Birth Story

I just read through the post I wrote 6 days ago, on my way into the hospital.  I don't know whether to laugh or cry reviewing the last week, really.  It depends, I suppose, on what time you ask me.  Today is our last day in the NICU (a term I didn't know before I had a baby of my own).  I guess I have a pretty intense birth story now, so before I forget it (the way I forgot my daughter's) I want to write it down.  I wish I'd blogged every day here, but physically I think I just needed the time to try and heal, to get myself back.  I am not yet back, just feeling like I'm ready to write it down.

On the way into the c-section I was so miserable.  I could barely walk, and I know pregnant women say that, but the immense, immense pressure of the front of my body was so different than the first pregnancy.  I had gained something like 60 pounds, I could feel a burning pressure at all times on my bladder, a numbness in my crotch which I can't even explain, pain in my legs, swelling in my hands, a constant feeling like I had to throw up, and even lying there, waiting to be "prepped" I found the pain of lying (in any position) completely unbearable.  It left me unable to breathe.

I had my question for the doctor.  Can we please avoid mag sulfate?  He said he would try, and said it actually looked like there would be no need, he just couldn't guarantee it.  I took it.  If I could avoid the two days of horror I endured on that drug during the last birth, it was worth trying.

I cannot describe how surreal it is to have a c-section.  You get wheeled on a bed down a long hall, and have no sense of where youre going.  Once you get there, it is almost unbearably cold, and you're in a little thin gown, fully exposed, paper hat on, while your husband waits in another room.  The anesthesiologist tries to calm you down and is generally funny, relaxed (must be a prerequisite for that job).  He numbs you, and gives you a shot, and then slowly you feel your body lose feeling. They move you to a super skinny bed, with barely room for your bottom, and places to put your hands.  I couldn't feel my hands either.  But I didn't know if that was from the swelling or the anesthesia.  I felt nervous, and weird, and aware of the number of people in that room.  There's the nurse with the pretty eyes, the joking anesthesiologist, the guy who's going to check the baby and the assisting him.  Nurses who will assist my doctor, and my doctor standing aloofly in the background, waiting for this prepwork.  I am only somewhat aware of my body being pretty fully exposed, waist-down to this room of people.  Mostly I feel so good being numb, having been in so much pain for the end of the pregnancy.

The husband is brought in.  He attempts to be reassuring, and they tell him the camera is ok.  He goes into "photojournalist" mode this time, and I miss a little the way he was my counselor the first time.  He takes my hand, but I barely feel it.  The surgery begins.  I feel nothing, but their goal is to not lose time once I'm open.  I hear the remarks, "wow, this is a lot of fluid, the uterus is very distended" and then something along the lines of "we need to get more of this fluid" and then the voice of the doctor gets more and more tense.  I have a vague feeling that things are not going perfectly, he is barking at the nurse a bit, "no, don't hold it there.  Support the head.  No!  The other side."  and a few seconds later, "this camera is driving me crazy" and my husband has been moved further away from the table.  I can hear the doctor sweating.  There is a clear moment when the baby is out, but unlike my daughter, no "crying goat".  No screaming.  Just waiting.

I hear the baby grunting, groaning, and then finally after about a million minutes, a clear, loud cry.  I look over at him, and he's pink, and he's got oxygen, and he seems ok, and I have no sense of emotions, like the first time.  I just feel relieved.  My doctor says he didn't see hair, and my husband corrects him.  There is laughing, because the baby has a lot of hair.  Then my happy doctor apologizes to my husband.  He feigns a bit of interest in me, he tells me, "i know that was just a minute but it felt like 5 hours" and he starts the stitch-up.  The neo-natologist says "we need to take him to NICU" and I acknowledge sadly there will be no face-to-face, no breastfeeding in the recovery room.  I'm nervous, but also vomiting from the medicine.

Wheeled into the recovery room, I vomit more.  I talk, I can't wiggle my toes, but they say that's ok.  Feeling comes back into me and it means a lot of itching.  My fingers are moving, but not well, and there's that darn IV that I don't want to rip out.  No baby.   Finally, eternally later, I see him, and hold him.  He has tubes in his nose.  The doc says he will be ok, but his lungs don't quite seem ready.  Tubes in his nose, IV in his arm, just like me, but I need to vomit, I need to close my eyes.  I can't really relate to him as these drugs wear off and take their toll.

