By Sonya Spillmann
@sonyaspillmann

The first time, I got pregnant easily. Not right away, but quick enough; what I’d hoped for, happened. The second time, though, was so fast, so unexpected, the speed between Maybe it’s time to think about … and Two lines! felt like whiplash.The near immediacy seemed unreal. The idea of wanting hadn’t yet become a longing, my desire wasn’t fully formed, as if a waiter refilled my cup from which I’d taken only a sip. The cool water was hardly relief, I wasn’t even thirsty. 

I was pregnant. Happily so. An objective fact. 

My first pregnancy was uncomplicated. But even so, I waited to tell my family this second time. At eleven weeks and six days, I made phone calls and the next evening, I began to bleed. 

I’d had spotting before, but this was different, more. This was call your OB after hours line and then hang up and dial your friend just before her bedtime and, because you don’t live near family, ask her to come over while your toddler sleeps because you were told to get to the ER as soon as possible. Which you do. Your mind is operating instinctually, you are numb and unsure if your feet are really walking but of course they are and of course this is happening—this whole pregnancy has been a too good to be true dream.

In the hospital, in the small room they put me, the doctor finds a heart beating and a little being bouncing. He puts down the wand and I wipe cool gel off my belly with a rough white washcloth. He looks at me and says, I’m sorry. I know he is, but these words don’t make sense. There is a life there, right there, inside me. I look at my husband, back at the doctor. We all saw it, right? 

You’ll probably miscarry, is what the doctor says next. And this juxtaposition—of a real life alive inside my own blood beating body—with death? is too much to take in. I split myself between grief and hope, heart and mind, love and loss. I do not know how to carry what I’ve been given. There’s a chance you might not, the specialist, who comes in next, says. We’ll have to wait and see. Until then, go home. 

Do I hear this right? You want me to go home and wait for my baby to die? 

Yes. 

But he might not?

Right.

Am I on bedrest? 

No. (The damage, if there is any, has already been done.)

I thank everyone—I can’t help myself, it’s just who I am. And then we go home. 

For the next week, I lay on the couch and move as little as possible. I introduce my daughter, who has never watched TV in her life, to hours of Elmo and Big Bird and Minnie Mouse.

And the baby inside me? The one I didn’t know I wanted so badly? I wait another week for another appointment. The bleeding stops. And when we see it, the same heart, flashing bright-dark bright-dark bright-dark bright-dark, strong and fast and perfect, I cry. Hey Mom, I imagine him saying; I’m okay, his little arm waving to me as proof.     

I’m careful the next six months. Walks replace runs. I do yoga. I get sciatica, do the pigeon pose. My daughter watches too much Sesame Street.

Late at night in early August, four days before my due date, the feel of water runs down my leg. I sit on the toilet and know he’s coming. My husband makes the phone calls, collects the things. But I’m stuck, anchored there in the bathroom. I cannot move. Because if I do, if I stand up, I will set in motion what I cannot stop. So I stay there and cry through my what-if fears of not loving this child as much as I love my daughter. Over my How could I? heart aching because I will be changing her life forever. Until my husband comes in and assures me it’ll be okay, I sob. It will never be just us three again. 

There is such grief within all the joy of motherhood, this is yet one more thing I didn’t know. 

In the hospital, I will labor but not progress. I will walk those halls until the nurses catch a severe heart rate deceleration while I’m being monitored. I will be given oxygen and turned onto my left side. His heart rate drops again and the room fills with white coats and navy scrubs. I will accept the epidural I did not choose at my first birth, did not want at this birth, but because I am unable to turn off my medically trained mind, I weigh the epidural now with general anesthesia then—the only other option if my baby needs an emergency c-section.   

His heart rate stabilizes. We all relax. Nurses not assigned to me leave my room to return to their own patients.

But then the monitor begins to ding. His heart rate climbs. It accelerates past normal, into the dangerous. The room fills up again. I am a babydoll turned and rolled, wrapped and poked. The obstetrician walks in, takes one look at the monitor and says to me, “Your baby is in distress. We need to get him out.”

I understand. But I cannot help it, stop it, not for one second—I burst into tears.

“Mrs. Spillmann, …” the doctor says, and I can almost hear the rest of her sentence: I know this isn’t a part of your birth plan… But before she continues, the midwife reaches out her hand and places it on the doctor’s forearm, stopping her. 

“She’s a reasonable woman,” the midwife says, “give her a minute. This just wasn't what she expected to happen.” 

We are reasonable, aren’t we? But sometimes we suddenly face what we cannot change and do not want. Sometimes we’re overcome with a fear beyond words, with unknowns incomprehensible. 

I’m wheeled into the operating room and my baby is cut out of my body. 

I will vomit and my heart rate will spike and my blood pressure will drop and I will know the pharmacokinetics of the drugs the nurse anesthetist pushes to keep me conscious. The doctors on the other end of me will give different meds and apply pressure to the bleeding which they can’t get to stop. 

Time warps, it must, because I haven’t heard my baby cry, yet he’s been out of me now for, what? A few minutes? No. It can’t be. Maybe this has just been a few seconds. Everything’s slow in an emergency. Or is it fast? The silence, the furious working in my peripheral vision, the combination of what I know and don't know, feel and don’t feel, becomes too big and too loud and finally I wail, “Why isn’t my baby crying?”

“It’ll be okay, I’ll be okay,” my husband whispers to me. What he doesn't say is that our baby is grey, the color of a dolphin, and that a cluster of highly trained adults move around him in hushed synchrony. Chris doesn’t tell me there is a tube down our baby’s throat. Or, as my blood pressure drops and I complain of chest pain and vomit more, that he feels like he’s watching his life fall apart.

But in those moments of eternity passing, I stop bleeding. My vitals stabilize. And the baby, the one I now cannot imagine living without, announces himself to a room of adrenalized relief with his very first scream.  

I gasp. Tears run down my cheeks.

They wrap up my son and a smiling nurse brings him close to my face. I look into his wide open eyes and I ask if she will press him close. I kiss his chubby cheek. I love you, I whisper. 

I will not hold my son for another eight hours. He and I both need monitoring after this birth. Chris will show me pictures of him: wrapped up, wired up, incubated. We will not room together in the hospital. But after that first day, I will be wheeled up to the NICU at least every three hours and I will hold him, nurse him, run my finger along his fuzzy hairline. After five days, I will be discharged and he will stay. My husband drives me home and I cry, again. I’d arrived to the hospital insecure over loving another child as much as I loved my daughter. But when I left, I was never more convinced I already did.  

Photo by Lottie Caiella.