The Squeeky Wheel

I remember sitting in that dark room staring at the monitor for the ultrasound. This was the second time that we had done this. During the ultrasound the technician said, "Huh." My eyebrows lifted as I tried to figure out what the concern was but she just went on working. Then came another, "Huh." This time she typed some notes into the computer. "What's wrong?" I asked a moment before my wife could get it out. "Nothings wrong," she said with a strange emphasis on the word wrong. I recognized this emphasis because it's the same one I would use when my wife asks if something she cooked was bad. "Not bad.....just not as good as usual." (I love her to death but she has truly butchered some meals.) After the ultrasound was over and she was getting an exam from the doctor we mentioned something about it. He shrugged it off as no big deal. This being our first pregnancy we didn't want to come off as worrying irrationally so we didn't push it any harder.

A few couple weeks later my wife's water broke. We still aren't sure what that was about. Perhaps it was nothing but can't help but feel guilty. Maybe if I pushed harder for answers or made them look harder this wouldn't have happened. I wanted to believe that there was nothing to worry about and now I don't have a baby. Maybe I should have worried. I hate that my fear of seeming irrational won over my fear of something going wrong over the pregnancy. Later we were told by another doctor that it would have been treated differently if it was a high risk pregnancy. High risk pregnancies would be ones where the mothers had health issues, drug abuse or two previous miscarriages. Why can't all pregnancies be treated as high risk? This was just another procedure to them but it was the world to me. That sounded to me like saying I don't lock my door because I haven't been robbed enough times. Perhaps if I had been the squeaky wheel I could have gotten us more care and they would have caught something.