Waiting for the Baby

My oldest daughter is pregnant and due to have her son on May 19th. I am a nervous wreck.

I can barely even think about it without freaking out.

This is her second child. The oldest, my darling, precocious grandson, C. , is almost three-years-old.  He and this baby may actually share a birthday since C.’s birthday is on May 11.

When my daughter was nearing her due date with C. she asked me if I would be in the birthing room with her during delivery. Having had four children, three of whom I delivered without anesthesia, I was thrilled and honored to help with the coaching and to be present when my grandson was born. She had a birthing room at the local hospital and had had the regular “tour” of the facilities earlier in her pregnancy.  Everything was going fairly normally when her labor started.  Things just weren’t going as quickly as the midwife would have liked so with the doctor’s approval she gave my daughter a drip of oxytocin to help the contractions be stronger and more productive. . It got a little too intense for her at one point so my daughter requested an epidural.   It was given and she felt a great deal of relief.

After many hours ( it seemed) of  contractions and finally instructions to “push”  the baby was born!! What a beautiful little boy!

And then the nightmare began.  She started to bleed….and bleed…and bleed.  There was a fibrous tumor near the birth canal inside the uterine wall. The uterus was unable to contract properly due to the size and location of the fibroid. She was given several pints of blood and frantically the doctor worked to staunch the bleeding. It took hours! I stood helplessly watching the blood flow out of my beautiful daughter, fearing it would never stop! I cry just typing these words!

She survived thanks to the professional care given to her by her medical professionals. The doctor cautioned her that any subsequent pregnancies could kill her unless the issue of that fibroid tumor was resolved.  She waited two years and her longing for another child grew great. She consulted with her OB/GYN and they did a surgical procedure to remove the offending tumor last fall.  When the surgeon went in he couldn’t find the tumor and refused to cut her up simply in order to locate it! So nothing was done except that she now had to recover from invasive surgery. According to the surgeon,  hormones cause the tumor to grow during pregnancy. When she wasn’t pregnant it had shrunk to such a small size that it wasn’t visible to the surgeon.

Pregnancy has caused the tumor to grow large again.

I don’t think I can be in that room and go through that again knowing that she could bleed to death in front of me. My heart says that if (God forbid) something does go terribly wrong I will always regret that I wasn’t there to hold her tight and give her all the love this mother has for her daughter.

I am so afraid. I don’t have the kind of strong religious faith that would help get me through with grace and acceptance. If anything should happen to her I will rail against God the same way I did when I was a child and I prayed in vain for the end of suffering at the hands of my parents.

So while I am anticipating the arrival of another blessing in the form of a fourth grandson, I also fear the whole idea. Pray for my daughter. Please.