Telling Henry...and Everyone Else

I just spent a few minutes on the back porch. We don’t have any trees in our yard yet, but the neighbor’s crepe myrtles generously drape themselves over the fence. I watched a skeletal gecko traverse the screen windows while the ceiling fans wound down toward dusk. It was a nice way to end what has been an atrociously stressful week.

I had hoped to make this announcement on the blog slyly, with a retelling of a conversation with Henry, and I do promise to end that way, but the events of this week compel me to vent them through writing. Thus, I might as well just come out and say it: I’m twelve weeks’ pregnant.

We are both thrilled about this, and I’ll get into the how and why it happened later, but this week one of the things I feared most about getting pregnant happened: my near-daily sinus headache morphed into a migraine. Unable to head it off at the pass with my usual meds, I tried to tough it out for the first twenty-four hours. But then I couldn’t take it anymore, and my OB had me admitted to the ER. They administered an IV dose of Dilauded, which brought immediate relief, and sent me home with Vicodin.

We saw my OB the next day – I was worn out, and the headache had not disappeared, but it was manageable. I had been attempting to avoid unnecessary ultrasounds, but when she couldn’t find the heartbeat manually, we decided to take a look. I have a retroverted (translation: tilted) uterus, so the baby was hiding in the back, but looked a good size and had a strong heartbeat. Yay! My OB referred me to two neurologists, in hopes that we can figure out how to manage these migraines, which didn’t show up until my last week in my pregnancy with Henry.

We saw the neurologist the next day, and he prescribed Compazine and Benadryl for the pain of the migraine. He also instructed me not to work for the rest of the week. Having already missed two days, this was tough to stomach, but there is no greater wake up call that I have to change my work habits than a 48-plus hour migraine. I stuck with the regimen Compazine-Benadryl for thirty-six hours, until I arrived for my appointment with the second neurologist. I had awoken that morning after a strange dream in which I was unable to turn my neck and body straight while driving my car down a two-lane road. I did feel that my muscles were a little tense, and I felt lightheaded and irritable, but that was to be expected after the past few days.

By the time I was waiting for the elevator, with Henry and Matthew in tow, I had to ask for a wheelchair. I found I couldn’t keep my face from contorting, my lips squinching up, my jaw protruding, and my neck and body kept twisting to the left. It was scary, but also physically painful not being able to control my muscles and clenching my jaw. We made it to the doctor’s office, only to have him send me immediately to the ER. He diagnosed an allergic reaction to the Compazine. Matthew couldn’t come with Henry into the ER, so he stayed behind and called Mom and I was wheeled into a scene straight out of TV’s “ER.” It was complete chaos, and when I asked to go to the bathroom, I was wheeled to the door but told it was occupied and the nurse would be right back. She didn’t come back. I began trying to get the attention of anyone passing by, but I am sure my appearance didn’t help matters. Everyone just looked away and kept walking. I finally yelled to the triage station that I needed help, and finally got it.

After that, the attack became worse. I was clenching my jaw so tightly, I chipped a molar and was afraid I would break more teeth, so I began biting down on a sweater. I couldn’t move out of my twisted position, and every muscle in my body was tensing painfully. As a woman in a nearby bed vomited repeatedly, they tried to triage me, but my tongue was protruding from my mouth so that I couldn’t speak well. It was terrifying to hear my own garbled words. They finally got an IV into me and a doctor ordered Benadryl. Matthew was with me by that point, and he could witness the immediate relief – my jaw loosened with each passing second, my legs relaxed, my neck and back straightened. I couldn’t stop thanking the nurse, over and over.

The doctor told me this reaction to Compazine is actually fairly common, as I discovered when I got home and googled it. Apparently, it can cause psychotic behavior along with the muscle spasms, so I guess I was lucky that didn’t happen. I am worried about any effect my dystonia could have had on the baby, but so far I haven’t found anything online confirming that, and the OB on call said she didn’t think it would cause harm.

Thank God for Benadryl. And it was just as well that I didn’t plan to go to work.

Today was the first day I have felt normal. The migraine is still there, but Matthew has been a saint and has been great at massaging me, which definitely helps relieve the pain. And I now have a new goal – to find a way to continue working without letting my Type A, billable-hour obsession get me into this situation again. I’m going to renew biofeedback therapy, and start a yoga routine. And basically just try to stop pushing myself. My Mom made a good point, that I have been trying to build this pregnancy around my life, when it needs to be the other way around. I'm going to take that advice to heart.

Okay, here’s the best I saved for last, our conversation telling Henry about the baby:

"Mommy, did the doctor say you could go on a bike ride with me?"

"No, sweetie, he said I probably shouldn't do that. You know why? Because the doctor said he saw a baby growing in Mommy's belly."

His eyes got wide.

"Well, what are you going to name it?"

We laughed. "We don't know -- right now we don't even know if it's a boy baby or a girl baby. The baby is really tiny, about the size of your thumb. But after a long, long, long time, Mommy and Daddy will go to the hospital and the doctors will open up Mommy's belly and take the baby out."

He stared at my chest and touched my sternum. "Is the baby going to come out right there?"

"No, the baby is growing in my belly, down here, and that's where it will come out."

"But, Mommy, if the doctors cut you open right there, you will get dead."

We showed him the scar where they took him out and explained that it was safe and I would be okay.

He said, "I want you to go to the hospital before my birthday party so the doctors can take the baby out and the baby and I can play with my toys." We tried not to laugh but explained that it would be after his birthday, after Halloween, after Christmas, and maybe even after Mardi Gras before the baby was big enough to come out.

We asked him what he would want to name the baby if it was a boy. He thought for a minute then said, "Jack!"

And if it's a girl? "Laila!" But then he said, "Daddy, what do you want to name the baby, because if I name it, there will be two Jacks and two Lailas!"