The next few days were the hardest part.  The wonderful neo-natologist tells me it will be one of two options.  Either 48 hours in NICU, or 7 days.  And then the news that it won't be 48 hours.  He has "watery lung".  It's not very unusual.  It can happen in c-sections.  My OB comes to me and just says "it's the diabetes" but of course after several days in the hospital I learn how stressful the birth was.  The fluid was far more than any mother anyone in the hospital remembered seeing.  Over 4.5 litres of fluid.  If they hand't created a huge plastic bag to catch it all in, it would have flooded the operating room.  The rush of fluid, at the first incision, started pulling him out feet first.  We knew he was breech, but couldn't predict that the head would be stuck, the last to come out of a distended uterus, and honestly, though the fluid could have caused his time in NICU, so could a few big gulps of fluid into his lungs while the doctor attempted to wrestle him out.

Hubby spent every night in the NICU while I was forced to recover down the hall.  As soon as I could get on my feet, I was up, walking down the hall, just wanting to be with him and the baby.  Waking up each morning in that room by myself was excruciating.  The walk down the hall alone made me feel better.  I did the first one too early, and had nurses hold a bucket while I vomited my way down there.   The baby made me feel hopeful by trying to nurse for 5 minutes once, but then days went by without him being able.  I pumped, and pumped and went through the healing of the c-section, the bizarre diabetes management of the labor & delivery unit, and every day he got just a little better.  He seemed fragile, panting, tubes in his nose, IV in his hand, monitors on his chest, and every time his oxygen levels went out of acceptable, an alarm went off and a nurse came in.

On mornings when the baby seemed better my husband would come running down the hall, grabbing me to say, "he might be ready to nurse," and I'd try, and we were quiet partners in that.

Then I was released as a patient, and moved into his room.  My husband went home, looking as worn out as I'd ever seen him.  I would actually miss walking down the hall and finding Dad holding the baby, half asleep in the arm chair.

You cannot anticipate this feeling, of knowing, logically, your child would probably be ok, of dealing with the emotions of just having a baby, of reporting to teh nurses whether you've pooped yet, when all you really want to do is know that nothing was your fault, that nothing could have gone better.

The care of this NICU was so wonderful.  They never tried to keep us from being parents.  They allowed us to hold him when we wanted, they fed us good food and chatted with me to delay the other feelings.  And oddly, I felt amazing.  I am weaker, sure, having just had surgery, but the weight of the world has been lifted from my tummy, from my legs, and my swollen hands.  My blood is moving at its old pace again, no crazy pressure.  My blood sugars don't need as much help.  I am a real person who can walk and bend over, and THANK YOU LORD--SLEEP.  I can sleep on my belly and my side and my back! 

In one split moment, he got better, just as the NICU doc (did I say how amazing he was?) said.  Looking at him now, he is "wireless" as my husband says.  No IVs, no monitors, no tubes, just hungry, sleeping baby.  Last night he nursed for 50 minutes and passed out, milk drunk.  I adore him, I find, and 5 days with him here has helped me feel it.  I actually feel grateful for this time.  Nothing else pulls me from studying my baby here. 

We are about to be discharged.  Tonight is tying up loose ends, packing, heading home.  He is sweetly sleeping, though I'm about to wake him up to eat.  I feel insanely emotional, like I can't possibly face a change so big as walking out of the hospital, and how will I not panic as I listen to him breathe each night? I feel more overwhelmed than I thought, but I am one of the lucky ones, and I know it.

Birthday

Today will be my son's birthday.

32 years ago I watched my mom give birth to my youngest sister in my bed.  It is an experience I am grateful for.  It wasn't traumatic, it wasn't really "magical", I was 7.  It was normal.  I walked with my mom down the hall as she used the toilet 20 minutes later.  She winced from pain, but it didn't devastate her.  And I think that memory shaped my whole view of birth.  Women have babies, easily, with a little assistance.  It's not a secret, or a medical mystery.  Doctors are kind of...on the side.

Today I have my second "high risk" birth.  The term still leaves a taste in my mouth I don't like.  I want to write a great big story about how I sweat and screamed, and the baby popped out (as my daughter says) and I grasped him to my chest and every moment is as memorable as the first time I stepped on stage.  That won't exactly happen.

If I've learned anything in life it's that my expectations are more likely to ruin things than make them better.  Every year millions of people create an expectation of Valentine's day that it's going to male them feel whole, which ruins the day.  I mean seriously we all hate that day now, drowned in Expectations.

