My Birth Journey: The Beginning

This is the story of my oldest son, of how I became a mother, of lessons learned the hard way. It's a story I have told in my head, angrily, a million times, that I have borne on my body in the form of a scar, but have never written down until now. Now, it is time to tell it. This is the beginning:

When I met my obstetrician for the first time at twenty weeks (I had to switch doctors because my original obstetrician needed hand surgery), I was laying half-naked on an exam table with my feet up in stirrups. He entered the room, shoved his hand painfully up my barelynotvirginal vagina, and commented to me on my "narrow pelvic structure." When I mentioned my wishes for a natural birth (I was concerned about being induced at 38 weeks, because most doctors do not "allow" women with my pre-existing condition to go past 38 weeks), he told me that I probably shouldn't rule out a c-section. I scoffed, while secretly wondering if my pelvic structure really was narrow.

My son was born at thirty-seven-and-a-half weeks, after four hours of pitocin-induced hell that the labor nurses called "labor." (No, sweetie, I've done labor, and that wasn't it!) I can still see the doctor and the relief nurse huddled over my EFM strip, having barely acknowledged my existence, staring at those contraction lines scribbled electronically on the strip--giant, pointy peaks of contractions, with no valleys. At all. They translated to an hour-long contraction that had me doubled over in pain, begging for an epidural. And now the doctor and this nurse were standing in the corner of the room discussing those mountainous contractions on the EFM strip, and the corresponding dips in my baby's heart rate. "Non-reassuring heart tones," they called them, as they shaved my pubic hair, washed my belly with antiseptic, prepped me for surgery.

The operating theater was stark white, with rows of blazing white lights set in cadence between white ceiling tiles. I was strapped, spread eagle, to the operating table, my gown pushed up to my chest, and a giant blue sheet draped vertically below my breasts, lest I see my baby's birth. Someone kept covering my nose with an oxygen mask, and I kept shaking my head to get it off. Strangers poured into the room, gathering around me, gathering instruments, chatting. The doctor prodded my stomach with his scalpel and asked if I could feel that.

I could not.

I lay there, passively birthing my first child--crossing a threshold, transforming, becoming a mother--and I could not feel a thing. All I could think about was that this doctor had scheduled me, in his mind, for this room, seventeen-and-a-half weeks ago, because I am "high-risk," and he didn't want to bother with me. Maybe this was not true, but it would be difficult, these six years later, to convince me differently. I was just another girl to him. He was just delivering another baby. Another surgery. Another day. But this was my beginning; and I would never get another. Ever.

I don't remember seeing my son in the operating room, although I'm told that someone held him up for a millisecond as the doctor shouted, "It's a boy!" And then he was gone. This baby that I grew in my body, nourished with my blood, dreamed of, loved--I could not touch him--not first. He was wiped, weighed, measured, diapered, swaddled, and finally whisked away to somewhere with my husband. And I could not feel a thing.

There was a glass-fronted cabinet next to the operating table, and I discovered that, after half the strangers cleared out with the baby, I could watch the doctor replacing my organs and the yellow mounds of fat, stitching my uterus, and then stapling the flaps of my stomach together. I watched, fascinated, thankful to have something besides my failure to think about. The doc finally patted my shoulder cheerfully and said, "All done," and I was wheeled off to the recovery room to be monitored.

Three hours. It was three hours before I saw my child. Three hours, and then he was wheeled into my room, swaddled and laying in a clear plastic bassinet, surrounded by a battalion of nurses, followed by my husband. The first thing anyone said to me was, "If you want to try to feed him, you can for just a minute or two, but most cesarean moms don't breastfeed at first because it hurts their incision. Do you want me to get him some formula?" I was repulsed. I had failed so horribly at birthing this little child, that I determined that I would not fail at breastfeeding. And anyway, I still couldn't feel a thing.

The doctor sent us home a day early because I was healing so well. I struggled through the first weeks, months, lifetimes. I struggled to get my baby to breastfeed after two days of sabotage by nurses, doctors, and lactation consultants. I struggled to function on little sleep, to do household chores during those rare baby naps. I struggled to find a new normal in all of the upset. I struggled to adjust to my new, notsopretty postpartum body. I struggled to find my stride in a sea of wavering hormones. I struggled with a bit of postpartum depression. I struggled to feel like a mommy.

