Well, of course, when we found out we were pregnant, I did all the heavy lifting and stuff. But Gale, being the nice girl that she is, always wanted to keep helping. When we would do the groceries, for example, she would always take a bag or two, like the eggs or the bread or something light.
One rainy day, we got home to our basement apartment. She was walking in front of me because she had the keys to open the backdoor to the house, and then the door to our little place. I had bagfuls of groceries in my hands, and as usual, she had a bag of something light.
The stairs were wet, and she slipped.
She couldn't grab on to anything, because she had stuff in her hands. In that split second that she lost her balance, I could she that she decided to fall on her back, to spare her belly from impact. And she fell right on her butt.
It was like everything stopped. We couldn't believe that had just happened. We dropped everything and went into the bedroom so she could lie down.
She was in a real panic. She was holding her belly. "I don't feel anything," she said. I asked her to calm down. We had this baby heartbeat monitor that we got from Babies R Us, and I put it to her belly. After what seemed like forever, we heard the heartbeat.
From then on, I didn't let her carry anything.
And then weeks later, we got a call from the hospital for a routine procedure. (It's funny how I used to know all the technical terms and explanations but now I can't remember them.) It had to do with it being her first pregnancy and some chemicals in her blood or something. They wanted to to take some of the fluid from the womb to check for the chances of Down syndrome.
This made her very worried. We cried for a bit, just having to think about it. And then we composed ourselves and decided, worrying won't solve anything, and that she shouldn't be upset for the baby's sake.
We met with a hospital counselor, who explained the procedure. They would have to poke a needle through her womb in order to get the fluid they needed for testing. She explained that it's generally a successful process that won't harm the baby. She was very careful with her words in telling us our options while not swaying us one way or the other. She also explained our choices should they find that the baby did have the syndrome. She also explained that we didn't have to know if we didn't want to.
That was the toughest part of the pregnancy for us. Having to wait with uncertainty. Having to consider those things. We decided it would be best to find out, so we went through with it.
Timeout Boy turned out to be normal and healthy. I don't want to think about what would have happened if it had been different. My prayers go out to those parents who are going through that routine testing, and especially to those who find out the opposite results.
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