The visit with Dr. Southern Comfort went well. We spent almost two hours giving the twice over to topics already covered. My uterus is fine. My cervix is incompetent. I’ll need a c-section and a cerclage—maybe an abdominal cerclage at that. The good Dr. feels certain that all will be well with careful planning. He has 25 years of experience and is a leading authority on incompetent cervixes—whatever that means—and feels certain that with careful monitoring we will go home with a healthy baby. It was all good news and we were glad to hear it once again. But here’s the fly in the ointment; the husband has freaked out and has stepped off the bandwagon.
After the slight bit of blood, the husband came undone. When I first noticed the blood, I casually mentioned it to him, and he insisted that I lay down. Glad to get out of doing the dishes, I assented. Mistake. Mistake. That moment allowed doubt and fear to creep in for the husband. We did not work on the plan that night. We did the next day. But something funny—well not really funny per se, strange and sad is more like it—began to happen or not to happen. Turns out fear can make you go limp. Yes, limp. He’s been a wreck since last week.
I was a wreck last week about all of this. I really felt betrayed that he wasn’t with the plan. There was a lot of shouting, even more crying, and an ultimatium: Either I am pregnant now, or we won’t ever be. (Ok all of the shouting, crying, and bossing around was done by me.) Yep, I threatened to close up the hatchery and become a woman devoted to career and not to baby making.
Now I could possibly be pregnant now, we were busy actualizing the plan during my window of opportunity. He insists that he’ll be thrilled if we are pregs again, worried but happy. But I wonder. If he went limp when he had the opportunity to impregnate me out of fear that I will die, how thrilled will he be if we are indeed pregnant?
