As I meet more and more people,
I am constantly confronted with the same questions: How old is she? She’s so
small-is she catching up? Why did that
happen? And I have the same responses that I’ve reiterated for almost a year
now, but answering how it happened, why it happened, that’s a little harder.
There are two possibilities: 1.
I had a virus that was undiagnosible and was a total fluke thing or 2. I have
some kind of blood disorder that is normally dormant and only exhibits symptoms
when pregnant. In the case of #2, all
they do is give me injections while I am pregnant which guarantees that it won’t
happen again-it also explains the miscarriages.
So next week I have an appointment with a hematologist to draw a serious
amount of blood and test the blood for every thrombosis under the sun. I am hoping, praying that I have a blood
disorder; a real, treatable, diagnosable disorder that answers all of the
questions, the how and the why. Because
if I don’t have a disorder, if this was all just a fluke thing and the doctors
can’t determine if it will happen again, I don’t know if I could do it all over
again, sit in a NICU for 11 weeks, lose all sense of myself, not take my baby
home with me…no, I take that back, I know
that I can’t do it all again. Please
please please universe, please say that I have a blood disorder, because I really
want to have another baby, I want to experience my water breaking and driving
to the hospital in painful anticipation and giving birth and putting my baby to
my breast and having visitors come to visit and hold the baby and say “how
beautiful,” instead of the tears of fear and bated questions that followed
initial trips to the NICU. I want
hand-me-downs and sibling rivalry and family vacations, like the time when my
sister and I spit partially chewed potato chips at each other across a minivan
to the utter chagrin of our mother.
I won’t know the results for a
little while, but the answers will determine a large chunk of our future as a
family. And my husband didn’t understand
my reticence in making the appointment.
