The Complicated Beginning
Five years earlier, I’d gone into labor believing I would leave the hospital with two sons in my arms. The pregnancy had been complicated from the very start—the kind of medical situation that sends doctors into careful mode and pregnant women into constant worry.Want to finish this story without interruptions?
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I was put on modified bed rest at twenty-eight weeks because of high blood pressure that refused to stay within normal ranges no matter what medication my obstetrician prescribed. Dr. Perry, the physician who’d been managing my care, kept using the same phrase during every appointment, his voice carrying a tone that suggested he’d delivered this message many times before to many worried expectant mothers.
“You need to stay calm, Lana. Your body’s working overtime. The stress isn’t helping anyone—not you, not the babies.”
The words were meant to be comforting, but they landed differently. They suggested that my anxiety was somehow contributing to the medical complications, that if I could just relax enough, everything would resolve itself. I’d read enough pregnancy forums to know that this wasn’t necessarily true, but I also desperately wanted to believe that I had some control over the situation.
I did everything right. I followed the diet recommendations, took every vitamin the pharmacy could stock, attended every appointment, and spent my evenings talking to my belly, my hands resting on the stretched skin that contained both my sons.
“Hold on, boys,” I used to whisper into the darkness of my bedroom, the house quiet around me. “Mom’s right here. I’m ready for you.”
The delivery came three weeks early and was difficult in ways that I’m still processing years later. I remember the progression of complications—the sudden shift in the fetal monitors, the urgent conversations between medical staff, the way the atmosphere in the delivery room changed from routine to emergency.
I remembered someone saying, “We’re losing one,” and then everything blurred into medication and pain and the kind of medical intervention that happens so fast you can’t fully process it while it’s occurring.
