Yesterday morning I pulled some salmon out of the freezer. I know you need Omega 3 whatever-it’s-called, and we haven’t been eating all that much of it lately. Perhaps have it with some broccoli and potatoes. We have been eating much more healthily since Amélie was born, but these days she seems to love casseroles and pasta bakes, and meals are often tailored to her needs. In general we still struggle with meal planning for the rest of us, and I was proud of myself for thinking ahead before the day began.
I was tired, as always, but this week had knocked me round more than usual. A bad hypo at 6am was my main suspicion for the increased impact on me. I was due to work from home, but renegotiated and decided to take it easy instead. Try to recover some energy somehow. I took a super long time to get Amélie up and ready for childcare, so long that I realised she was going to miss their ‘late’ breakfast (for slackers like our family), as well as their morning tea (which typically coincides with our weekend breakfast timeslot). Instead, I set the three of us up for breakfast and enjoyed my morning watching her in love with vegemite on toast, making the drop off to childcare a very late affair. Ewin called, and I proudly told him I was able to eat, so I wasn’t going to hold back. We enjoyed two pieces of toast with vegemite and cheese! I think even Amélie was jealous of us.
It has been pretty hard to eat lately. At first all I could stomach was fresh cob lettuce with a bit of egg and loads of cheese. I had visions of Caesar salad sans the bacon and, as I soon realised, the anchovies as well. The croutons and the dressing were optional extras. I couldn’t get enough of the fresh crispy lettuce though.
Even as I type this I feel nauseas. Can you believe it? Is that not the cruellest trick out there?
When I was pregnant with Amélie I commenced throwing up as soon as we landed in LA for a five week holiday to the US for some comeback racing. I was five or six weeks at the time. I didn’t stop the entire time we were there. We tried every old wives tale: dry crackers as soon as you wake up, lemon, ginger, ginger biscuits, lemon flavoured sucking sweets, constant small snacking (but how when you can’t eat?), and bought stupid remedies from health care and pregnant clothing shops. As we drove across the States I became well versed in the art of spewing neatly into a plastic bag, and being able to tie it off quickly and double-bag it without the smell overpowering us. Ewin would then pull off the freeway to a petrol station where we would dump our bag and continue on. We would keep spare bags everywhere, but always in the side of the car door, within arm’s reach. It wasn’t until we returned to Australia and saw our obstetrician that we learnt about anti-nausea drugs, even those suitable for pregnancy. They were my lifeline. Each round of ten wafers would cost $132. The expense made me cringe but the effects were worth it. I would take half a wafer at a time, but often found myself replenishing the script every ten days. It was an expensive process. And it never relented. I once went ten days without throwing up, and started to believe I was over this period finally. But then it would start again, and hit so hard. Any time, any place. Some days you would just throw up the medication you had just taken, and you counted the cost going down the toilet, along with breakfast or late night bile. To round it off, I even threw up twice in labour.
This time around I expected it from you. I don’t hold it against you. It is not your fault. It is my body that despises being pregnant, or something like that. But I was ready this time. I knew it would be hard but I knew I had been through it all before, and I could do it again. And I had living proof this time that the outcome is very sweet. A beautiful perfect little daughter. What a reminder of the reward from nine months of suffering. I could do it again. I wanted to do it again. We were so excited to do it again. It didn’t mean it was going to be easy. I started suffering early this time, earlier than the first time. The first scan revealed you were still pretty early, and we had to drop off two weeks of hopeful progression, bringing you back down to five weeks old. This disheartened me, but I wasn’t surprised. Amélie also had differing due dates from my last menstrual period to the scan estimate, a difference of 11-12 days, similar to you.
The unfortunate challenge with constant nausea and vomiting with you was that I would struggle to hide it this time around. I had no five week holiday in another country to keep the news from family or co-workers. So we started telling people early. Hey, why not? We were excited and proud, and so looking forward to meeting you. We discovered two lots of friends were also at similar stages to us. The excitement was infectious. We could all see the future of our kids all growing up together. Although I couldn’t imagine how we would cope, with you and an almost two-year-old, but those details really didn’t matter. It always works out. Sometimes it is more eventful than you expect, but it always turns out.
Over the past four weeks my days of nausea increased, and I began with the drugs early, thankful that the price had dropped to $82 a pop for you. During this time, despite my best efforts with timing the drugs, I threw up a stack of times, including twice immediately after taking the drugs. It didn’t seem quite so heartbreaking to see only $8 go down the drain at a time. And to tell you the truth, most of the times I threw up I actually felt better afterwards. Sometimes Amélie would follow me into the bathroom and put a hand on my leg, to check that I was okay. It would make me cry. But the constant nausea made me miserable and I began to say over and over that you would be our last. I couldn’t look at Amélie when she ate her dinner – it would send me to the bathroom. I could barely prepare it for her. And changing a nappy...whoa! Nine months is such a long time to be miserable.
