Once upon a time an overstressed, female journalist began noticing certain changes in her body. She always needed to pee, and it just took much energy to chase her neurotic dog around the house. It was easier to sleep through the dog’s yapping. Then there were her breasts. The slightest breeze would bring the most horrible pain.
Suspicious, the journalist took a test. Minutes later she stared at two pink lines. She was pregnant. There were a few minutes of hysterical laughing, followed by hysterical crying followed by manic denial. It had to be a mistake, so she took another test, and another, and another. She took a total of five tests – all of which came back with double pink lines. The journalist was well and truly pregnant or so said her OBGYN a few weeks later. She is still disputing the results. She actually still believes she is just getting fat instead of pregnant.
Fast forward six months, past the drama of telling boyfriend, family, boss and coworkers to one very sunny day in March. It was a day like any other. She had two stories on her plate, her idiot editor was looking to add another and the source that had promised to call her back in five minutes was twenty minutes late. Ignoring the editor and annoyed with the silent phone, she headed to the bathroom for a pee – an everyday, every hour, every minute practice now that she was “getting fatter” The first thing she noticed was that it hurt like hell – think of passing kidney stones – and there was pink on the tissue – not something a woman “getting fatter” wants to see.
She calls the doctor and he suggests going to the hospital’s labor and delivery ward.“It could be nothing. Sounds more like a bladder infection,’’ he said. “But we need to be sure.”Two hours pass. Blood is taken. Urine sample is taken and everyone is pretty much convinced – bladder infection, but as one last precaution, the nurse decides to do a pelvic exam.
Within minutes of beginning the examination, the nurse’s expression goes from amused to worried. She doesn’t look the journalist in the eye as she mutters, “have to get the head nurse to check you out.’’The head nurse comes in and does her own examination, then whispers to her counterpart – “Call the doctor.’’
A week later, the journalist is in a different hospital room, but still a hospital room, on bed rest for the next 13-weeks. The doctors fear her weak cervix will fail and she will deliver a premature baby. They want her off her feet, and when they say off her feet, they are serious. The only time she is allowed to move is when she has to go the bathroom. Now the journalist is stuck in room 205, where there is a view of pipes on the roof, the TV doesn’t work, and she is poke and prodded every day.
This blog is her means of survival, something to keep her writing and busy every day. Just how much she can share with the world from Room 205, should be interesting, but who knows. Maybe she will gather a nice group of cheerleaders as she goes through the joys and fears of cooking baby.
