difference in income we will now have as my maternity leave has become this much longer. We are preparing our hearts for a very tiny baby who will live in the NICU for a time before he can live in our house with us. We are taking slow deep breaths and being thankful for all of the little things that give us peace, like watching our shows together on our couch and the ability to walk into my kitchen and cream butter into sugar and make something delightful to eat. Baking gives me such a sense of control when life is unpredictable, eggs flour and sugar are very predictable. Of course, we all know control is an illusion but we can often be fooled into thinking we have more say in the course our lives take than we really do, and I for one like that illusion. My favorite thing to say to myself these days is : this is mine, you will have your own, there’s nothing like the real thing. We are watching our baby’s story unfold, we are not writing it, and everyone has their own story. You can’t live someone else’s story we must each have our own. Accepting that means “the real thing” is so so good even if it’s hard and scary, there is absolutely nothing that can compare to living your life in each moment with acceptance. Denial of reality, or what Joan Didion called “magical thinking”, is an old coping mechanism for this enneagram 7. I don’t want to pretend this hard stuff isn’t happening, I want to hug the me that is doing hard things and tell her I’m so proud of her and keep showing up for myself in that liminal space. I wish you a July of ease and joy, but if you find yourself in places that are challenging may you embrace them and live into the “real thing” because your story is beautiful and it’s yours.