Of course with pregnancy, a type 1 diabetic is never under so much extreme pressure to not stuff up than they would ever be in their entire lives. It is extremely stressful. I don’t want to complicate your development in the early stages, nor do I want to over progress your growth in the later stages. My starting point with you was much better than with Amélie, where I had a five-year worst A1c reading on the day I discovered we were pregnant. Although I had an occasional rise in readings, I was generally happy with the progression. I was even more proud of being able to avoid any seizures to date. Again, with Amélie, I suffered five seizures from low blood sugar. To help avoid this with you, we set our alarm clock at 2:30am every morning, and I would roll over, test, and go back to sleep. Okay I admit, not all the time. Ewin would nudge me and I would roll over to test, and then promptly forget and fall back to sleep. But it seems I was always up around 4am to use the toilet, so I could get a test in then. I knew I needed to make a minor overnight basal adjustment, probably only 0.05u/hr increase at around 3am or 4am, but ‘seizure fear’ prevented me from doing that. Instead a 6:00am test would show a slight rise and I would simply whack in a small correction to cover for it, enabling a normal waking reading. The changes were so minimal a continuous glucose monitor wouldn’t have picked it up, so I was pretty happy with the old school process.
At fourteen months of age, Amélie has discovered her belly, and her belly button. She loves to lift up her shirt, whack herself in the belly and go, ‘boom boom boom’. Ewin actually got her onto that, but she finds it hilarious. When we snuggle up on the couch together she reaches over to lift up my shirt, and then pokes you and I. I say to her, ‘careful of your sibling!’ She looks amused. She then will climb up onto my lap and hold onto the top of my shirt, and use me as a jumping pad. That hurts so we stop this promptly, but it doesn’t stop her from trying it again and again. We try to imagine a cheeky two year old being jealous around you and how we will cope. I know we will find a way.
We hadn’t thought of names yet. It was actually the one thing I have been dreading. What on earth would we call you? We couldn’t wait to find out if you were a boy or a girl. Although given all the nausea, we were certain you would be a girl. Now we’ll never know.
Yesterday afternoon was our scheduled nine week check-up. I picked Amélie up from childcare and caught the tram into the city. She watched the school kids with a silent intensity, taking in their every move. As the ride progressed she got more comfortable and started to make some noise. From Clifton Hill to Collingwood I got her out to sit next to me, and she was very interested in the streetscape from her vantage. We walked the final few hundred metres and got into the building only ten minutes late. By this stage Amélie was tired and hungry, and we couldn’t cater for either of these needs. Ewin and I tried to keep her occupied until the doc was ready for us.
I knew something was wrong by the way he was measuring you. You didn’t appear like I was expecting you to. The computer kept readjusting the delivery date every time he took a new measurement, pushing it out further again. ‘I’m afraid it isn’t good news’ confirmed our suspicion.
My immediate reaction was numbness. I didn’t know what to do or say. Amélie was proving a distraction to any thought processes, as she became increasingly demanding from fatigue and hunger. I popped her on my knee and she tried to suck at the jar of jelly beans (from the outside). She’ll sleep as soon as we get in the car, but that is not before we get all the forms filled out. We got the low down on the process, finally managed to book in a time and remembered to ask one question, the only one I could think of: ‘have you ever stuffed one of these up?’ No pressure.
Coming home, with Amélie asleep, I started to get angry. Nine weeks of feeling like shit, all for nothing! All that time off from being productive around the home, missing days of work, missing bike rides and races, missing being a part of life. All for what? And we’ll have to re-consider if we want to one day do this all again? After I swore this would be the last time? Fucking hell.
Later that night I called my parents, but became lost for words when speaking to Dad. I switched to email to inform the rest of the family, and began the slow awkward process of letting those already in on the secret know about the turn of events. Damn it, why did I tell so many people?
Today, after dropping Amélie off at childcare, I went to a coffee shop and ordered a strong caffeinated flat white. The nausea was hitting me hard, so I took another anti-nausea drug. It isn’t you that caused these effects; apparently it is the damn placenta that is still going strong. I sat alone, in disbelief that you were still there, but not. The tears flowed uncontrollably. I hoped it wasn’t too obvious but I really didn’t care. A waitress brought me extra napkins.
I know now that you had a pretty high chance this would occur. I know it is no one’s fault. I know it has been said that it is nature’s way of taking care of issues. I know I will never get the chance to meet you, or get to know you. I know you will never get to meet your sister or father. I know the salmon will keep in the fridge for probably another day, but I know I won’t eat it now. Tomorrow I’ll be busy saying goodbye to you, forever.
