Days of Isabel

I confirmed my pregnancy in a motel room in Salina, Kansas.  Isabel’s dad and I were driving across the US with our belongings in a moving truck.  To that point it had been a stressful trip, only because the moving truck was terrifying to drive on unkempt US highways.  The worst to that point and ultimately the worst on the trip was in Colorado, the state we had been in the day before.  The road south from Cheyenne, Wyoming to Boulder was horribly pitted and pocked.  The drivers were ridiculously aggressive and the road was crowded. Whenever our truck would hit one of the holes in the road, it would start to rock and sway, back and forth, back and forth, the wheels even coming off the ground.  The small trailer behind us would begin to fishtail madly, so much so that we could see it in the side rear-view mirrors.  Braking only made the shuddering worse, so we would have to speed up to get out of it. Since it only occurred on downhill slopes, speeding up made things even more precarious.  It was utterly terrifying, easily the most frightening experience of my life.  By the time we reached that motel room in Kansas, this had happened to us four times, we had been on the road for four-and-a-half days, and the stress and fatigue was wearing us thin.  (To see posts and photos of this trip, click these:  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11.)

I had begun to suspect the pregnancy on the second day of our trip.  We left Grants Pass, Oregon, on that day and headed south into California, then east into Nevada.  Our plan was to check weather in Reno.  If things were cool, we would continue on into Utah, Wyoming, and Colorado.  If the weather was dicey, we were going to head south through Las Vegas, Arizona, and into Albuquerque.  I was starting to wonder because my period had not come, and my period arrives like clockwork.  I have taken my basal temperature for years in order to track my body clock and I can usually predict it almost to the hour.  It had been due on January 3.  By the time I started feeling suspicious, it was January 9, nearly a week late.  I thought maybe the stress of moving had interfered with my cycle, plus I kept having premenstrual symptoms.  These can be deceiving though, because premenstrual symptoms are nearly identical to pregnancy symptoms.  Late period or not, I just wasn’t sure.  I had an IUD, one of the most protective means of contraception.

One pregnancy symptom that is not present in premenstrual symptoms is the need to pee every five minutes.  Leaving Colorado, I felt like I was going to wet my pants nearly as soon as I left the bathroom.  This is not helpful when driving across country.  In spite of the IUD, during a bathroom and gas break at a King Sooper’s in eastern Colorado, I decided to buy a pregnancy test.

Later that night, while taking a bath at the motel, I shared my concerns with Isabel’s dad.  He informed me that he had been wondering too, knowing my period was always on time.  I peed on the stick and it was positive.  The test came with two sticks so I tried the second one too.  Also positive.

During the entire pregnancy we wondered what had become of the IUD.  My doctor here was surprised the doctor in New York had not done an ultrasound to see if it was there.  Once we moved to Oregon, we had forgotten about the missing IUD.  I was clearly pregnant and it simply never came up in the meetings we had with the midwives before Isabel was born.  After her birth, my midwives described my placenta as one of the most unusual they had ever seen.  In fact, neither of them had seen anything like it, and one of them had been practicing for over twenty years!  My placenta had the main, large placenta, then a bridge to another smaller placenta, then a small, hard, disk of tissue and blood.

When the midwives described this unusual placenta to us, we realized perhaps the small disk was the IUD.  When we told the midwives, they agreed that the small disk was indeed probably the IUD.  Since discussing it with my doctor, we have determined that it was likely the IUD was not placed properly in my uterus, resulting in a pregnancy.  I could never feel the strings and I had experienced odd breakthrough bleeding since its placement.  I’d had none of these issues with my first IUD.  My doctor told me that IUD pregnancies usually occur when an IUD is not properly placed.  As for the other smaller placenta attached to the main placenta, we think maybe it had been a non-viable twin. The whole thing has been sent to the midwife college to study.

Obviously, Isabel wasn’t planned or expected.  The pregnancy certainly threw a wrench into our New York plans and was the major contributing factor in our decision to move back to Oregon.  Yet I have no regrets that she was conceived.  I am so glad she is here.  I wouldn’t have it any other way.  That’s how babies are; in speculation they can seem like the worst news in the world, but in reality, they are the most wonderful, the best thing that can happen to a person.  I would not have described a pregnancy as the worst thing that could happen to me, but I certainly would not have planned one for that particular time.

Now that it’s done, however, I am so grateful she is part of my life.  I’m lucky to have her.  Her dad is completely in love with her.  He must say I love her fifty times a day, and I’m not exaggerating.  Milla is delighted with her, asking to hold her and even change her diaper.  She is a blessing to us all.