My doctor had told me to call him when I started my period and he would write me a prescription for more Clomiphene. I started having cramps around the normal time, they were the worst they had been in quite some time. After a week of not having actually started my period other than a brief bout of spotting, I called the doctor’s office to see if they would give me something to induce its onset. They said that would be fine, but that I would need to take a pregnancy test just to be sure.

So, I diligently went to the store and bought a home pregnancy test. I decided not to take it that day—it was already depressing enough to me that I did not ovulate on a drug that supposedly made ovulation happen; I didn’t really need it rubbed in by getting a negative result on a pregnancy test. The following morning, I decided to go ahead and get it over with. You cannot imagine my shock as I was brushing my teeth and saw the little "+" sign come up on the test. I really wanted to believe it was true; but it couldn’t be, could it? You can’t get pregnant if you don’t ovulate, and I didn’t ovulate so I couldn’t be pregnant. I decided there must have been something wrong with that particular test so I went back to the store and bought a different brand. Once again, the results were positive. I was elated; I really wanted this. Now I just had to hope that it wasn’t some kind of cruel trick and that everything was as it should be.

I made an appointment to see my doctor and officially begin my pregnancy. They did all of the usual things that they do for people who have been taking fertility drugs. They did an ultrasound to make sure that the pregnancy was not a tubal one and to determine the number of fetuses. Once I was assured that everything was in the right place and that I was only going to have one baby, I went about the business of learning how to be pregnant. I bought books and read all about what was going on in my body, what I should be feeling, and the do’s and don’ts of pregnancy.

My pregnancy progressed perfectly according to all of my various resources. I was very fortunate in that I never got sick. I got pretty bad headaches for a few weeks but those went away, and personally, I’ll take just about anything over nausea. I was quite relieved to get through the first trimester safely, and looked forward to the second trimester (when its okay to look pregnant, too.) All of my monthly checkups were fine. In October, I had an ultrasound which told me that we would be having a girl. We decided to name her Marilyn Nicole. Now, with this information in mind, we had four months to actually prepare for her arrival. We had not really started doing anything in terms of baby shopping or nursery preparation. We planned to begin all of those sorts of things in November. Little did we know what was about to happen.

The night of November 11, I went to bed as usual. My husband, Dwight, stayed up late doing something on his computer. I awoke around 3:30 in the morning. This was not unusual; I often needed to get up and relieve myself in the middle of the night, especially in recent weeks as Marilyn was growing (I am of the personal opinion that she knew exactly where my bladder was located and found it amusing to kick it and see how long it would take for me to respond.)

When I came back to bed, I was very uncomfortable. I thought to myself that this is what my pregnancy book had been referring to when it discussed how as the fetus gets larger, it may be difficult to get comfortable due to the pressure exerted on various organs when you are lying down. So, following my books’ advice (which of course I had read and reread several times), I changed my position to my side. No matter how I moved I could not get comfortable. I was really getting quite aggravated because I NEVER have trouble sleeping, but in the back of my mind I considered the fact that I should feel quite fortunate if this was to be my only pregnancy woe. After about 20 minutes of contemplating my dilemma, I noticed that somewhere along the line my discomfort had turned into pain. I had no idea what to make of this, and while I was trying to figure it out, my pain turned into a more real pain.

Trying not to worry, I went downstairs and asked Dwight to come and be with me. When he asked me why, I tried to explain that I was in pain but I didn’t really know how to explain my pain other than it was painful. He mistakenly thought I was just moaning and groaning about a tummy ache and didn’t really move to jump up and comfort me the way I had hoped. By the time I made it back to the bedroom, my pain had escalated to a kind that really had me alarmed. I was quite scared because I had no idea what was happening other than the fact that this kind of pain was not normal. I debated calling the doctor, but it was 4:00 in the morning. Now, I realize that most people wouldn’t think twice about calling the doctor, but my father is a doctor and I had been around one too many times when someone had woken him up for something that could have easily waited or something that he could not do anything about. Because of this, I thought I should evaluate my pain just a little more thoroughly before I made the decision to wake my doctor.

By the time Dwight came upstairs, a whole 5 minutes later, I was seriously reconsidering what I should do. I was trying to read in my books about my problem, but every time I started reading the pain would grip me just a little more and I couldn’t concentrate on what the books were saying. Dwight kept asking me questions about what I was feeling, but I just couldn’t describe it. I couldn’t figure out if I was going to be ill or what. Every time the pain got really bad and I could just about identify it, it would go away and leave me wondering if I just had a really bad stomach ache. By this time it was almost 4:30. At Dwight’s suggestion, I decided I should go ahead and call the doctor. She returned my call almost immediately and told me to come on in to the labor unit and let them take a look at what was going on.

I realize now that in the back of my mind I knew I was having contractions, but for some reason, I would not let myself believe this. I was only in my 26th week of the pregnancy. It was not possible for me to be having contractions. I had not had any problems; therefore, this could not be happening. With all of this in the back of my mind, I threw on some clothes and headed out to the car. I even stopped on the way out to get some work numbers so I could let them know I would not be in to work that day. I may have been in some sort of denial, but I did accept that something was wrong and that I would probably spend the day dealing with whatever that thing was.

