When I was about 20 weeks pregnant with my second child, the doctor came into the ultrasound room to tell me my baby looked beautiful. From the way she said it, I could tell something was wrong.
The problem was not the baby, the doctor explained. The problem was me, or rather the scaffolding my body had built to sustain the pregnancy: A blood vessel meant to be tucked up safe inside the placenta instead lay exposed in a coil around the opening of my cervix. My baby’s blood stood between him and the world.
The doctor was very calm as she explained what would happen. It was very important that I not be allowed to go into labor. If I did, the blood vessel could break, with catastrophic consequences for my child. Another doctor later used the word “exsanguinate,” and I had a moment of perverse pride — this woman took one look at me and assumed, correctly, that I knew the word for a body running out of all its blood.
