Chapter 3
Every veteran mom will say that each and every pregnancy is unique and different from any other. This surely proved to be true for me. From the very beginning, I knew that I would have a boy. I never knew how I knew, but I did. However, just for the security of “knowing”, we had an ultrasound done to confirm the gender, and sure enough, the baby was determined to be male. I was very happy; I seemed to be following the same pattern that my mother had: a girl, then a boy, then a girl, then a boy, then a girl. I was more than happy with that arrangement, and dreamed of having the exact same pattern with my children.
I was determined to have a normal pregnancy this time, so I started from the very beginning trying to exercise regularly and eat right, although, at 20 years old, I did not really know much about nutrition. I was satisfied that I was doing a good job as long as I was not getting any more than occasional seconds at dinner, and only eating desserts rarely, and drinking plenty of water, which is one thing that I really had neglected during my pregnancy with Mercy. I was convinced that it was my lack of proper hydration that caused the preeclampsia with my first pregnancy.
In the year preceding my second pregnancy, we had moved to a bigger house. It was still on the same ten-acre plot, still owned by the same lady, so, essentially, we had moved across the pasture. This house was a two bedroom house, with a small covered patio off the front. I loved this house. It had windows everywhere. I had the pleasure of being a stay at home mom, so I would always start my morning by opening up all the blinds and the front door, letting the cool morning breeze blow in. Mercy and I would eat a modest breakfast of Cheerios or some other cereal and chatter to each other in that wonderful language that every mother develops with her baby. I told her all about her new brother or sister, although I was very sure that it would be a brother. Of course she didn’t completely grasp it, but she knew there was a baby in Mommy’s tummy, and the baby would grow bigger and bigger, and we would be able to see Mommy’s tummy growing bigger, and someday after a long time, the baby would come out for us to hold with our arms. After having the gender confirmed, we chose the name Nicholas, and began training Mercy to refer to the baby as “Baby Nicky”.
I was desperate for more maternity clothes, because, although I had saved my entire meager maternity wardrobe from my first pregnancy, the season of my pregnancy had reversed. I was now going to be pregnant during the summer, rather than the winter. I made several trips to my local Crisis Pregnancy Center, and utilized their Resource Center. There I found many second-hand maternity outfits, and also began to collect “boy” baby clothes.
My life was very monotonous at this point, and I began to suffer from intense boredom and restlessness. I stayed at home all day long because we couldn’t afford the gas for me to drive the hour and a half round trip to town more than once a week. My days ran into one another, and all became a blur, with just a few highlights. One of those highlights came when Mercy celebrated her 2nd birthday. We had a huge, Veggie-Tales themed birthday party for her. We invited all of my family and several friends. It was the first “big” birthday party I had ever planned or been a part of. I had not grown up having big parties in my family, so everything was new to me. I quickly realized that this would be the last time I would be so foolish as to invite nearly 30 people into my small two bedroom home, with at least half of the company being under the age of 5, and give them chocolate cake and ice cream to mash into my carpet. Mercy was not quite as appreciative as I naively assumed she would be, and my visions of her coming to me with her arms outstretched and with a huge smile on her beautifully innocent face, whispering her deep thanks and appreciation for my time, expenses and energy quickly dissipated. After it was all said and done, and we had surveyed the damage, my husband and I agreed that we would not have that many people into our house at one time again. I was 6 months pregnant by this time, which I’m sure may have contributed to my disgruntled attitude.
Another highlight came when we decided to conserve energy and not use the air conditioner. This decision came mostly from my husband, who had obviously never been pregnant before, and especially not during a heat wave, but he was right about one thing, and that was that our electric bill was getting to be too much for us to handle. At about $110 to $120 per month, we had never seen a bill that high before, and were finding it very difficult to afford it. So I agreed to turn the air conditioner off completely during the day and not turn it on until it was getting dark outside, then we would set it at 78 degrees and no lower. From the end of April until July was a very long, very hot, very difficult time for me. I tried as hard as I could to just grin and bear it, but it was hard not to feel resentful toward Sal, even though I knew he was in the same boat I was in; he didn’t have air conditioning at his job.
