Six months ago today, my life was forever changed. I started the day out great. Our baby’s room was almost complete! It was a warm and sunny day outside. I took my two girls outside to play, and also carried a huge drink outside with me. I left my drink on the deck, and walked onto the grass to play with the girls. They were being silly and playing on the miniature Little Tykes slide. I was standing next to it laughing with them. All of the sudden I started feeling weird. I have had these spells as long as I can remember, but they happen A LOT in pregnancy. I hear a ringing in my ears and then everything starts to go black. I always beg God to make it stop, because it is really frightening. This time seemed no different.
I grabbed onto the side of the slide to steady myself praying, “God, please make this go away. Please.” The next thing I know I open my eyes. I see the deck and a blue sky. There is also a blurry face right next to mine. “Ashley. Ashley, do you know where you are.” I just kept nodding my head. “Where are you?” I couldn’t answer. I had no idea what was going on. “Can you tell me your name?” Yes. “Ashley.” The next thing I remember is being lifted onto a gurney by two men. They buckle all of these buckles. Then, I am wheeled between our house and Pastor’s house. I see my girls playing soccer with our Pastor’s son. They are smiling. None of this registered with me until later.
In the ambulance I hear Scott telling them that he is going to follow behind in our vehicle. “I love you, Ash. It’s going to be ok.” I tell him to call my parents. I didn’t even know what was going on, but somehow I knew that they needed to know. They close all of the doors and away we go. The EMT sitting next to me was so nice. I asked him if my girls were ok. He says, “They are just fine. They are so cute!” He starts trying to find veins in my arms. I tell him that they have been having to use my hand lately. I thought I was getting my blood drawn. Next thing I know, I have an IV in my hand. Suddenly it dawns on me that I am in the back of an ambulance. “WAIT! WHAT HAPPENED TO ME?” I say in a panic. He calmly tells me that it looks like I have had a seizure. “Oh, okay.” and I relax again. “Do you feel the baby moving?” Thump. “Yes” I say with a smile.
We get to the hospital and I am put in a triage room in the ER. Doctors and nurses are coming in. A nurse tells me that I need to remove my shirt and bra. I am so confused that she removes it all while another nurse holds a gown in front of me. Scott arrives. You can see the concern on his face. The nurse comes back and tells me that they need a urine sample, but that she does not want me to go alone. Scott has to come with me. He holds me up as I stumble to the bathroom. I make him face the wall, because this is humiliating to me.
A doctor comes in my triage room. He tells me that they are going to admit me to the hospital to run tests and observe the baby, and that I was SEVERELY dehydrated. “We need to know if you actually had a seizure. If you did, we need to know whether it was random, or eclampsia. If it is eclampsia we need to take the baby to protect her.” I smile and nod… and more confusion sets in for me. It is amazing how your brain is just completely scrambled after a seizure. It almost feels out of body, and then you are occasionally thrown back into your body to process what has happened to you, but then thrown back out of your body before you can completely figure it out.
It took hours for them to get a room for me. I was put in the labor and delivery area, because that is where a woman with a 30 week pregnancy needs to be. All of my greatest fears start crashing in. The pregnancy before this ended at almost 12 weeks. An acquaintance from high school had pre-eclampsia and her baby had to be taken early. After a few weeks of a fairly healthy, but tiny and fragile, life, it suddenly ended. I couldn’t bear the thought of something happening to my yet-to-be-born baby. I didn’t want to go home to her almost completed room and have it remain empty. Please, God.
Scott eventually headed home to get the girls in bed and relieve our Pastor’s wife, who came home from work and watched the girls for us. I cried. I didn’t want to be alone. My parents showed up some time around 11 PM. I was so thankful to have some company. The doctors ran every big tests that I can think of. An EKG, ECHO, EEG, MRI.. so many tests on no sleep. All of them keep saying that they think that what happened was just because of dehydration. This really upset Scott. “I know what I saw. That was not just dehydration.” I don’t know what he saw. I don’t really want to know, because my heart breaks for him having to witness that.
The next day we finally get some results of the test. A resident tells me that I have a hole in my heart; a PFO. I was born with it, and will need to get more testing done to be sure that it is not big enough to need repaired. Great. The neurologist tells me that I did in fact have a seizure. They are going to put me on something that I need to take twice a day to prevent another seizure. Another seizure could cause me to go into labor too early, or potentially kill the baby. The baby is developed enough that the medication is safe to take.
The next day was Saturday; my birthday. They tell me that I will be discharged. I am handed what feels like a massive packet of discharge instructions. I am now a high-risk pregnancy. I have to see my OB once a week, and get non-stress tests done twice a week. I also have to follow up with a cardiologist and my neurologist. Also, I am no longer allowed to drive. “At least six months.”
A half a year ago today, our lives changed forever. My husband had to drive me everywhere. I had to sit hooked up to machines twice a week to make sure that our baby was still doing ok. Several times I had to have additional ultrasounds because her behavior was scary. Once I had to go to Labor and Delivery because her behavior was REALLY scary and they thought she was in distress.
A half a year ago today, my life was altered. A half a year ago today, my faith in God was tested. A half a year ago today, my faith in God GREW. A half a year ago today, I had the choice to let what happened to me- to us- make me bitter, or to let it make me better. I think that I honestly have bounced back and forth between the two. I sometimes feel bitter. At the beginning of the year, I was healthy. I had to use an inhaler before exercising, but that was it. Now, in November I have a hole in my heart, an undiagnosed seizure disorder, I fell down the stairs while pregnant, I had a breast cancer scare, I had to make the hard decision to no longer be able to have any more biological children, my aunt has been diagnosed with cancer, my grandparents are in failing health, and I was terrified for my baby’s life on more than one occasion. I have asked “Why me?” a few times. I have sat crumpled up in tears wondering why things just kept piling on top of me.
Sometimes though, probably most of the time, I am better. I KNOW that God won’t let me down. Even if things had turned out differently, He would still have been in every situation. I don’t always understand what He is doing, but I know that He is good and that is good enough for me. I have this beautiful miracle sleeping in a swing next to me. I have two other miracles whose smiles light up a room. I am thankful that the pregnancies with them never had these problems, because I had those strange spells in every one of them, and the doctors could never figure out what caused them. When they finally turned into a full-blown seizure, God protected me. He placed Scott behind a lawn mower facing me at a time when he typically would have been in his office. He placed me next to a slide that my body slowly fell onto and slid off of, instead of me plummeting to the ground belly first. He placed a neighbor next to us that was able to quickly get my girls away from the situation, so that they would not be afraid of all that was happening. He kept Harper safely inside of my belly until she was completely developed and strong. He was IN IT ALL. I never once have doubted his goodness.
It is hard to believe that it has been half of a year. Sometimes it feels like it was so recent, and other times it feels like it has been an eternity. On Monday, I will go see my neurologist, and he will fill out a five page form that clears me to drive. Or, he may say that I have to wait longer. I have had a few of those strange spells in recent weeks. I do not know if he will do another EEG before clearing me, or what is going to happen. I do know that God is in it all.
