Soft markers

I lovehate the internet. On the one hand, in ye golden olden days, my midwife would have uttered the words “echogenic bowel” to me and I would have had to carve out some time between milking the cows and hanging the pig guts to walk uphill both ways toward a library, inside which I’d pore over medical books carefully in dusty, neglected library aisles, wondering what the densely packed terms actually meant. And worrying.

On the other hand, now I can sit in the comfort of my desk chair, sneezing every five seconds because I work in an apparently completely unventilated, never-cleaned newsroom staffed by walking strains of influenza, and click every Google return on the term, reading every weepy message-board thread and looking carefully at every sample ultrasound photo, comparing it with the ultrasound video I took with my phone of my baby boy, all the while trying to discern with my untrained eye exactly what the hell I am looking at. And worrying.

I don’t know which is better but I suppose they both suck in their own special ways.
They tell you, when they hand you those harsh clinical words, not to worry. Worry doesn’t accomplish anything and there’s probably nothing really wrong. It’s just a blip on the radar screen and we need to get it checked out to be sure, that’s all. I play along enthusiastically, thinking somewhere in my lizard brain that if I pretend to feel calm and rational, the calmness and rationality will substitute itself for the confusion and fear I can feel bubbling up beneath my increasingly upbeat-sounding voice.

These are the rare moments in life when you try to fit in with the majority, to not be the exception to the rule. Most cases where echogenic bowel variations are detected turn out to be just fine, the Google search results tell me. It’s rare for the variation to show up at all, of course, which is scary in and of itself. But once it has shown up, it’s more than likely that all is well and you just have to wait it out. It will resolve itself and you will have a bouncing, perfectly healthy baby in your arms soon enough. Except sometimes all isn’t well and you’re actually getting a peek at something going very wrong in your baby. And then what?

People will try to comfort you with anecdotes of their own misleading findings and you will want to be comforted by them, but you’ll also secretly want them to hush up because their success stories make the slight statistical probability of a bad outcome feel heavier and heavier on you.

The waiting sucks.

It leaves you alone with your thoughts, which can’t stop turning dark. No matter the probabilities.
It would be super awesome if Women’s Physician Group — home of my (former?) OB — would turn loose of my bloodwork records taken two months ago. My midwife has requested the information twice now, and still nothing. I don’t know if they’re being jerks or just being incompetent and slow, but this is not the time to be fucking with me.

There is this often unspoken aspect of pregnancy that is very superstitious. We don’t spend a lot of time talking about the what-ifs because it’s as if speaking them aloud makes them more likely to occur. No, it’s best to have faith that everything will just work itself out. Science or predestination be damned!

But what if something is wrong? I feel conflicted even writing about it because for some reason I feel like the possibility of something going wrong is a secret I should keep close to my vest. Bringing up potential complications sure does bum people out, you know, and besides, whose business is it? Except … to me, it is the only business there is right now. It consumes me, even though I promised it wouldn’t. I have one role in this baby’s life right now and that is to get him here safely and in the best health possible. It’s impossible not to feel responsible if something is going wrong in there. And my not attempting to think through it and process the possibility doesn’t make it any less likely to happen than my thinking about it makes it more likely to happen.

We have to go get another ultrasound to see if it cleared up on its own. If it hasn’t, I’m sure I’ll be sent down the genetic testing/amnio path, which is a path I had very much hoped to avoid for obvious reasons.

Where that path leads eventually is sort of a mystery to me. I hope the heirloom tomato formerly known as sweet potato knows that I love him very much already and want him here, no matter what, should he decide to stick it out with me.