The Pregnancy Test

This post is part of a blog series on pregnancy loss from a miscarriage I had in August 2021. Thank you always for reading. – Jesse

June 15, 2021

The day my water broke, before my son was born in 2016, I was sitting beside two-year-old Nora’s hospital crib, advocating for a strong discharge plan and the home respiratory equipment I believe Nora needed: pulse oximeter, an oxygen concentrator, suction machine, and supportive respiratory medication.

But the pulmonologist believed Nora’s lungs needed to show us, clinically, that she needed this type of support at home. She emphasized that the clinical team simply did not send children home with this type of medical equipment, and before any equipment could be ordered or received, Nora would need to be seen in the pulmonary outpatient clinic, and closely followed by a pulmonologist. And then, referring to Nora’s recent g-tube surgery, she felt the need to inform me, “We never would have done elective surgery on a child whose lungs look like this.”

I spent the remainder of my afternoon seeped in caregiver shame and guilt, devoting deep and concentrated thought to questioning my own intuition and judgment with my daughter’s care, occasionally crying and pacing (or both), and obsessively calling central scheduling to schedule Nora with a pulmonologist, all while online shopping for baby swaddles and caps.

Central scheduling called me back the next day, while I was in labor, about the time I was preparing to push — my mom took the call.

Over the last few months as Tyler and I talked about having more children, I told him, after the year 2016— hospital admissions for Nora, seizures, eating challenges, reoccurring pneumonia, not knowing how I would safely feed my toddler, handing her off to surgery, advocating for, and then not receiving the support I believed she needed before leaving her side when my water broke to give birth to my son, —I never, ever, wanted my family to feel that torn and vulnerable again.

But what I think I meant (and can hardly admit to myself even in this moment) is this: I never want to feel that out of control of my family’s life, health, and circumstance, again.

Now as I hold a positive pregnancy test, I’m reminded that life in all its fragility and unpredictability, is a gift.

And, I’ve never been in control.