The phone is a terrible invention. In my experience, it either rings incessantly crashing the fragile concentration you’ve mustered, and sits mercilessly in silence, taunting you when it holds the knowledge you so desperately desire. And frankly, awaiting medical news just plain sucks.
Our appointment was on a Wednesday morning and we left with the understanding that our doctor would call us later that afternoon to discuss the results. I returned to my day job generating nonsensical strings of data (if isEmpty(coffee) then goto break_room) while my wife went her nanny gig (if baby = screaming then apply ether). And the waiting began.
And continued.
Through pointless meetings and tiresome conference calls.
Through cup after cup of ‘coffee flavored water’ or whatever the swill they serve us is.
And when the work day ended, and we reconvened with the cats (and rabbit) it became apparent that no call was forthcoming that day.
Once you reach this conclusion, the road of possibilities forks a bit. One avenue of thinking suggests that ‘no news is good news’ and that everything is fine. I think everyone outwardly displays this brash optimism, banking their mental health on a doctor’s triage abilities – ignoring of course in this particular instance that said doctor could be squatting under some prego in a hospital somewhere waiting for a baby to drop rather than worrying about my wife being a quart low.
The other road is to sink into those dark recesses of your mind where the twin terrors live – ‘Johnny WhatIf’ and ‘Charlie WhyDidEye.’ We certainly took a brief visit there that night – Charlie whispering into Kim’s ear and Johnny into mine. Sleep was fleeting that evening.
Morning brought little relief, except for the calming, eternally gray skies. Oh Syracuse – why hath the sun forsaken thee?
Finally, mid afternoon we got some news from our doctor. Yes, the levels were a little low, as was the placenta. But ‘stomach discomfort’ of the ‘gross’ variety could definitely cause dehydration and low fluid levels. They wanted a followup ultrasound sooner rather than later to see if the levels had rebounded. Kim, in no mood to wait any longer had it scheduled for the next day.
In the meantime she would continue her new hobby – attempting to consume an entire swimming pool’s worth of water in two days…
Thought i would leave you hanging again?
Friday morning we once more met with our sonographer, who now knew our names, what we took in our coffee (Sweet and Low for me, Kahlua for Kim), and probably how much we really weren’t fond of seeing her anymore. She was all business this day, and once more the magic wand Harry Potter’d its spell of visibility on our unborn child. Lo and behold, after ridiculous amounts of liquids, Kim’s fluid level was a full point above where it had been a few days ago. This is apparently a quick turnaround. It was at this point that we began asking about the numbers.
According to our sonographer, the “normal” range of amniotic fluid levels is between 10 and 20 (gallons maybe?) Kim’s newly determined elevated level was a 10.9 – on the low side but still inside the safe range. This, of course, begged the question from us – what exactly was the level before? Oh, she said, it was a 9.7.
…
9.7? That’s not really that far below 10, is it? It even rounds up to 10? I mean, if I said to you, “Hey, [insert your name here], we’re running low on beers – normally we have 10-20, but right now we only have 9 and 1 can somebody took a few sips of,” would you lose sleep at night? Yeah, well, that’s what essentially happened to us. If we had actually known the numbers, maybe I wouldn’t have had to watch that 4 AM infomercial for that local leather store in which the entire family of thickly accented displaced Brooklyner’s attempt to peddle leather gloves, hats, jackets, scarves ad socks to insomniacs like me.
Well, regardless of “how it went down,” everything turned out to be fine. The ship has been righted, justice has been done, and we can sleep well at night, confident in the knowledge that Kim’s amniotic sac is quickly filling with fluids. Well, I can sleep at least – she has to get up at eight times at night. All that water I guess…
