It Didn't Happen Like I Expected

It didn't happen when we first met. There were no heavenly choirs of angels singing. No tears. I was just happy to have given birth and be done with that part of my life. I was also pumped up on drugs after being in labor all day only to have been pumped full of more drugs when we resorted to a c-section that night. I'd feel that spark later, I thought.

It didn't come the next day either. Nurses had thrust my squirming son into my arms once every three hours for feeding. I wasn't very good at it and needed help frequently. I only felt frustration and exhaustion when nurses responded to the call to take him to the nursery. I hoped they weren't shaking their heads and calling children's services because I didn't want the baby in the room with me after feeding was done.

It didn't happen when we came home from the hospital either. I just felt terror. My husband and I had this baby now. No nurses. We were on our own. Everything I ever read beforehand went out of my head. My son did not follow any rules.

I was afraid I had made a mistake and was not mother material. I was embarrassed: family and friends gushed over how beautiful he was, how I must be so excited, so in love. I looked away and nodded. I said what I was expected to say.

Then one evening, I sat with him laying in my lap. Exhausted, I turned on a children's radio station on my computer, and sang along with the ones I remembered from my own childhood, hoping to quiet my fussy son.

That's when it happened. He looked at me, focusing his eyes as if seeing me for the first time. He smiled and made a soft coo. I found myself smiling back. He had me. I was in love. It didn't happen like I thought it was supposed to, but that's okay. It happened in our own time. And I have a feeling it will only grow as we get to know each other better.

How He Got Here

My baby boy is finally here!

The journey to bring him into the world was quite an adventure for someone who has a pronounced anxiety around medical equipment. I thought I’d better write about it before the memories started to erode from lack of sleep.

On April 10th, I arrived at the hospital at 6 a.m. to be induced. I’d gone several days past my due date, yet had been having frequent periods of strong, close together contractions that kept tapering off. In fact, I was already having these contractions again when I got to the hospital and started getting set up in my room with my husband and mother.

They soon hooked me up to the first of many very uncomfortable devices I would have to endure that day: the IV. I winced, but took it, throwing my blanket over my arm and pretending it didn’t exist. About an hour later the doctor came in and broke my water – another uncomfortable experience, but it was over quickly, so I managed fine.

As I relaxed as much as possible and watched my contractions on the monitor beside my bed, I realized that I could watch the contractions of the several other ladies also in labor in the other rooms. Theirs were little blips on the screen, while mine were rocketing to the top of the charts. My husband, mom and I joked that those ladies just needed to go home. They couldn’t possibly be in active labor.

Ironically, every single one of those women gave birth before I did.

As another hour ticked by and things progressed, the nurses started suggesting I think about ordering an epidural since it took an hour from the time it was requested to the time I could receive one. I put it off at first. I wasn’t in that much pain, surprisingly. Finally worried that things would start happening too quickly and I wouldn’t have time for an epidural at all, I agreed.

An hour later, the biggest, most anxiety-causing needle entered the room. Not that I ever saw it. But from my husband’s expression as he looked over my shoulder, I knew it was bad. I then spent the next few minutes trying to hunch over a pillow while relaxing my shoulders and trying not to think about the diagrams in all the books I’d read that had “helpfully” illustrated exactly what they were doing to me. My hands were trembling from anxiety while my husband held them and the nurses prepped me. I’m pretty sure I came close to fracturing a few of his fingers when the anesthesiologist started her work.

That finally over, I lowered myself back to my bed and within a few minutes I was blissfully numb from the middle of my back down to my toes. It quickly took care of contraction pain and had the added benefit of making me unable to feel when the doctor had to make checks as well as insert what would have otherwise been highly uncomfortable devices. It was like I really could throw a blanket over the lower half of my body and pretend it wasn’t there. I was encouraged. If I was this numb through the whole thing, childbirth was going to be easy.

If only.

Hours passed and nurses kept upping my dosage of drugs, but for some reason things weren’t progressing. Morning tuned into afternoon and started fading toward evening. I was a little disappointed about how slow things were progressing since things had seemed to start so quickly. But I was still in pretty good spirits, all things considered.

Until the shaking started.

