This Day In History

One year ago today, Jon and I went to the midnight showing of Harry Potter 6, then went home and got a few hours of sleep on the floor of our empty apartment.

One year ago today we woke up, packed the last of our things, did our last minute cleaning, and turned our keys over to our landlord.

One year ago today we got the call telling us that Jon's CF carrier test was positive, that any child we had would have a 25% chance of having cystic fibrosis.

One year ago today, my eyes already red from crying, we boarded the plane for our red-eye flight and said goodbye to Hawaii.

Flashback: Shoe shopping in Japan

This recent post by a friend of mine about shopping for women's shoes in large sizes reminded me of a story I have to share.

The women in my family all have large feet. I used to wear size 10, though strangely my feet seem to have shrunk to a 9. I don't know how that could happen, but I guess it has. Now, most stores do carry shoes in size 10, but usually there's not as big a selection. For years I used to buy men's tennis shoes, because it was just easier that way.

So one summer I went to Japan with a friend, and we had a blast staying in hostels and riding the trains all over the place. It was awesome. It was also the rainy summer season, and the Vans I had brought were not waterproof. They soaked up with water every day and didn't ever have time to dry, and after a few days of this we realized it was time to buy new shoes.

We found a shoe shop and went in. I found a style I liked, found a worker and asked timidly if he had the shoe in US size 10. He took the shoe and went over to his co-worker and whispered something to her in Japanese. They both started giggling. Then he came back to me and said, "This shoe.... biggest size.... seven!!"

So yeah... I bought some men's shoes.

Flashback: Birth Story

The story continues from my previous post!

Jon and I had been preparing to have a natural, unmedicated, low-intervention birth. We read books, took a Bradley Method class, and practiced relaxation techniques. Well, things didn't quite go as we had hoped.

At one of our ultrasound appointments near the end of my pregnancy, it looked like the baby's growth had slowed down. We started doing non-stress tests and amniotic fluid checks, and every time we came in the amniotic fluid was lower, and lower, and the baby was definitely measuring small. On September 17th the fluid level was below 5, and they recommended an induction the next day, at 37 weeks. We talked it over, consulted with our childbirth instructor, and asked for another fluid check, which this time was below 3. I desperately did not want an induction, knowing that there would be greatly increased risks of interventions, fetal distress, and c-section, but we agreed that there was now a medical need for it.

I was admitted to the hospital for the night, and my OB placed a foley bulb to ripen my cervix overnight. At 7am they started Pitocin, and at 9:30 my OB took out the foley bulb and broke my water. The nurse gave me low doses of Pitocin, gradually increasing it and then turning it off to see if my body would take over. In the afternoon, it worked! I didn't need any more Pitocin, my body was able to take it from there. After some decelerations in the baby's heart rate, they put in a tube to pour fluid back in.

I started to have very painful back labor. Earlier in the day I had been able to walk around, but now the discomfort from everything I was hooked up to combined with the back pain made me prefer to stay put. It was hard to use the relaxation positions we had learned, because the monitors would slip and the nurse would have to come in and fiddle with them to find the baby's heartbeat again. Jon was an amazing coach and helped me through each contraction.

My OB went home and was replaced with the on-call OB. She came in around 9pm and checked me, and I was at 6cm. I was elated to have progressed so far, but the new OB told me I hadn't made much progress, and maybe I should get an epidural because it might speed things along. Yeah right!! Thanks for the vote of confidence, and for ignoring my birth plan! I told her no and she left, saying she'd be back to check on me. Shortly thereafter I went into transition, and before the OB even came back I was pushing.

I was told not to push until the doctors arrived, but we ignored that and I pushed anyway. The baby's heart rate was having decelerations again, then they lost it on the fetal monitor so they put in a fetal scalp electrode. I heard someone ask the OB, "Are you going to try vaginally??" She answered "Yes" but that question had told me how close they were to doing an emergency cesarean on me, so I pushed as hard as I could and in just a few contractions, our baby was born. She was placed on me for only a moment while they had Jon cut the cord, then she was taken across the room to be checked out by the team of neonatologists that had attended the birth. They took some of the cord blood to do a genetic test to determine whether she had CF. The OB stitched up the two tears I had acquired from all of that overly-hard pushing.


