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Weeks 25 to 26
A Moment of Panic
I guess every pregnant woman is entitled to one panic attack, one frivolous call to the OB after hours, right? There are hundreds of anxiety-provoking topics from which to choose: food safety concerns after stomach pain sets in; headaches that linger through the night; a sudden onset of exhaustion; a sudden relief from exhaustion; you name it. Filter any event through the prism of prenatal angst and a reason exists to call the doctor for reassurance.
My Subject du Jour: fetal movement.
This is a whole new experience for me. When I was pregnant with Henry, I felt virtually none. Ever. The doctors monitored me several times a week to prove that the fetus was kicking, punching, and doing flips as he should, but for reasons still unknown, I felt next to nothing. And so that became normal. I didn’t worry because it didn’t change. But with this little guy, I feel the somersaults and stretches every day, usually in the evening when I settle down to rest and in the mid-afternoon after I eat some fruit. Which is why, when during a particularly relaxing few days off I felt nothing, I worked myself into a state of panic.
“Call the doctor,” Jack urged. It was dinnertime on Saturday night, a fairly civilized hour to call the obstetrician.
“I can’t, I feel embarrassed.”
“That’s his job,” Jack said. “He’s not on vacation, he’s on call.”
“He’s on call for emergencies. Me having a self-induced meltdown isn’t a viable emergency.”
With that, I resolved to give the little guy one more hour to show a sign of life. I drank juice. I lay on my left side. I knit. I jostled him around from the outside. Nothing. I downed a tablespoon of honey and a bottle of club soda, hoping the sugar/carbon dioxide combination would get him to dance. Instead, it gave me gas. I did some gentle exercises. He didn’t. I took a bath. He found it very relaxing as well. No movement. It had been more than a day since I had felt any life at all.
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I pored over my pregnancy books. “If you haven’t felt 10 kicks in the past two hours, call your practitioner immediately.” My blood pressure hit the roof, or the floor, I’m not sure which, but with a racing heart and clammy hands I dialed the number I had committed to memory, just in case.
I told the answering service I had a question about fetal movement. Increase or decrease, they asked. Decrease, I think, there’s never all that much. Within minutes, a hospital nurse called and demanded I come to the maternity ward, my doctor would meet me there. I asked her to slow down, to put me in touch with the doctor instead, knowing that if I went to the hospital they might keep me there for hours, even days, all because I let my imagination get the best of me. I feared I could work myself into a preterm labor. So she relented, and when my doctor finished a delivery a few minutes later, he called.
I must have apologized 3,000 times. He was as sweet as can be, and assured me that little movement might just be the normal state, that the guidelines my pregnancy books offered pertained to later stages of weeks, and that I could have a sonogram if I wanted during my checkup, scheduled for Monday, to make sure all was well. Had he been in my house, I would have kissed him on the lips.
And then the baby moved. Kicking me for transforming into an hysteric. Nuzzling me for looking out for him 24 hours a day.
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