It was Labor Day in 2008, and my then-girlfriend and future-wife wanted to do something with the day off. We had decided on going to the Bronx Zoo earlier that weekend, and on Monday morning, and as usual, I woke up early and my wife woke up late. That kind of got me upset because I didn't want to drive through traffic.
Even though it was already late, we decided to go anyway, and the vibe was pretty tense. When we got there, the parking lots were full, so we had to drive around and settle on parking on some street in the Bronx. I was not very happy about that.
When we got there, we only had an hour until closing, but we managed to walk around and take some pictures. Then we left, I ended getting all turned around and going in the wrong direction. I was very angry by this time, and in turn she was getting angry at me as well, but we both managed to keep our composure by the time we righted ourselves.
And then she checked her voice mail.
Let me rewind back a few days, and I'll warn you this might be just a bit TMI. So it's up to you if you want to keep reading.
A couple of weeks before this, my wife had gone to a gynecologist for the first time because she wanted to take birth control pills. But before she could get them, she had to take a pap test. But before she could take that, she had to wait until her period ended. But her period didn't end. It just kind of kept going for over a week. So her gynecologist looked into all that. My wife thankfully spared me most of the details, but we thought it might have been a yeast infection.
So it was a pretty big surprise to both of us when, driving on that Bronx River Parkway and looking for the George Washington Bridge exit, we hear on the phone's loudspeaker: "You might be pregnant, and you might have had a miscarriage." Only, the doctor didn't use the term miscarriage but the technical term for it, which is spontaneous abortion.
I think I understood what she meant, but I don't think it was wise of that doctor to use that A-word on a woman who didn't know she was pregnant. It was a bit perplexing, suffice it to say. I advice the doctors out there to stick to layman's terms, especially when leaving the news on voice mail.
Anyway, instead of looking forward to winding the weekend down with the beer and watching the Mets inevitably lose, we were headed to the emergency room. We were both calm and quiet during the car ride, but I'm sure my wife was terribly worried. I have to also add that we have no family in the area; her family is in Hawaii and most of mine are in the Philippines.
I really didn't know what to expect in the hospital. Finding out that you have a child but that he might not be alive anymore although he wasn't born yet, is hard to explain. We did get some good news. The details are kind of foggy now, but there was a chance that the baby would be healthy, if she was indeed pregnant.
The nurse told us they would need to do a couple of tests and then left us alone. My wife sat quietly, and I stood beside her for a few minutes. I mostly didn't say much all evening because I really didn't know what to say. I told her I would support whatever her decision was. And then after a few minutes of silence, I just absently said, "But I would wanna keep it." I don't remember my exact words.
She suddenly sighed and hugged me.
She went upstairs, and they did an ultrasound. I wasn't allowed to be there, but afterwards, she described the sound of the heartbeat to me. I was overjoyed.
The ER was busy that evening. Many hours after we checked in, the doctor told us the baby was healthy and the bleeding was either unrelated, or a normal side effect during a first time pregnancy. The details are foggy at this point. I do remember that after leaving there, we headed over to Walgreen's to put in our prescription for prenatal vitamins.
Fast forward to three years later. Here are mother and child practicing letters and numbers:
I'll be writing more about this journey, because as shown by what I've written above, the details can become foggy.
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