By the time we left the subdivision, I was in the kind of pain that made my knuckles turn white from gripping the seats and kept me from talking. In between the pains, I would talk to Dwight who was amazingly calm. I can’t remember what we talked about, but I am sure it somehow concerned the pain and how I did not read anything about this kind of pain in my books. The hospital is only 10 miles from my house and at 4:45 in the morning the roads are virtually empty. I know that Dwight was driving at an incredible speed, but that trip to the hospital was an eternity for me.

As we turned onto the road that led to the hospital, my water broke. Once again, I knew what had happened but I could not bring myself to say it. I believe I said something to the effect of "I just gushed stuff all over the seats of your truck." I must have been bordering on some kind of hysteria because I can remember thinking how amusing it was that Dwight wasn’t getting upset about his car getting messed up (he’s very funny about his cars.) When we got to the hospital, it occurred to the both of us that we couldn’t just go up to the labor unit because we didn’t know where it was. The hospital tour was one of those things that we were going to do sometime in the next month. Dwight pulled up to the emergency room entrance and they wheeled me upstairs to the appropriate floor. At this point, I had gotten control of my near hysteria and achieved a very nice state of calm with underlying fear. After "all that stuff gushed out" my pain felt much better. I was working on convincing myself that they would check me out, make sure the baby was okay, give me some sort of medicine, and tell me to take it easy for a few days.

The doctor got me into bed and started explaining to me what was happening. She said that my water had broken, but that they would keep me in bed and try to delay labor-----now at the end of this sentence is when I just really couldn’t handle it any more. I was sure she was going to say something to the effect of they would delay labor, get everything under control, and watch me closely for the rest of the pregnancy. Instead she said, they would try to delay labor for about 72 hours and give me some drugs to help the baby’s lungs mature. I think at this point I just tried to remove myself from my body. I couldn’t have a baby yet. I was only 26 weeks pregnant. In that hysterical part of my mind that was starting to resurface I remember thinking how only just last week I had jokingly said, "Look honey, it says here that if I have the baby now, they will be able to keep it alive." I didn’t mean it, I certainly never considered it a possibility. I had never even given a thought to prematurity because I was having a healthy, no problems pregnancy where I followed all of the do’s and don’ts. Premature babies are the result of some definite problem or too many drugs, right?

As I was trying to assimilate this concept of prematurity, I was also trying to pay attention to what the doctor was saying. She said that the baby was in a breech position and I would probably need to be delivered by c-section. Now this might upset some people, but in the overall scheme of things I really didn’t care anything about that because I still couldn’t believe that in the next few days I would actually be having my baby that was probably too immature to survive, regardless of what those stupid books said. They never mentioned anything about any of this now did they? The doctor was now saying that she just needed to check and see how dilated I was.

I was still trying to get a grip on what was happening when she said that she saw a foot and the umbilical cord. I was then informed that the baby was going to have to be delivered immediately. I remained what must have appeared to be calm while she explained to me that there was no time for me to have an epidural, they were going to have to put me out completely. Somewhere around this point, I just started tuning out. I was just focusing in on the sound of my baby’s heart. Occasionally, the baby would move and they would lose the heartbeat. Each time I kept thinking they weren’t going to get her out in time, but then they would move the monitor and her heartbeat would resume.

I was trying not to panic, but it was obvious to me that the nurses were in quite a hurry. One of the nurses couldn’t get my IV in. She was getting so flustered that at one point she jabbed the IV clear through my vein and even uttered a curse word. People were doing things to all parts of my body to prepare me for surgery. Everyone was telling me who they were and what they were doing. They put an oxygen mask over my mouth while I was trying to tell Dwight what numbers to call (once again, we didn’t have a prepared list of phone numbers because we didn’t think it was necessary yet).

When they actually started to wheel me down to the operating room, I couldn’t take it anymore and I just started crying. I was sure that Marilyn was not going to make it. All I could think about was how unfair life could be. I had wanted this baby so badly. I had even waited until it was "safe" to start planning for her arrival. Now, it was all going to be over. I prayed for everything to be the opposite of what I knew would happen, but I really didn’t think that anything could help at this point. Dwight walked me down to the operating room and told me he loved me. I couldn’t bring myself to tell him that we were about to lose our baby.
When I awoke, I was told that Marilyn was stable and that she was in the NICU. I can’t even begin to describe how I felt. My baby was alive and she was okay for the moment. I was excited, grateful, and terrified. She had made it into the world okay, but would she survive?

As the first days passed, I began to believe that Marilyn would be okay. I am sure that I could have just come out and asked "Is she going to make it?", but I was scared that I would not want to hear the answer. Over the past month, we have experienced the ups and downs of that NICU roller coaster, but Marilyn has always been stable and her problems minor compared to those of other preemies. She continues to progress nicely, but that is quite another story. I am very thankful that I have a beautiful baby girl. It wasn’t very nice of her to come so early, and no one knows quite why she did. But I figure she must have had her reasons; and after all its pretty hard to complain when your daughter is born on your birthday.