Rhianna's Birth Story

 

Thursday was a busy day. Nate had gone to work for his final shift before leaving to Chicago to take the Emergency Medicine Oral Board Exam. We had two weeks until Sean’s baptism and my list of things that needed to be done kept growing. Nate had spent the day before pruning the trees in our yard. The entire place was blanketed with branches of every kind. He had called to find out where he could take them, but the hauling could only happen during the hours when he was at work. He could, he had been told, bundle them with twine in four feet bundles and leave them by the garbage on Friday. I knew he didn’t have time to do it. I regretted walking away from the projects in the house that I needed to finish, but garbage day was the next day and the yard had to get done.

It was a good day for it, cool and buffeted by dark, fluffy rain clouds. I even got the added blessing of a few sprinkles to mingle fresh water with the mounting sweat on my arms. I had to straddle the bundles I made, to hold them together before tying, and the branches were leaving shallow scratches up and down my arms. Still, the worst part was my hands. The twine wore my skin raw while I tied the knots. I couldn’t wear gloves because they made me completely unable to tie, so I took them off each time and then slipped them back on for gathering the next bundle and cutting the branches to the correct size. I worked all day, continuing when the kids got home from school. They helped me carry the finished bundles to the road; although, I had to go out and restack them afterward. I didn’t finish. The rain came again and I took the excuse to rest my aching hands. It was enough. Nate could do the rest tomorrow.  I felt good about the work I had done. As I sat down to rest, I noticed the dull aching in my lower back. It didn’t hurt. It was just a symbol of a good day of working.

As expected, my sweet Nathan was pleased to find so much of the job finished after work. He hadn’t had a great day himself and I knew it meant something to him to not have that task facing him on his one day off before his huge test. He wanted to spend Friday studying.  We were both exhausted and went to bed immediately after tucking in the kids. I suppose that is where the story really starts.

Thursday night didn’t end up being as restful as we could have hoped. Halfway through the night, I woke up, shivering uncontrollably.  I reached over to Nate and asked him if I was fevering. He rested his hand on my forehead and then my neck. He answered that I was really hot. The next day, when all this had passed, I would find myself thinking that sickness was worth the pain because it gave me the opportunity to see that my husband really loved me. Of course, I had no idea what was in store when I had those thoughts. It was a long night. Nate didn’t sleep either. He gave me medicine and water. He would seem to be dozing, but would then reach out and place his hand on my waist or back, checking for improvement to the fever. He asked questions about other symptoms, and pushed gently on my back and stomach, looking for tenderness, but he never shared his thoughts. By morning the fever was gone.

I wandered around the house Friday morning worrying about the strange fever. I didn’t think very much about the backache because of the work I’d done the day before. But I was afraid because Nate was leaving and I wouldn’t have him to tell me if I should worry if the fever came back. I spent a ridiculous amount of time reading about kidney infections. I knew they could cause preterm labor and I didn’t have any flu-like symptoms, so what else could it be? Finally, I decided to just go get a urinalysis. It was only money that made me hesitate. The insurance wouldn’t cover the visit. But Nate was leaving and I would be alone. I needed to know for sure I didn’t have a kidney infection.  I called the doctor’s office. My doctor didn’t have any appointments. I could see the Nurse Practitioner. Well, she could order a urine test as well as anyone.

The appointment was exactly what I was expecting and why I had hesitated to go. My urine was fine. She ordered a blood test for a white cell count: also fine. I didn’t have an infection. The fever was gone. It was probably just a virus. I felt of twinge of regret about the bills we would soon receive for that waste of time. I didn’t let it consume me the way it would have a year ago. Nate was leaving, the peace of mind would be worth the expense. I came home still feeling lousy. Nate gave me a kiss and told me to go lay down.  We were supposed to go find a notary and sign the selling documents for our house in El Paso. I was just so tired. We could do that later.

The kids were home when I woke up. Nate was helping them remember to do their homework and piano practice. We went out to get the paperwork signed and FedExed to the title company. It had to be done before he left for Chicago. I told Nate I wasn’t really up to making dinner, so he bought pizza for the kids and, again, we went to bed early. I realized I hadn’t eaten anything the entire day.

The fever came back, as is often the case at night. I repeated to myself how glad I was that I had gone to the doctor. I said I should feel good because I knew my baby was safe. I knew it was just a virus. It was worth getting the tests done. This time, the fever was accompanied by another worrying symptom. The backache had faded, barely noticeable most of the time. I had been, as with all my pregnancies, experiencing Braxton Hicks contractions every few minutes most days. But the contractions Friday night were accompanied by the resurgence of the back pain. In fact, they felt like labor contractions, if very mild ones. I told myself again not to worry. It was just the Braxton Hicks and they were putting pressure on my already sore back.

Nate had to fly out of Idaho Falls at seven Saturday morning. He tried not to wake me as he made his final preparations and packed up his truck. He kissed me goodbye, told me to call my mom and ask her to drive to Rexburg, and left. I laid in bed, glad I had been to the doctor the previous day.  I wasn’t going to make my mom drive four hours. I’d just been tested and found infection free.

When I realized that all the kids were up, I stumbled out to the couch. The fever hadn’t broken with morning this time and I felt as weak as a kitten. The kids made their own breakfast. I swallowed some Tylenol  and made myself get showered and dressed. Chloe, Quentin and Sean were all in soccer games that morning at ten. I helped them gather their clothes and loaded them into the car. I honestly don’t remember much of the games. Despite being a beautiful day, it didn’t feel like the invigorating family time I usually enjoy on Saturday mornings at soccer. Somehow, we made it to the games and somehow we made it home. By the time we got there and I fell onto the couch, I was starting to shake again.

After that, the whole day is kind of a haze, but here are a few of the details that stick out. The kids weren’t interested in chores or piano. I couldn’t make myself care. It was like some odd music video where I just sort of stared at the room while life passed by in fast forward. Chloe brought me a blanket and pillow. At lunch time, Ryan made Ramen noodles. He brought me in a bowl and I told him to feed the kids. He just stood there, holding it out to me and said, “I want you to eat first because you’re sick.” Later a doctor would ask when I last ate and I would remember those noodles as the only thing I’d had in days. I took Tylenol whenever the shivering started. It was six hours the first time, then five, then three and a half. Once, I pulled myself off the couch and tripped over my feet to my bedroom looking for the Tylenol. When I turned around with the bottle, Ryan was standing there. My sweet nine year old said, “What are you doing? I could have brought you that.” He had been bringing me glasses of water at the couch. I couldn’t believe how thirsty I was. Twice the waters got knocked over. I couldn’t care.

Evie, my precious thirteen month old, decided she had enough of me laying delirious on the couch. She put her face in mine and screamed. I asked Sean to get her a bottle of milk. Other times she would bring me her empty cup and hold it out, as she does on normal days, but I couldn’t fill it for her. I felt sick at being too sick to help her. But her brothers and big sister always came over to handle the task.  Toward the end of the night, she started crying uncontrollably. I tried to pick her up, but really didn’t have the strength. I cried too. I asked Ryan to put her in her bed. He did, but she didn’t stop crying for a long time. Ryan came back and found me shaking and bawling at the same time. He put his arms around me to hold me still and said, “I will help you stop shaking.”

Laying on that couch (on my left side, sipping water), the contractions began to feel more and more like labor contractions. My mind went crazy with horrible fantasies. They had switched my urine with someone else’s. I did have a kidney infection, but some other poor woman was getting treatment for it. I was in preterm labor. My baby was already dead and my body wanted to rid itself of her. Thankfully, she was still moving from time to time and every time she did, I said a little prayer of thanks. I tried to text Nate, hoping he would just tell me to go to the hospital. He was out with his medical school friends and didn’t get my texts. The Oral Board Exam that he was there to take wasn’t until Sunday. I started to honestly consider the idea of not worrying about what it would cost and just going to the hospital.

The problem was that there was no one else to take care of my kids. I had neighbors, but no one I could invite into my disaster of a house. It’s never spotless, but the days of sickness had made it very close to needing a visit from a HazMat crew. I thought of Sean’s friend, Michael, who had been at my house all day, running amok with the other kids. His mom was a nurse and maybe she could help. I sent her a text. She advised me to call my doctor. This may seem like a “duh” solution, but I didn’t even know you could call a doctor on a Saturday night.  I called the office and got the answering service. When the poor lady asked what was wrong, I just started sobbing. I felt like such an idiot. I did not want to be one of those whiney pregnant women, but I couldn’t get out an explanation without accompanying it with tears. It was also accompanied by apologies. Yes, I had been seen in the office just the day before. Yes, all the tests were negative. I knew how silly the whole thing sounded. I was just so scared. She told me that the doctor on call would call me back. So many of my fears melted away just knowing I was going to get to talk to someone soon.

I waited an hour. Then ninety minutes. I had given the woman my cell number, but I made the kids bring me the home phone too, just in case. The fears started mounting again. I couldn’t push away the silly scenarios. The fever wasn’t reacting to the Tylenol at all anymore. I could feel myself getting hotter. Finally, the phone rang. It was Nate. He had gotten my frantic texts. He wanted me to first, call back that answering service and ask for the doctor again, and second, go to the hospital.  It felt like a license to act silly. I was happy for it.

This time the lady was able to get me on the line with the doctor on call. He said he would call labor and delivery and tell them to expect me. He would also call my doctor, Dr. Zollinger, and ask him to meet me in the hospital.

I texted Michael’s mom again. It was nine at night, but I told her I needed help. She sent over her husband. The poor man had to sit in my messy house with the kids. The humiliation barely fazed me. I was teetering back and forth between feeling silly about running to the hospital and feeling relieved that Nate and the doctor on call wanted me to.

On the way to the hospital, I called my mom. When I told her I was going in to get checked out, but that it likely wasn’t anything to worry about, she told me she was on her way. I didn’t argue. I wanted her here. Even if I only spent an hour at the hospital, the sickness wasn’t going to be gone the next day and Nate wouldn’t be home until Monday night.

I had to enter the hospital through the ER. That meant that everyone Nate worked with would know I was there. The lady at the admitting desk asked if I was “Dr. Hancock’s wife.” Then she asked if I was in labor.  I told her I wasn’t. My husband was out of town and I figured going to the hospital was the best way of getting a babysitter. I was feeling sillier by the minute. As soon as I entered the hospital, I had started to sweat. “Oh great, “I thought, “Of course. I’m here, so the fever is going to magically disappear.” Despite my insistence that I was fine to walk up to labor and delivery, they made me sit in a wheelchair with a nurse to push me.
I was hustled into a small room used for outpatient monitoring. They gave me a gown and asked for a urine sample. I changed and sat in that bathroom for ten minutes, but I was too dehydrated to produce more than a trickle. The nurse started knocking on the door to make sure I was okay.

Once they had me seated with monitors hooked up to measure contractions and the baby’s heartbeat, she started asking me the barrage of questions. She was very nice and I appreciated the candor. No, there had not been any bleeding. I didn’t know how far apart the contractions were. The possible symptom list left me, again feeling a little silly. I said “no” to almost everything. Somewhere during the interview, I started to feel leaking fluid. I interrupted the nurse to tell her I thought I was leaking something. She pulled back the gown and gasped, “Oh. It’s blood.” I looked down. I was covered in bright red blood and a ping pong ball sized clot sat in the middle.  The nurse put the gown down and ran out of the room, saying she was going to page the doctor.

While we waited for him to arrive, she continued her barrage of questions. At one point, I commented that I was feeling kind of lousy. She glanced down at the print out recording my baby’s heartbeat and said, “Your baby isn’t doing so hot either.” I didn’t know how to respond to that. The strip had a zig zag line right down the middle. It wasn’t flat, but it had very little variance. I didn’t know what that meant.

Dr. Zollinger started with a speculum exam. He declared that the baby was okay and that my cervix was still closed, but that the blood and blood clots were still pouring out. I wondered how closed it could possibly be when it was letting out clots. He performed an ultrasound next. He didn’t say a whole lot during the procedure, just that the placenta was well away from the cervix. After that, he stood back and looked at me for a moment, obviously unsure what he should do next. Then, he said he was going to go “talk to some guys” and left. I was pleased he was asking for a second opinion. Having had the advantage of watching Nate through the medical training, I understand how valuable it can be to discuss situations with other professionals.

When he returned, his whole demeanor had changed. He explained to me that since I didn’t have placenta previa, the likely cause of the bleeding was placental abruption. I knew what that meant. If it abrupted completely it could kill the baby and me, as well. I asked if he had seen an abruption on the ultrasound. He hadn’t, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t there. He felt like the best course of action was to perform an emergency caesarian. I didn’t have to think about it. I was very afraid of losing my daughter.

Dr. Zollinger pulled out his cell phone and asked for Nate’s phone number. I told him not to call Nate because he wouldn’t be able to take his test if he was worried about me. It was half hearted, though, and the doctor was insistent.  I listened to him explain to my husband that we were headed to surgery. When he handed me the phone and I asked Nate for his opinion, he said that if the baby monitor wasn’t picking up variance, she needed to be taken out. He told me he loved me and asked me to call as soon as I could with news. I felt a strange comfort from the fear I heard in my husband’s voice. I know it should have disconcerted me. He’s so hard to upset. But just knowing how worried he was about me and his baby made me feel better. I needed his love.

The doctor went out to make arrangements. The surgical staff would have to be called in. It was eleven at night on a Saturday. The nurse stayed with me. She asked if I wanted a blessing. I told her I would and she said she would find someone to perform the ordinance. A few minutes later, my own doctor and the anesthesiologist came in with a vial of consecrated oil. I didn’t hear much of the blessing, a bunch of words about helping me and the medical professionals. I just kept praying he would tell me the baby would be okay. When he finally did, I started to breathe again.

The surgery went well. I was surprised by how many people they had in the operating room. I didn’t feel any pain, but I did throw up a couple of times. The anesthesiologist gave me the play by play as the incision was made and the baby pulled out. Dr. Zollinger held her up above the sheet that blocked my head from the action and declared that she was a little girl before the nurses whisked her away into the other room where the pediatrician on call was waiting. She was born on April 28th, 2012, at 11:57 p.m.

The clean up took much longer than the actual birth did. The anesthesiologist kept adjusting my medications and holding the little bowl so I could throw up. I wasn’t really paying attention. I just kept listening to hear the occasional cries from the other room. It wasn’t persistent, but she was crying. If she could cry, she could breathe.

After he was done, Dr. Zollinger again pulled out his cell phone and dialed Nathan. This time, he handed the phone to me. I announced that our little girl was doing well. He just wanted to know one thing. In a strained voice he asked, “Does she need a respirator?” Listening to his concern, I realized that being in his swanky hotel room all alone had been much worse than what I had gone through in the operating room. In the conversations that would come, I would understand that he was dealing with flashbacks from his time rotating in the pediatric intensive care unit in El Paso. Not much fazes Nate, but a tiny little boy named Landon had. Nate had to be there as his parents signed the DNR order a year before. Now he saw the possibility that his own precious child might be in the hospital, hooked up to all those machines and he was across the country. My heart ached for him.

A couple hours later, I found myself in the recovery room when my parents arrived. They were allowed to go see my little girl, even though I was not. They brought me back pictures. I would spend the next day with those cell phone pictures; they helped me sleep.

I honestly don’t remember a whole lot of what happened over the next couple days. Whatever had caused the fevers that forced my daughter’s dramatic entrance into the world did not go away with delivery. The doctor tried four different antibiotics. It took another 48 hours before the cycle of shivering, fevering, getting overheated, and taking drugs abated. I remember being afraid that they wouldn’t find what was wrong and I would never be able to take care of my kids again.

I was optimistic for the most part, but had a minor breakdown two days out. I had called home and my 13 month old was crying. I felt so absolutely useless. Everyone else was doing my job because I couldn’t. Mom and Dad had decided that I couldn’t come home to all five of my kids and they took the two youngest home with them. I agreed to it, but I felt like a horrible mother. The feelings improved as the sickness slowly abated. By the time I was fever free for 24 hours, I was feeling pretty okay.

Everyone who entered my room Sunday or Monday had the same question: “What is the baby’s name?” I answered the same each time, “Her daddy will name her when he gets here.” His test was Sunday afternoon. He wasn’t scheduled to fly out of Chicago until Monday. He tried hard to change that. He looked for flights that would get him home even a few hours earlier, but there wasn’t much point to it. The nearest airport was Idaho Falls and it was so tiny that it hardly had any flights in or out. He was just going to have to wait for his scheduled flight and meet his baby Monday night.

Nate finally arrived around eight Monday night. My parents had left with Evie and Quentin. The other kids were in the care of my visiting teacher. Nate came straight to the hospital. Together, we walked to the NICU and he finally got to hold his baby girl. He spent some time snuggling and some time shaping her thick, black hair into a Mohawk. Then he named her Rhianna Colleen Hancock. It was a name he had picked out himself, which meant a lot to me. With the other kids, I made suggestions and he said he liked it or he didn’t. But he had chosen Rhianna on his own. It is a Welsh name that means “Great Queen.” I pointed out that it was also the feminine form of Ryan, which is our oldest son’s name. He smiled and declared that we had come full circle in completing our family.

I could point to a hundred different points when this story could have changed directions and ended much differently. As is so often the case, I felt the power of a loving, attentive Heavenly Father every step of the way. Rhianna was escorted here by angels, both those on the other side and an army of them here on Earth who took care of her, me and my family as we welcomed her into this world. I don’t have the talent to express my gratitude or share my feelings. But I know that there can’t be a higher calling or purpose than being a family. I will try to be the mom she deserves, the mom each of my elect children deserves. Already during those quiet moments she and I have spent together with tangled cords attached to her tiny body, I have whispered to her about the covenants that make us an eternal family. I’m so very grateful that our eternity together will start with this life and not just the promise of a joyful reunion in the next. Welcome, precious Rhianna. The world is a brighter place since you arrived.