It galls me, now, to think back to the days following my gutting, when I was actually thankful to the doctor for "rescuing my baby." That I breathed a sigh of relief as he stood by my bed and said, "Well, it's a good thing we did that c-section; his cord was wrapped around his neck three times!" as though after the fact, he was glad he had come up with a reason for cutting me. And I was thankful. I truly loathe myself for that. It was weeks, maybe months, before I gathered up the courage to pull up my browser and look for information on birthing babies with cords around their necks. On labor induction and fetal distress. And I was appalled at myself when I read that what I had suspected but refused to acknowledge was most likely true: the doctor should not have cut me.

Next time--I vowed that I would have another chance. I vowed that I would not be bullied or pushed around again; I would not be submissive or uninformed. I vowed that I would not be cut again. Next time, I would feel. Everything.

It's not just texting and driving that's dangerous...

I rue the day I started texting. Really. I should have never opened that Pandora's box, but, sadly, I did. So now, at least once a week, I get to experience the horror of having to explain to someone why they got a weird, and often cryptic, text from me. And it's never just something simple like, "hey, hubs, could u pick up some mlk while you're at the store?" Oh, no. It's usually much, much worse. 

Just tonight, I tried to send my husband a text because he was upstairs in his office putting in some catch-up hours for work. I needed him to take the dogs out because the sheltie was threatening to release the entirety of her 50-gallon bladder on my living room carpet, and I didn't want that. Unfortunately, the baby had just recently fallen asleep (finally!) in my arms, and I was afraid that if I got up to take canine faucet out, I would disturb her and we would have another screamfest on our hands. My hands, actually. So the dog was being annoying; and I was being crabby, so I sent this text to my husband: "Idiot may need to go out, and eg is finally asleep, but barely." I thought I sent that text to my husband. Actually, though, I sent it (in all of its not-very-gracious sarcasm) to a very nice lady from my church, who, I'm sure, was utterly appalled to see me texting the word idiot to her. And, really, telling her I meant to send that to my husband didn't do anything to make the text any nicer, so either way, I came off like a--well, like an idiot. She and her husband are supposed to come by for a visit on Friday--if she doesn't call and cancel, now. Which I would totally deserve. 

The pièce de résistance, though, happened a week or so after the baby was born. We were in town, and I needed to pick up some more sanitary pads because of the after-birth bleeding. Since my girlie-bits were feeling a little bit gnarly (and not in a good way) that afternoon, I sent my ever-accommodating husband in to fetch them. I told him I'd text him what I wanted, instead of trying to tell him and hoping he'd remember. So I texted him: "always ultra thin with wings. Overnight. There are three little pad shapes in a box somewhere on the front of the package. You want the one with the biggest pad shape filled in. Those are the overnights." 

A few minutes later, I got a text from my husband asking me what kind to get. And that's when I realized. I'd sent my pad description text to a guy from craigslist who I was meeting later  to possibly buy something from. Yeah, after that text he never showed up for the meet. Lucky for him, he now knows what kind of pads I wear, and how to identify them. 

Insurance--Again!

Ugh. I just went through the huge (HUGE!) headache of applying for different insurance. Currently, I pay $$$ a month just to insure myself. On top of that, my insurance company requires me to pay out of pocket for my prescriptions, and then, eventually, they will reimburse me the 80% they're supposed to pay for those. So the new policy would only cost $ a month, and I'd have a flat fee at the pharmacy counter for a month's supply of medication, so I wouldn't constantly have to deal with the rising prices of my particularly expensive medication (incidentally, the cost of my medication has risen almost 70% in the last seven years--YOUCH!).

So I had a question regarding the letter of creditable coverage that I would need to get coverage for my pre-existing condition before the 365-day waiting period, and I was informed that I had been rejected. Rejected. Now, granted, I have a pre-existing condition, but it's well controlled. I've had a baby within the last 8 weeks, but I had the obligatory 6-week post-partum checkup that the new company was making me get in order to apply (which I now have to pay for with absolutely no benefit for having jumped through this hoop), and everything was perfectly normal. So why was I rejected? Because I'm too fat, apparently, for them.

Now, to give you some perspective, this is me when I got married:

According to the BMI charts (which the insurance company uses to determine whether or not a person is "too fat" to be insured), I was overweight in the picture. Now, really? Overweight? I was fit and healthy, and if I got any skinnier, I'd start looking frail. Granted, I don't look like this anymore (although, I'm working on it!), but, if I was "overweight" back then, imagine what I am now, with the remains from four children clinging to me (because, yeah--I need to lose some weight now)! Yeah. So that's super duper annoying. Well, more than annoying--insulting. I mean, here I am, 8 weeks removed from childbirth, already counting calories and exercising as much as I can, trying to BE as healthy as I can BE now, and GET as healthy as I can GET while I'm at it. And no one the heck cares. All that matters is the numbers. It's downright discouraging, and makes me feel just a little bit sub-human. 

