gypsymom
10-28-2006, 02:47 AM
I have not posted my pregnancy story previously because there are some very personal aspects which I feel cannot be extricated from the story and I was uncomfortable with sharing them. However, I have given it serious consideration and I believe that ours is an unusual story that may reassure others who have been through something similar. I need to go back a ways to how it all started...
I had escaped a tough living situation and was camping out on a bandmate's couch. We'd been very good friends and musical compatriots for awhile, but we slowly found ourselves falling for each other. On April 20th, 2005 our apartment burned down and the firemen assured us that if our dog had not woken us up we had only about five more minutes before we most likely would have expired from smoke inhalation (carbon monoxide poisoning). I spent five agonizing and beautiful hours at DH's hospital bedside that morning. While gazing at his smoke-blackened face with the oxygen mask and clutching his hand I realized that I was actually in love (an amazing feat for me). The American Red Cross provided us with a hotel for two lousy nights and then we were on our own. His family members helped out financially and the next few weeks were spent in a dizzying blur of love-making in various southwestern hotels, campsites, and our van. We couldn't have been happier to be alive and that we were all okay and were living a blissful "homeless" life.
But then I started to slow down. My daily 6-7 mile hikes were getting difficult. I was fatigued all the time and didn't feel right. My already-to-big boobs were getting bigger. I was in complete denial that I could be pregnant. Fortunately the fire had sobered us up and I didn't spend these weeks drowning in booze the way I typically did. After a wonderful birthday weekend I finally said that we had to do a pregnancy test. We got a hotel room and took the test. Three of them. They were all positive. The next day I went to Planned Parenthood. Positive. We freaked out. We were rockstars, travellers, solitary wanderers who had decided to spend some time together, not parents-to-be, or people who even kept a job or a place to live longer than six months. We had to get an abortion.
The two hour trip to Phoenix seemed like a lifetime. When we got there, I looked around at all the teenagers and obvious crack hos and started to wonder what I was doing there, but it was my only option. When I finally went into the back for my u/s I was relieved to be getting it over with. I laid down on the table, and a very indifferent technician said, "There's two of them." I said, "What?!" and started crying and ran out of there to find DH. I just sat there saying, "I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do." I was sobbing when they came out and told me to make a decision because the doctors wanted to go home soon. We left.
Two weeks later we decided to go back. We spent that evening in Sedona. I sat on Airport Vortex weeping and playing my viola to the stars for hours while DH hiked off into the darkness. We later drove down into the desert to spend the night. I had a breakdown. I completely lost it. DH had to physically restrain me from walking off into the desert to disappear forever...
We went to Phoenix again anyway. When I was in the back the counselor pulled me into his office and we had a loooooooooooooong talk. Just as I was getting out of there DH was up front clamoring to let them see me. We had both decided to leave and never look back.
We decided to move to Portland. Why you ask? Our bandmates said they wanted to so we decided we'd go first. Rent was cheap and we felt as if the universe had kicked us out of Flagstaff. After we threw our stuff in our new place we took off for Glacier, Cascade, and Olympic National Parks. We spent almost a month on the road.
Back in Portland, DH settled into work and my unemployment checks aided in furnishing a home from scratch. (We had lost almost everything in the fire.) I had quit smoking the day we left AZ and spent my time doing what I could that would be best for the babies. I baked bread every week and cooked all of the time. In addition to taking the dog for daily walks, I did prenatal yoga. And through it all we were looking into adoption. Yes, we really didn't get it. In my heart I knew that I had to have these babies, but I just couldn't wrap my brain around the idea of being a mother. I have never wanted to have children, and neither did DH. We panicked a lot. We fought a lot. We were freaked out constantly. It was a long, lonely, and wet winter.
At 28 weeks I lost some fluid. I called my friend from yoga and she said to call the doctor. The doctor told me to go to Immanuel hospital because that is where the NICU was. I went in and they discovered that I was contracting constantly. They monitored me for half a day and sent me home to be on bedrest. I was a relatively good girl after that--I still baked and cooked all the time and went to the library at least once a week, in addition to Target runs to spend gift cards on baby stuff.
Then the real panic settled in. As soon as we had decided to have the babies I had wanted a water birth. Well, when I finally got insurance in OR I was six months preggo and just happy to have coverage and didn't press the issue. But then the nightmares about hospitals started. We looked into a water birth center, but my gut said that it was a bad idea. At about 36-37 weeks, my doctor hooked us up with the midwife of all midwives. She is the one who teaches all the others. She has delivered thousands of babies in some of the harshest conditions possible in this country (in rural Appalacia and the rez in NM). She was willing to let me labor in a water tub at OHSU. She was willing to work with me on the "minimal intervention." She couldn't believe I was still preggers...
I had a dream that the first baby wouldn't come out and the second one wasn't breathing...
