Life in the Flock of Geaschels

Chapter 1
“I won’t be able to deliver your baby at home. You will have to go see a doctor.” Those words that were spoken by the midwife would drastically change our summer and impact all of our lives. As I was lying on the midwife’s exam table, with my husband holding my hand, and our children playing quietly in another room, I felt like I was in a nightmare, one from which I couldn’t awaken. The precious baby that I was carrying was our eighth. This was supposed to be our second home birth. We were looking forward to the peaceful, drug-free atmosphere that we had experienced with this baby’s sister just fifteen months earlier, but then my current pregnancy had been different from the beginning.
I had only wanted an ultrasound so that I might have peace of mind in our decision to take the kids on a trip to Virginia. It was the four hundredth anniversary of the founding of Jamestown, and we planned for the whole family to be a part of that exciting celebration. Our children’s names were engraved on a memorial plaque that was going to be unveiled during the celebration, and we hoped to be a part of that momentous occasion. During our planned stay in Virginia, my husband, Bill, was also planning to take part in a reenactment of the second Virginia Convention, with about a dozen other men and boys.
I had already started packing and filling the living room with bins of nonperishable food and small suitcases of clothing because I knew that packing for nine people while being pregnant was going to take me a few weeks. We would be taking most of our food with us because eating out was so costly and time consuming with a large family.
Our planned trip was only a couple of weeks away, and our baby was due shortly after we returned home. As I look back, I realize that I had been having thoughts for a while that something was not right. I just had not been sure what it was. I was not worried about going into labor while we were away because all our other seven children had been born late. I had never had any contractions prior to my due dates. There was no reason to believe that I would go into labor early this time, but I wanted to know where the placenta was located.
I also had concerns about the baby’s position. I thought that if I was due soon, the baby should have descended farther into place than I felt that she was. I mostly wanted to know where everything was positioned before embarking on our cross-country journey. I already had contact info for midwives who lived in the states that we would be traveling through, in case I did go into labor while we were away, but it didn’t ease my gut feelings of question and concern.Earlier in the week at my bimonthly checkup when I told the midwife I wanted an ultrasound, she questioned me. “Why do you want an ultrasound?” I told her of my concerns, especially in regard to traveling so far, and she helped me find another midwife nearby, who gave inexpensive ultrasounds for home-birth moms.
We went for the ultrasound. When we first arrived, we had all our children with us in the room. I was so excited to show them their new sibling, who we expected would join us four weeks later. This was the first one that many of them had seen. As we watched the screen, we excitedly saw our precious baby. The technician pointed out the legs, the arms, and the spine. Everything seemed to look perfect.
Then at one point, Bill and the technician became quiet. We realized that when we were looking at the baby’s face, something was wrong. The eyes were easily located, and we saw the nose, but below the nose going all the way to the chest, there was a dark area. The technician scanned the face a few more times and then stepped out of the room. We sent our seven children out of the room to play.
I do not remember what happened during those next few secondsor was it minutes or hours? But during that time, the technician called our midwife and told her what she had found. The technician then returned to my bedside holding a cordless phone, and my midwife talked to me on the phone and gave me the news. She told me that there was something seriously wrong with the baby and that we needed to go to a physician who would take us through the rest of the pregnancy and perform a hospital delivery. She said that the technician felt there was some kind of mass or teratoma on or in the baby’s mouth.
We were also informed that the baby had some fluid around the heart and that the baby was not as far along as it should be. There was a difference of about five weeksFive weeks? I wondered how the baby could be five weeks smaller than it should be. My midwife reluctantly told us that there was no chance of a home birth and that I might even have to have a C-section. Now the scheduled trip to Virginia was also questionable.
I was in shock. I realized that the next few weeks would be crucial to the future of this precious little one. At that stage in my life, I started wanting things to be more natural and with less doctor intervention, so this was very hard to swallow. A C-section? I thought. I had never even had an epidural because I did not want drugs, or needles, or anything more than what was necessary. A C-section? A hospital? What about our quiet natural living room delivery with the family all around me, which we are preparing for? I wondered. Everything seemed to be so overwhelming. I felt as if my head was spinning.