Okay, and the fact that I have to keep paying for insurance that I can barely afford is really maddening, too. Why can't I have the same options as someone else, who better falls inside the little box allowed for us by the stupid BMI charts? Well, because I'm "fat," that's why. And fat people are stupid, and unhealthy, and lazy, and undesirable riffraff that need to be purged from society. Apparently.

How'm I Doing?

I've been asked this more than a few times since baby was born. With my mom here, it's been the easiest week-after-baby ever. And then she left. Honestly, I am a little out of my depth right now. We stopped at the store today, and I had all four kids by myself, and I was trying to buy wipes so I could change my toddler's diaper (conveniently, the entire brand new case of wipes that I bought three days ago were sitting unopened at home, an hour away). We got to the checkout line, and my preschooler started doing The Dance (mom's of preschoolers now what I'm talking about).
"I have to go potty!" she said.
"You just went!" I said, slightly exasperated. Her bladder has terrible timing. "Hold it till we get through the line."
"I caaan't!" she wailed. I could tell she wasn't joking, either.
"Hold it," I said, sternly. Because that totally works. Yeah.
"I caaan't!"
"You have to!"
I looked at her again, and panicked. "You have to hold it," I said, again. In case she missed it the first time. I texted my husband a desperate message, "Need help! Register 19. NOW!"
He never got it.
We managed to get through the line without an accident, and I rushed the toddler and my six-year-old to the bathrooms. I was less than patient, I'm afraid.
I pulled the baby car seat out of the cart basket, grabbed the toddler's hand, shooed the other two in, ordered the preschooler to go potty.
The baby started wailing, and the six-year-old started a round of 20-questions with me.
I plopped the toddler on the changing table, got his pants off, and realized I'd left the wipes in the cart outside the door. I sent the six-year-old out to get them. Meanwhile, the preschooler finished pottying, but couldn't reach the soap to wash her hands.
"Mooooommmmy! I can't reach the sooooaaaaap!"
"Just WAIT!" I said.
The six-year-old brought the wipes, so I finished changing the toddler. I turned to help my preschooler reach the soap, and the toddler shoved an entire roll of paper towels into the sink. The sink with a motion sensor that never turns on when you're washing your hands. Turned on; doused the entire roll.
The baby was still wailing.
We finished, and left to wait for my husband to meet us.
It totally sucked.

So, yeah. That's how I'm doing right now. However, this isn't my first time around this block, so, while I feel tired and overwhelmed and still a little postpartum-weepy, I also know that we will, eventually, equalize. Baby will stop feeding around the clock, the toddler will start sleeping, and I will get the hang of  how this works. In that sense, I'm doing okay. NO matter how dismal things seem today, I know they will get better.
That, and my mom stocked my freezer with meals, so I won't have to cook for, like, two weeks. Booyah!

The End; The Beginning

I made it to 42 weeks before I got impatient. My mom and my mother in law had been here for longer than they were hoping to be here, and we were all suffering from Antsinpants disease. Plus, I'd gone to 42 weeks, and I wasn't sure how comfortable I felt going much longer than that, especially with my pre-existing condition (doctors have this irrational-in-my-opinion fear that my placenta will age prematurely, and cause baby to be stillborn, but I can't find actual documentation of this happening in real life. However, due to their fear of this, people with my condition, who birth with a doctor, will be induced at 38 or 39 weeks, regardless of how the mom or baby is actually doing). So at 42w1d, I took castor oil to try to get things moving along.

I took the castor oil at lunch, and by 3p, I was having noticeably regular braxton-hicks. They continued through the afternoon, so after we tucked the older two kids into bed, my husband and I took the toddler, and went to our local Wal-Mart to walk around for an hour or so. The contractions got to the point at which walking was getting uncomfortable (plus, it was, like 11p and I was exhausted), so we packed up and headed home, expecting we'd have a baby that night.

When we got home, I was so tired that I just fell into bed, and didn't wake up until morning. I was disappointed to discover the next morning that, not only had I not had a baby, but my contractions had all but stopped. I showered and took a nap, and hoped they'd start up again, soon. They reconvened at supper, and, after a few hours of their being fairly strong and fairly regular, I texted my midwife to tell her that I thought I might be in labor. At bedtime, I nursed my toddler to sleep, fell asleep myself, and assumed I'd have a baby that night.

