My pregnant sister-in-law

The younger of my two sisters-in-law is pregnant now, about six weeks behind me. She runs a tiny, struggling horse farm, mostly by herself as her husband drives many miles every day to his full-time job in the big city. She's legally blind, too. They announced at Christmas (while I was between my first and second betas) that she had just gone off the pill, and announced at New Year's that their efforts had been successful. I uncharitably cursed to myself: aside from the apparently instant fecundity, were we going to get only two weeks of undivided grandparent attention? (My MIL is an angel.) C'mon!

Their first ultrasound, expected to be past 8 weeks, turned out to be at mid-4-weeks. (Hmmm! One does have to wonder what happened there.) She's had awful, incapacitating morning sickness, but other than that things have progressed smoothly. Until now.

I don't know the root cause of her vision problems, but apparently things are getting worse in her less-bad eye. Her ophthamologist feels she needs immediate surgery to avert retinal detachment. Her OB has said yes—as long as it takes place before 24 weeks (???). Anesthesia will be local, and she'll go up to Labor and Delivery straight from the recovery room for a few hours of fetal monitoring.

I can't imagine making that decision: on the one hand, baby. On the other hand, what sight she has is crucial to her: with magnifiers and special lighting she can read, she can e-mail, she can stay connected to the world outside their isolated farm. I don't pray. But if I did...

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Am about to head off to F.'s wedding. Will stay with Beaker's lovely parents. Beaker will search their basement for relics of his childhood; we are hoping that the mildew will have spared some toys.

Comments

[Jody]

Well, I pray, so I've said a prayer for your sister-in-law and her baby and her eyes.

Good luck with the mildew and the toys, and enjoy the wedding. Are you wearing one of those spectacularly fun maternity dresses everyone dreams about?

[yusifu]

Wow, that sounds awful, and it also sounds like you're not in much of a position to be of help. But if your sister-in-law has any sort of degenerative condition, at some point she's going to need to come to terms with alternative ways of reading and using email. They exist, and she really doesn't need to be cut off from the world by bad eyesight. Too often people are because they refuse to get the training necessary for using means that don't depend on vision.

Obviously during a pregnancy and during a medical crisis is no time for your sister-in-law to come to terms with alternative techniques. But help's available, and the National Federation of the Blind is a great starting resource.