Our little Gwena weighed just 4 lbs 13 oz, and was born at 12:59 am, September 19th (Talk Like a Pirate Day!). Her Apgars were 8 and 9. They gave her back to me and let me warm her with skin-to-skin contact. They wanted to take her to the NICU for observation, but we asked that if nothing was wrong that she remain with us. As hard as they looked to find something wrong with her, they just couldn't! During the next two days we would spend at the hospital, they checked her blood sugar, her weight, jaundice levels... and everything was fine.


The week after she was born, Jon finally found a new job! Everything seemed to be going well. Our only clue that something might be wrong was her frequent poopy diapers. It wasn't until more than 2 weeks after the birth that her genetic results came back, showing that she did have CF.

We ended up with many interventions during Gwena's birth that we had hoped to avoid. However, I am proud to say I made it through without an epidural or any other pain meds. I believe if I had gotten an epidural, that since it would have slowed my labor and taken away my control of pushing, it is very likely I would have ended up with that c-section. I am also convinced that with drugs in her system at birth, Gwena would not have done so well and would have been taken away to the NICU.


Even though we didn't have the birth we had hoped for, and there are a couple of things I would do differently if I had it to do over, I am satisfied that for the most part we made informed decisions and did what we believed was best for Gwena's safety and for mine!

Flashback: Pregnancy

To tell the story of Gwena's CF I have to start with the pregnancy. Jon and I had gotten married in July of 2008, and we were living in Hawaii, where we had until recently been going to school. We found out I was pregnant just before we moved from our tiny 300 sq ft apartment into our "huge" 500 sq ft apartment (on the 4th floor of the building with no elevator). It was close to the hospital, just a few minutes walk, so we walked to all of our prenatal appointments. My due date was October 9th.


At 19 weeks we had our 2nd trimester ultrasound. We found out our baby was a girl (there went Gilgamesh as a possible name!) and she had a strong heartbeat, good movement, well-developing brain, etc etc. When the tech came to her bowels he spent a lot of time looking at them and not saying anything. He marked the pictures he took with a question mark. This didn't exactly put us at ease.

The doctor came in and looked, and explained to us that they were seeing "echogenic bowel" on our baby's ultrasound. This means the bowels were showing up brighter than they should, which meant they were harder than they should be. Several things could be causing this, so they would do some tests to try to find out what it was. One of the possible causes was cystic fibrosis.

A lot of waiting followed. We had to wait for my insurance to approve the carrier test, then we had to wait for the carrier test results. They called me one day while Jon was out and told me the result was positive, I was a carrier. (Or as my sister said, the result was positive in a negative way.) I cried my eyes out that day, even though Jon hadn't been tested yet.

Sometime in the midst of all of this, Jon and I both lost our jobs. Hawaii isn't the cheapest place to live, especially when you have no job, so when Jon's search for a new job proved unfruitful, we began to plan an emergency move back to California. We already had plane tickets for July to visit our families, so we decided not to come back. This added no small amount of stress to our lives.

We spent most of our first anniversary packing boxes. The next morning Jon shipped our things while I was at the doctor's having a 3 hour glucose test. The next day we got the carpet cleaned, I got a Rogam shot, and then in a fit of insanity we went to see the midnight premier of Harry Potter 6. The next morning we handed over the keys to our landlord and left. Somewhere between the apartment and the airport, they called to tell us Jon's test result - he too was a carrier of CF.


We both carry the same mutation, the most common one, Delta F508. There is a 25% chance that any child we conceive will get both mutated genes and have CF. We declined an amniocentesis, deciding to wait until our baby was born and have her blood tested then. We spent the rest of the summer moving back and forth between our two families' houses, looking for a job for Jon, and going to many doctors' appointments. The baby's bowels got less and less bright, until it was almost unnoticeable. We hoped and prayed that she wouldn't have CF, knowing it was very likely that she did.

The story of Gwena's birth will follow soon!