At 38 1/2 weeks my blood pressure skyrocketed through the roof. It was time to get them out, so my midwife manipulated my membranes by hand and sent me home to hopefully go into labor...
The rest is the birth story...
I had escaped a tough living situation and was camping out on a bandmate's couch. We'd been very good friends and musical compatriots for awhile, but we slowly found ourselves falling for each other. On April 20th, 2005 our apartment burned down and the firemen assured us that if our dog had not woken us up we had only about five more minutes before we most likely would have expired from smoke inhalation (carbon monoxide poisoning). I spent five agonizing and beautiful hours at DH's hospital bedside that morning. While gazing at his smoke-blackened face with the oxygen mask and clutching his hand I realized that I was actually in love (an amazing feat for me). The American Red Cross provided us with a hotel for two lousy nights and then we were on our own. His family members helped out financially and the next few weeks were spent in a dizzying blur of love-making in various southwestern hotels, campsites, and our van. We couldn't have been happier to be alive and that we were all okay and were living a blissful "homeless" life.
But then I started to slow down. My daily 6-7 mile hikes were getting difficult. I was fatigued all the time and didn't feel right. My already-to-big boobs were getting bigger. I was in complete denial that I could be pregnant. Fortunately the fire had sobered us up and I didn't spend these weeks drowning in booze the way I typically did. After a wonderful birthday weekend I finally said that we had to do a pregnancy test. We got a hotel room and took the test. Three of them. They were all positive. The next day I went to Planned Parenthood. Positive. We freaked out. We were rockstars, travellers, solitary wanderers who had decided to spend some time together, not parents-to-be, or people who even kept a job or a place to live longer than six months. We had to get an abortion.
The two hour trip to Phoenix seemed like a lifetime. When we got there, I looked around at all the teenagers and obvious crack hos and started to wonder what I was doing there, but it was my only option. When I finally went into the back for my u/s I was relieved to be getting it over with. I laid down on the table, and a very indifferent technician said, "There's two of them." I said, "What?!" and started crying and ran out of there to find DH. I just sat there saying, "I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do." I was sobbing when they came out and told me to make a decision because the doctors wanted to go home soon. We left.
Two weeks later we decided to go back. We spent that evening in Sedona. I sat on Airport Vortex weeping and playing my viola to the stars for hours while DH hiked off into the darkness. We later drove down into the desert to spend the night. I had a breakdown. I completely lost it. DH had to physically restrain me from walking off into the desert to disappear forever...
We went to Phoenix again anyway. When I was in the back the counselor pulled me into his office and we had a loooooooooooooong talk. Just as I was getting out of there DH was up front clamoring to let them see me. We had both decided to leave and never look back.
We decided to move to Portland. Why you ask? Our bandmates said they wanted to so we decided we'd go first. Rent was cheap and we felt as if the universe had kicked us out of Flagstaff. After we threw our stuff in our new place we took off for Glacier, Cascade, and Olympic National Parks. We spent almost a month on the road.
Back in Portland, DH settled into work and my unemployment checks aided in furnishing a home from scratch. (We had lost almost everything in the fire.) I had quit smoking the day we left AZ and spent my time doing what I could that would be best for the babies. I baked bread every week and cooked all of the time. In addition to taking the dog for daily walks, I did prenatal yoga. And through it all we were looking into adoption. Yes, we really didn't get it. In my heart I knew that I had to have these babies, but I just couldn't wrap my brain around the idea of being a mother. I have never wanted to have children, and neither did DH. We panicked a lot. We fought a lot. We were freaked out constantly. It was a long, lonely, and wet winter.
At 28 weeks I lost some fluid. I called my friend from yoga and she said to call the doctor. The doctor told me to go to Immanuel hospital because that is where the NICU was. I went in and they discovered that I was contracting constantly. They monitored me for half a day and sent me home to be on bedrest. I was a relatively good girl after that--I still baked and cooked all the time and went to the library at least once a week, in addition to Target runs to spend gift cards on baby stuff.
Then the real panic settled in. As soon as we had decided to have the babies I had wanted a water birth. Well, when I finally got insurance in OR I was six months preggo and just happy to have coverage and didn't press the issue. But then the nightmares about hospitals started. We looked into a water birth center, but my gut said that it was a bad idea. At about 36-37 weeks, my doctor hooked us up with the midwife of all midwives. She is the one who teaches all the others. She has delivered thousands of babies in some of the harshest conditions possible in this country (in rural Appalacia and the rez in NM). She was willing to let me labor in a water tub at OHSU. She was willing to work with me on the "minimal intervention." She couldn't believe I was still preggers...
I had a dream that the first baby wouldn't come out and the second one wasn't breathing...
At 38 1/2 weeks my blood pressure skyrocketed through the roof. It was time to get them out, so my midwife manipulated my membranes by hand and sent me home to hopefully go into labor...
The rest is the birth story...