When my daughter’s pregnancy was on the line, it felt like history was repeating itself… | Life and style
IT was a routine pre -birth date with many still until birth. “Things are not as we hope,” said the midwife, an anxious look at her face. “You need to go directly to the hospital.”
The date was on April 8, 1992. But also, it was August 1, 2024. It was a stumbling block in 1992 to me; The child, who will be born the next day, in 29 weeks (the “term” is 40 weeks) was my daughter Rosie. The bump was in 2024: After 32 years, history was repeating itself.
Like Lee, Rosie carried a school book to this point. Like me, she had no warning that things could suddenly turn into a red alert, as it seems that the child in her womb fails to prosper. However, of course, there He was Warning – because patterns are repeated in families. Sometimes, as perhaps in this case, it comes to heredity; At other times, it comes to something less concrete, a type of unpopular déjà vu. A disease repeats something similar in the previous generation; A sorrow reminds us of sadness at another moment; The decision that appears to be strange in a similar option that has been taken decades ago. However, these “coincidences” take us unaware. Perhaps we cannot calculate that the shocks of previous generations will be repeated.
But they do. Before the remedy, it means that Rosie had left my mercy very early: my husband, Gary, I spent two months sitting anxious by an incubator at St. Thomas Hospital in London. However, after more than three decades when I heard the wonderful news that Rosie was pregnant, I never entered my head that a similar experience might be in her store and her partner Toby. They live in Amsterdam. The child was due on September 22 last year. While we live in the United Kingdom, a six -week tour of its angle is booked. I told Rosie: “The child is likely to be late.” “Most children.”
Just as I had been returned in 1992, Rosie was planning homebility – easier to organize in the Netherlands, as it represented about one in three births (compared to one in 50 in the United Kingdom). Just as I was and Jarani, she and Tobi hoped that they could move to a place larger than their apartment after the child’s arrival; Just as we had, they were planning to meet other couples in prenatal classes and expect a child at the same time. Everything has returned to the future for me: this will be our first grandson and all that Rosie said about her life, hopes, plans and aspirations, we chanted when we expected it. I remembered happily about everything related to having a child, but, in some way, I erase the shock of my actual generated rays for the first time. Therefore, although Rosie spoke to her care providers about the circumstances of her birth, we were not looking for her; In fact, we barely talked about them at all.
Everything changed when, in 32 weeks, Rosie went to perform a routine examination. When I called me, I was driving the car on its way to the meeting. I answered the phone on the car’s speaker; Within secondly, I used to return to three decades. I immediately knew the shock, fear, and the complete disbelief that Rosie was feeling. I withdrew from the road and to the first car park I saw. Rosie, very disturbing she could not speak, handed over the phone to Toby; He started telling me a story that I already knew. They were on their way to the hospital, where more tests will be done. Although she had no signs of pregnancy poisoning, the examination showed that the child was small, and much smaller than expected to become pregnant.
“It will be fine,” Rosie continued to say. It was, of course, its own model. I have survived. Her child was surviving. I also thought that, but also, I knew what awaits us. Suddenly I remembered well for long weeks of hope and waiting. The weeks in which the entire background in life was a series of yellow machines with warning devices that will explode incomprehensible, living a presence in a part of the hospital that most new fathers have never seen, intensive care of newborns.
He is physically exhausted and emotionally drained, because in the midst of everything, a new person, a very small, smaller than any child you have seen or held before. In the case of Rosie, it was so small and early that at the time, there was no promises to survive. I was born about 12 hours after my routine appointment before birth, depending on the department, and weighs 2 pounds of 15 ounces. It was ventilated for two weeks, failed to breathe alone when it was first separated from the device, and she had to return to it for another eight days. Even when we finally brought her home, aged two months, around the day she should have been born, there were more difficulties in the store: I felt terrifying the only responsibility for this huge infant. It was weighing only 4 pounds when unloading.
On the day Rosie told me that she was at risk of birth prematurely, these memories were back. More than anything else, I wanted to protect Rosie and Tobi, and this unborn child, from the experiences that I knew in the future. But I knew that I could not. Even when life is repeated, the viewer must play; There is nothing fast on the difficult parts.
Rosie remained in the hospital from the day it was accepted; The plan was to keep her baby inside up to 34 weeks, when there was the best chance to survive. The tests showed continuous failure to prosper. As in my case with her, there was no choice but to accelerate the birth by doing a cesarean job. When today came, she was at least in hospital for two weeks, not just a few hours. There was time to talk about everything, to plan for the first few hours and the first few days; To see the newborn unit, to get to know the machines and the doctor who are all and newborn.
Their little boy, Seoul, arrived at 11:30 am in a sunny morning (and then his name). When I was born Rosie, I could not see her for the first 48 hours – all I knew was that somewhere in the hospital was a pink child, because this is what the doctor told me (hence her name came). But I saw my grandson within an hour of his arrival: The call was until I was in Amsterdam Hospital for delivery, one of the greatest privileges of my life. For Rosie and Tobi, miraculously – or so it seemed to me – there will be no separation from their child, which found one of the most difficult birth of Rosie. He was taken care of in an incubator alongside Rosie bed and Toby was able to stay in the room. They were a unit from the first day. When I insisted on running out the purchase of champagne, I was celebrating not only that the child was here and vital, but my daughter, my son -in -law and her grandson seemed much better than Gary and Rosie and I was 32 years ago.
She was born in 34 weeks, Seoul was larger than Rosie – 3 pounds 5 ounces – and she was able to take steroids before his birth, to help his lungs. On all this, my heart was singing: Déjà vu was, but restart was much better than the original. Everything was going well and we were more than the worst.
Later, I woke up at 7 am with a call from Rosie. The child’s condition was greatly worsened overnight; He was lighting in blue all over the city at 2 am to the hospital for most sick children, with Rosie and Tobi in a second ambulance. Doctors in the new hospital were not sure of the problem: All we can do is wait and hope.
Wait and hope. I went back to where you were; Rosie returned to where she was. Only this time the mother with a pale look that she could not lift her eyes from the young child in the incubator who was trying to survive.
It was tense, long days – it is difficult to see what is behind the days. But slowly, the Soul rose, then stronger. Today he is six months old – full, muffled laugh, diamond boy – and you will never know what he has passed. However, like Rosie, who believes, as I do, the conditions of her arrival formed the person who became it, his first experiences will always be part of it. While Rosie already knew about her early birth and her son’s model was to survive, her first months also taught her – retroactively – about her beginnings.
The patterns are often repeated in families, and even if they do not tend to warn in the future, they teach us about the past. In the end, whatever painful, we are all richer for experience. More importantly, Rosie and Wobby have a Soul, just like Gary and Wali Rosie. This is an example of the date of the repetition of itself, which we will be grateful forever.
