Noah

The day I learned the baby would die was the day I began to show so much that I could no longer hide him.

Someone congratulated me in court the next day and all I could was shake my head no and say something to the effect, he not going to make it. Looking back that was probably inappropriate but I was in shock and pain and I probably should have been home and not in court anyway. I mean for crying out loud I was experiencing a terrible trauma. Why was anyone letting me go to work?

The day after the sonogram I went into a high risk doctor and he did what’s called a CVS test. The best I can describe it, is as a mini amnio. E came with me. He held my hand and we watched on a monitor as a very long needle went into my belly and into the baby. He held and I squeezed his as I felt the needle go in and I had to stay as still as I could. That was a Friday.

By that night I was so stressed out that my asthma was out of control and I wound up in the emergency room for a breathing treatment. E tookme there too. I was starting to feel so needy.

On Sunday night I found myself once again in the ER. I couldn’t breathe. My inhaler was useless. While we sat there behind a curtain my phone rang. It was a blocked number. Sunday night at 9:30 the dr was calling with the results of my CVS test. I answered in the ER, already barely able to breathe. E was sitting in a chair right in front of me.

I don’t remember the words he used. I just remembered that he told me my baby had Down syndrome and heart defects and there was a 90% chance he would not make it to 20 weeks. I asked if he he knew the sex. He said yes, and asked if I wanted to know. I said yes. He said it’s a boy. I was 13.5 weeks pregnant.

When I got off the phone I told E and just collapsed onto the bed in a puddle. He was inconsolable. It was as if I had told him the baby was dead. To me he wasn’t dead. He was still alive and moving inside me.

We named him Noah.