Nurses said it was a common reaction to the drugs being used to induce my labor, and I’d been hooked up to an increasingly heavy dosage all day long. Wasn’t dangerous, they said, but there was nothing that could be done to stop it. So I trembled. And trembled. And trembled. If I used every bit of my concentration, I could will myself to be still for 30 seconds or so to try to rest my body, but then I’d just go back to trembling again. This continued for hours. My epidural started wearing off. When a nurse came in to check my progress after several hours and revealed I was exactly the same as before, I broke down and cried. I was complexly exhausted from my shaking, I had been facing down some of my biggest phobias all day long and I desperately wanted something to eat or drink – and now I was embarrassed to be crying.

My doctor came in for a check and agreed that I was making no progress. He encouraged me to give it a few more hours before deciding if I wanted to opt for a C-section. At this point I was so completely wiped out from trembling that I didn’t think there was any way I’d be able to push a baby out into the world myself. But then again, I’d read all about the surgery and what it entailed, and was slightly terrified of the procedure. (Any procedure that keeps you awake while your insides are being cut open is not OK with me.) I told him I’d wait one more hour.

The time came and went. Doctor checked and confirmed that I was exactly the same. With a shaky breath I agreed to the C-section. As soon as I uttered those words, a team of nurses descended on me to start prepping me for the procedure. As I was poked, prodded, disinfected and pumped full of more drugs, I had the fleeting urge to tell the nurses I’d changed my mind about this whole giving birth business. I’d just leave the baby where he was, thank you very much. Just send me home and I’ll just be pregnant forever.

They wheeled me into the operating room and strung up a curtain across my chest so that I couldn’t see what was going on – again, just throwing a blanket over my lower half and pretending it didn’t exist. Of course then they strapped my arms down like I was in some sort of medieval torture device, which along with all the medical professionals and surgical equipment surrounding me should have been enough to send me over the edge. However at this point I was so completely exhausted and pumped up on so many drugs, I realized vaguely that I should be terrified, but really just wanted to go to sleep.

My husband was escorted in, all in scrubs, a few minutes later. He looked nearly as terrified as I knew I should be feeling. It wasn’t until later that he told me that the surgery had actually already started when he was ushered inside and he got an unpleasant peek at some of my internal organs. In fact, I was so out of it from the drugs that I didn’t even realize that we’d started the procedure until I heard a baby cry. I remember looking over at my husband, confused, and hearing somebody say, “Wow, look at the size of him!” just shortly before I spotted a nurse coming around the corner to lay a little squirming body down on the nearby table at 11:37 p.m.

Unlike many birthing stories I’ve read, I didn’t hear a chorus of angels when I first saw my son. I didn’t break down in tears. I just stared, bleary-eyed and grinning like crazy as the nurse cleaned him up and checked his vitals. I hardly even heard the doctor directing the nurses on how to put my internal organs back the way they’d found them. (Yeah, ew, right?)

The nurses let me get a closer look at the little boy I’d just brought into the world, and then took him and my husband away to the nursery. As I lay there, waiting for the medical team to finish stitching me up, I couldn’t stop grinning.

I’d just faced down and conquered some of my worst phobias. And even though the idea of trying to raise a child is scary in its own way, I’m ready to face that challenge now, too.

Dominic has arrived!

Dominic was born April 10, weighing 9lbs 15 oz, and measuring 21 and 3/4 inches.

As soon as I don't feel like the walking dead, I'll write about my experience. It definitely was not what I expected!

Counting Down the Days

(This column was originally printed in the Herald-Citizen, minus the images).

Well, my husband and I survived our month-long birthing classes, despite my doubts that I’d make it through. As I’ve mentioned before, medical facilities make me anxious in the first place, and the thought of needles and other unpleasant medial instruments make me squeamish. I can’t count how many times I’ve read a few pages in one of my books about the birthing process, made a horrified face and then shut the book and went to pick up a nice novel instead.

So I knew I was in for a very long evening when women groaning in pain was the introductory “music” for the hour-long video we watched in one class. And then there was the zoomed-in view of these women giving birth — the VERY zoomed-in view. And the video of a woman getting an epidural. Plus the animated diagram of exactly what an epidural entails (a needle jabbed in between your vertebrae that they then thread with a tube and leave in your back for the duration of the birth — at least I think. I had my eyes closed for some of the explanation.) And the likewise animated diagram of what happens during a C-section (It’s a much more involved surgery than I originally thought).

Most nights I left educated but brimming with anxiety. After each class it took me a day or two to go from believing I was going to have a humiliating anxiety meltdown in the labor/delivery room to being able to tell myself “It’s not that bad. I can do this.” Then the cycle would start again after the next class.

Though after about the third class, I’d had to watch so much video of the labor process that I finally started being able to stomach it better. I could even watch the epidural process without grabbing for my husband’s hand under the table.

