Melissa Harris - One Pound, Twelve Ounces: A Preemie Mothers Story of Loss, Hope, and Triumph

One Pound,
Twelve Ounces

Copyright 2021, Melissa Harris

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, digital scanning, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, please address She Writes Press.

Published 2021

Printed in the United States of America

Print ISBN: 978-1-64742-213-4

E-ISBN: 978-1-64742-214-1

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021912122

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This book is dedicated to the staff
of Alta Bates hospital,
heroes in surgical masks.

My mom,
whose love and support are missed every day.

And to Sam and Irene,
you two are my everything.

I had a plan.

It seemed like such a simple plan.

Two kids, two years apartand before I was thirty-five.

My husband, Peter, and I were in agreement. He was an only child, and my brother and I were four and a half years apart. Growing up, I always wished we had been closer in age.

We managed to accomplish the first part of the plan easily. Within two months of deciding we were ready to have a child, I was pregnant with Irene. Despite being uncomfortable and suffering from pretty bad acid reflux, my pregnancy was unremarkable. It wasnt until the end when Irene refused to come out and I was induced two and a half weeks after my due date that I felt like I understood why some people hated being pregnant.

It was the second child who was proving to be difficult. For two years, I kept adjusting the plan until finally, it looked like everything was coming together. I was pregnant and heading toward my last trimester.

So how the hell did I end up in Labor & Delivery contracting every two minutes with my head below my feet at just twenty-three weeks and two days pregnant?

T rendelenburg. That is the technical name for the position I was in. The head of my hospital bed was tilted downward at a thirty-degree angle. The first few moments were so surreal, I felt like I could slide off the end of the bed at any moment. Then, I felt all of the blood in my body rush to my head, and the room began to spin.

I was contracting every two minutes, and the gestational sac was partially out of my uterus. The idea behind Trendelenburg is to use gravity to move the gestational sac back where it belongs. And, until the sac was back inside the uterus, I was told not to move, as any movement could cause the sac to rupture.

On top of the gravity-defying position I was in, my body was being pumped full of the contraction-stopping drug magnesium sulfate. In addition to helping stop contractions, magnesium sulfate also causes headaches and body sweats.

It seemed like hours before a doctor came in to talk to me. Up until then, I knew things were bad, but I didnt understand how bad.

At this point, I cant tell you if we will be successful in stopping the progression of your labor, the obstetrician on call said quietly.

What happens if we cant stop it? Peter asked timidly.

Unfortunately, it is too early for your baby to be born and survive, the doctor replied.

That was it for me. I was no longer able to focus on what was being said or the people around me. I was deep in my own head, trying to figure out what I had done wrong and doing my best to push down the primal scream that was building up inside of me. I wanted to unleash it all. Scream. Cry. Lash out. But the only thing I was able to do was weepcarefully.

I understood it was too early to have the baby. At the time, I knew most doctors consider twenty-four weeks to be the earliest point of viability. I was still a few days shy of that mark.

I had worked so hard to become pregnant. I had been through so much. Ever since I peed on the stick and it came back positive, I had fallen in love with the baby growing inside of me. I had so much hope wrapped up in this little one that the thought of losing him or her was more than I could bear.

T he first miscarriage happened so early in the pregnancy, I never really even felt pregnant. It seemed like the moment Peter and I decided it was time to work on baby number two, we were pregnant. As easy as it was to get pregnant, it turned out it was just as easy to lose the baby.

After that miscarriage, getting pregnant again became difficult. We struggled mightily and months passed without a positive result. We finally got to the point where my obstetrician felt we needed to see a fertility specialist, Dr. Chetkowski.

For Peter, a visit to the fertility doctor meant a quick sperm count and motility check (he passed with flying colors). For me, it was a much more involved process. I had to have my entire reproductive system mapped through a combination of MRIs, X-rays, and blood tests. The results were disheartening.

It turned out that I was a walking reproductive nightmare. I didnt ovulate every cycle; my uterus is severely tilted, making it hard for the sperm to get where it needs to go; my cervix doesnt close all the way, making it hard to trap the sperm in the uterus so they can get to the egg; and, most troubling, I had a bicornuate uterus with a septum creating two distinct chambers.

T he first night in Labor & Delivery was pretty much a blur.

I know my mom and Peter spent the night on the couch in my room, curled up next to each other, snoring. I know my night nurse, Nora, sat next to my bed holding my hand all night and telling me to keep breathing and to take it easy. I know my head was on fire from the magnesium sulfate. I know my contractions became stronger and I was given a button to push each time I felt one (still every two minutes). I know I cried, all night long.

Once morning came, the doctors added a new drug to my IV, Procardia, in the hopes that it would help slow my contractions (it did). Then an ultrasound machine was wheeled into my room to see whether being in Trendelenburg had helped get the sac back where it belonged (it hadnt). Worse than that, the ultrasound now showed that I was dilated to eight centimeters, just two centimeters shy of where you need to be for delivery.

Despite the contractions being slower, they had grown in intensity. I felt each and every one of them. They were so strong, I had to ask for something to help dull the pain.

Not long after getting the pain killer, we were visited by the perinatologist on call. I will refer to him as Dr. Doom. He was the most negative man I had ever met.

So, after looking at the ultrasound, and the frequency of your contractions, I believe this is a doomed pregnancy, and you should stop treatment and let it go, Dr. Doom said in a monotonous, emotionless tone.