Due to the high heat, we began to have a serious exacerbation of the one fault our house had: scorpions. The best we could figure, the house had to have been built over a scorpion nest. We noticed the problem when we first moved in, but this summer of 2002 was especially bad. On a routine basis, we would see at least three in the house every day. They were everywhere. I began having dreams that I was surrounded by scorpions and couldn’t get away. I was 7 months pregnant now, to which I attributed the weird dreams, but they persisted and began to really disturb me. The beginning of the end came one day when I was doing laundry. I was already accustomed to having to carefully sort through the clothing before I gathered it up in my arms, so I knew there were no hidden scorpions in the load that I put in the washer. Our dryer had stopped working a couple of months before, so I had hung a line and bought some clothespins to hang my laundry the old fashioned way. I gathered up the load that had just finished washing and went outside to hang it up. Mercy played outside on a mat in the grass while I took care of the clothes, then we went back inside. The washer, which was a 30 year old GE model, finished the cycle about 20 minutes later. I opened the lid and started to reach inside when I saw it: a huge scorpion perched on top of the clothes! I jerked my hand away like it had been burned, and then I just stared at it, trying piece everything together. I knew it wasn’t in the clothes when I first put them in; I figured it must have found a hole somehow and climbed in looking for water. In any case, it had to have gone through the wash cycle, so I was sure it must be dead. However, I had been stung by one before; I wasn’t taking any chances. I grabbed a spoon from a drawer in the kitchen and gently lowered it into the washer, setting it down close to the monster scorpion. This thing had to be the grand-daddy of them all! I slowly moved it closer, fully expecting it to be dead. But suddenly, without warning, it struck the spoon with its tail and raced backward over the clothes so fast I couldn’t track it. I threw the spoon and screamed and had backed out of the laundry room and was up against my pantry door before I ever realized what had happened. I actually started crying out of terror and frustration. It took a lot of courage, but I finally went back in there and, with shaking hands, began to pull the pieces of clothing out one by one, holding them far away from my body, shaking them carefully out, looking for that scorpion. I finally found it about halfway through, which made it easier to get the rest of the clothes out, since I at least knew where it was. I finished pulling everything out, then killed the scorpion, disposed of the body, then resolutely went out to hang up my last load of laundry. I ran out of line and pins about a quarter of the way through my load, so I set the remainder aside, and began taking down whatever was dry. I was lost in thought about my recent battle with the scorpion grand-daddy and not paying full attention to the task at hand. I was very close to the line, which was eye level, and I reached up to unpin a pair of pants, when to my horror, I found myself face to face with yet another scorpion who was proudly perched on my husband’s pants, only a few inches away from my face, and even closer to my reaching fingers. I found myself once again screaming like a maniac and backing up about 20 feet, running over anything in my path, including my daughter. This time I cried for real out of fear, then laughed at myself for being such a girl, then cried again out of a sudden fierce anger toward that stupid scorpion. Not realizing how dangerously close to going off the deep end I was, I suddenly stepped forward to the clothesline and the scorpion and screamed at the top of my lungs, “Who gave you the right to touch my stuff?!?! Get off!!!!” The scorpion, indifferent to my violent emotions, stubbornly refused to obey my command, and stayed right where he was, earning himself a violent death by Raid. But that only served to make me even angrier, because that meant I had to re-wash the pants, as they had received more than their fair share of the poison during my tirade. I threw the can of Raid down into the grass and stomped off toward the door, only to realize that my poor baby was still sitting there where I’d trampled her, crying herself into a tizzy. I picked her up and tried to console her and myself. It was stifling hot in the house, and I was sweating profusely, as was Mercy. Her face was turning splotchy red from the heat, so I decided to go for a “swim” in the tub. I got a clean diaper and took her into my bathroom. I set her down and told her to take off her diaper (the only thing she was wearing), and took off my sundress. I was going to stay in my underclothes, since they were already soaked with perspiration anyway. I pulled back the shower curtain and began to step into the tub when my disbelieving gaze was met with another scorpion. I didn’t just scream; I screamed a very ugly word on my way backward into the wall behind me. Luckily I missed Mercy this time, so she didn’t get trampled. I stalked outside in nothing but my underclothes and very pregnant belly, retrieved the detestable can of Raid that I had thrown earlier, stomped back inside, and proceeded to maliciously soak the hated creature in poison, all the time crying out in a primal scream of rage at the babbling fool I had been reduced to. After I wasted about half the can on the scorpion, I threw myself into my bed and sobbed. I questioned God rather rudely on why He ever thought to create such a hideous creature. Finally, after about an hour, I sat up and called my mother. I told her everything that had happened, and ended by confessing that I felt like I was on the brink of a nervous breakdown. I told her that if the heat didn’t kill me, the psychological strain the scorpions were putting on me surely would. She told me that she had an inflatable swimming pool that could help me deal with the heat, and she promised to bring it and my sister over to my house the next morning to stay the day with me, “to keep me company”. I was very grateful, and when my husband got home from work, after he cleaned the Raid and the very dead scorpion out of the shower, I told him about my day. I ended by saying that I wasn’t going to be able to handle things much longer. I was much too hot, much too pregnant, and much too sick of scorpions. He took one look at my face, red from heat and swollen from crying, and, out of deep sympathy and compassion, said, “But, Jen, it’s not all that hot, you know. I’m out in the heat all day long, and I can handle it just fine…..” My hate-filled stare must have made him rethink his statement, because he ended by saying, “But if you want to, honey, you can start turning the air conditioner on and just leave it at 82. Will that be okay?” I agreed, and also told him that my sister would be coming over the next day to keep me company. We sat down to our dinner of spam and bread, and I stated rather casually, “By the way, Mom mentioned that the guy that does the pest control for their business would probably come out here and spray for scorpions for about $40 a month, and she’ll pay the first month for us.” He shook his head and tried to gently explain that we just couldn’t afford it right now. I nodded and said nothing more about it. I knew he was right.
