It’s the Final Countdown

Here we are. The final days of this pregnancy.

I apologize in advance for the stream-of-consciousness format of this blog, it is more of a brain dump than a thought-out post. This is the type of thing that usually goes in my journal. I have many pages of thoughts there too, and I’m sure I’ll add to that tomorrow, the day before I go to the hospital.

I want to start here: I am so glad that I have an induction date. Knowing there is a time at which I will no longer be pregnant is a godsend. We haven’t really told anyone my exact induction date, because I have enough stress in my mind about it. I can’t handle the other stress of people checking in, calling, and “seeing” how I am. Here’s how I am: STRESSED OUT OF MY MIND.

Here is a list of my worries:

• Worry 1: The baby will somehow die inside me before my induction date. I am so hyper aware of his movements, and I live in constant fear that he is moving less, more, or differently. The main issue is, he tends to move in the morning or at night, so that leaves MANY hours midday where I am in a sheer panic.
• Worry 2: I will go into spontaneous labor before my induction date. This is a fear, but not one of my top ones because I know I will just proceed immediately to the hospital. Do not pass go, do not collect $200 (more like pay $200,000 in medical bills). I have a friend who was scheduled for a c-section the same day as me, and she had her baby a week earlier. Her baby is doing great, so this helped allay this fear slightly.
• Worry 3: Labor will take a long time because I’m being induced, and because it took 31 hours last time.
  • Note: my fear is not the time I will be in labor, but the fact that the longer amount of time I’m in labor, the more stressed I will be, which will raise my blood pressure, which will then force them to put me on magnesium sulfate again either during or after labor. Note on the note: my doctor warned me about this, and said I should be very vocal about my fears and my severe white-coat-hypertension so they can get ahead of it. She also recommended pain meds as soon as possible for this reason.
  • Second note, I’m not super afraid of mag because I was on it for four days last year, but it’s not fun. It means no food, it means nausea, it means feeling like your face is on fire, but your body is in hypothermia. It also means full body shivers, again, not the worst thing in the world if it prevents seizures, but not a good time.
• Final Fear: I will die. I suppose this is rare because I’ll likely be in the hospital already and hopefully, they will be watching me carefully, but knowing it almost happened a year ago, it seems naïve to assume it won’t happen again.

Even with those worries, I’m still glad I have an end date. I feel like I have been pregnant for three years. I HAVE been pregnant for three years. I was pregnant 3 months of 2022. I was pregnant 2 months at the top of 2023. Then I was postpartum. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists considers 3 months to be “postpartum,” also known as the “fourth trimester.” But some people consider individuals to be postpartum for as long as 12 months after birth. Then I was pregnant again for two months at the tail end of 2023. And I have been pregnant for 7, almost 8 months of 2024. I am ready to be DONE. Having an end date is good for my mental health.

That said, having an induction date looming is extremely nerve-wracking and intimidating. The idea that there is a legitimate countdown makes the minutes of every day move at a glacial pace.

I have been trying to create distractions for myself. Here are a few things I have done:

• Laundry. Just when I think I’ve washed everything, I find more things to wash. Couch cushion covers. Our entire linen closet of extra sheets and towels. Purple Bear. Every eye mask we own.
• Online shopped. It just so happens that Amazon Prime Day AND the Nordstrom Anniversary sale took place the week before my induction. If that wasn’t the universe saying, “Emily, you did the right thing by not buying a single thing for this baby until the last minute,” then I don’t know what it was.
• Attempted to clean the area rugs we have. This was a fail, and the viral vacuum I bought from Amazon will be returned.
• Checked social media constantly.
• Scheduled dates with Chris and friends, including a comedy show, dinner, and multiple ice cream dates.
• Finished the Medium and Hard Sudoku every day from the New York Times.
• Went on walks if the temperature got below 84.
• Watched Love Island.
• Wrote this post.

A lot of websites say to have your hospital bag packed and ready by the front door at around 32-34 weeks. I couldn’t imagine needing one, so I never packed one. Yesterday, at 37 weeks, 4 days, I finally started putting things in a bag. As I have been saying to people, within a week, this baby is coming out, dead or alive. So, I guess I should have a bag. Then again, last time I went to the hospital thinking I’d be there for 2 hours max, get some BP meds, and go to sleep at home. That evening, I brought a Stanley cup of water, my phone charger, one pair of contacts, and my Kindle. I was there a week. I live close enough to the hospital that my sister and husband were able to go pick up stuff for me. This time, knowing that, I’m not worried about forgetting anything.

