March 27th
AUGUST 7TH
I am at the doctor’s office, gel on my stomach & a teeny tiny heartbeat flashes on the screen above me.
I’m seeing my baby for the first time. Which looks more like a little fuzzy circle on the ultrasound, but the tears fell from my face anyway.
“Yep, so it looks like March 27th will be your official due date.” says my nurse.
I look up at my mom with excited eyes, waiting for her same reaction.
“March 27th" I whisper to myself, doing the math in my head.
Who knew? I had lived 22 “March 27th’s” in my life, each year unknowingly passing what would someday be the biggest day of my life.
From then on, “March 27th” became almost like a mantra I lived by. Nothing filled my cup like the notification I got every morning from my “countdown” app on my phone.
“100 DAYS UNTIL MARCH 27TH”
Which really just meant that in 100 days my life would change forever. 100 days until I would become a mother. 100 days until I’d bring a LIFE into the world! It was a type of excitement & anticipation that filled my entire body and only gained momentum by each passing day. Knowing that I was another day closer to one of the most significant days of my entire life.
JANUARY 7TH:
I wake up to the notification, like I do every day,
“80 DAYS UNTIL MARCH 27TH”
I knew exactly how many days there were until then, but I still loved the reminder.
I try to sit up, but my sick body and growing belly win the fight. So I lay there whimpering for attention until I have to lovingly “kick” my boyfriend awake. (Don’t you hate when your manipulation tactics fail?)
“Whats wrong?” He says
“I don’t think I can go. I think I’m dying.” I reply.
I was referring to our appointment in 30 minutes with a nutritionist. I had been “diagnosed” over the phone 4 days earlier with Gestational Diabetes (GD) when my glucose results came back in the high 400s. The office was closed over the weekend, and the soonest they could “get me in” was Tuesday, January 7th.
Now listen. This blog post isn’t supposed to be about my diabetes and how I knew in my soul for the two months before this that I had GD. It’t not about how even though I was passing out multiple times a week, getting up 30+ times a night to pee and drinking gallons of water daily and BEGGING to be tested….my midwives still wouldn’t test me until I was 28 weeks pregnant. This blog post isn’t about how one of my midwives told me that type 1 diabetes was out of the question even though I showed every symptom. Or how she told me I was “too skinny” to be diabetic. It’s not about how my glucose test results came back at a level that should have immediately admitted me to the ER, yet they made me wait 4 days. No, this blog post isn’t about how my midwives nearly killed me. BUT if you could keep that in mind, that will help jazz up the story a little bit, you know?
Oh and for the record - I know I’m inherently dramatic but I really did think I was dying. I had never felt anything like that in my life. But I knew if I wanted to get better, this was the first step. So Jackson carried me out of bed and we drove to the nutritionists office.
Again, this isn’t supposed to be about my diagnosis story even though its a crazy one that I’d love to tell someday. So long story short, we see a specialist who basically takes one look at my chart, one look at me and cuts me off mid sentence with “We need to take you to the ER right now. I’m almost positive you have type 1 diabetes.”
6 hours later and I was being life flighted in a helicopter to a different hospital. I was officially diagnosed with not gestational diabetes… but type 1 diabetes. Oh yeah, and I was in labor.
JANUARY 18TH:
“69 DAYS UNTIL MARCH 27TH”
I’m sitting on the living room floor of my friends house, retelling the story for the 25th time that day. The story of how I went into DKA (diabetic keto acidosis) two weeks earlier and almost fell into a coma, then shortly after went into labor and was flown to another hospital to have a c section to deliver a baby that I was told probably wasn’t going to survive.
The spoiler to that story for you, is that everything ended up okay! I’m fine. And by some miracle the baby was too. We were able to stop the labor, and I stayed in the hospital for a week, recovering and learning all about the world of diabetes.
We were hanging out at a friends house, watching the McGregor/Cowboy fight when everyone started placing bets on when I’d have the baby.
“March 27th” I say when asked my thoughts.
