File Under "Weird Things that Actually Happened"

All continues to be quiet on the western (southern?) front. No new bleeding, no cramps to speak of, no sudden cessation of pregnancy symptoms. So, in the hopes that everything is going to stay stable, I want to tell you about a very weird and surreal experience we had during our middle-of-the-night hospital adventure this week.

The ultrasound was actually performed on another floor of the hospital, so I had to be brought up from the emergency room on a stretcher. We saw the baby moving as described in my earlier post, we still didn't know about the sub-chorionic hemorrhage, and we were feeling incredibly relieved and giddy when the ultrasound ended. The sonographer wheeled me out from the curtained exam space and parked me about 20 feet away in a little holding area. It was entirely deserted and the lights were low. Harry and I were quietly talking and joking about random stuff unrelated to the pregnancy by this point. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a transport person show up and I thought "oh good, we can go back downstairs now" but then I quickly realized that he was just bringing up another patient. Her stretcher was brought into the holding area only a few feet from mine, and we had the following conversation:

Lady: Hello.
Me: Hi.
Lady: Are you pregnant?
Harry: [taken aback] Uh, we can't really talk about that right now.
Lady: Oh, I'm sorry.
Me: Actually... I am pregnant, but unfortunately I'm bleeding.
Lady: Oh, I'm terribly sorry to hear that. I'll say a Hail Mary for you.
Me and Harry: [somewhat awkwardly] Oh, thank you very much.
Me: [trying to be polite] I hope you're feeling alright, too.
Lady: I'm having some kidney pain. I had it once when I was 24 and now I'm 55 but I knew exactly what it was as soon as I felt it.
Me: I'm very sorry to hear that. I hope everything's okay.
Lady: Yes, me too. Okay, I'm going to say the Hail Mary now.
[Harry and I exchange glances - we had both kind of thought that she would be praying at a slightly later date and time. But what do we know, neither one of us has ever said a Hail Mary in our entire lives.]
Lady: [crosses herself, closes her eyes, and whispers] Hail Mary, full of grace...
[Harry and I are silent and kind of don't know where to look as she's praying]
Lady: [finishes prayer and turns to me] You are going to be a wonderful mother.
Me: Oh, um... [speechless]
Lady: You are. And your baby is going to be fine. [sonographer comes over to move her stretcher away] I don't really know what this means, but you have a tiny tear in your - in your placenta? That's what caused the bleeding. [almost out of earshot] It's going to heal and everything is going to be fine.
Me: [fighting back tears] Thank you... good luck!
Lady: [behind the ultrasound curtain now] You too!

It was, without a doubt, one of the most bizarre experiences of my entire life. Let's review the tape for a moment: we weren't talking about the pregnancy when she came into the room, I'm not really showing, and it wasn't a dedicated ob-gyn ultrasound area, so there was no immediate reason for her to think that I was pregnant. We didn't ask her to pray for us or read our fortunes or anything - it's not like that time I went to the renaissance faire.

On the other hand... it's not like her diagnosis was entirely correct, what with this whole not-tiny not-tear in my placenta. If she had said "large sub-chorionic hemorrhage that did not actually compromise the placenta but you won't know that until Thursday" then I would have gotten even more chills. And if you're a layperson, and you hear about bleeding during pregnancy, wouldn't one of your first guesses be to say that maybe there was a problem with the placenta? And it was late, and dark, and we were feeling very relieved but still had a ton of adrenaline running through our veins, so we were about as primed for a chat with the divine as we were ever going to get.

That said... it was still one of the most spiritual moments of my life. (That includes the time I converted to Judaism, which in the moment was more "this water is a little chilly and I wish I could have kept my contact lenses in" than "I am emerging from this mikvah a new woman!") I don't often take this stuff as seriously as I probably should - Harry and I are more irreverent than anything else when it comes to organized religion, even our own. But I don't know where to fit this experience in with that worldview. She could have been a crazy person, or a kind person who was telling us what she thought we wanted to hear. Or, she could have actually been speaking with G-d. We'll never know. But I hope she was, because I hope she was right, and because that would be great news.