slightly longer version, maybe; okay, definitely

I can’t tell if I have the energy to re-live our weekend in a play-by-play. It was kind of awful. I am still bleeding today, though the color has changed again, to like a muddy brownish red. I have a call in to the doctor’s office for reassurance. Though I feel more secure than I did the other night, the best possible thing that could happen is for the bleeding to JUST STOP and NEVER COME BACK.

Anyway, our experience at the ER was mostly terrifying, then reassuring, then kind of amazing, since we got to see the bao kicking and bucking and twirling away in there. It was quite the roller-coaster ride of emotions, and by the time we got home yesterday we were exhausted in every possible way. You know how sometimes you are so tired your eyebrows hurt? It was like that.

Okay, I’m going to give this a shot. You already know that at 4 a.m. I saw red blood. I was scared, and kind of pissed. Here I was, about to make some peace with my body, willing to trust it again, and it was going to effing miscarry on me? At 14 weeks? Oh hayl no.

I took a deep breath and decided to do some googling to see if I could get reassurance that way. And eat a bowl of cheerios, because I was starving. At the first random site I went to, the women on there were telling stories about bleeding and going to the ER and coming home reassured that everything was fine. (Bleeding like globules and tissues and copious amounts of blood.) So what I took from that was “I should go to the ER for my own personal peace of mind. It’s not like I can go to sleep now anyway. Might as well go now rather than wait until a doctor’s office opens in the morning.” So I woke Mama Jae up and off we went.

We decided to go to Park, since we knew it had the women’s hospital and that it was small and unlikely to have a ton of people waiting. We were right–when we arrived at the hospital’s main ER, there weren’t even any staff in the admitting area. Mama Jae had to kind of wander around and make a little noise and walk in front of the automatic doors a couple of times before a guy came out. We were the only people there, though, and we got seen right away. After taking my blood pressure and some other vitals, they said they were going to transfer me to the women’s hospital. A guy came to get us, and wheeled me up and down corridors and elevators to the women’s hospital. The tears that had been threatening began to fall out. I was just miserable.

When we got to the women’s hospital, I stripped and got into a gown and the nurse took my vitals again and asked me some questions. Then she took out the little external fetal heart rate finder thing and put goo on my belly, and attempted to find the baby’s heartbeat. And failed. And moved the machine to a different place. No luck. Move again. Nada. Move again. Nope. This went on, as I said, for what felt like forever. I couldn’t look at the nurse; I couldn’t look at Mama Jae. Finally, finally, FINALLY we heard whooshing. My eyes flew to the nurse’s face and I asked, “Is that it?” and she said yes, and proceeded to say something about the heart rate being totally normal and around 145 and it also being hard to distinguish between my heart rate and the baby’s, but I was only taking it in in a kind of roundabout way because of the sobbing. Every gasp registered on the monitor, though, and loudly, so I was trying to hold it in, but it was pretty much impossible. Holy crap, I don’t think I have ever been that scared, and then that relieved, in such a short amount of time.

This is where things get hazy and really, really slow, because we were in this little curtained-off area for the next four hours. At some point, the nurse hooked me up to a machine that monitored my blood pressure and heart rate constantly. We were asked if we wanted an ultrasound, and said yes, and the ultrasound tech was paged. She came maybe an hour later, and told us that she was the ultrasound tech for our OB’s practice, so she would be seeing us again. She was kind of hilarious and awesome. She tried to maneuver my bed around a little to set me up for the ultrasound and couldn’t figure it out, especially the stirrups. She had one of them on backwards at one point, and said, “well, that’s not going to work; you’re not Barbie, for crying out loud.” So no stirrups for me–just scooting to the end of the bed, and suddenly there was an image of the baby on the screen. It was so surreal to go from panicked “I’m miscarrying” to sitting there watching the bao doing morning calisthenics. Its little legs were crossed at the ankle when the image first popped up. I will never forget looking at those tiny little feet. We got to see it from all different angles, but since it was an ER ultrasound machine, they didn’t have a printer, so we didn’t get to take any pictures home with us. But the bao is measuring right on target, at 14 weeks, and the crown-to-rump is something like 7.7 cm. Tiny bao, tiny happy moving HEALTHY bao!

So, huge sigh of relief. HUGE. She didn’t find anything on the ultrasound to indicate where the bleed was coming from. No placenta previa, and my cervix is wicked long, and no problems with the placenta or the cord. So off the tech went to consult with the radiologist, and Mama Jae and I collapsed back into our chair and bed with relief. It’s like that old Rolaids commercial—U-L-T-R-A-S-O-U-N-D spells RELIEF!

Then after like half an hour, the tech was back, all huffy with professional indignation, because the radiologist told her she hadn’t taken enough pictures. So we had ANOTHER ultrasound. (My hoo-ha is quite exhausted.) This time, she found the source of the bleed, which is in a tiny area between the placenta and the uterine wall. It’s like 3.5 cm across at the widest. So she took some pictures of that and whatever else, and was off again.

Apparently the radiologist approved of these pictures, because a little while later this guy in denim scrubs came in the room. Turns out he was the doctor on duty, and he explained everything to us. (Side note: several of the less sensitive people we spoke to during this process expressed disbelief on a varying scale that we had not yet had our first appointment with an OB. I was like BELIEVE ME. WE HAVE TRIED. It was so exasperating to feel like we were being held at fault for this. Anyway.) After he’d done his explaining, and instructed us to make our first appointment with our doctor (NO SHIT), and listened to my heart and lungs, he patted me on the foot and MAMA JAE ON THE HEAD and left, and we were discharged. Yes, he patted her on the head.

Which reminds me about how weird the interactions with some of the staff were. She got “sirred” a couple of times, and I think everyone was kind of confused in general about what was going on and who she was and what our relationship was. Because we were pretty distraught, we weren’t exactly taking the time to come out to each staff member and explain our relationship. At one point I was in the bathroom and this woman came to take my insurance info, and I think she thought Mama Jae was a) male and b) my husband, so when she asked Mama Jae about next of kin and Mama Jae spelled out her name, she was wicked confused. Also I noticed Dr. Denim Scrubs looking at my wedding ring, so he probably was wondering what the hell was going on. We are unsure whether he thought Mama Jae was my female friend/roommate or perhaps adopted Asian child. Most of the staff was beyond awesome, don’t get me wrong, and we got excellent medical care. I think that we just have to be aware, when we go in for labor/delivery, to make sure that everyone is on the same page about Mama Jae being treated as a (female) parent. We have to be proactive and speak up. I think in this case it was okay, because we were upset, but we do have to keep that in the backs of our minds.

Okay, I think this version is long enough. Right now we are waiting for our OB appointment, which got rescheduled to next week, and hoping that the bleeding goes the aitch away and never comes back. Thanks again for your fantastic support, y’all. I don’t know what we would do without this community, really. Big kisses and hugs.