They say that if you want to get a baby out when you're full term, there are a variety of methods to get the job done. There's the popular wives' tale that spicy foods will do the trick. And considering how many babies seem to sprout in the great state of Utah, I'm constantly surprised that the Mexican restaurants of the valley don't have specials or discounts for full term mommies. It would be a goldmine of epic proportions if you offered a near birthing mother a 2-for-1 deal on spicy chile verde enchiladas. Others prescribe to the physical activity approach. My mother-in-law was so desperate to get her labor kickstarted with Elisa that she shoveled snow for half of the neighborhood. I've also heard of soon-to-be mothers going for a hike, up in altitude, or power walking at malls to get the contractions started. More new age friends would say that massage, pedicures, or acupuncture could do the trick - that is, if you have the desire to have someone needle you (both literally and figuratively). I've found that by this point in pregnancy, the father is best positioned to be just outside of a good right hook from the wife. Thoughts of a friendly massage are met with disdain and eye rolling. And then, it seems the most sure method is what got you into this mess in the first place. Have some good, old fashioned sex. Just enjoy the irony that the thing that caused the pregnancy is well known to magically get the end going as well. Recent surveys show that 9 out of 10 men (yet -3 out of 10 women) think this is the best and most prudent approach.
But, as with everything, Elisa and I tended to not follow the typical methods. Elisa was ready, and as we were 11 days before our official due date, I could see her considering long hikes or power walking (somehow, that last method didn't seem to come up). In fact, the day before we headed up to Park City to see if that could get the process going. It didn't. December 17, 2006 was a snowy day, so we decided to go to a movie (Charlotte's Web) and then hang out at home. After the movie, we decided to get some house tasks done. And who would have ever considered that something like a menial task was going to kick start this party. Around dinner time, Elisa and I commenced our never ending conversation of "What do you want?", "I don't know, what do you want?" regarding dinner. Elisa, always the overachiever, decided to multitask and sat on our office floor filing bills. We were just getting to the good part ("okay, I'll give you three options and you choose!") of our argument about sustenance when the bill filing did the trick. Elisa's expression changed midsentence. And in a way that you'd only dream of remembering fondly, Elisa dropped a "OK, either my water just broke or I peed my pants!" I'll skip the part where I started grilling her for assurance that this wasn't a loss of bladder control. Let's just say that in a matter of minutes, I was confident that the water had indeed broken. Our first little boy decided that it was time to grace the world.
If getting pregnant proved to be more frustrating and time consuming than I had expected, our first pregnancy took the award for scariest. We should have known that this wouldn't be the smoothest ride in the world, considering our travails with good old Clomid, but the degrees of fear and worry weren't anything we could truly prepare for. No, we were first time parents, following the basic outline of "What to Expect When You're Expecting". We strayed away from the section entitled "when something isn't right". But early on, things seemed to be progressing like everyone around us had predicted. First, was the nausea. I thought I was prepared for Elisa to have morning sickness. What I didn't expect was the violent changes in taste from minute to minute. One lovely day, I made the mistake of asking Elisa what she wanted for lunch. It would have been one thing had she just told me that she wasn't hungry. No, we had to go on the great expedition to find what would work for Elisa's stomach. We started simple. Cereal. That was a non-starter. But she didn't decide that until I'd brought it to the bedroom (husband of the year, right here! Lunch in bed!). We moved onto a sandwich and chips. She tried a chip. She verbally assaulted the sandwich. Back to the drawing board. We had some leftover italian. Negative. Then she thought that macaroni and cheese would be good. Out came the box of Kraft (it's the cheesiest!). 20 minutes later, Elisa had a bowl in front of her. Well, at least for 2 minutes. Then, it was back in the kitchen. After a few more failed attempts, I told Elisa that I'd make her a fried egg. Before I got back to the kitchen, I sat on our stairs with my head in my hands. Never before had cooking been so maddening. And I couldn't get mad at her. So I blamed the baby. Hey, I didn't know him/her yet! That day, Elisa ate. Well, she ended up eating the egg white of the fried egg. Imagine my delight when I came up to find a single egg yolk on a plate. Hey, whatever works.
I wish I could write about more meaningless stories like the search for food palatable to Elisa's belly. But that was like the happy peak of our 1st trimester. Because other "fun" would start soon. And by fun, I mean not fun. The "fun" began on May 9, 2006. It was a normal day, or seemed to be until we arrived into the late evening. I was sitting in our office, surfing the internet (Elisa did the bill filing...clearly). Elisa had gone to the bathroom. It wasn't that she said my name. It was how she said it. Tinged with fear. I walked into the bedroom and Elisa told me that she was bleeding. Keep in mind, we were first time parents. There isn't a planning book that tells you to be ready for this pregnancy symptom. Bleeding at any point of pregnancy isn't considered normal. It's potentially problematic. I picked up the phone (of course, it was an evening!) and called the nurse hotline that our OBGYN had given us. I explained to her what was happening. She quickly told me to take Elisa to the emergency room. And she ended the call in a chilling (albeit sympathetic way). As I write this, I'm not even sure I ever told Elisa about this. But if I stopped with details, I'd start violating my pledge of supreme honesty, right? Luckily, I don't think this lack of sharing will result in a night on the couch. There was just absolutely no way I was going to share it with Elisa in the moment After saying we should head to the emergency, the nurse finished with "I'm soooo sorry". Again, it wasn't the words. It's the way she said them. In the nurse's mind, our first pregnancy was well on it's way to ending. She believed it. And for the first time, I was truly scared.