People talk a lot about buying/bringing a “going home outfit” for yourself and the baby. How confident! I’m not sure my baby will be going home, nor am I sure I will be. Body bags for both of us are the “going home outfit” that floats around in my mind on my bad days. But last week I finally considered the other option, and got a cute outfit for him. Worst case scenario, he’s dead and I lost $9.99 and guess what, that’s the least of my worries.

It’s crazy to me that people plan their hospital stay. They assume things will go well and that they’ll be out in 2-3 days. This is still a mystery to me. I kind of assume we will face some complication or another (hemorrhage, emergency c-section, random postpartum blood pressure spike…) that will force me to stay there longer than the initially planned time. For that reason, even though I know it’s fine if I forget things, I am bringing whatever will make me feel comfortable or slightly less uncomfortable. I know they give a toiletry bag with travel supplies, but I want MY shampoo and MY facewash. What if I’m there for 6 days again? If facewash makes me feel more human, then I’ll bring it. Let them judge the size of my bag. I really DGAF. This is also why we have kept the exact dates of our hospital stay a secret. The pressure of giving updates is too much, especially if things are tenuous and the stay is longer than originally planned.

My mom asked me yesterday if we finally “thought we were going to have a baby.” I answered this easily: “yes.” The real question is… do we think we’re going to have an ALIVE baby. And my answer to that is, I’m still on the fence. It’s so hard to imagine things going well. Yes, even now. Somehow, he needs to get from inside my body to outside, and not kill me in the process. Every single night we say goodnight to him, and every single night we say, “please don’t kill your mama.” While we are so close to the finish line, for normal people, they may say the hardest part is yet to come. For me, this ENTIRE thing has been a hard part. I kept waiting to feel assured or hopeful, and that time never came.

I’m hopeful that being in the hospital will help. I’m hopeful that hearing his heartbeat on a monitor will calm me. Last time, when Maliyah died and they took the monitors off me before inducing labor, it was both a relief because they kept slipping off my stomach, and completely devastating, because I knew there was nothing left to listen to.

This time around, I’ve been having weekly non-stress tests (NSTs) for almost two months, and I find that I am the most relaxed hooked up to those monitors than any other time. Hearing his heart beating, and knowing that if anything goes wrong, I’m in the exact right place, there’s nothing like that sense of peace. Almost every time, I nearly fall asleep because it’s the one time I am calm. I am hopeful I will feel that way when I show up at the hospital for my induction.

One of my biggest worries that is unrelated to this pregnancy is that people will forget about Maliyah. I’ve talked about this in a few prior posts, first in the one about Invisible Grief, then again in No, It’s Not my First. Not only is this a concern for after he is born with friends and family talking to us as “new parents” or saying, “you’re going to be parents!” (already happened many, many times), but we also thought about this extensively for our stay in the hospital.

Chris and I attended a Childbirth for Pregnant After Loss Parents class, and one of the things they recommended was a sign for the hospital room door. I was hesitant to make one, because I know doctors and nurses rarely read my chart, so why would they read a door sign? That said, my support group coordinator (also a nurse) said it can be helpful for staff, and it may make me feel like at least I’ve done everything I can. Even if it only saves me retelling my story one time, that may be worthwhile. In what is bound to be a stressful situation, it made sense to try and reduce the stress any way I could, so we made a sign based on a few examples from the class and from PAL friends I met in my support group. I also felt that having a sign on the door could be a moment for passive education. Last year in the hospital, every time Chris was in the hallway he was congratulated by other dads-to-be. Of course I can’t blame them, how would they know? But I do think it’s a moment to have people recognize while they walk down the hall that things are not always unicorns and sunshine, and maybe they will think twice in the future.

Speaking of the hospital, I also wanted to make sure I had something of Maliyah’s with me in the delivery room. It feels so strange to know I’m walking into the same hospital, on the same floor where I delivered her, but without her. We decided to bring laminated copies of her feet and handprints with us, as well as the jewelry I wear all the time (a ring with hers and my birthstone, and a necklace with three diamonds for the three of us, and her name engraved on the inside). I hope to get a photo of this baby’s hands next to hers, so we can introduce him to his big sis. While it’s gut-wrenchingly sad to know that they will never meet here on Earth, it felt really important to me to have them be together in some way at the beginning of his life.

This post has gotten very long. I guess I had a lot of thoughts. I am hoping this blog post closes the chapter of PAL blogs for at least a while. My brain and body need a break, and I need to move on to new worries. Every time I mention to a non-loss mom how I can’t wait to not be stressed anymore, without fail they say, “you’ll just have new worries!” Quick tip: don’t say that. Also, I obviously know that. I will be worried about keeping this child alive forever. But at least after he’s out of my body, it won’t be solely my responsibility, and I may have some visual clues. I cannot wait to share the responsibility with someone else.

See you on the other side…

(Written at: 37 weeks, 5 days)