I was technically still dilated to a 3, but the doctor reassured me that everything was good now and that it was fully possible to make it til my due date. So I stuck with what I knew best. March 27th.
“Noooo way!”
All of my friends were in agreement that the baby would be coming soon. like soon, soon.
“Im guessing 3 weeks.” My friend Weslie says.
“Are you kidding me??” I say back.
Even with March 27th always in the back of my mind, I knew due dates changed. I knew the likelihood of being induced even going all the way into April. But 3 weeks? No way.
JANUARY 19TH 7:21 PM
my baby boy, Seven Severe, is born.
If only I had known the night before, betting on the babies birthday, picturing the countdown to March 27th in my head. If only I would have known that the countdown was at zero. I had an infection that caused me to go into labor (again) the next morning. This time they couldn’t stop it, so we went through with the delivery.
I push for 10 minutes and he is out. My world is whole. Everything stops. I have a son!!
They hold up his big healthy little body, let me get one look through tear filled eyes, and then whisk him away. Up to the NICU, where unknown to us at the time, would be where we’d be spending the next 5 weeks.
“When do you think he’ll be able to come home?” I ask the nurse that night.
“When was his due date?” she says.
“March 27th.” I replied.
“March 27th then.”
My heart sank. The day that used to fill me with excitement, now only brought the harsh reality of our next few months.
JANUARY 22ND:
I feel empty.
I’m laying in my own bed, for the first time in three days. We are home from the hospital, but Seven stays.
The lights are off, I can tell by Jacksons soft little snores that he is already asleep. He’s so exhausted I don’t want to wake him, but i’m breaking. tears run down my face and soon I am sobbing uncontrollably.
My baby who was with me and apart of me every day for the last 7 months wasn’t with me anymore.
I didn’t feel empty. I was empty.
Those 5 weeks in the NICU were without a doubt the hardest weeks of my life.
Seeing him brought me the most intense form of love and happiness I had ever felt, but it was like I could actually feel it leave my body as we went down the elevator to go home. There were countless breakdowns on our cold walk from the hospital to our car. Every part of me hurt. Between my hormones, the trauma of everything that had happened with the diabetes & delivery, and my postpartum depression - I was a mess.
“March 27th, March 27th, March 27th.” was all i could think. “it’s almost March 27th. It’s almost over.”
it once again, became my driving force.
Instead of “37 days until baby” it became “37 days until baby comes home.”
FEBRUARY 19TH:
It’s officially been one month since Seven was born. We are so so so drunk in love with this baby boy. And as much as I’d like him home, we’re old pros at this point. We have our routine down, we have our favorite nurses, we know what we were doing and we know what to expect.
About one more month.
As I was feeding him, one of the doctors came around to check on Seven. We talked, I updated her, she updated me and then she asked me how his feedings were going. Breastfeeding wasn’t going well with either of us, so we decided to try bottle feeding a few days earlier. I told her he was doing great and was finishing all of his feedings to which she replied,
“Great!” If he keeps that up for a few more days, he should be able to go home on Monday.”
HUH?
MONDAY!?!
It was the most panicked/excited weekend of our lives running around target looking for fingernail clippers and bottle warmers, folding his clothes and begging anyone to let us borrow their carseat because we hadn’t even ordered one yet.
It was almost over.
FEBRUARY 24TH:
I’m driving down state street. Both hands on the wheel. It’s the most gorgeous sunny day after a brutal winter and I am smiling ear to ear. I look in the rearview mirror and catch a glimpse of Jackson in the backseat who is also smiling ear to ear. We make eye contact and both of us smile even bigger. Sitting next to Jackson is our tiny baby boy in a borrowed carseat. We just left the hospital and we’re bringing Seven home. It’s the best day of my life.
MARCH 27TH
The day I have been anticipating for months has finally arrived. Right now. today. Im in the future! And here is what it looks like:
Not exactly what I pictured today looking like for all of those months, but I’m not complaining. This is heaven!!
I think back to that day at the doctors office all the time. Learning of the potential meaning of this day for me. I thought about how today would go so many times. How it would look. I had no idea.
