Happy November, friends! It turns out that, when you have a baby, you tend to fall off the face of the earth in every other respect. I guess we could have seen that coming. And yet, somehow, I didn’t believe that Little Foot (now officially nicknamed Peanut because newborns really do resemble peanuts) would be rounding 5 months before we’d have a chance to return to sharing this experience with you all.

And in some future post I would love to share the end of our pregnancy journey (two weeks earlier than planned), the birth (experiencing much more of labor than we had prepared for), the aftermath (the agony and the ecstasy… ecstasy might be a bit overstating it), and introduce you formally to our little precious Peanut. Oh, and of course review the risk factors both pre and post birth. If you were looking forward to that, continue looking!

Today is for a different story. Today marks the one year anniversary of the day we found out Little Foot had opted in to our family. So, in this post, I’d like to throwback to November, 2020 and share with you the story of the big reveal.

Surprise! It’s broken.

Where the story of the big reveal actually begins is with my pulmonary valve insufficiency – my need for a pulmonary valve and all the medical lead-up to receiving a trans-catheter pulmonic valve insertion. Ah, the appendectomy of heart procedures, or so I’m told. I say “procedure” because it is not a surgery. All things going well, this, thankfully, can be done by threading a catheter up through a vein in the leg into the heart and popping a valve into place. Voilà! And the recovery is about a week. If I had needed this procedure 10 years ago, I most likely would have needed open heart surgery. Bless science and medical research!

There is a decent amount of pre-procedure prep that happens, tests and appointements, etc. And one of those was an MRI. So two weeks before the procedure, I drove down to Stanford for an MRI feeling a bit stressed and cranky from a combination of work and a menstrual period that kept feeling like it would happen at any moment but hadn’t quite yet… oh, yeah, and by the impending “procedure” itself (because of course, regardless of the fact that it’s not surgery, we’re still prepping to tinker with one of my most major organs… not exactly a day at the spa). 

My MRIs involve contrast dye, something that is not to be given to pregnant women for concern over what it might do to a fetus early on. So I had to pee in a cup for the dip stick test (does anyone else call it that?) to ensure I was not pregnant. And of course, as with every test before it, I was not. <sigh> Did you think it would be positive? Ah, not quite. Little Foot has the timing of truly great stories.

A nurse came in shortly after with some surprising news. Nope, nothing related to pregnancy.

The MRI machine had broken, and it would be out all day. Such was the way of life in 2020, right? I was sent home 30 min after arriving, my morning amounting to nothing more than a 3 hour drive (the hospital being over an hour away… without traffic) and adding “reschedule MRI” to my todo list.

Surprise! It’s positive.

I love calling to reschedule appointments when something like that happens. The poor schedulers who often seem to have no idea of the urgency of anything…

Me: I need to reschedule an MRI for a procedure I’m having in 10 days.

Them: Our next available appointment is in 2 months.

Me: (facepalm) I need an appointment next week… before the procedure I’m having in 10 days.

Luckily, they are quite accommodating when they finally do understand the need. And not only was she able to schedule me one week later, at an actually convenient time, but she was also able to combine all the rest of my pre-procedure appointments into that same day so I would only have to go there once before the procedure. Critical to this part was that Brian could be with me for it all, as he was only allowed to join for the final pre-procedure appointments (ah, COVID).

Okay, fast forward to that day, November 12. Brian and I are hanging out in the MRI prep room. Ly, our delightful prep nurse, took my vitals and started preparing the line for the contrast dye when I asked if they were going to test my pee again.

“No, we don’t have to do that since we did just a week ago. We only test if it’s been over a week.” Fair enough. Except I still hadn’t bled. Not an overly long cycle yet. I’ve had a couple loooong ones. And I was certain Aunt Flo was in hiding due to stress. But I asked if she’d dip stick me just to be sure. “Of course! No problem.”

She returned a few minutes later with an expression on her face that we couldn’t read at all due to us all being masked. And she said in the most even, flat tone,

“So. The. Pregnancy test. Came back. Positive.”

“Are… are you joking?” We both gasped this in unison. And even as we said it we realized she couldn’t possibly have been joking (how insanely unprofessional would that be?), and my tears started flowing.

“I wouldn’t joke about this.”

“No. Of course not. I’m so sorry – holy f***ing s**t!” we exclaimed, me slobbering into my mask.

“Is this a good thing?” We were confused by the follow-up question. Of course it was a good thing! How could this not be a good thing?! Forgetting entirely that we were actually being seen in the children’s hospital (not the adult one, due to the nature of my cardiac history), and a positive pregnancy test probably was not typically the best news bestowed upon a patient there. We assured Ly that it was not only a good thing, but maybe the best thing we’d ever heard, and she relaxed into the joy of the moment with us.

What followed was essentially a radiology party. The nurse who had tested me negative the week before came in and tearfully congratulated us. Multiple nurses and technicians, some of whom I’d met before and others new, followed suit. A delightful patient services guru joked about Ly being the godmother. And the department gifted us with a little stuffed bear. Merry merry was the atmosphere as we wrapped our heads around the news (and awaited the blood test confirmation, performed on site immediately).

Two hours after we’d arrived, we were on our way home, procedure canceled, bear in hand, and lives changed forever.