Thank you to everyone who reached out to me over the last few days with words of encouragement, support and love. You can't possibly know how much that means to me.
And for those who don't know already, I'm sorry for the late update but I am not having my cerclage placed this morning.
A nurse practitioner, but more importantly, dear friend of ours, called me Monday morning and gave me some insight into the risks of having the cerclage placed by an inexperienced OB. I, unfortunately, had no clue that there was a likelihood that the cerclage could be ineffective if placed improperly. I had been led to believe by the OB I saw last week that a cerclage is a cerclage and as long as no complications occurred during the surgery it would be all that it could be. Kind of like the Army.
But my friend has some personal experience with ineffective cerclages placed in a friend's cervix, resulting in the tragic loss of one baby in the second trimester and, bless her heart, even another in the third. As you can imagine, that little bit of information just put me over the edge.
I called Caleb immediately and explained my conversation with our friend. He was quick to say he was happy I was going to seek alternatives because he had a "bad feeling" about the other OB. Poor guy knows how stressed out I am and probably weighed the added stress of insisting I find another option against his bad feeling and decided it better to keep quiet. Sorry, hon.
So the search for an alternative began. And it was a full day of phone calls on Monday that finally resulted in my appointment yesterday morning with the intake nurse at Scott & White's Round Rock clinic. I wasn't expecting much from them, considering my other experience with S/W so far, and was really concerned about further delaying the procedure that was already 5 days and counting behind the "ideal placement for optimum effectiveness" as per the perinatologist I'd seen at North Austin Maternal Fetal Medicine. But I felt I had little other option and hadn't actually canceled my procedure or pre-op yet.
The nurse blew me away. Maybe it was because I told her Bryce's birth story and then showed her two pictures of him - one of the night he was born and one of him eating a push pop last week with the sweetest grin he could possibly muster for a mother constantly taking pictures of him. Who could resist this sweet face?
And remember this? {Seems like just yesterday and a million years ago all at once.}
She immediately left the office and asked every nurse and OB available in the office what the best thing to do was. She genuinely cared and clearly understood my concern for the situation. I know that there are distinct limitations to what people can do, especially when it comes to doctors and specialists and surgery scheduling. But I just wanted someone to try and she did. Thank you, Laurie!
And so did the OB's in the office - they told her they wouldn't touch my cervix with ... I don't know, something you don't touch a cervix with....until that cerclage was safely placed by a perinatologist. I knew they didn't have one here and I had come to terms with the fact that I would likely be driving to Temple. But the peri. they suggested is, of course, on vacation this entire week. Laurie promised me she would call his nurse, send my records and plead my case first thing this morning when she was scheduled to be back, in an effort to get me on his surgery schedule Monday.
And so I left the office equally uneasy and relieved. And not one hour later Laurie called to say that she found another peri. office at the S/W clinic in Temple who could get me in on Friday. So to Temple I go on Friday.
I'm still waiting to hear back if I need to have someone drive me Friday because we could be in surgery or if I can go alone. Since my appointment isn't until 1:20 p.m. I'm assuming the latter but my gut feeling about this whole waiting game is getting increasingly bad.
That could be a result of my intense mom desire to do everything possible for this baby, to make no mistake and have no regrets. Or it could be that same sixth sense that regularly woke me in the night the weeks and months after Bryce was born and was fighting so hard to survive.
I've been trying with all my might to stop weighing pros and cons, stop second guessing my decision to cancel the cerclage today and stop wondering how I'll deal with it if it turns out that waiting was the wrong decision. I went to work yesterday after the appointment, I got up early and cleaned the kitchen today, I am going to tackle laundry and meet Bryce's new occupational therapist and do my best to distract my whirling mind from the omnipresent questioning that is plaguing it.