I woke up the next morning, still pregnant, and the contractions were on-again-off-again. I was frustrated and tired, and fed up with not knowing what was going on. I told my midwife that things had stalled again, but I'd started having bloody show, so I knew things were moving along, even if labor wasn't starting in earnest, yet. I had bloody show—gobs of it—all day that day. The contractions didn't stall out completely again, but they weren't regular, either. I went to bed completely exhausted, hoping I wouldn't have a baby that night. 

And now it was Friday—Good Friday, actually. I'd had prodromal labor for 3.5 days, I was tired, crabby, frustrated, and over all the uncertainty. The moms took the kids for a walk, and I decided to go to the store because I'd been stuck at home for the past three days. I got out, got some lunch, and watched a show while the house was empty. I contemplated what eternal pregnancy might feel like. 

That afternoon, the contractions picked up again. They were very far apart, but they were definitely stronger than they'd been. The moms went grocery shopping that night, while the kids, my husband, and I stayed home. The contractions were growing stronger still, but were still quite far apart. I started looking around on http://www.spinningbabies.com, to see if it had anything to say about prodromal labor. I found some information on a technique called "The Lift and Tuck," that they purported would help a stalled or inefficient labor. The post warned that it could make labor progress very quickly, but after almost four days of prodromal labor, I rolled my eyes and said, "Yeah. Right." I tried it through a few contractions, and it made them immensely more manageable, so I figured whether it helped improve my labor pattern or not, it made me more comfortable, so, by golly, I would do it anyway. 

The moms returned from grocery shopping, and I helped them put groceries away for a few minutes, but I had to keep stopping to work through contractions, so I went to bed. My toddler came in for milkies, but I sent him out because I wasn't ready for the super mega contractions that nursing him was going to bring on, unless I was going to get a sleeping toddler out of the deal, and he wasn't close to being ready to sleep. I sent him out to watch Mythbusters with daddy. The contractions continued to ramp up, and I suddenly realized I was grunting and pushing through them. Which freaked me out, because I wasn't yet ready to commit to the idea that I was even in labor yet—fool me once, and all that—so I definitely knew I shouldn't be feeling pushy yet. 

I had to pee (again), in fact, I was feeling like I constantly needed to pee through every contraction, which was driving me nuts, so I got up and sat on the toilet for a while. And tried to keep from pushing. Which totally sucked. So then I decided to heck with it, and pushed anyway—but I, apparently made this ridiculous compromise with myself, so I only kind of pushed. Which also sucked, and also freaked me out, because obviously I wasn't making progress if I was only kind of pushing, so then I was all, "Ohnoes! I'm not going to ever get this baby out!"

I went back to bed because I was tired, and my husband sent the toddler in, saying he was ready for bed now. So I nursed (and pushed!) until the toddler fell asleep, and then I decided to get in the shower for a little hydrotherapy. While I was in there, my husband came in and asked if he should maybe call the midwife. Still in denial that this could really be labor (yes, I am a little irrational in labor), I said, "No; things will probably slow down again after I go to sleep." He stood there for a minute, listening to me push and moan, and said, "I think I'll call her anyway." 

After a short conversation with the midwife, in which it was decided that she would head out, since she had a two-hour drive to our house, my husband came back in the bathroom and said, "The midwife wants to know how far apart your contractions are." He timed my moans and pushes for a few minutes, then called the midwife again, to tell her the contractions were coming about two minutes apart. "Hope you're ready to catch a baby," she said. He laughed. She's such a jokester.

I moved from the shower back to the bed, and pushed while lying on my side for a while, but that didn't  feel right—especially since I was still only kind of pushing. Finally, I said, "Oh, to heckwithit!" I threw a chux pad on the floor by the bed, knelt down, and gave a good push with the next contraction. My water broke. In my pants. Because I was still in denial that this was labor, so I'd neglected to remove them. Although, I wasn't in denial anymore.

I started pushing in earnest at this point; the contractions scooted closer and closer together, and got stronger and stronger. I had my husband performing counter-pressure duty on my lower back at this point. 

"Let me know when you have your next break," he said. "I need to tell the moms that you're in labor." 

"Don't you dare leave!" I gasped. "You'll never get back in time for the next contraction!" 

