Chapter
Twenty-three: That Discussion
I didn’t want to bring it up. Talking about it made it real.
“What if?” I hesitantly voiced.
“I don’t think the Eagles will
score. The Giants are fine,” Jack
unflinchingly replied.
Seriously, men suck
sometimes. Jack sucks sometimes. How could he not tell that I wasn’t talking
about the football game? Didn’t he
notice the tone in my voice? Ugh. I was an idiot. Of course, Jack didn’t notice. He, like most men, had the ability to escape
into sports or other activities. He was
able to compartmentalize our triplets and put them into a closet in the back of
his brain, whereas, the triplets and Brian were in every millimeter of my
being.
“No, honey, what if I go into
labor.”
“Please, let’s not talk about
it. If you do go into active labor, then we’ll talk about it,” Jack pleaded.
“I need to know what we’ll
do. I need to know,” I started
whimpering.
“What can we do? I didn’t think we had any options left if you
went into labor,” Jack said as kindly as possible.
“So, they’ll die,” I sobbed.
“Yes,” Jack said with a tear
trickling down his cheek.
We stopped using the names we
chose for Baby A, B and C, Elizabeth,
Garret and Hunter. It wasn’t something
we talked about. We both apparently felt
the same way and sometime during the morning, we both changed. It was too hard to think of them as the
perfect, little babies that they were.
If they did die, we thought it would be easier to bury A, B and C and
not Elizabeth Ann, Garret Jack and Hunter Frank.
We were silent for a while. Jack was back to watching the Giants and I
was trying to drift off to sleep. I
couldn’t sleep.
“What if my cervix gets worse,
but it is only twenty-three weeks?” I interrupted his peaceful football
watching. “Or twenty-two weeks?”
“Laura, please don’t play the
what-if game. Let’s go to the doctor
tomorrow and see what he has to say,” Jack stated, hoping that I wouldn’t go
there.
“But I need to know what you are
thinking.”
With a big sigh, Jack said, “Can
we saddle Brian with three special needs children?”
He said it. It needed to be said. He would want to abort, terminate, kill my
babies. It is what I was thinking too
and I hated myself for it.
Dr. Nasty predicted that I would
go into labor within the next two weeks, which would only get me to
twenty-three weeks. He was a senior
doctor at the practice. I’m guessing in
his sixties, but I’m not so good with age.
He had many, many years of dealing with high-risk pregnancies. As much as I hated him, I thought that he
knew what he was talking about. After
all, my cervix only got worse after taking the progesterone.
Of course, I hoped the new
medicine would work, but for how long would it work. I needed it to get me to twenty-eight weeks
when my babies would have an 80% chance of being fine. However, sadly, I was currently aiming for
twenty-five weeks when they have a 50% chance of being fine. At twenty-one weeks and 2 days, twenty-five
weeks felt like a lifetime away. It
seemed almost inevitable that I was going to go into labor soon.
Jack and I waited to fall in
love, commit to marriage and start a family.
I was thirty-eight years old; Jack was 39. We were worried about dying on the young-side
of average and leaving Brian to take care of his siblings.
“So you would want to abort?” I
asked. I wanted to hear him say it. Make him say it. Could he say it?
“Yes, sweetie, if things look
really bad and the doctor recommends it, I think we should abort and try
again.” The power of Jack’s words was unknown to him.
Abort and try again, rang
through my head. It sounded so
simple. Abort and try again. Abort and try again, repeated in my head, I
felt my heart expand and envelope my babies.
We, my babies and I, were not going to abort and try again. There was no trying again. This was it.
These were my babies and they were perfect. They were going to live. Abort and try again. Over my dead body. Never.
I felt alone. Alone with my babies.
“You want to abort,” I accused Jack.
“No. No, I don’t.” He slid over
to my side of the couch and encircled me in a bear hug, burying his face in my
belly. He cried. Thankfully, not the gut-wrenching crying that
I was doing, but silently crying that I didn’t even notice until he got up and
I felt that my shirt was soaked with his tears.
“What about Brian? Even if we make enough money to make sure the
triplets’ needs are met after we die, how much attention can we give Brian on a
daily basis if we have three special needs children?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Laura, in a best-case scenario,
if the triplets are born at twenty-five weeks, we are looking at three children
with cerebral palsy and even that diagnosis has a wide range of capabilities.”
“Ok,” I said ending the
conversation. I realized that we just
didn’t know. I couldn’t have a
plan. There was no plan. Nobody plans for this, not even me. I tried planning for the impending stillbirth
of my babies, getting an outlook so bleak that aborting look possible, making
it far enough along that the babies were on the edge of survival. However, my heart wouldn’t let me plan. My babies were going to make it. My heart was firmly cemented around each of
my babies and it was going to make sure that they stayed safe.
I went to bed Sunday night and
quietly sang to my babies. Brian was my
sunshine, so my little girl, Baby A would be my flower. Baby B was my star and Baby C was my moon.
“You are my flower
My pretty little flower
I will love you
Every single hour
You are my flower
My one only and only flower
I will always love you.
You are my star
My shiny bright star
I will love you
Even from afar
You are my star
My lovely star
I will always love you
You are my moon
My big full moon
I will love you
And sing you a tune
You are my moon
My one and only moon
I will always love you”
My eyes were tearing up. I wanted a girl so badly. She wasn’t just my flower. She was my desire, a life-long dream since
the beginning of my memory.
I had been surrounded by boys
when I was growing up. I do have an
older sister, but she is eight years older than me. We had never been on the same page when I was
young. When she became boy-crazy in high
school, I was in second grade, digging for gold with Bobby and David on the
playground of Lincoln Elementary School.
I even had a boy baby doll,
Robert. It was actually a girl baby
doll, but the baby had brown hair and brown eye lashes. My brother, Frank, convinced me that the baby
wasn’t mine, because I would only have a baby with platinum, blond hair like
mine. I pulled out all of the baby doll’s eyelashes and painted its hair with
our house paint, English Ivory, so that it looked blond.
I was proud of my accomplishment
and showed Frank how great my baby, Mary, looked. He told me that girls have eyelashes and boys
don’t, so my Mary was no longer a Mary.
Hence, I was one of the few little girls who had a boy, baby doll.
I never asked my mom or Santa
for a new girl baby doll. I probably
could have gotten one. However, I had
fallen in love with Mary and it really didn’t matter that much to me that she
was now Robert. I loved him just the
same.
After I finished my breathing exercises,
I remembered when Dr. Nasty initially suggested selective reduction. He told me that we would have to reduce Baby
A, because A was in the best position. I
put my hands on my belly and whispered to her, “I will not let you go without
the fight of my life. I am your mommy
and my heart is inside of your heart. I
will love you for always and ever. You
are my little girl.” I sang to my little
girl and tried to calm my emotions. “You are my little girl. My only little girl. I will love you for now and always. You are my little girl. My sweet, little girl. I will keep you safe,” and I lost it. “Please, someone please, help me keep my girl
and boys safe?” I begged to everyone and
anything that I thought could possibly help.
I lay there and thought, I am Dr. Jekyll and Mrs.
Hyde. One minute I knew with certainty
that my babies would be fine and the next I planned their funeral. I felt
the protective bubble of love around them.
Then my visions changed and I was crumpled in a ball as if my bones
disintegrated next to a grave marker. I
never could picture my life the day after the babies’ funeral. I knew my life would continue, but my brain
and heart didn’t think the other could recover from their loss.
Here are some chapters of my book:
