Faking It

I’m interrupting my regularly scheduled interview posts for a detour into terror. Try to picture me saying that like Rod Serling. It’s much cooler.

Today Janelle and I got to discover the flipside of pregnancy. It’s pretty well understood that pregnancy is not all fun and roses. There’s a baby, and that’s neat, but there’s also digestive problems and other various forms of awkwardness. Even that stuff is kind of amusing, though. Let’s be honest, having gas can be pretty funny. Or maybe I never really grew out of that particular juvenile humor stage.

The not-fun stuff begins early for some pregnancies. Morning sickness is pretty definitively in that category. There are stealth problems that you don’t get warned about as much, though. I got to learn what one of those was about three hours ago.

I got a call from Janelle on my office phone. She told me that I needed to come and pick her up. When I asked what was wrong, there was a shuddering breath, the onset of some tears and then “I’m getting this really bad, shooting pain down my left hip. And I think I need to call the doctor because it’s bad and I think I need to go in.” Before the sentence was finished I’d announced I was on my way. A couple of powered off monitors and a laptop later, I was cryptically informing my techs that Janelle had called and I had to leave and was dashing out the door.

The most difficult part of a situation like this, as Tom Petty will surely tell you, is the wait. The journey from the third floor elevator to the car in the basement to Janelle’s parking lot is about 10-15 minutes, depending on stoplights. That is certainly ample time to let various doomsday scenarios marinate. I was able to distract myself for a moment by playing out a scenario wherein I was pulled over for going too fast and I won the cop over onto my side by telling him my easy-to-empathize-with story of a panicked first-time father-to-be. Could I fit more dashes in the end of that sentence? Maybe.

After that, all I had were the items you don’t want to think about. Is my wife okay? Is the baby okay? If we have to go to a hospital, how long would it be before they can help her while she’s in pain? Is there anything at all I could possibly do to help? Assuming the worst, would I be able to comfort her and salvage the pair of us successfully?

It was a long 1.5 mile drive.

To break the suspense, Janelle is fine. She called the nurse at our OBGYN and based on her descriptions, they were fairly positive what the problem was. See, as the mother-to-be’s body adapts, things don’t always go well. One of the parts of the body that tends to protest the whole pregnancy process are the tendons at the hip. As that region changes and shifts, there’s no guarantee that everything is doing so on the same timeline. Around the halfway point, it’s not unheard of for women to experience some pretty debilitating pain as their tendons decide that, quite frankly, they have had enough. They don’t want shift and stretch, dagnabbit. So, after instructions to head home, take aspirin, drink water, and not be up and walking around too much, we’re both home and Janelle is feeling much better.

And with that, the roller coaster ride has begun.