Miracle

I am sitting in the new glider in the yellow nursery feeding Peanut when my phone lights up.  I desperately want to ignore the call, but I can't.  I know it's my doctor and I know he is going to ask if I took the medicine he prescribed last night.  The medicine that is supposed to help stop the heavy bleeding I'm still experiencing three weeks post-partum.  The medicine that carries a label advising against breastfeeding while taking it.  The medicine that I did not take last night.

"Hi, doctor," I say into the phone.

"Good morning!  How are you feeling?  Crampy?"

I only met this doctor eight weeks ago, when I transferred to his Long Island office from Westchester at 35 weeks, but I really like him.  I don't want to disappoint him.

"No, not crampy..." I trail off.

"Why not?  You didn't take the medicine?"

"Well, I didn't think I could take it while breastfeeding, and I'm just starting to establish a good supply, so..."

There is dead silence on the other end of the line.  I feel like I'm back in the fifth grade, being reprimanded by my favorite teacher for rolling my knee socks down.

The doctor speaks slowly.  "I don't think you understand.  You need to take the medicine.  I know breastfeeding is important to you, but this is a matter of life and death."

My doctor isn't one to overstate the truth, so this grabs my attention.

"I don't think you realize how lucky you are," the doctor continues.  "We just got the placenta back from pathology, and that baby you're holding is a miracle."

I think to myself that after the pregnancy and delivery I just experienced, there is nothing that this man can tell me that will surprise me.  If my pregnancy with Minnow was textbook, my pregnancy with Peanut was a horror story that included four hospitalizations: Two for unexplained bleeding in the first and second trimesters, one for acute food poisoning and dehydration, and one after a low-impact car accident at 32 weeks.  In addition to all that, I was also diagnosed with a low-lying placenta at my twenty-week anatomical scan, and for most of the pregnancy we believed I would deliver Peanut by scheduled C-section.  The placenta finally moved far enough away from the birth canal at 37 weeks, and I was cleared for a natural delivery.  I was thrilled to deliver Peanut naturally four weeks later, but, unfortunately, after she came out things went very wrong.  The doctor could not control the bleeding after I delivered the placenta and I was rushed to the OR for emergency surgery to treat post-partum hemorrhage.  There was talk of a hysterectomy and I was scared out of my wits, but, thankfully, the doctors were able to stop the bleeding.  Sort of.  Three weeks after the surgery I am still experiencing heavy spotting, which is why my doctor has prescribed the medicine I refuse to take.

But all of this has little to do with what he tells me next, and it shakes me to the core.

"The pathology revealed that the baby had a velamentous cord insertion that ran for eight centimeters, resulting in a vasa previa."

I don't speak Latin, so I ask the doctor to explain.

In a normal pregnancy, the baby's veins run from the middle of the placenta to the baby through the umbilical cord.  The umbilical cord protects the veins from rupture.  In velamentous cord insertion, the baby's veins traverse the placental membrane unprotected before coming together in the umbilical cord.  Peanut's veins ran unprotected for eight centimeters and actually crossed the birth canal, which is what is meant by vasa previa.  If at 28 weeks during my food poisoning episode, at 32 weeks after the car accident, or at 41 weeks during labor and delivery these veins had torn as a result of contractions or membrane rupture, Peanut would have bled out in a matter of minutes.  She would have been stillborn.

In fact, when vasa previa goes undetected, as is it did in our case, the infant mortality rate is between 50-95%.  It is called the silent killer because it affects mothers and babies who enjoyed otherwise healthy, uneventful pregnancies.

When vasa previa is detected, usually by color Doppler, the survival rates jump to 50-95%.  That's because when vasa previa is detected, the baby will be delivered by C-section at about 35 weeks, before the mother goes into labor.  Vasa previa is so rare (1 in every 3000 pregnancies) that it is not screened for unless the mother exhibits warning signs.  I've learned that I exhibited many of the warning signs for vasa previa, including unexplained late-term bleeding, low-lying placenta, and a history of non-abortive uterine surgery, but my former doctor in Westchester did not screen me for the condition.