We headed to the St. Mark's emergency room, checked in, and waited. By the time we had gotten there, it was around 9:30pm. By the time we were checked in and had received an initial visit (where we discovered that the nurse was someone Elisa had previously dated...I would have tried to trip him to establish my superiority but he was carrying vials of her blood. I resisted), it was nearly midnight. We were sent to a room with an ultrasound machine. I was afraid of what we'd see (or not see). The tech fired up the machine and I could feel myself brace for the worse. The phone nurse's "I'm sooo sorry" kept replaying in my mind. We saw the sac. We say the baby. And we saw a flicker. 6 weeks into our 1st pregnancy, Elisa and I were sitting in the St. Mark's emergency room, watching our baby's heartbeat on screen. Elisa was relieved. I was a little shellshocked. And then I glanced at the clock and realized that we had switched days. It was 12:10am. On May 10, 2006. Our 3rd wedding anniversary started by seeing our baby for the 1st time on ultrasound.
We went home with the instructions to see Elisa's OBGYN the next day. And when we headed in, Elisa was still bleeding. The OBGYN was concerned, but happy to hear that we had seen a heartbeat. In we went to his ultrasound room and we got our second view of the little bean. Sure enough, the heart was still beating. The baby seemed strong. The bleeding continued to be unexplained. We went home with the instructions of watching the bleeding, and to only be concerned and come back if the bleeding got worse. Sadly, it got worse. I remember living in a sense of fear. Every time she would go to the bathroom, I'd sit and worry. I'd fear the news. At work, I'd await texts and would ask annoying questions about how it compared to an hour before. But when we knew that the bleeding had gotten markedly worse, we were ushered back into the OBGYN's office. And the second true stab of fear walloped me in the face. I found my humanity towards my baby.
We moved into a new ultrasound room and were greeted by a worried doctor. True to our past experiences, Elisa got a physical examination. As the doctor finished that portion, he warned us of what the ultrasound might show us. He believed he saw "membrane" on Elisa's cervix (which had to be a sign of impending miscarriage). Elisa tensed and I could see the fear rise in her. Back to the ultrasound. Back to wondering what the image would hold. Breathless waiting. My eyes shifted from Elisa to the screen to the doctor. Our OBGYN's first word was "good". I figured that would not make it into the vocabulary if we were going to be met with bad news. Sure enough, we saw more flickering on screen. The baby continued to look strong. Our OBGYN seemed perplexed at the physical examination. When we saw the heartbeat, Elisa broke down. I stayed strong. Until the OBGYN left. And Elisa handed me the picture of our little baby. Free of anyone else in the room, and with Elisa having collected herself, I broke down. I'll say again that I'm not a big crier. But I couldn't help it. The fear over the last few days had built up inside of me. And I realized that getting a positive pregnancy test was much more than the peed on stick. There was a life...sadly, with my DNA...but a life nonetheless.
Elisa continued to bleed through the 1st trimester. We had more ultrasounds than I would care to remember. But we came out of the 1st trimester as well, more grateful than I ever expected to be. I remember, as we celebrated the 2nd trimester, thinking that people experienced this transition every day and didn't even realize how lucky they were to actually be here. And my feeling was entirely based off of fear. It would take another 6 weeks before we started to get an idea of why Elisa had bled so heavily during the 6-8 week period especially. During our "official" ultrasound, where we found out that we would be having a little boy, we were told that there appeared to be an extra sac. The explanation was that we most likely had a twin in there that had miscarried very early on. That explained the bleeding and the OBGYN's worry at the membrane during the physical examination. Again, I felt lucky to be staring at images of our little man. It could have turned out differently. I was supremely happy to not have to live through that horror.
To be fair, the rest of our pregnancy with our little man was more or less uneventful. We started with a list of 32 names that we narrowed down to 20, then to 15, and then to 10. We sat on a group of about 5 names for the majority of the summer, only to agree spontaneously as we drove back to Salt Lake City from Fish Lake in August. We prepared our home, had numerous baby showers, and generally tried to get used to the fact that we would soon have a baby in our presence. But as I stare back at the events of Lukas - of struggling to understand potential loss (and loss 10 weeks after it had happened), I realize that these were all little steps in our path to Sam. Little did I know that our lessons were only getting underway.
In the meantime, we were good little boy scouts, practicing the tried and true motto of "be prepared". And when we were finally ready, finally prepared to meet our child, we did what any focused and educated parents-to-be would do. We started trying sure methods of getting that labor going. We filed bills. And it worked like a charm.
Here came baby #1. Here came Lukas.
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