"I'll make it—I promise!"

"Fine—go NOW!" He ran off, and just made it back in time to slide into home and shove his fist into my lower back. 

The contractions were crashing one atop the other, now, and I was feeling pressure—the kind no pregnant woman wants to talk about. Ever. But this is a true story, and I'm sparing no details, so—.

"Tell me when you get another break," my husband said. "I need to get some more chux pads. And some toilet paper." He was so polite about it. "I know—I pooped! No breaks—just deal with it later," I said, as one contraction subsided and the next one started up. I had started feeling the "ring of fire" as I felt the baby's head push past my tailbone, and it totally confused me because a) I had just felt the head push past my tailbone, and b) that only happens when the baby's head is crowning. And I couldn't possibly be crowning yet. I still had hours of labor to go. At least, that's what my labor-addled mind was telling me. Plus, I wasn't in my "labor zone." 

With the next push, clarity came. I could feel the head pushing against the opening of my vagina. I was having a baby. Now. With only one chux pad and no toilet paper. "Here comes the head," I told my husband. "Where? Now?" he said. "Yes!" I shouted at him. He bent down for a closer look and said, "Gah! There's the head—what do I do?" "Catch it!" And so he did. "Body's coming," I warned him, now that the pressure from the head was gone. He caught it as it slithered out of my vagina. "It's a girl!" he said, as he passed our crying baby up between my legs. I pulled my tank top down and latched her on, still kneeling on the floor by the bed, the umbilical cord dangling between my legs. 

"Can you help me up on the bed?" I asked. My husband was rushing around the room, trying to clean blood out of the carpet, and wipe up the various bodily fluids that had missed the chux pad. He'd done astoundingly well at squelching his inner germaphobe while I was birthing. "Hang on—let me get this cleaned up." He lost his head a little in the confusion, but a little throat clearing brought him back, and he helped me onto the bed just as the placenta slid out. Which was good because, you know, only one chux pad, and all.

We called the time at 12:36a, although, we aren't for sure, because, I mean, when you're having a baby (somewhat unexpectedly), you're not going to look at the clock. The midwife arrived two hours later, and we all had a good laugh because—well, it seemed like the thing to do. Our baby girl was born at 42w5d, weighed 8lbs11oz, measured 21 1/4 inches long. 

That's my story.

Forty Weeks, Come and Gone

Today was my (estimated) due date. Which, of course, means absolutely nothing, since baby doesn't read calendars yet, and, could she (or he?), wouldn't give two craps about it, anyway. I know all of this, but I am still finding it difficult not to be impatient; not so much because it's my "due date," and baby is "late," but because my mom and my mother-in-law are here, waiting around for baby to show up, and baby isn't here. And, because, with all the bleeding and nonsense that was going on at the beginning of all of this, I really geared myself up for a miscarriage. We made it all the way through, and there's still this niggling fear that something will go awry. I know this is, well, possible —but unlikely. And still it persists.

Other than that, things are going well. I'm still hideously comfortable, for having carried this child in my uterus for such a very long, short time. My ankles have started swelling if I'm on my feet too long, but they go back down immediately once I'm off of them. I'm peeing all the time, but that's hardly even worth mentioning, since that's what pregnant women do. I'm still tired all the time, but since the moms have been here, I've been able to rest some, without worrying about the kids doing anything rotten. The moms have been watching the kids, cooking for us (they even stocked our fridge and freezer, and are making meals to freeze so I don't have to cook right away after they leave).

So there you have it. We'll see when baby decides to come, and I will try to be patient.

Unfortunately, patience is not one of my life skills.

March

The reality of this month is (sort of) beginning to set in. I'm still waiting for nesting to show up, which means that it probably won't, and my mom and my mother-in-law will be forced to shower in nasty bathrooms. Sorry, ladies. I've been extra crabby with the kids lately, due, in part to being tired all. the. time. And, due in part to trying really hard to keep the house picked up until baby comes (yeah. Every try this with three little kids around?). I'm working on the crabby thing.

I'm now completely ready for baby to come--car seat is here, newborn diapers are all ready to go; just waiting for baby. I'd be lying if I didn't say that I've felt more impatience this time around than I did last time around. I think that might be because I was really expecting my last baby to be very late, like his sister was, so I wasn't expecting labor to show up the day before I was due. This time, I'm definitely getting antsy (and I'm only 38.5wks!) already. I need to find stuff to do before baby comes. Besides cleaning the bathrooms.