On Wednesday morning I woke up to my husband frantically looking for our sump pump and asking me if I had seen it anywhere. He said our basement was flooding. He was angry because he couldn't find the sump pump to stop the water from rising any higher. As he searched our house high and low for the sump pump I tried to go back to sleep and not feel sick to my stomach about the items being stored in the basement getting ruined. It was pouring rain outside our bedroom window and all I could think about was the box full of our daughter's memories sitting on the basement floor being drowned in dirty water. Eventually I was able to fall back asleep once I convinced myself that there was nothing that I could do to prevent, stop, or help the flooding situation. An hour or so later my husband woke me back up and asked me to drive down to his sister's house to get their spare sump pump. While driving the four blocks through town to my sister-in-law's house I could see the canal overflowing into the streets and yards completely under water. When I got back with the sump pump my husband informed me he had located ours-it was at his friends house. He had let his friend borrow it a few weeks ago and never got it back. So he drove two blocks to his friend's house to get our pump back and when he got home he got busy to work pumping water out of our basement. Our neighbor even brought her pump over for us to use once she got the water out of hers. As frustrated as my husband was that our basement was literally a swimming pool, and even as sick as I felt about our belongings getting ruined-especially the box of Riley's memories-I kept telling my husband "we aren't the only ones with a flooded basement."
The flooded basement reminded me of how it has felt going through life over the last seven years. It resembled "the storm," if you will. After losing our daughter in March 2008 it felt like I was drowning in a dark, dingy, stinky basement all by myself. My husband, who was my boyfriend at the time, tried to look for ways to fix my grief but he couldn't. He couldn't figure out how to drain the water from the basement that I was drowning in. Eventually we found the tools together to help us get our heads above the water again. This cycle repeated itself four more times (our three miscarriages and one failed IVF attempt) before we finally found a way to drain the water so we could walk on dry ground again. We finally realized that we needed to reach out for help-from our family and friends and Baby Quest Foundation. We never imaged that people would be so willing to help us conquer this storm. We also never realized that by sharing our story it would connect us with so many other couples who have experienced these storms too and help us feel like we weren't alone. It's brought a calm to our lives that we've never felt before. Kinda like the calm that was in the air Thursday morning when I left my house for my doctor's appointment-the sun was peaking out and it was the perfect temperature with no rain in sight.
Wednesday was Riley's due date. Had she been born she would be 7 years old. Knowing that her memories were stored in a box on the basement floor and they very well could have gotten ruined on her due date is a hard reality to accept. But what if she was trying to tell us that it is okay to move forward-that it's okay to let some of her memories go? It's just stuff....a mold of her hand and foot that you could barely see because she was so tiny, the cards from her funeral and the funeral sign-in book, and some crib sheets that never got used and I wasn't planning on using. Her memory really isn't even in those things-it's inside my heart and that can never be washed away.
Even though it was raining again today when I left my house for work and at times I couldn't see more than 50 feet in front of me while driving, I'm not going to let it rain on my parade. For the first time in the past seven years it feels like we are actually going to get our Rainbow. I've made it to 32 weeks and Baby M is doing fantastic. I started my twice-weekly testing this week. On Monday at had my first ever non-stress test (NST). Baby M was active the whole way to my appointment but surprisingly was reserving his energy when they hooked me up to the monitor and needed to assess his heart rate and movements. I've said it a million times...but this little guy is so stubborn! When the nurse practitioner (NP) came in the look at the results of the first 15 minutes on the monitor she said "he's not as reactive as we need him to be" so she kept me on for another 15-20 minutes. During that half of the monitoring little man was kicking the crap out of me and showing off in my opinion-"oh, I'm not reactive enough for you....well let me show you how reactive I can be!" The NP was very pleased at the results when she came back in to check on us. Baby M's movement was great and I was not having any contractions. So we passed with flying colors on the first NST!
On Thursday I had my first bio-physical profile ultrasound. Baby M was moving around, his heart rate was around 150, and his weight was 4 lbs 9 oz putting him in the 75th percentile for size. His head, on the other hand, is measuring at 34 weeks and is already 11.8 inches!! I keep replaying stories in my head that my mother-in-law has shared repeatedly about my husbands birth. I'm pretty sure I'm going to be begging for a c-section if this baby's head keeps growing the way it has been! I don't want to hemorrhage the way my mother-in-law did from my husband's 15 inch head! As of right now it's still up in the air as to rather or not a vaginal birth is even an option though...the placenta is 3.5 cm away from the cervix but needs to be at least 4, preferably more than that. The umbilical cord is no longer covering the cervix so that is one less concern. There's still time for the placenta to move too so we'll just wait and see what the next couple of weeks brings our way between the placenta and the head! All of Baby M's organs looked great but once again he was being stubborn and wouldn't breathe for us when the sonographer was watching for breathing. She had to send me out to the waiting room for about 20 minutes and bring me back in. Sure enough he showed us right away on the second attempt that he knows how to breathe. This boy, I tell you what! Thankfully I've gotten to know his personality really well and haven't been letting things like this freak me out....I've been able to remain calm and confident in our son's ability to do what he needs to do to prove he is strong and healthy.
I hope everyone has a good weekend that is hopefully filled with sunshine and not this yucky rain stuff!
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