Quadraphobia

By Randy Haglund

“We have four heartbeats.”

These words came to my wife, Lisa, at the ultrasound just over twenty years ago, and sent our lives into a whirlwind.

Those of you who know me only through my stories might think that my Allegedly True Stories are fanciful and exaggerated.

But my stories are true. And I will admit, this one is the craziest true story of them all.

Let’s back up several months and even years to set this up. My wife and I got started on kids rather late. I was almost twenty-eight before we got married and had our son, Josh, nine years later. We didn’t want to raise him as an only child but we had difficulties getting pregnant.

We tried a number of fertility options—nothing worked. We finally resorted to In-vitro Fertilization (IVF), which is not covered by insurance. This procedure involves mixing the sperm with the egg in a petri dish, and wait to see what fertilizes. We couldn’t afford the out-of-of-pocket expense. Lisa worked as an RN at Sacred Heart Hospital; I did sales at Spokane Power Tool.

Because of the high cost, we knew we had one shot. Lisa was over thirty-five, so our infertility specialist suggested we implant all four eggs that successfully fertilized.

As you might imagine, I raised an objection to this idea. But he assured us the chances of getting pregnant at all was less than twenty-five percent. Having twins, he said, about ten percent, triplets about one percent, and quadruplets would be like winning the lottery.

I have never won the lottery, but the comparison of winning the lottery and having quadruplets seemed like an inverse equation. I didn’t realize it yet, but I had quadraphobia:[i] the fear of having quadruplets. But we decided to take a chance because we wanted a girl to complement the one five-year-old boy we already had.

Not long after the procedure, lab work came back suggesting we might be having multiples.

My phobia was building.

At eight weeks, Lisa went in for the ultrasound where the ominous words mentioned above were uttered. Quadruplets was not part of our plan. We wanted one baby, not a bowling team. “Upset” is the word Lisa used to describe how she felt when she got the news, but she went straight back to work, feeling numb, and didn’t tell me until later in the day.

The bombshell sent me into a stupor I have never entirely recovered from, as many can attest.

We thought this news would be the worst thing we could have heard, until we saw the fertility specialist a few days later, who strongly encouraged us to have a selective reduction performed. Selective reduction is a euphemism for the abortion of two babies.

Our initial reaction was one of mortification. We have always been dead set against abortion, and we found the very notion appalling. But the doctor emphasized it would reduce risks for Lisa and the two remaining fetuses. Carrying four babies would be a great health risk and possibly even fatal.

This threat caused me to re-evaluate my ethical persuasions. Could I ask my wife to put herself at risk because of some moral code? We struggled with this dilemma and prayed fervently, both of us coming to the same conclusion. We simply couldn’t make the choice of who would live, and who would die. As frightening as it was, our conclusion was to rely on God and let Him determine the outcome.

The normal gestation period for humans is forty weeks, but we knew from the get-go these babies would be premature. We were told to hope for twenty-eight weeks.

Lisa kept working at the hospital until sixteen weeks, when she had to go on strict bed rest. At eighteen weeks she was admitted into the hospital for constant observation.

During this time we decided on names for the babies. We had already learned there were a boy and three girls so we named the boy Caleb. He would be Josh’s companion, just as Joshua and Caleb were friends in the Bible. The girls were named Emma, Grace and Rebecca.

Things went fine until twenty-four weeks when Caleb’s amniotic sac ruptured. He was on the bottom and the pressure from his three sisters was too much. I never had any sisters, but I had friends who told me sisters could be a significant burden.

This rupture took place on Aug. 17, 1999 at 3:20 p.m. I know this because at the exact same time the pipes in the basement of our church burst as well. Experts refer to this phenomenon as empathic illness, though I believe it may be the only documented case involving a soon-to-be-mother and a church building.

The doctors dealt with this catastrophe (labor, not the pipes), by giving Lisa a drug that would stop her labor. The longer she could hold on to these babies, the better chance for their survival. But there were side-effects, the worst one being pulmonary edema—her lungs were filling with fluid.

On the evening of August 20^th, 1999, her doctor put her hand on my shoulder and said, “Randy, we have to pull these babies now to save Lisa’s life.”

“Do it,” I said.

They wheeled her into one of two delivery rooms needed to pull off this procedure. It required more than thirty medical personnel, many of which were called in at the last moment. M.D.’s, nurses, respiratory therapists, anesthesiologists, and others attended.

I wasn’t allowed in. Instead, I stood in a hall outside, like a fifth wheel. I couldn’t sit. I wrung my hands and paced the hall, with nothing else to do. Others were with me—my mom and my in-laws—they had rushed there when they got the news. There may have been others, but it’s all a haze to me now.

All I could do is wait. I didn’t have to wait long.

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For the exciting conclusion of Quadraphobia got to http://randyhaglund.com/stories/quadraphobia-part-2/Quadraphobia Part 2.

 

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[i] I totally made this word up.