I type, then hit delete until the text field is clear. It doesn’t help; the feeling persists. I type again:
I feel ya! I’m trying to not be too impatient and enjoy these last days but man I just want to meet this little guy!!! I hit send.
My stomach churns, then prickles nervously the way it does in moments of heightened anxiety. It won’t be settled with pastimes or entertainment; I need to do something. I reach for my home Doppler—which I purchased in my first trimester—from my bedside table drawer and turn it on. I hit the power button, squeeze the jelly onto the wand, and press it to my belly. I wait for the familiar whoosh, whoosh, whoosh but there is nothing, just static. I move it around. Still nothing. I pull out the instructions and try to read them, but the words blur together on the page.
“Aaron!” I yell.
I hear the screech of his chair pushing back. He appears in the doorway and after one look at me says, “What’s wrong?”
“I can’t remember how to use this.” I hold the Doppler up by the wand. “I haven’t felt him move yet this morning and now I can’t find his heartbeat.”
He sits down on the edge of the bed and calmly reads the instructions—he is inherently logical, he will figure it out. After flipping a switch he squirts more jelly on the wand and gently holds it below my belly button. Static. He fiddles with some dials and slides the wand down lower. More static. He takes my hand and holds it for a moment. Then he gives it a little squeeze and asks, hopefully, “Maybe it’s broken?”
I know it isn’t.
I throw myself off the bed and run to get the magnet off our fridge with the emergency numbers for our medical team. I plant myself down on the exercise ball in the center of the living room floor and ask Aaron to get me a glass of orange juice, a boost of sugar for the baby. As I dial the numbers to page the doctor on call, I bounce in gentle circles and repeat aloud: “Wake up baby, wake up baby, wake up baby.” Clockwise and then counterclockwise. Back and forth.
The phone rings for what seems like much longer than normal before I am greeted by the medical receptionist, who puts me through to the midwife on call. “I haven’t felt my baby move yet this morning,” I repeat. The gentle voice of the midwife speaks calmly into my ear.
“Hi Emma, this is Tess,” she begins. “Have you tried drinking some cold orange juice? Lying down for an hour?”
“Yes,” I lie. Not about the orange juice, but about the lying down; I’m not willing to wait an hour. I bounce up and down. “He usually moves as soon as I wake up. This has never happened before.”
Tess calmly tells us to come in to get monitored, assuring us that babies tend to slow down right before delivery. I hold on to those words as tightly as I can as I gather my things.
“Should we bring our hospital bags?” I ask Aaron, struggling with a toppling Ugg boot.
“No,” he answers, grabbing my shoe to steady it for me to step into. “If we need them, I can come back and get them. It’s not like the baby is coming right now, right?”
Aaron and I run out of the door and drive to the hospital, ten minutes away. We arrive at eleven thirty. As we walk through the Labor and Delivery doors for the first time, I keep thinking that this isn’t how it should be. I’m probably just over-worrying; there is nothing wrong with our boy. But by the time we reach Admitting my panic is rising—I still haven’t felt him move.
“What brings you in today?” A nurse greets us with a smile.
“I haven’t felt our baby move yet this morning,” I repeat for what feels like the hundredth time that day, but with more urgency. “I called ahead and spoke with the midwife on call, Tess.”
As the nurse shuffles through some papers my eyes lock with those of a woman down the hall. Her blond hair is pulled back tightly and the tops of her cheekbones catch the light just so. In one hand she holds a Starbucks cup and with the other she is rubbing the back of her laboring client, in a hospital gown beside her. A doula. I know it instantly.
“Are you with the birth program?” the woman asks.
I nod.
“Who’s your doula?” A slightly annoyed look crosses her face. “And where is she?”
“Jill,” I answer. “But I’m not in labor. So—”
The conversation stops there because the nurse is now directing us toward the registration desk. I look back at the doula and smile, as if to say, “thank you for caring.” Later, I’ll remember this. The last smile before.
The administrative worker asks me to sit, takes our information, and attaches a hospital band to my wrist. Another nurse brings us to the side and pulls out a Doppler. I read the name on her tag: Hilary. As she works on the machine I look up to study her. She is sweet, with strawberry-blond hair that frames her slender face in tight little waves. She keeps her lips pursed in a straight line.
She reaches for the jelly. As she shakes it onto the probe, she asks, “What position is baby usually in?”
“Head down, back along the left, feet up in my right ribs.” I rub the curve of his back down my side. “But maybe he’s moved?”
“Okay, let’s take a look,” she says. “Lift up your shirt.”
I fold the bottom of my black-and-gray-striped tee to the top of my belly and sit back in the chair. Hilary places the probe below my belly button, to the left, then glides it over my skin slowly, looking for the heartbeat. It must be only a minute, but it’s the longest minute of my life. I watch Hilary’s face the entire time, all the while clutching Aaron’s hand, and in those sixty seconds her expression goes from fresh and confident to very panicked. I know then that something is terribly wrong.
She switches off the machine. “You know what? These things break all the time. Let’s just get you into a room and hook you up to the better monitors.” We follow quickly behind her. In the room, she instructs me to get on the bed. Her hands tremble and she bites her lip as she fidgets to get the straps around my belly and hook up my own pulse monitor. Immediately, the monitor shows 130 bpm, which would be a relief were it not in sync with my own heart rate. This sets off the monitor’s alarms. Hilary tries to silence them, but they ring all around us. The rhythmic beating of my heart quickens, echoing out of the speakers. The monitors show 150 bpm. The alarms continue to sound.
Tess, the midwife I spoke to on the phone, appears. I am struggling to breathe.
“There, there,” she hushes. “What’s wrong?” She manages to turn off the alarms and takes my hand, trying to get me to calm down, but I can’t.
“They can’t find his heartbeat!” I gasp, and then start to sob.
“That sounds like one, doesn’t it? One fifty?” She turns to Hilary, who shakes her head.
“No, that’s hers,” she says.
Aaron meets my gaze and we hold it as a flurry of activity erupts around us. For that moment time stands still, just for a second, and we brace ourselves for what is to come.
“We’re going to do an ultrasound,” someone declares. “Just to check.”
A
