THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, August 8, 1995 TAG: 9508080045
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY PAM STARR, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 83 lines
PREGNANCY WAS the last thing on my mind when I told a co-worker how sick I felt one day in April.
I'm chilled and nauseated, I said. Depressed, irritable and bloated. And I'm so exhausted I'm in bed every night at 9.
She asked if my period was late.
``Well, yeah,'' I answered. ``But 40-day cycles are normal for me. I think this is just a bad case of PMS. Or I'm going through pre-menopause.''
My co-worker looked at me quizzically.
``You don't think you might be pregnant?'' she asked. ``You could take a test and find out in five minutes.''
``No way,'' I replied. I wasn't going to disappoint myself for the 20th time with a negative home pregnancy test. ``I'm sure it's a hormonal imbalance.''
I refused to believe I was carrying a life, despite all the signs. Last November I wrote a column about my husband and me finally agreeing to have a baby, but years of trying left us frustrated. We decided to take my doctor's advice to undergo a diagnostic laparoscopy, during which a miniature camera and laser is inserted through the belly button to view the reproductive organs. She suspected that I had endometriosis, a disorder that makes tissue grow in places other than the uterus, sometimes causing infertility.
The day after that column appeared, I went in for surgery. The doctor removed patches of endometriosis and drained a cyst on my ovary.
``If you aren't pregnant in three months, we'll have to run some more tests,'' she said a few weeks later. My heart sank. I knew what that could mean. Injecting dye into the fallopian tubes. Testing my husband's sperm count. Fertility drugs. Expensive in-vitro fertilization. Doug and I had decided that if I couldn't get pregnant the natural way after this surgery, we simply wouldn't have children.
So in February, after I got yet another period, Doug sat me down and said: ``Look, honey, I think we need to put this out of our minds. If God wants us to have a baby, we'll have one. I can't stand seeing you depressed anymore. Just let it go.''
He was right. I had obsessed over babies long enough. I threw away the ovulation charts and stored my thermometer. I stopped reading books on conception, pregnancy and child-raising. I pushed the baby idea out of my mind and concentrated on my career.
Then the unbelievable happened that night in April, after my co-worker persuaded me to buy a pregnancy test. I was kicking myself for wasting another $10 while unwrapping the package. Shaking, I took the test. . To my amazement, the vertical line in the first window turned pink before I even left the bathroom. Convinced that the test was wrong, I waited five more minutes before rechecking.
The line was a darker pink. There was no mistake - I was really, truly going to be a mommy.
Doug came home to find me laughing and crying on the couch. I pointed to the test on the bar. Perplexed, he went over and saw the two lines clearly showing in the test windows. His blue eyes widened.
``You're pregnant?!!!'' he yelled. We hugged each other tightly and danced around the living room, tears falling down both of our faces. A second test at the doctor's office the next day confirmed it. I was five weeks pregnant. Our baby girl is due Dec. 5, four days after Doug's birthday.
My biggest fear, that Doug wouldn't be as excited as I, was unfounded. He has been incredibly loving and supportive, tending to my aches and dealing with my mood swings. He has done most of the cooking, cleaning and grocery shopping this summer. He built a changing table/chest of drawers and is transforming the extra bedroom into a nursery. Now he combs the classifieds for secondhand baby items and scours the baby catalogs.
``Let's go shopping for baby stuff,'' he keeps saying.
Since I announced my news, several people have asked if I believe the surgery really helped. Some women had undergone one or two laparoscopies with no luck and have also tried fertility drugs and in-vitro fertilization. We think the surgery did help but believe other factors were involved.
I had stopped drinking coffee in January, after reading a study linking infertility to excess caffeine consumption. The next month I started weekly chiropractic treatments for an old karate injury.
But the most important thing, at least for us, was that we finally went back to church and got our spiritual lives in order. I don't want to sound trite, but we left it up to God. And he blessed us with our own little miracle. by CNB