doctors | Lessons from my daughter

No no…. I am not thinking about having another baby. Emily will be 15 in 2 weeks….. I am done!

Seeing my friends get pregnant and seeing their babies reminds me of my pregnancy.

We wanted a baby and tried for a couple of months before we got a positive result. We were sooo excited and Jon told everybody he knew way before the safe time… You know the so many weeks you should be waiting for before you tell… 🙂

Quite early in this process I ended-up at the hospital with major cramps, because of the pregnancy, we had ultra-sounds done and the hospital staff was ready to terminate it all as they couldn’t see the fetus in my uterus. They assumed it was in one of my fallopian tube. They couldn’t see it anywhere but the bloodwork said I was pregnant. That day I learned that we were probably a good 3 weeks less advanced than we though.

I told the doctors that until they could prove that my life was in danger, they were not going to terminate my pregnancy. We scheduled a follow-up ultra-sound…

2nd ultra-sound! – they can see the fetus in the uterus but their is no “c.f.” ….. don’t you like it when doctors are talking about you but don’t want you to understand??? So, I asked, what’s a “c.f.”? The conversation was in French at the time and a c.f. stands for coeur foetal… my fetus’ heart…

From the previous ultra-sound, we knew I was at least 3 weeks behind the original delivery date but it wasn’t changed anywhere… so again I asked, is it possible that it is not formed yet? The answer was yes but we shouldn’t take a chance, we should terminate your pregnancy…. Wait what??? No!!!…. We should not terminate anything…. we should schedule another ultra-sound and see if the c.f. is there …

3rd ultra-sound! – here it is…. my fetus is in my uterus and has a tiny beating heart!

What a relief! We were so happy!

Emily arrived a couple of weeks early when comparing to my original delivery date but when factoring in all the ultra-sound, she was born at least 5 weeks early and she was really tiny (5lbs 6oz). Should my delivery date had been changed, we would have been transferred to another hospital, Emily would have been considered premie… Maybe she would have been diagnosed there…. But that didn’t happened…. we were sent home with our perfect little baby!!!!

The rest is history.

Fast forward a couple of months after Emily was diagnosed…

Someone at work had the …. audacity??? to ask me if I regretted not letting the doctors terminate my pregnancy at the beginning when I had all those ultra-sounds going on…

I can’t remember exactly what I said but it must have been something like …. WTF??? You did not just ask me that….? Emily is the love of my life regardless of what is going on now!

Even in my sleepless full of stress state of mind, I never one second thought I should have terminated my pregnancy. I am not opposed to terminating a pregnancy under certain circumstances… I think it is a decision to be taken between you, your spouse and your consciences…..

At that time, Emily had already taught me the importance of love, care, patience, repetition, …. and more! She had taught me to slow down and not turn into a workaholic…. she had taught me that a cuddle is worth more than anything….

How can someone felt it was ok to ask something like that?

How would you have answered that question?

June 18 1998 20:24

Our daughter is finally here! A tiny baby 5 lbs 6 onces …. 18.5 inches long.

She is beautiful! The cutest baby in the nursery! I know every parents think that about their baby but mine was awfully cute!

She had the most perfectly round face with big almond shape eyes. She had a tiny cry while all those other big babies were so loud!!! She had a tiny spot on the back of her head that had no hair, she had a tiny purple spot on her forehead and a little skin tag by her left ear….. Other than that 10 fingers, 10 toes and a cute tiny nose….

Emily was born in the time of breastfeeding madness….. where you “had to” breastfeed. Emily didn’t want to!!! The drinking containers (my breasts) were bigger than she was….. She didn’t latch, she didn’t suck and couldn’t swallow…… My breasts became public properties to the nurses at the hospital….. They all had a different approach that was supposed to make Emily drink….. Well that didn’t work and quite frankly at some point regardless of their good intentions, I couldn’t stand nurses grabbing my breasts!!! MY Boobies!!! Not public property!

The doctors ordered tests and it was decided that her not drinking properly and turning blue while we were feeding her had to do with not knowing how to swallow! We were cleared to go home with our daughter, all we needed to do was take our time feeding her…

Did we ever!!!

You know those babies who drink 8 onces and go for a nap!?!?!? I’ve heard they exist! I believe some of my nephews were like that but in our house there was none of that. No drinking, no napping!

I pumped milk for as long as I could, I started with a manual pump, got on a path to tendinitis so I switch to electronic…. talk about feeling like a milk cow…. not sexy, not stimulating…. but I did it for my daughter! Emily drank maybe 2 onces at the time and to get those 2 onces in her took a couple of hours. Put a tiny amount in her mouth, sit her up straight, put a hand on her tummy, once you felt the sip go down (yes, you can feel that….), sit her up straight and don’t move her……. wait maybe 5 minutes and repeat…. The waiting was to help her keep the milk in. Regardless of how slowly we got the milk in her, she vomited at least half of it……

One day, I will tell you about the time her godmother decided to play with her just after she was done drinking….

Feeding Emily was a 24/7 adventure. We just kept giving her small amount of milk hoping it would stay in, hoping she would keep enough to stay alive!

My house was a mess, I had on-going piles of laundry (all the vomiting) and I was exhausted…. Emily didn’t sleep. She drank, vomited and cried…… She slept maybe 4 hours on 24 hours and they were not in a row!!!

To this day, I am not sure where the energy and tenacity to continue came from….

One thing for sure, by the time she was diagnosed and that the doctors talked about feeding her by tube….. I knew we could keep her alive without it! I knew that it was hard, I knew that the tube might be easier but at the end of the day, I wanted her to learn to eat, I wanted her to learn to use her tongue and cheeks….. I wanted her to developed those muscles so maybe one day she would talk…..! Maybe one day she would say “maman”

When faced with a never ending task, how long will you keep going?