I read a few blogs this morning about peace in caesareans..

I prayed, and I reviewed how I can take this day back.  Sure my body has its problems, but ny daughter was easily conceived, perfect at birth and wonderful now.  God brought me to a park yesterday, where I met a woman whose 4 year old has had 2 open heart surgeries and a kidney removed.  She smiled and hugged him.  She was grateful and funny, and not caught up in comparing herself to all the moms with healthy kids.

Poor me.  She. Never said it once

This day is my 2nd miracle.  It doesn't have to be perfect, or lib  up to some lifelong homebirth expectation.  Thank God that although I have a disease that is the number  one cause of maternal death in undeveloped countries, there is a surgical option that will put a healthy baby in my arms.

And then I can get back to worrying about how to sing more often.

Sorry, Lord.  We both knew I had to say it.

The Hippy Allure

I have had such a rough morning that I am choosing to shove it aside and deal with it later.  A large part of this involved once again having a huge corporation tell me I owe them a tiny amount of money (to them), which amounts to more than I earn in two months, and that there's nothing I can do about it.  That I couldn't have prevented it (though I tried) that I had no option (though doctors scared me into it) and that now I would either have to face the great CREDIT killer fears that everyone who is halfway down the income line lives under.  I am more than responsible....I'm like the crazy responsible kid who gives themselves hernias trying to do the right thing, sometimes.  But I am not immune to the dark and evil hand of greed that we are part of.

Anyways, that's the ranting section of this.  I called a few people.  My mom, who panicked about my blood pressure and offered me money, which I don't want to take.  I talked to my sister, whose perspective earning twice what I earn is that it's awful, unfair, but just not enough to get worried over (her lawyer bills alone from dealing with a crazy ex have given her some major perspective here), and my lifelong friend, who repeatedly called them f*ckers and shared my incredibly harsh view of the "man" for a few minutes.  It all amounted to some good crying time, and a chance to try to imagine how much worse it could be.

My lifelong friend has always had some different perspetives from me.  We have so many views that over time have caused almost a polar opposition to some thoughts.  But deep inside, we are both children of hippies.  And I have to be honest, everything good comes from hippies.

I mean--all that wonderful garden food, clothes made out of breathable fibers, diseases cured by eating healthy, not wearing bras, not spanking your kids, hating to hear them cry....not wanting to go to war, hoping to find some common ground with everyone you meet (which unfortunately often seems to require letting go of what you actually believe), that's the stuff of our hippy parents.  Vegetarian Mondays, people who talk slower, sandals, not bathing as much, accepting yourself for who you are?  Hippies.

Nowadays I find people who think of themselves as hippies unbearable.  I mean, you want to eat from the garden, but if you shop at Whole Foods and spend like $5 a pound on a vegetable, what the hell is that?  If you can't shut up about the legalization of pot and can't see that all politicians (even the democrats, man) are pretty yucky, I am already bored.  I want that utopia, I really do, where we're just good to each other, and where we can imagine a world in which a rich person sees a poor person and feels a RESPONSIBILITY to save that one person, well, that's where I want to live, but the middle road, eegads. 

I don't like the smell of new car.  I don't like 50 inch screens on my TVs.  I don't like knowing all my food is from a factory farm or made with  high fructose corn syrup, or that you're in denial about what's happening to the polar bear.  I hate credit scores.  But somehow I find those shared feelings unbearable in quite a few people.  I wish I could put my finger on it, the unbearableness.  I don't know if it's because they often seem to hate Jesus, or that they think they know who I should be?  Or their watchful eye makes me feel terrible about feeding my child chicken nuggets?  I don't know.  I just wish I could invent a new hippy.  That's the allure :)

I just noticed my sister sent me 100 bucks, by the way.  I got good people.

The 2AM Rantings of a Woman Close to Birth

As pregnancy goes, I fall asleep at 10pm with my dear 3 year old by my side and then wake up, disoriented, around 1:00...but tonight I am frustrated and angry, so...warning.  This blog may contain cursing.

