Home Is Where Your Heart Is

"Is he usually this still?" the ultrasound tech asked as we watched the shape of our 26 week son sleeping still and soundly on the black and white screen. As tears began to fill my eyes, I told her yes and that I didn't know why. As it goes, she sent us down to the 5th floor where my OB's office is with a stack of fuzzy photos displaying lots of foreign numbers. On the way down, my iPhone wooed me to Google  "biophysical profile scoring at 26 weeks," against my better judgement. I learned that the scoring was based on a 10 point rudric and that a 7 was not extremely promising. A wave of disappointment and familiar emptiness rushed over me. I had been here before.
After an embarrassing, but uncontrollable outpouring of tears in the waiting room, we were called back and put in a room to wait for my doctor. Although she comforted and assured us that our baby was okay, all I seemed to hear was "We'll put you in the hospital to monitor you and repeat the biophysical profile. If the score is the same or lower, we will go ahead and deliver the baby via c section this weekend to prevent putting him under further stress." I couldn't believe it. Just a week earlier, I was having what I thought to be a perfectly healthy pregnancy.
First came the swelling. And the excessive weight gain. This happens to everyone when they're pregnant right? Then the headaches and the shortness of breath. At some point, the combination started to come together in the nurse part of my brain. 160/105.
The first hospitalization was okay. Aside from the whole lack of sleep thing. And the holding my breath waiting to hear my baby's heart beat every 3 hours on the fetal monitor. But I had my husband, and a so far, healthy baby boy still growing peacefully inside of me. All of us ignorant to the struggle that lay ahead. Jake and I spent the weekend watching TV shows on the laptop and taking wheelchair trips down to the Subway on the 1st floor of the hospital. As a lifelong rule, never eat hospital catfish.
Sometime that weekend, my favorite antepartum nurse, (we'll call her Nan for good measure) explained to me that the results of my urine protein were okay, not severe enough to deliver just yet, but definitely indicated that I was preeclamptic.
On Sunday, the infamous perineonatologist that we had heard so much about, wheeled his portable ultrasound machine into my hospital room and so it began again. So much for trying to keep your blood pressure down, eh? I sent up a few quick, desperate prayers. "Lord, please, don't take him from me. Not yet." Dr. C was a man of few words, but that's all I needed. "He gets a 10. He's perfectly fine."
False alarm. In the clear. LET'S GO HOME!
The next day, my doctor came in and told me that she would let me go home as long as I was okay with coming back and forth for frequent blood pressure checks, etc. Sure, sure. Home sweet home.
I entertained two miserable nights in my own bed. I began to look like the blueberry girl from Willy Wonka except not blue. I drank all the water that I could force down. I peed into a white, plastic "hat" positioned on my toilet and then poured it into a jug to take to my doctor's office to be tested for protein on Wednesday.
I drove myself to the doctor that morning and made lunch plans with my husband for after my appointment. As I sat in the waiting room (pee jug in hand), I texted him, "Happy Halloween!" and "At least we've made it to a November birthday." Wrong.
+4 on the dipstick.
"Can I go home and get clothes?"
"No."
Nan drew a cat on the whiteboard in my new room.
Baby's name: Rhyan Tyler
Gestational age: 27 weeks 3 days
I waited for the urine protein results to come back. 1.35 to 16 grams in just 2 shorts days. She hadn't said it yet, but I knew it was time.
IV infusing magnesium sulfate, blankets lining the bed in case my preeclampsia escalated to eclampsia. They told me not to be alarmed if he didn't come out crying, his lungs weren't very strong.
But then I heard him, strong as can be, wailing at being torn from his mother's womb. Too early. Unfairly. Emptiness. Why me? Why him? Why us?
A man that I had never seen before held him up for me to see for 1 second. Then he was gone. Whisked away to be saved.
The NICU. A little sign hung outside of Room 8. "Rhyan," it read in big colorful letters. "1lb15oz, 14 inches."
The morning after Rhyan was born and after the mag was finished infusing, it was time to go. And I was ready. Pain. Pshh. Then I tried to stand. Okay, that hurts. Bad. But I made it and that was my first of many journeys to the backside of the 2nd floor where lies all the tiny miracles like mine.
As I watched my son sleep outside of my body for the first time, I wondered if he knew that I hadn't abandoned him. That I was still here. That I wasn't going anywhere. How could I? It's impossible to live without your heart inside of your chest, but my heart lay in a plastic case that the nurses called a "Giraffe" bed.