I don't know why my former doctor didn't test me for vasa previa.  I don't know why Peanut survived a natural delivery when the great majority of babies with her condition do not.  I've been taught not to question miracles.

I wasn't sure I'd ever share this story on the blog, but October is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month, and I want to raise awareness.  One in 200 babies is stillborn and, sadly, some of those stillbirths cannot be prevented.  But some can be, if we inform ourselves about the causes of stillbirth.  If I had known about vasa previa, I would have asked to be tested for it after my first unexplained bleeding episode at 11 weeks.  I would have insisted on a scheduled C-section at 35 weeks.  I would not have put my baby, and myself, at risk.

To learn more about vasa previa, please visit The International Vasa Previa Foundation.  My story is not meant to scare, but to inform.  Vasa previa is rare, but if you or anyone you know is experiencing any of the warning signs listed on the website, insist on being screened.  It may seem like another unnecessary test during pregnancy, but it just may save your baby's life.

Before we hang up and after the doctor convinces me that taking my prescription is what's right for both me and the children I need to care for, he says one more thing that deeply impacts me:

"Do you believe in God?  Because I do."

Unwinding with a Catalogue

It's Monday night.

After a half dozen escape attempts, your toddler is finally sleeping soundly (albeit upside-down) in her bed. Your seven-week-old has just nodded off in her swing.  You've survived another day that included a tantrum in the cracker aisle at the supermarket, sore arms from rocking a fussy baby for four continuous hours, and a leaky pipe that required your plumber to take a sledge-hammer to the living room wall you recently spent thousands of dollars to paint.  And despite all that, you were still able to prepare a nutritious dinner for your family, even if the salmon was a tad charred and the quinoa a bit soggy.  You kick up your feet eager to indulge in the treat that arrived in the mail this afternoon: The Williams-Sonoma catalogue.

Pictured on the cover is the latest iteration of the iconic Kitchen-Aid mixer.  Like a Louis Vuitton bag it is something you must own eventually, even if you don't bake and wouldn't know the first thing to do with a dough hook.  The mixer comes in French blue and looks good on a counter; that's really all that matters.

On page 11 there is a suggested menu for a wine-tasting party.  You turn to your husband.  "We should host a wine-tasting party," you say.  "Sounds expensive," he replies.

Page 35 features several font options from which to choose for sets of monogrammed linen napkins.  You wish you had the disposable income for monogrammed linen napkins.  For now, it's paper napkins bought in bulk from BJ's for you.

On page 48 a picture-perfect stack of skull-shaped pancakes dressed in maple syrup and walnuts seems to mock you.  You do not have room in your ugly blue kitchen to store skull-shaped pancake molds and, therefore, will almost certainly never make skull-shaped pancakes for your children on Halloween morning.  You're starting to feel pretty crumby about that.

Before long you are accelerating down the self-deprecating spiral.  Two smiling girls on the following page are eating homemade organic whole wheat waffles off immaculate white plates resting on a reclaimed-wood kitchen table that also contains bowls of plump mixed berries, sliced apples, and a vase of fresh-cut flowers.  Breakfast at your house is cereal eaten out of (BPA-free) plastic bowls off an Ikea table that also contains a weeks' worth of mail and last weekend's New York Times.  On page 55 a child using a citrus press to make a single glass of orange juice makes you feel guilty for not serving fresh-squeezed juice to your children, even though you don't allow your children to drink juice because of the sugar content.  The gleaming espresso machines on pages 64-67 make you wish you knew how to make your own lattes, instead of spending $50 a month (according to your last credit card statement) at Starbucks.  Perhaps this is why you can't afford sets of monogrammed linen napkins.

Because of the braised ribs simmering in a slow-cooker pictured on page 70, you experience pangs of remorse that, due to its inconvenient location at the back of the cabinet above the refrigerator, you've hardly used the Crock-Pot you registered for when you got married.  The pictures of autumn wreathes on pages 98-99 remind you that fall is coming and you should probably think about how you're going to decorate the house, because you can already tell that this is the type of neighborhood where neighbors compete to have the best-looking seasonal house on the block.  The picture of the Miele rotary iron on page 104 reminds you that you should probably iron the stack of khakis in the laundry room so that your husband has more than one pair to choose from this Labor Day weekend.

