My Miracle Baby

I wasn’t supposed to be able to have children.  

I had struggled with endometriosis from the time I was fourteen, although I wasn’t diagnosed until I was twenty-seven.  Two months after that first surgery for endometriosis, I was diagnosed with a congenital heart condition.  The endo seemed to thrive with every hormone that was supposed to control it.   Less than a year later, I had a second surgery and the endo was even worse than the first time.  I had a third surgery for endo complications.  After that, I was facing a hysterectomy -- nothing more could be done for the endometriosis, and the scar tissue was already extensive.  I was not yet thirty. 

A few times, the pain was so intense that I seriously considered the hysterectomy, but something stopped me.  My head accepted that I could not have children, but my heart never did.  I lost a few relationships to what I thought was my inability to have children.  But my husband, whom I met when was 35, accepted me and all my flaws.  We married on my 37th birthday.  

About two years into our marriage, I became pregnant.  We were elated.  The pregnancy, however, only lasted about six weeks.  Pretty much almost as soon as I realized I was pregnant, the pregnancy was over.  I had four more very early term miscarriages over the next eighteen months.  By now, we were well into a children’s home system and the county system to adopt a child.  While taking the parenting courses to adopt, I had one more early term miscarriage.  After completing the courses and two home visits, I was pregnant for the seventh time.  I was three months along -- further than I had ever been.

Mine was a very high-risk pregnancy:  I was forty, I had six miscarriages, I had scar tissue from the endometriosis and surgeries, and I had a heart condition.  The pregnancy itself was not horrible for me.  It wasn’t until the last six weeks that I lost my ankles and shoes were challenging because of the swelling.  At around five months, I developed pain around my ribcage on the right side.  None of the doctors at the high-risk hospital were concerned about it, so neither was I.  

The morning I was scheduled for my C-section, I was bumped back a few hours because of an emergency delivery.  By the time I was brought in for my delivery, I started having labor pains, but the pains on the right side were even worse.  The standard epidural was ineffective for my pain by then, so the dose was doubled.  My blood pressure bottomed out.  During the procedure, the additional fluid was too much for my heart and I developed congestive heart failure.  The epidural wore off before the end of the delivery and nothing more could be given to me.

I spent the first twenty-four hours after giving birth in ICU.  I saw my son once, for about ten minutes.  The next day I was moved to the critical care unit.  My son could only be brought up to me if there was a guard on the floor, so again, I only saw him once, but this time for an hour.  The third day, I could not see him at all.  I was in the hospital two more days.  Meanwhile, the pain from the C-section improved, but the pain in my right side never did.  It wasn’t until a night-time trip to the ER three months later than I learned I had developed calcium gallstones during my pregnancy.  

I don’t regret anything.  My son is worth it all.  And I do think, even now, he is something quite remarkable.