But since I am in the future, i’m living March 27th RIGHT NOW, I’d like to give doctors office me a little heads up. Here is what I would say to her:
“Hi. It’s you from the future. It’s March 27th! I sit here, writing this to you with the sweetest, chillest, cutest two month old you’ve ever seen laying in my lap. Yep. Two month old. You went into preterm labor due to a tear in your amniotic sac and had him 10 weeks early. He’s okay though. Healthy as can be. He’ll be there at the hospital for about 5 weeks just until he learns how to eat and then you’ll get to bring him home. He doesn’t cry, he loves to cuddle, he calms down whenever Celine Dion is being played, he loves to be clean and he loves sleeping in your bed. Jackson is an even better dad than you could ever imagine, and you won’t be as sad anymore. Oh yeah, we are also in the middle of an already-bad-but-not-even-the-worst-yet pandemic, and have been self isolating at home for the past two weeks. I know you really wanted to have your baby today but think about being a 9 month pregnant woman due any day with severe asthma and newly diagnosed diabetes during a pandemic that is especially harmful to people with severe asthma and newly diagnosed diabetes. You know? Also Peter chooses Hannah but then realizes he’s still in love with Madi and Barb freaks out making it really uncomfortable for everyone. Anyways good luck!”
To which doctors office me would read all of that and say, “Who is Barb?”
I’ve realized so much about this experience. About all of it.
I’ve realized if I can handle contractions, I can handle anything.
I’ve realized that I reaaaallly realllly reallllly love being a mom and i’m reaaaally reaaaalllllly good at it.
I’ve realized that life doesn’t follow our timeline. Our “countdowns” we make. Life is on its own countdown, unknown to us. You can surrender to it, or try to predict it as close as you can, but the problem comes from letting the “countdown” control you. When you’re focused so hard on the outcome that you let life pass you by. When you’re so set on March 27th that you forget to enjoy the September 16th’s and the November 3rds.
There were so many times when I wished I could fast forward to today. So many moments during my pregnancy, during the lonely nights after the NICU, that I thought it was too hard to go on. I wanted it to be over.
But then I think about back in august, Jackson came out to LA to visit and we laid on the beach and watched the sunset, talking about the baby, imagining what he’d grow up to be. It was the sweetest day. I hold it so close to my heart.
I wouldn’t want to miss that.
I wouldn’t want to miss sitting on Kate’s bed with her and Courtney, showing them the video of the first ultrasound, all of us crying and hugging as we listen to the baby’s heartbeat.
I wouldn’t want to miss screaming from the bathtub that I felt the him kick for the first time and Jackson running in as fast as he could, sitting there with me for 30 minutes with his hand on my stomach waiting for him to kick again.
I don’t want to miss those little moments waiting for a bigger one.
I was thinking of the current state of the world & the Pandemic and how we all just want this to be over. I do too. But we cannot focus so hard on the outcome that we miss the golden moments. That we miss our life.
In the midst of all the darkness, those golden moments will always be there.
So surrender to the countdown and focus on TODAY. Right now is happening right now. Don’t miss it thinking about the future.
And finally, I realized that I was wrong. I thought I had so much time.
and I was wrong.
Time to decorate the nursery. Time to take more pregnancy photos. Time to film more doctors appointments. Time to write about my pregnancy journey and the feelings and experiences I had. Time to go on one last trip with just me & jack. Time to take birthing classes. Time to research labor and delivery. Time to prepare for March 27th.
When in reality, my time was almost up and I never even suspected it.
and when you put that into a larger scale… it makes my heart stop.
We all think we have so much time. Time to visit Italy in the summer like you dreamed of as a teenage girl. Time to move on from your ex and find love again. Time to write the book. Time to make the YouTube channel. Time to start a clothing shop. Time to lose the weight. Time to become who you were meant to be.
But the truth is, we never know when our time is almost up.
So make the YouTube channel, take the pictures of your baby bump, write in your journal, mend your relationships. Say sorry. Say I love you.
Because never know how many “March 27th’s” we have left.