And you're spent.  You decide to leave the Pottery Barn catalogue, waiting on the coffee table, for another night.

Laundry Dreams (And Nightmares)

One of the best things about buying a house, in my estimation, is finally having a private laundry room.  After four years of renting in buildings with shared laundry facilities and dealing with all sorts of laundry drama, I’ve been dreaming of carrying baskets of laundry to the basement whenever I am so inclined, dumping them into the washer, and enjoying the rhythmic hum of the machine as I move on to other household tasks.  No waiting for an open washer because, despite the notices posted in both English and Spanish prohibiting the use of more than three washers at a time, a neighbor’s housekeeper is occupying all seven washers and three dryers.  No racing down four flights of stairs before some neighbor who just carried an oozing bag of garbage to the trash hut removes my freshly cleaned clothes from the washer and dumps them on top of the machine.  No worrying about someone stealing my sheets and towels out of the dryer (that happened), having to comfort a neighbor’s housekeeper who was just fired from her position (that happened), or getting stuck in an elevator for a half hour on my way to the laundry room (yup, that too).

We knew when we bought this house that the appliances were ancient.  I mean, the dryer was manufactured by RCA.  Are they even around anymore?  But the sellers certified in the contract that all systems and appliances in the home were in “working condition,” so we were hoping to get away with not having to buy a new appliance until our bank account balance is restored.

The night before I planned to do my first load of laundry in the new house, I went down to the yucky laundry room in the yucky basement and ran a cup of bleach through the yucky washing machine.  No morning-after disasters resulted from this experiment.  The hose didn’t leak, the laundry room didn’t flood, and the washing machine smelled a lot cleaner.  I put in my first sorted load, closed the door, turned the knob, and prayed for the best.  Forty minutes later, our clothes were damp and smelled clean.  Success!  Time to transfer them to the dryer.  I opened the door to the dryer and WHAT… THE… F?!

“You’ll never guess what I just found in the dryer,” I texted to my husband, who by now is accustomed to receiving various S.O.S. messages from home while at work. 

“A mouse?”

It was a reasonable guess.  Although we haven’t found any evidence to date, I’m quite certain there is a colony of mice living above the drop ceiling, because that’s the kind of basement we have and, also, that's the kind of luck we have.

“Worse,” I replied.  “A load of laundry the sellers left behind.”

“Gross!”

It was gross.  Those clothes have been sitting in the dryer for at least one month since we’ve closed!

The idea of leaving behind an entire load of laundry in a move absolutely baffles me.  If I so much as lose a baby sock in the midst of doing wash I am bent out of shape for a week.

I didn’t know what to do.  I am skittish about touching other people’s laundry, even if it’s clean.  I mean, who wants to touch someone else’s granny panties?  So I put on a pair of latex gloves and put the forgotten clothes into a black trash bag.  The clothes were dry, but smelled damp.  I put the trash bag in the laundry room closet, but immediately felt guilty.  Should I fold them? I wondered.  No, I decided, that would be creepy.  I loaded my clothes into the dryer, set it for an hour, and called the seller’s agent to arrange a pick-up time with the sellers.

An hour later, when I went down to retrieve my laundry, it was still damp.  I guess it needs more time, I reasoned, and reset the dryer.  Another hour later the clothes were still damp and I realized that although the dryer’s motor was running, it was not emitting any heat. 

“Dryer’s busted,” I texted my husband.

“But I thought you found dry clothes in there.”

“Yes, but remember, they've been sitting in there for over a month.”

Of course the busted dryer meant that my dream of doing laundry on a whim had been placed on hold.  Two days later, I loaded two bags of laundry into the Jeep and carted them to my in-laws'.

