Baby Bean

Alisha called me tonight and I followed her to the hospital because she was having some bleeding. I tried to stay calm for her,  which is ironic since Alisha's house could be on fire and she would just shrug and say "Eh, we'll deal with it later," and I was doing a great job until we got into the ultrasound room. Her husband Dan was still at work and couldn't be there, so I went in to hold her hand and be her moral support, as best friends are wont to do.

The ultrasound technician lowered the lights in the room and began roaming around on her belly, looking at things. I've been party to a few baby ultrasounds, and when he stopped his routine and I hadn't seen that little white bean floating in a sea of black like I knew I SHOULD be seeing, I panicked. But see, Alisha couldn't see the screen like I had seen it, and I couldn't be the one to tell her what I had seen, or in this case, NOT seen. The technician said he was going to come back in a few minutes and do an internal ultrasound, and then he turned the lights back up and left the room.

"Cheney, your face is on fire," Alisha said, and I realized that in those few minutes my blood pressure had probably skyrocketed as it tends to do when I am really stressed out. My mouth was dry, my head was pounding, and yes, it felt like blood was just going to seep through the pores of my face. I could see my reflection in the metal paper towel holder on the wall, and I am surprised that no one admitted me to the ER at that point. 

"I'm freaking out," I admitted. "Someone needs to panic!" 

She asked me if I had seen anything, and I just, well, lied. "I don't know what I'm looking at," I told her, and shrugged. But inside I was panicking.

The technician came back and began the internal ultrasound, and again Alisha couldn't see what I was seeing on the screen. I just held her hand and tried to stay calm as I reported to her what I was seeing, since the tech didn't have much in the way of a bedside manner.

"You have a right ovary," I told her. "Oh, look, you have a left ovary, too."

Then there it was. A little white blob in its little sea of black. "Yolk sac" the tech typed onto the screen as he took measurements. "Gestational sac," he continued, and then he focused on the white, spidery looking baby bean, and I held my breath until I saw what I needed to see. The rapid flickering of it's itty bitty little heart.

 

It took a while for my blood pressure to drop, for my head to stop pounding. But we needed to see that, and I felt much better when I was able to walk out into the waiting room and retrieve Dan, and then the three of us waited together.

I can't remember the technical term for things, but apparently there is a small hemmorage between the placenta and the uterus. It COULD heal, the doctor said. But, she COULD miscarry. They told her to call her doctor first thing in the morning and to come back if things got worse. 

I guess, no matter what, the future is totally uncertain for us all, and sometimes you just have to let the worry go and hold on to the love. 

Tomorrow is another day. But tonight, there's still that two centimeter long baby bean, its heart beating furiously in the belly of my best friend, and I am so totally in love with it already.