An introduction

So I successfully pro-created. Over the past six years, our problem hasn't been getting pregnant, it's been staying pregnant. Actually, it's been both. Kami and I have been trying (or at least not not-trying) to get pregnant for about six years now. It happened a few times before, such as:

Pregnancy #1: February 2008 - Kami miscarried at about eight weeks.

Pregnancy #2: July 2008 - Kami miscarried at about four weeks.

These two events were so abrupt and sudden that I - personally - wasn't prepared for it. Kami felt awful - physically and emotionally - as is to be completely expected and understood.

Pregnancy #3: December 2008. This one was brutal. We found out in early November that Kami was pregnant, and immediately started making all sorts of parenty plans. We told my parents, and my dad was pretty sick at the time (spoiler alert: He's okay) In the second week of December, we went to New York City for a wedding with all of Kami's family, and told them that we were pregnant - which is always a risky proposition. But there was something off. I didn't catch it at the time, but Kami's coloring was all wrong. She looked a little grey, and a lot tired.

At the time, we lived in Cooperstown, New York, where I was the Manager of Visitor Education at the Baseball Hall of Fame, in charge of school visits and videoconferences for the Hall's Education Department. Kami called me on the morning of December 15, about 10 minutes before I was to deliver an education program, and I could tell something was wrong in her voice, and then she told me to come home.

Arranging to have the other guy take the videoconference, I ran home (literally, Home was only a block and a half from Work), and Kami was as white as a sheet. She had taken a bath, passed out, and then called me with this feeling that something was totally wrong.

So off we went to the hospital in Cooperstown, which was about six blocks away from the house. As we progressed through the previous six weeks, Kami got her tests done at all the pre-determined times, and we couldn't get a straight answer from the doctor(s) about what was happening with her hormone levels, because they were way too low for as far along as she was. We heard everything from "Are you sure you're pregnant?" (which, a quick glance at that handy little clipboard would have been able to answer) to "Maybe you're just not that far along."

In one instance, a nurse took us into a room full of baby cribs (with no babies in them, or this would have been ultra-sinister instead of just a douchy thing to do) and said, "There's a possibility you're in the process of having a miscarriage, so you might want to start thinking about that." Anyhow, no one at Bassett seemed to be terribly bothered by the fact that something was not right with Kami's pregnancy, including the ultrasound guy - who creepily resembled Ben Linus from Lost - who, in the middle of our last ultrasound, poked around in Kami's innards and said, "Yeah....I don't think you're pregnant. At least not anymore."

All in all, these are terrible things to say to anyone. So we knew there was a chance that something was wrong, which was complicated by the fact that nobody at the hospital seemed to want to talk about it.

So we arrive at the hospital, go to the ER, and...wait. Kami is writhing in pain, and (fill in your own awful ER experience here). We wait, and wait, Kami is in bad shape. Another horrifically painful ultrasound with Ben Linus, who had the emotional capacity of a drain blocker, and they tell us that Kami needs to go into surgery, because the pregnancy is ectopic.

Before they take her back to surgery, a nurse asks if Kami needs to use the bathroom, she says yes, tries to stand up, and then goes into a sort of unconscious/seizure episode that ranks up there with The Sixth Sense as The Most Terrifying Thing I've Ever Seen. They take her back.

So I'm standing there, it's about 6:00pm, and I'm wondering what to do, since the doctor said it would take a couple of hours. You have to understand that I had (and, to some extent, still have) a numb-nuts' understanding of anatomy, in general, and an even lesser set of knowledge of the female anatomy. I know the important bits. (JEEBUS. Eyes, heart, butt, etc. Collective heads out of the proverbial gutter, people). But I had no earthly idea as to what was happening to Kami, what they were doing to her, what was wrong in the first place.

I like to think that My Lord And Savior Jesus Christ placed the Veil of Knowledge over my eyes to help me remain a complete and utter mouth-breather during this point, because I didn't panic, until a couple of days after it all took place, because I didn't know any better. So what did I do while the doctors gave my wife of (at that point) five-and-a-half years three units of blood, replacing the blood she lost while bleeding internally over the previous week from her fallopian tube exploding when the ectopic (meaning, the baby never made it to the uterus, it attached to the tube) grew too big?

I went to Fookin John (not kidding, that's the name of the place. It's excellent.) and ordered some sesame chicken. Then I took Gunther and Angus for a walk. I was so calm that a normal person would have seen my actions and thought I was a serial killer. I just didn't know. When I got back to the hospital, our best friends Lucas & Melissa were there, and we sat in the waiting room watching Monday Night Football. They knew what was happening, but mercifully decided not to shake me by my collar and yell at me, "Hey, idiot! Put the chicken down, because your wife might not make it through this!"

The doctor came out, and everything was as fine as could be expected. They apparently had to tip her over on her side while she was under the anesthetic, to pour the blood out of her midsection. It was an ordeal. Then they wouldn't let me stay in the room with her overnight. -1, Bassett.

I went home, slept for a few hours, and went back early the next morning. I took some work with me, because I knew they were going to give her morphine. I worked in the chair. Cleveland State beat Syracuse on a buzzer-beater. And Kami woke up.

She went home later that day, after her mother had flown in from Texas, and we tried to do what was best for her. She slept on the couch, because she couldn't walk up the stairs (luckily, there was the coldest indoor bathroom on the planet). So I slept on an air mattress in front of her in case she needed water, or anything else. That first night, if I remember correctly, it was a few degrees shy of Absolute Zero, and I didn't think about being on the floor of an old house, and didn't bring enough blankets with me. I was so cold, that I slept with a pillow over my head to trap the heat. Crazy thing is, it worked, and I still sleep with a pillow over my head. Would-be murderers take note.

Ultimately, I felt guilty because, if I had to choose between a baby and Kami, I'm taking Kami every time. I was broken up, sad, depressed, all of that - but I was just happy to still have my wife with me. Once I did a little reading and figured out just how close it came to that not being the case, I wanted to scream.

The doctor - who was great, and just about the only competent physician we dealt with at that time - told us that she had lost her left fallopian tube, but there was no reason that she wouldn't be able to get pregnant again. Which, despite, our watching ovulation cycles, and counting days, and whatnot ("Oh man! Unprotected sex? Again?") did not happen for two years and nine months.

But now it has.