A Little Miracle

I am so lucky to have my little girl. When I think back to all that I went through during my pregnancy, it is a wonder that she even arrived. After getting confirmation that I was pregnant, a couple of key incidents happened that made very scared to even announce to people that I was expecting. 

Early on I found myself bleeding a lot and having cramps that doctors assured me was normal. I kept crying because I knew something was wrong. The more I called the doctors, the more they said bleeding in the first trimester was normal. Until one day it wasn’t. 

I found myself feeling very sick to my stomach one day. I attributed it to the hormonal ups and downs of pregnancy but it was enough for me to call out sick. I felt better the next morning so I went into work only to be bent over in agony at my desk that afternoon. I kept thinking it was something I had eaten. When I just couldn’t take it anymore, I left work and took a cab home. As I writhed in pain in bed, the pain getting unbearable, I called the doctors. I told them what was happening. They told me to go to their office immediately. 

A trip that normally should have taken 10 minutes by taxi took 45 minutes because President Obama was in town. I thought I was going to die in the cab…tears rolling down my cheek and my nails ripping the fake leather of the car seat. 

When we finally got to the doctors, they did an ultrasound. They found I had a lot of fluid in my uterus. And yes, that I was bleeding a little too much. The culprit could have been one of a number of things: an ovarian torsion (an ovary is twisted upon itself), an ectopic pregnancy or an ovarian cyst that had ruptured. The only possible way for them to know what was going on was to operate. They confirmed that the fetus was doing fine but in having the operation, there was a chance that I could lose the baby. Knowing this information was not very comforting in my decision to go forward with the operation. 

Luckily the operation was successful and the baby was doing fine. But the culprit was in fact another embryo that had implanted itself into my Fallopian tube and that had ruptured. I had to have my tube removed.

As I was recovering, my dad’s health deteriorated and he passed away a little less than a month after my surgery. Even though I had prepared myself for the worst with regards to my dad’s health, I was still devastated and sad for a quite a while. I was afraid for a bit that the shock would impact my growing baby. I will never know if it did until many months or years from now. 

When I look at her now and the joy she brings me (even when she fights her sleep), I can’t believe she is here. It was a very long journey to see her birth.  And I know it will be a long journey until she becomes an adult but I am happy to have gone through it already. It has taught me many lessons about myself and my daughter and it makes her all the more special in my eyes.