I’m hoping when it comes time to face labor myself, I’ll be able to just focus on dealing with each needle and other uncomfortable medical intervention as it comes. I’m also praying that I’ll take after my mother, who was in labor with both me and my younger sister for only two hours each time — instead of following my mother-in-law’s 27-hour labor experience with my husband.

However, one thing I will remember clearly about each night of the (sometimes slightly traumatizing) two-hour classes is when my husband and I would get to pause at the nursery and see the newborn babies sleeping soundly in their bassinets. It was a sweet reminder of exactly why I will be facing my medical anxieties head-on in a few weeks. I know it will be worth it.

Tearful Third Trimester

(This column was originally printed Feb. 10, 2013, in the Herald-Citizen, minus the images).

I’ve finally made it to my third trimester, and now every day seems like a small victory. Though with all the pregnancy hormones swirling around, pretty much everything is starting to seem like a bigger deal than it really is — both the good and the bad.

So while I can be happy for hours after a single nice comment from someone, my day can also come crashing around my (swollen) ankles with very little prodding.

[Me, looking miserable. The cat looking comfy.]

Like the night a few weeks back when I fell into bed in a sobbing fit and swore I was just going to delete my novel-in-progress that has more than 80,000 words and two and a half years of daily writing/­rewriting/­editing in it. This all because of an innocent comment from a critique partner about my first chapter needing a little more description in it. Luckily, by morning my despair had ebbed and I decided my novel was not the worst thing ever created in the history of the written word after all. I’m still working on it, with hopes to finish before the baby arrives.

Then there was the evening a couple weeks ago where my husband found me sitting on the floor of my running shower, crying because I couldn’t figure out how to maneuver around my whale-sized stomach to get to my legs with a razor. I laugh about it now, but then I’d had several stressful days in a row, felt like I had bruised insides from baby kicks, was frustrated with my decreasing maneuverability, and uncomfortable with my now regularly swelling ankles and fingers. My shower issue was the last straw that night, and so seemed like a perfectly sane thing to sob over.

My sweet, and probably slightly alarmed husband (since under normal circumstances I’m not a frequent crier at all) took me out to dinner at my choice of restaurants that night, offered to take me to get dessert, and anywhere else I wanted to go. Plus I’ve been getting twice the number of random “I love you!” texts I usually get from him throughout the week.

But while there have been fits of tearfulness, there’s also been happy times these last few weeks. Like me being able to start identifying which specific baby appendage is currently pressing against my stomach, making an uncomfortable bulge. (Though this has been the cause of some tears too, as junior has seemed to have decided that he prefers one particular spot on my right side to poke all day long. It gets quite painful after a while.)

And just a couple of weekends ago my mother and aunt descended on my house with paint buckets and brushes and helped me finally clean out and paint the baby’s room. Now instead of a dark room filled with a few bags of baby things, some boxes of my summer clothes and the cat’s litter box, the room is now empty of clutter and has bright, cheerful blue walls.

Plus there’s the birthing classes at the hospital to look forward to. I’m hoping they will help me stop having a panic attack every time I try to read one of my books on the birthing process. I keep getting overwhelmed with all the technical terms and the seeming 1,000 different things that could happen during the big event. I know it will also help ease some of my anxiety to actually see the facilities where my baby is going to be born.

I’m sure there will still be tearful days ahead as the frustrations of pregnancy continue to grow, but now I’m eagerly counting down the days when those tears will be not because of my uncooperative body and emotions, but instead because I’m finally holding my son in my arms.

Preparing for the Future

(This column was originally printed Jan 2012, in the Herald-Citizen, minus the images).

When the calendar rolled over to 2013 last week, I found myself hit with a sudden realization. I remember wandering into where my husband was on his computer and saying something like, "Holy cow, we're going to have a baby in about three months."

He looked at me like I was crazy. "Uh, ... yeah?" he replied. I guess he was wondering why I was saying this like it was a surprise. We've known a little one was on the way since last July. I'd been deathly ill with 24/7 morning sickness for the first three months. And then there's the hard-to-miss evidence of my greatly expanding waistline.

It's just that up until now, the due date seemed very far away -- something that I didn't have to worry about for a very long time. And now, here we are suddenly three months out.

The baby's room isn't painted yet. Anything baby-related has just sort of been dropped into a box and shoved into the corner. The crib isn't assembled. We haven't collected even a fraction of all the supplies we're going to need to take care of a newborn. We haven't even decided on a middle name for our son yet. Now that 2013's here, I'm feeling very unprepared for this huge change that's just over the horizon.

