Sunday March, 18th, 2018 (22 weeks pregnant). I didn’t know that this would be the start of the worst week of my life. Everything felt great, cleaned the house, did some homework, finished my lesson plans for the following week. Went to dinner with family. Everything was perfect.
I had some minor cramping, but chalked it up to being a normal part of pregnancy. After using the restroom, I knew something was wrong. I asked my husband to take me to the emergency room, and my sister in law joined us. When we got there they quickly admitted us to labor and delivery.
I remember trying to keep my cool. Everything was fine. You have minor bleeding. I remember thinking she’s probably going to tell me bed rest, then send me on my way. Oh, how I wish that was the case. My life was about to be shattered into a million pieces and I didn’t even know it.
The nurse searches for the baby’s heart beat, and quickly finds a strong heartbeat. In that moment, I truly felt everything was okay. Then the doctor comes in, she’s this skinny super sweet lady, that you’d never guess is a doctor.
She examines me and orders an ultrasound as soon as possible. She tells me in the sweetest kindest voice, that my cervix is opening and she can see the water bag. She tells me that they may be able to save the pregnancy, and do an emergency cerclage, but the I have to wait for a high risk doctor, and high risk will be there in the morning.
At this point, I didn’t know how to feel. Okay this is really serious. The ultrasound machine was in use, and they couldn’t wait so a nurse wheeled me into another area to get an ultrasound. As all this is happening I’m having extremely bad back pain, I’m trying to ignore it but its becoming more frequent. We go to the ultrasound room, and the tech does an ultrasound. She shows me where my cervix is opening. I remember staring at the screen holding my tears back.
We get back to labor and delivery and they give me a room. The doctor explains I have an incompetent cervix. The word incompetent, just kept running through my head. All I wanted to do as soon as she left was google everything I could about this incompetent cervix. However, I had no energy to do anything, they told me to stay flat on my back and tilted the bed back, so gravity didn’t work against us.
Oh yeah, that back pain that is coming and going, turns out they are contractions. My body was actually going into labor. I remember begging them to make them stop, but they wouldn’t give me anything. They wanted high risk to see me first. I stared at the clock, it was my worst enemy that night. I had contractions from 11pm on Sunday night, all the way to 4 am Monday morning. As the contractions grew stronger and more frequent, I remember asking my husband “Why will no one help me?”, “Why am I getting punished?”. At one point the contractions were so bad, I wished I was dead. I couldn’t take it anymore. I kept hitting that nurse call light and the doctor finally comes in and gives me something to stop the contractions. Within minutes it worked. After they left I asked my husband why they couldn’t just give me that from the beginning.
I finally slept.
Incompetent and Resilient 