Arrival in Labor & Delivery

The drive to ENH was another blur. So many things were running through my head -- I'm sure the same things were running through Geoff's. We were on our way to save our girls -- there were no guarantees, we knew that, but we also knew that this could be the one chance we have at saving this pregnancy.

The directions we had were not good -- we got lost. I called into the phone number the doctor in Libertyville gave us and got a wonderful woman on the other line. I told her our situation and she proceeded to give us turn by turn directions and insisted on staying on the line with me until we reached the front door of the hospital. I was so grateful for her -- she was our angel guiding us to our destination. I wish I remembered her name.

Geoff pulled the car up to the Evanston Woman's Hospital entrance and we were greeted by the valet -- we quickly got a wheelchair and were on our way to Labor and Delivery. Upon our arrival, they knew who we were and what we were there for. They were still working on my room, so we had to wait a few minutes in the hall. As we sat there I thought, this was not how I envisioned our first trip to Labor and Delivery to be. Around us were people who were there for happier reasons, because their healthy babies were soon to enter the world. I started to cry and tried to stay positive -- but it was so hard.

We were soon moved into a room, and I was given a hospital gown and told to undress and my nurse would be in shortly. I undressed and got into bed -- Geoff sat next to me in a chair and we held hands. All we could do was look at each other in stunned silence -- we couldn't believe this was happening. As we sat there I thought to myself, this has to be a dream, this can't be real. I finally spoke -- "I can't believe this is happening" I said. "I know" Geoff replied. "Why does everything happen to us -- can't we ever catch a break" I asked. "I've been wondering that same thing" he said. After awhile of sitting there a nurse came in and got me hooked up to a contraction monitor, did my vitals and aked me a lot of questions to finalize the admitting process. I wasn't having real contractions, but I was having a lot of Braxton Hicks -- I brought water, but the nurse told me not to drink anything for right now, since she didn't know what the doctor had planned yet. She finished her part and soon left -- again, Geoff and I were left alone with our thoughts. "I want to be optimistic" Geoff said -- "I keep going back and forth with that, I'm scared, but then I'm optimistic -- this isn't the end" he said. "I know -- we've come too far for this to be the end" I replied. "We aren't giving up without a fight -- that's for sure." I knew I had to stay postitive -- if there is anything I learned throughout our battle with IVF is that positive thoughts do help frame your future. But I also knew that negative thoughts are the evil enemy that are really, really hard to fight off.

We were soon seen by a resident -- she was young and very nice. She asked me some questions about how we ended up here today and eventually checked my cervix. She told us what the plan was -- Dr. Neerhof would be in soon and would assess the situation. The plan was to see if I was a candidate for an emergent cerclage. If I was a candidate -- what did that mean? I thought we were being sent there so I could get the cerclage -- why wouldn't I be a candidate?
After about an hour of waiting, we were visited by a different doctor -- Dr. Neerhoff had gone home, and we were seeing Dr. Silver. He was very nice and easy to talk to. He came in, sat down and talked to us. The resident had reported to him the condition of my cervix and he discussed our options. First they really want to know what caused the early effacement and there were a couple of ways for them to do that. They would keep me overnight and perform a vaginal ultrasound in the morning to measure the length of my cervix and see if anything changed overnight. If things changed, then they would want to do an amniocentisis to rule out an infection in the amniotic sac of Baby A. If an infection was present then they could not do the cerclage. If nothing changed, they may still want to do the amnio to rule out infection and if one was not detected they would then do the cerclage. Either way, it sounded like we were going to do an amnio. I wasn't thrilled because I knew the possible complications that were involved with doing an amnio, but it sounded like we didn't have much of a choice. If it was our only option to save the pregnancy we were going to do it. Dr. Silver checked my cervix and said he would be back after giving us some time to digest all of the information he had just shared with us. After Dr. Silver left, Geoff and I looked at each other and acknowledged that we had no other choice but to go ahead with what the doctors are reccomending. This is what these doctors deal with -- they know what they are doing, we have to trust them. Shortly after Dr. Silver returned, we told him that the plan sounded good and that we were going to do whatever we can to save this pregnancy. Shortly after that a nurse came in and told us that they were getting a room ready for me upstairs and that they would be moving me shortly.

We were transferred upstairs -- upstairs was a unit that was reserved primarily for women hospitalized with high-risk pregnancies. There were 22 beds on this unit -- amazing. Geoff got me situated, I ordered some food from "room service" and soon it was time for him to leave. He had to get home to take care of our pets. We had tried to get a neighbor take care of them, but our "hidden" key was not where we usually left it, so Geoff had to leave earlier than he wanted to. Saying goodbye was so hard -- I cried... a lot. We didn't know what tomorrow was going to bring -- we still didn't know if our girls would be saved. It would be a very difficult night for both of us. We kissed each other goodnight and he was on his way home. He was going to be back the next morning by 7 am -- back in time to be there for the ultrasound which was scheduled for first thing the next day.