Solid Ground

31 weeks + 1 day, 14 weeks + 3 days post rupture, day 10 in hospital (again).

Although I'm 31 weeks and 1 day pregnant, my future appears as a black hole. I don't know what will happen tonight, let alone tomorrow or next week or next month. I hope Acorn will be born with a scheduled C-section at EXACTLY 34 weeks gestation (which according to my September 1st due date is July 21st), alive, and breathing well on his/her own, with no signs or symptoms of infection, and will be ready in a short period of time to learn to eat, grow and come home, healthy and normal. I hope I will recover well after my C-section, avoid any infection, major pain, or other heart complications (Dr. S. was throwing around possibly watching for heart failure for up to a week after delivery).

I don't know what the reality will be. It frightens me and makes me feel so alone.

I am hospitalized in the building across the street from where I work, which I can see from my window. To me, that building represents control, power, and normalcy, everything this hospital doesn't. I remember walking down the street towards work in January, February and March of this year and looking across the street to this hospital. Every time I tried to envision me, heavily pregnant, healthy and normal, arriving to birth my full term baby. The trees would be out, it would be hot and I would be SO ready to meet my baby. Cares and worries for his or her survival would be falling away. Acorn would almost be here! Yippee! I remember DREADING, absolutely anything that resembled the situation we are now in. Praying that we could avoid any major complications like last time. Hoping things would just be 'average' with a side of cardiac monitoring to be done. I had lots of hope...until March 24th when things went sideways again.

It's weird how I almost envy people who are TTC or who are newly pregnant these days. Not because I don't love Acorn or would wish to be going through that process again...but because those people still have the possibility of everything going smoothly, and normally. I am happy Acorn has a chance to be born healthy and okay...but I would like that possibility to be larger and more assured than it is right now. What I wanted was "normal" and what I got might be a miracle...or it might not.

Brian is now starting to talk like the baby is going to be alive and okay. On the one hand, I'm glad at least one of Acorn's parents can think so hopefully for him, but on the other, I worry for Brian's sake. How can he get his hopes up? Doesn't he fear the possible fall? Or is setting your hopes high a healthy and normal thing to do, and it's me who is being a stick in the mud and unrealistically pessimistic?

I worry that Acorn will be born and will either die or be severely sick before I ever get a chance to hold him. I worry that I'll be up in the cardiac ICU, suffering from heart failure on the 16th floor while Acorn is fighting for his life down here on the 7th. I worry about what Acorn, Brian and my other family members will have to suffer because of my (2nd) wonky placenta and weak amniotic sac. I worry how many people are going to hurt if Acorn doesn't survive. I worry I will physically, mentally, emotionally and socially never recover. I worry that life will be cruel to us again.

The wait is agonizing. And after 101 days I want to stand on solid ground again. I want to know what will be. I just hope I like what I see.

Are you standing on solid ground these days? How does it feel?