I am 39.  I waited forever to find the right person, and felt no longing to have children until I made a home in which I knew a child would feel safe.  It doesn't really fit, this lifestyle I now have.  After all, I'm the child of an alcoholic, and a person who struggled with mental illness.  I am the child of musicians, who changed the word "sin" to have a million meanings over time. I am the child of a divorce, an affair, and a lot of screaming.   I am the sister of someone who abuses their children, but gets away with it.  I am the person who likely would have made only a lot of bad decisions.  And I think that one thing really changed me....my pursuit to be thin.

It didn't work.  I am still fat.  I have really, always, in every stage of my adult life, been fat.  I have been "healthy looking and pretty" fat, I have been "this can't be good" fat, pregnant fat, etc.  But in addition to diets, I sought for years a way to change my brain and heart to be thin.  I thought, maybe something internal will change, and I'll find a way to change my body.  And I never really did, at least not by societal standards.  However, all those years of counseling, of groups, of work, of prayer, of commitment....they changed the rest of me.  They changed the parts you don't see.  They made me choose a spouse who is consistent, faithful and won't touch a drop of something that might cause him to make a bad decision.  Those years of "work", I'll call it, gave me some peace.  Reassured me that I don't need him for happiness, but that I could choose a life of partnership rather than dependence.

But having babies changes things.  I am up and angry tonight and trying to decide what is the worst thing.  Is is the assumption that they were going to cut me open and take the baby from early on?  Is it the fact that the doc, two years older than I am, called me "kiddo" and patted my knee, or is that this doctor is a million times better than the last, and I still feel angry, out of control, unhealthy.  I am like a victim here.

I went to an "empowerment" page, of women who were overweight and pregnant, or mothers.  I felt better looking at pictures, hearing them talk about how they had natural births, home births, the "dream" I know I won't have.  I envied, and felt a sense of sadness.  I wished I could be somewhere and someone else.  I longed to not be part of this group that tries so hard not to feel shame, while made to feel it.

My OBs are always people I would not ever have hung out with.  They are always part of "normal", a part I was never that crazy about.  Maybe I would have liked midwives?  Maybe at least a person with a hippy background would be more like me...but I don't know.  I just think that shame, for whatever reason, always comes from a group that passes itself of as "normal".....like the medical community.   And here I am, fat, on the outside, being called "kiddo."

Part of me wants to desperately attempt a second time at this dream of being more involved in the birth of my children.  Part of me wants to get done and get out.  And part of me wants to mourn, to feel incredibly sad about the years of work, the change within me, the fruit, which no doctor will ever see, since what they see is "FAT".  They diagnose fat before me, they treat fat before me. 

Sooner or Later

I think that if I compare my life to others' lives, I am a person with more transitions than most.  I will have a few years of "being settled" doing something, being with someone, being someplace, and then that will change.  I cringe at job applications that want a list of 5-10 years of addresses.  For me, that is a long, confusing task which involves looking through old emails searching for mentions of where I've lived.  I don't think everyone has to do that.

I'm sure part of it is the pursuit of being an artist.  But here I am, married, home owner, mother, and we find ourselves anticipating change again.  A new kid, hubby interviewing for new jobs, me contacting jobs near the jobs he's looking at just to see if that's changing for me too.  It's enough to give one a huge headache, if being 36 weeks pregnant didn't do that on its own.

I've learned after time that you can be happy on either side of change.  You can be happy before a change but feel something's not right for you.  You can be happy after, as soon as the dust settles and the feeling that you've got no ground under your feet subsides.  Change is the biggest fear of most people, but as I've heard a dozen times, it's actually the only constant in our lives.

I am comforted by the thought that God never changes, but confused by it.  After all, EVERYTHING changes right?  

Last night I saw David Wilcox perform, and if you've read my blog before I am such a huge fan of his storytelling, and his honest music.  I see myself doing something like that.  Of course-- I see myself doing everything musical, as long as it doesn't involve tattoos and rock star hair.  I have been writing a few songs lately, frustrated that singing has been tough.  But I really long to sing again too.

It was a good concert, but he was sick, and so he chose to not take a break.  He worried about his voice cracking and strained for high notes, so I never felt swept up in his stories. I knew the feeling of struggling through a "sick" performance (although I would never perform that sick). 

There were so many changes I noted in that concert.  I had a friend with me, I had a baby coming, I had no coat on, and I was a teacher at a college.  Two years, and I can't even imagine what 2 more years would bring me.

Sooner or later, stuff changes.  Off to a Dr's appointment this morning, and of course I'll ask about the strange, sudden lightning pain in my lower abdomen last night.  More change, I assume.  More change.