That night, I dreamed that I was in my living room, lying on my couch. I stood up and immediately noticed three scorpions running around on the carpet next to my feet. I tried to sit back down on the couch so I could pick my feet up off the floor, but realized the couch was gone, and I was standing there surrounded by scorpions, with just one can of Raid that suddenly appeared in my hand. I heard a strange, crawling noise, and then I realized with horror that there were scorpions everywhere. They were crawling down the walls, dropping from the ceiling, all crawling around and over each other and there was nowhere I could go to get away. I started spraying Raid like crazy, but the more I killed, the more scorpions came out. Although I woke up several times from my nightmare, my dreams always returned to that same scene, with me surrounded by thousands of scorpions, trying to run away but not able to. I was a wreck the next morning. No matter what I did, I couldn’t shake the uneasy feeling that everywhere, just beyond my feet or hands, was a scorpion, just waiting to get me. My sister finally arrived with the swimming pool. I confessed my overwrought nerves regarding the scorpion situation and asked her to help me take my mind off of it. So we watched a movie and laughed together, then watched another one. Finally, the day warmed up to beyond the point that I was willing to tolerate, and I turned on the air conditioner to 82. Then I suggested that we inflate the pool and go for a quick dip. Kelly was only too happy to oblige, and after about 15 minutes, we had the pool sitting in the shade and filling with cool water while we went to change into our swimming suits. All the sudden, I heard a scream, followed by crying. I ran into Mercy’s bedroom, and there sat my sister, nearly hysterical, and Mercy, screaming in pain. I found out that my sister had pulled Mercy’s bathing suit out of the drawer and put it on her, but Mercy complained that something felt “pokey”. My sister reached in where Mercy was pointing, thinking that it might be a sticker, and pulled out a live scorpion! She screamed and jerked her hand, accidentally throwing the scorpion on Mercy, who got stung. I found the scorpion hiding under the dresser, and it was quickly killed and disposed of. Mercy’s leg was bright red at the site, and starting to swell. It took a while, but she finally calmed down, although she said the “owie” wasn’t going away. We finally got out to the pool and sat there, my sister still looking at her hand as if she expected the scorpion to magically reappear, Mercy complaining about her leg, and me trying to figure out how I was going to tell Sal about my decision. Finally, I got up and went back inside. I began packing my clothes and Mercy’s. I called my mother, told her what happened, and ended by saying, “Unless you come right out and tell me ‘You are not welcome in my house’, I am moving in with you starting today until we get rid of these scorpions.” She laughed in a way that I found slightly annoying, like she knew that it was just nerves and drama and not anything very serious, and said that would be fine, and I was always welcome at home. Then I called Sal, and as soon as he answered, I started babbling incessantly, telling him everything from my horrible dreams to Mercy getting stung. I finally told him, “I don’t care what you do, but I’m leaving right now. I’ve already packed for me and Mercy, and I’m not coming back until these scorpions are gone!”
And so it was, later that day, I went to live with my parents. My husband called the pest control company that my mother had told me about that same day, and two days later, he came out and sprayed. He advised us to stay at my parents’ house for one more day, and then it would be safe to move back. But before that could happen, I had another doctor’s appointment, and was found to have preeclampsia again. I left the office that afternoon in daze, wondering how it could have happened so fast. I thought everything was going so well. I called my mom, then my husband, in tears, telling them what I had found out. I had to go back on bedrest that day. Although it had taken a couple of weeks longer to manifest than it had with Mercy, it had come back with a vengeance, and was even more intense this time. I celebrated my 21st birthday a few weeks later, 8 months pregnant and on bedrest. And then, almost two weeks later, on a Friday afternoon, I heard the same words from my doctor that he’d told me two and a half years before when he was going to induce my labor to have Mercy. He told me to come in to the hospital on Monday evening, that we would start on Cervadil, then if that didn’t work, we would start on pitocin the next morning. I shared the news with my family, and my grandparents even drove into town to be with me. It was now the second week in August and sweltering hot, and, if everything went the way it did with Mercy, my son would be born on my grandmother’s birthday, August 13th. I nervously awaited Monday evening, trying to convince myself that I was an old pro at this, and deep down, wondering what in the world was wrong with me. Why couldn’t I just have a normal pregnancy?