[My cat, napping under the pieces of the crib.]
[He's not ready either.]

Like most first-time moms, I'm also feeling very unprepared for the process of actually getting a baby into the world. I've had some moms tell me it's not that bad -- "After you're given drugs, you're fine," they say -- and then I've had some tell me it was the most painful, horrific thing ever. I've also had family offering to video the whole thing for me so I can watch it later. I don't even want to be there while it's happening, let alone watch it again.

I have a definite anxiety around most medical facilities. I get a little stressed just going to the dentist's office for a routine cleaning. Last year I had to have sinus surgery, which required me to have an IV in my arm. After it was in, I threw a blanket over it so I couldn't see the needle in my arm and spent the rest of that morning pretending that my arm no longer existed.

I nearly had an anxiety attack in my private room and then again in the operating room while waiting for them to knock me out. I was so grateful to see the man with the drugs finally come in that I would have hugged him ... if I hadn't still been pretending my IV'ed arm didn't exist. Unfortunately, they can't knock you out when you're giving birth.

I've been trying to read books so I'm somewhat prepared, since I figured most of my anxiety about the whole thing is coming from my only experience with births being the dramatic and scream-filled depictions in movies and TV. But I'm finding I can only read so much about needles and C-sections and medical devices shoved in awkward places before I feel my heartbeat speed up, my breathing quicken and I have to shut the book and go do something else for a while.

I have to push it all out of my mind and tell myself to just focus on getting through the aches and pains of today. Don't think about what's going to happen later. Just get through today. After all, by April there could be some miraculous medical breakthrough where doctors will be able to just magically transport a baby from the womb to your arms.

It could happen.

Maybe.

Otherwise I'm going to have to go to Plan B: throwing a blanket over the lower half of my body and pretending it doesn't exist.

Getting a Kick out of the Holidays

(This column was originally printed Dec. 24, 2012, in the Herald-Citizen, minus the images).

While many people are singing "Deck the Halls," this Christmas season, I've been busy getting decked in the kidneys by my little bundle of joy on the way. The little flutters of baby movements have slowly turned into full-blown punches and kicks these last few weeks, making me look like I have some sort of nervous twitch.

The first kick caught me completely by surprise one Saturday morning while I was at work helping to finish up a Sunday paper. I was leaned over my desk, proofreading a page and happened to have my hand on the side of my stomach.

I suddenly felt something jab me so hard from inside that it bumped my hand right off my stomach. I was pretty startled, as I didn't think my baby was big enough to be able to do that yet. As I felt the jabs a couple more times that day, I started wondering if I was going to give birth to some kind of Incredible Hulk baby. However, at my next doctor's appointment, I was assured that my little one was growing at a normal rate.

[This is the Hulk. You can see why I didn't want to give birth to one.]

At first I jumped or twitched whenever I felt the movement. There's just something a little freaky about having your internal organs kicked.Especially bizarre was the evening I was showing my husband my bare stomach to demonstrate how big I was getting and we both saw a quick bulge just below my ribs on my right side. I wasn't sure whether to say "Aww," or "Eww."

The swift jabs and kicks have become the norm now though, even though I still sometimes jump. I am no longer weirded out by the movement (Well, unless I'm getting kicked in the bladder. That just feels wrong.)

There was even one time last week while I was on my way home from work that I scratched at a spot on my stomach and felt a kick in that exact place. Just for the heck of it, I did it again. Felt another kick in the same place. I did this four or five times with the same result before it stopped. I'm not sure if it was a coincidence or if the baby really was interacting with me, but it entertained me, at least.

The periodic kicks make everything seem a little more real. Even though I've only got a little over three more months to go, there are still time when I can't believe this is really happening. I have those moments (probably intensified by pregnancy hormones) where I imagine the future and become convinced that I'll never be able to handle motherhood, that I'll mess it all up.

But recently I went to a Christmas party with a bunch of friends, one of which had a nearly one-year-old little girl. In the past, I would have given a baby a wide berth, but this time I felt comfortable with her around. I was even pleased when, tempted by the sparkles on my Christmas shirt, she let me pick her up off the floor and hold her so she could inspect it better.

She didn't scream, didn't cry. I didn't drop her. She just calmly poked at my shiny shirt in between glancing curiously up at me.

And I had the quiet thought, "Hey, maybe I won't be so bad at this after all."