October 8th...

And today marks one year since I was rushed to Parkview Hospital in Fort Wayne, when Evan tried to make his grand entrance 16 WEEKS early instead of 14 weeks. My aunt Brenda has always said, "He just has things to do" when talking about his early birth. And that is certainly true!
After the traumatic catheter insertion and ambulance ride, I was taken to Labor and Delivery at the Parkview main campus. After getting me to my bed for the next 12 days, several nurses were called in to attempt to put my bed into "Trendelenberg" position. This is a position in which the bed is still completely flat, but tilted on end so that my feet were above my head, taking pressure off of my cervix, which Evan was so determined to come through. It would seem that this was awful, but that was not the worst part of my stay. The worst part was that Evan had one foot on my bladder, stomping on it with the catheter in, and the other wiggling around in my open cervix. I told the nurses that his stomping on my bladder was making the catheter move in and out, but they didn't believe me. One nurse finally realized that was certainly what was happening when she was emptying the bag and she felt the tube move several times. She was one of my favorite nurses, Nurse Jan.
Anyhow, once they got the bed into position, I noticed that they had turned on a bed warmer...you know the kind they place the baby in right away. I understand that this is protocol, but nevertheless, it freaked me out. It was then that it really sunk in what was happening to us.
So, this began my journey to becoming a preemie mommy. I'll spare most of the uncomfortable details of being completely bedridden in a hospital. You can figure it out. But really, I only had to lie there 12 days...some women end up doing so for much longer than that...months even.

One scary thing I do want to share. Until you are placed in a situation like this, and it can be any trauma, really...you really don't know yourself at all. The very deep, dark places of our humanity can come through, and when certain thoughts are voiced, people that have not ever had to face these things think "Don't talk like that," or "How could she say that?" Well, I want to share how disorienting it was to feel two very different emotions so strongly, to be so fully passionate about two extremely differing desires: I wanted to stay pregnant, for as long as possible, so that Evan had the best chance possible, and I could take home a perfectly normal baby. But I also felt, just as strongly, that all I wanted was to be out of that bed (mostly just to get the catheter out, really) and what that meant was Evan would have to be born. I wished he would just come so that it could be over for me, even though his problems could have been lifelong, or even fatal. It's just a part of being human, and the deepest, darkest part of me that is so incredibly selfish that at that moment I wanted to trade two weeks (potentially three months) of my discomfort for a lifetime of heartbreak, pain, medications, surgeries, and possibly death for my baby.
That feeling eventually subsided, after a couple days. All I wanted then was to have a normal baby, for him to stay in there as long as possible.
But then there were similar feelings at different times in the NICU as well. But, anyway, I just wanted to share, because that was something I was thinking probably right at this very minute exactly a year ago.