This past weekend, we made an unplanned visit to P.C. Richard to purchase a new dryer and, hell, while we’re at it, we might as well buy a washer, as well.  Our brand-spanking-new, state-of-the-art, top-rated, glass-top Samsung washer and dryer were delivered this week.  They look a little out-of place in our yucky laundry room in our yucky basement (I was actually embarrassed when the delivery men arrived to install them), but aren’t they gorgeous?  It turns out laundry dreams really do come true! 

Solace in the Mail

In this time of transition (five weeks living with my in-laws and counting), there are plenty of people and entities that are slowly driving me mad; at the top of that list is the U.S. Postal Service.  Despite arranging for mail-forwarding two weeks before our move in April, I am currently receiving mail in three different locations.  My student loan statements, credit card bills, and other mail that could affect my credit score are being sent to the Bronxville apartment, so every week, after dropping off Minnow at school, I have to go to my former building and retrieve a shopping bag full of mail that the current residents have left in the lobby for us.  Meanwhile, my New Yorker and American Bar Association subscriptions, as well as mailings from organizations such as The Human Rights Campaign and Food for the Poor have found me at my in-laws’ address, confirming my mother-in-law’s suspicions that I am, in fact, more liberal than I let on.  And at the new house, our mortgage lender, utility companies, and village have not missed a beat in sending us payment reminders, bills, and tax documents.  Welcome to your new home! 

This afternoon, as I opened the house for our painter (whom I adore but, let’s face it, is among those slowly driving me mad) I stepped onto a pile of mail that had been pushed through the mail slot on the front door (because, in addition to light switches and central air conditioning, our home lacks a mailbox).

“Well, here’s some mail,” I observed insipidly. 

“And there’s this, too,” our painter said, bending to hand me a small brown paper package sitting on the stoop.

I knew what this was, and it had nothing to do with monthly payments!  I tore open the paper and, after figuring out how to operate the rental car’s newfangled six-disc CD player, fed the CD into the stereo.  The smooth crooning of Josh Ritter poured through the speakers, temporarily melting away my frustrations with the world and everyone in it. 

One of my first encounters with Josh Ritter was watching an exclusive video performance of “Southern Pacifica” that he and his wife, Dawn Landes, did for Daily Candy in April 2010.  I remember crying the first time I saw it, and I still cry because everything about the video is pure: the music, their young marriage, their vintage Brooklyn kitchen.  Now I have a vintage kitchen of my own and it doesn’t seem nearly as hip because it’s not in Brooklyn.

The summer I was pregnant with Minnow, my husband and I saw Josh Ritter perform at the Music Hall of Williamsburg.  I sang along to every song off the So Runs the World Away album, which was the only album of his I owned at the time, and attentively listened to the rest.  It was one of the best, and definitely the longest concert I’ve attended, which would have been awesome if the venue wasn’t standing room only and I hadn’t foolishly worn my Coach platform sandals.  I’d never left a concert before the encore until that night.

For three years I have been yearning for Josh Ritter to release a new album, and in March of this year he finally did.  The Beast in Its Tracks immediately garnered airtime on public radio, and I once again fell in love with Josh Ritter’s soulful, narrative lyrics.  I imagine he had Dawn Landes, from whom he split in 2011, in mind when he wrote “Joy to You Baby”:

There’s pain in whatever

We stumble upon

If I never had met you

You couldn’t have gone

But then I couldn’t have met you

We couldn’t have been

I guess it all adds up

To joy in the end…

Listening to the album in its entirety tonight on the drive back to my in-laws’ from the construction zone that will eventually be our home was the best part of my day, and probably week.  Suddenly the fact that the electricians have been working for over two weeks and are still not finished updating our electric, the fact that the painters will be delayed at least a week because they have to wait until the floor guy sands the hardwoods before they put paint on the walls, the fact that the U.S. Postal Service really doesn’t give a damn where we live didn’t seem to matter anymore.  In a few short weeks this, too, will be a closed chapter in our family's story.  Or as Josh Ritter puts it in his new song, “Hopeful”:

She has been through her own share of hard times as well

And she has learned how to tear out the heaven from hell

Most nights I’m alright, still all rocks roll downhill

But she says I’ll get better, she knows that I will

And she’s hopeful, hopeful for me

Coming out of the dark clouds.