What Daddies and Mommies Do

I'm in so much back pain.  My stomach seems to be pulling downward at all times, as if the child inside me is headed somewhere (down) and needs to get there desperately.  I have a strong excess amount of fluid, which makes everything more uncomfortable, God help me.

My daughter says that "daddies go to work and mommies go to the gym."  I have ideas about where she got this notion (I never take her to schools to watch me teach, but I do take her to the daycare at the gym) but as at least somewhat of a feminist, I'm kind of horrified to hear it from her mouth.  I have told her a million times that both mommies and daddies work, but it's not a conversation she "gets", and I realize I can't get too caught up in a 3 year old's perception of the world.

I have learned so much in teaching how falsely the expectations of artists (and therefore my own) can be.  I got so angry at a student today who expected to sing in a contest this weekend.  She came in with the new music in the new key, that I had asked her to get.  I had given her a lecture that if she DID want to perform this new song, it would require a great deal of work on her part, daily work, and that she needed to commit at the very least to listening to a recording of it every day until the next time I saw her.  Easy homework.  Today she came in not even able to read through 5-6 notes in a row.  She didn't know anything, and obviously had not looked once at the music.  She honestly thought she was singing a competition in 2 days not able to perform the piece without my prompting EVERY single pitch on the piano.  It was so ridiculous I had a rare moment of actually wanting to just ask her to leave.  I was much nicer.  But I see parts of myself in this, parts of the dream without the work, or the idea that that would be ideal.  I see parts in those who work their butts off too, but this maybe more.

I also had one of my favorite students do her annual disappearing act.  3 years of teaching her, and 3 years of her disappearing when softball season starts, and reappearing at the end.  Only at the end this time she'll be moving, so I may not see her.  I feel so hurt....so attached to her beautiful voice and sweet personality, and sad to know I mean so little that she'll just disappear forever.  Teaching is full of relationships that feel one-sided, sad and happy, codependent.  How could I not love it?

When I read reviews from college students I find that often the comments "I thought the music was too challenging" accompany the line "I never practiced."  Hard to take those seriously.

Since I am focusing on gratitude, I should note how grateful I am that students wrote things like this
I love lessons with Piper.  I appreciate everything she has to say and feel like I am improving as a vocalist.  As a senior, I sincerely wish she had been my voice instructor for my first three years of college as well.

Trying to remember how Daddy never gets comments like that at work at all :)  And I sure as hell never get it at the gym!

Gratitude

I have no idea what day of this it is...like 8?  Mondays and Tuesdays feel exhausting, so I don't even bother with the old blogosphere.  This morning I am living in an infirmary...sick husband, sick daughter, pregnant mom.   BLech.  Hubby's home from work, which means he's REALLY sick.  And I'm kind of amazed I'm not sick.

I've been on the phone all morning trying to figure out how much the hospital will charge me for the 7 tests I'm required to take there.  So far my answers have ranged so broadly that I've asked them to "investigate".  It's kind of nuts.  Hospitals, if you don't know this, don't have REAL prices.  There is no price list.  There is only a 'range' for each thing you can get done.  All of these ranges are dependent on the insurance company you have.  Isn't that weird?  So your insurance company says, "ahhh, we'll pay 200 for that" and then the hospital says, "ok that sounds cool" and then the insurance company charges you 15 percent of that.  It's literally impossible to price shop.  How did we get this incredibly unfair system?  Anyhoo....trying to figure out who might be less of the two hospitals, blocks from each other.  So far the same procedure has been quoted to me as $162 and $365.  That seems like a big difference right?  Especially since I have to have SEVEN of them.  Oy.

So here's my gratitude.  I am so grateful for my immune system.  Eh, that just popped in my head.  But it's true.  My whole life, I have had short illnesses, short colds, short flus.  I have had entire illnesses pass me by and affect everyone else.  I am convinced I have a pretty kick-butt immune system.  This year has been the sickest of my whole life.  Teaching students, having a 3 year old in preschool, ugh, that has just SLAMMED me with various flus and bacterias, blah blah.  But at the end of the day, I know how much worse it could be.  I am so grateful that up to this point, I have had a body that if it fails me, doesn't fail me long.  I don't have to be afraid of people with colds, because if I get it, I know it will leave me soon enough.  No docs, no meds, Makes me feel pretty lucky.

And now, back to the phone calls.