I could not believe this was happening. Everything had been going so well. How could things end like this? I wheeled my wife into the Emergency Room and tried to explain the gravity of the situation. The hospital told us that they only had one emergency gynecological room and that it was taken. We would just have to wait.
I was livid. We have to wait? They can’t be serious! This can’t wait. I walked up to the nurse and asked her if she realized that the prognosis was worse every minute we waited. She asked me if I was a doctor. When I said no, she told me there was nothing I could do.
Fortunately, my older brother is a doctor. I asked the nurse if I could call him to see if he could light a fire under them. Their attitude did change after they spoke with him, but they still told us there really isn’t anything they could do until the room is open.
As we were sitting and waiting, my wife made the rather prophetic observation that if we had similar difficulties three weeks hence, we would go to labor and delivery, not the ER where we couldn’t be seen immediately.
It felt like an eternity, but we were finally ushered into the room. They took the blood work, but what we were really waiting for was the ultrasound.
Once again, neither of us had any idea what the pictures on the screen actually showed. After a short while, and upon the return of the blood results, the doctor told us some great news. The babies seemed fine, and her cervix appeared to be closed. This is what they call a threatened miscarriage. It wasn’t good news, to be sure, but we were still expecting. The next step was a much more in-depth follow up with the high-risk OB specialist.
The specialist confirmed the health of the babies the next day. These things just happen sometimes but, from that point on, my wife needed to be under much stricter supervision by the high-risk team. She would also need to stay on bed rest for a few weeks just to make sure things continued to progress nicely.
That made our moving day more complicated (packing and moving is not part of my skill set), but we did have the full support of my in-laws who helped us through the process. We even joked to my wife about how she got to take it easy while the rest of us were doing all the heavy shlepping.
We settled into the apartment which we assumed would be our family home for the foreseeable future. Cooking and cleaning are also not in my skill set, and there was some difficulty in my attempts to fill that role while my wife rested, but we had a great support system of family and friends, and we managed quite well.
We were anxiously looking forward to the major (albeit routine) ultrasound at around 17 weeks. The plan was to take full measurements of both babies and to make sure that their fetal development was proceeding on pace. My wife hadn’t been out much in the previous few weeks, and we decided that we were going to stop off for some pizza right after the ultrasound because we were out anyway. Unfortunately, we never got that chance. Instead of a pizza party, we got news that changed our lives forever.