Urban Drool

Because I just didn't feel COMPLETELY and totally awful today, I just found out in the previous 6 minutes that

a) my two cats ran away

and

b) I did NOT get the fantastic job that I had a 2 1/2 hour interview for for VERY BIG AND IMPORTANT LAW FIRM, LLC.

Going to go sob in the Ladies room now...

I am floating around - I think my whole family is in some kind of transitional phase right now, and we have not yet landed. The Boy, the baby and I had to achieve a new normal when we first got home from the hospital, a new(er) normal when I returned to work, and we are now in the throes of yet another shift into another new(er) normal.

We ain't there yet.

And I am having a really tough time.

In truth, I feel bruised and beaten - greatly disheartened. For weeks now, I feel like everything I say and everything I do annoys/angers/embarreses/just plain pisses of my husband. The rolled eyes, exasperated sighs, stormy silences and outright bursts of anger are running rampant from him right now. It's as if I am a constantly misbehaving 5 year old and he is the unfortunate sod whose job it is to babysit and correct/chastise me.

In his eyes, I don't clean the house the "right" way: the way he does.

Ditto for feeding the baby.

and soothing the baby.

and shopping for household goods.

and dealing with trying to find a new job.

and speaking to him in public.

and just generally existing, so it seems.

All of these above things are done (by me) incorrectly.

Everything I do is met with irritation and indignation. I cannot remember the last time I received a completely unsolicited kind word from him. I cannot remember the last time we were driving somewhere in the car and he just reached over and held my hand. Or the last time he approached me, smiled and kissed me and said "thanks."

He will, however, call me and ask me to do a million things for him on any given day. I try and accomplish most of them. And I do get some of them done. But it's the one thing...the ONE thing that I did not manage to do that I hear about ad finitum when I get home.

I know things are tough right now, for both of us. I know that transitioning into a new family dynamic after you have a baby is huge. And difficult. And takes a long time. But I cannot believe that I am REALLY all that irritating, all that incompetant. Am I really that impossible to live with? Am I really that much of a dissapointment?

Between my boss at work, telling me that I am useless and my husband at home who most of the time acts as though he would greatly prefer to not speak to me or even be in the same room with me, my self esteem these days is nonexistant.

It sucks.

I have nothing else to say right now...I don't even have the heart to write a (already way overdue) Pickle Periodical. How very sad.

OK...going to hide in a corner and lick my wounds and be as invisible as I can be...

So monumentally depressed.

I have sent out over a dozen resumes in the past 5 weeks.

I received exactly one telephone call in response.

One.

I had the interview last night.

He was such a nice, laid back guy.

In a little law office not even 10 minutes away from my house.

He was willing to let me work on my own files, without a lot of heavy supervision.

He was even willing to have flexible hours. I would have been able to have one more whole day a week to be at home with Lucy.

But…but…

It would have been a pay cut. A small pay cut, but a pay cut nonetheless.

And…and…

No medical insurance of any kind.

So it was unacceptable.

And I turned him down.

And I am seeing endless weeks and months and years of commuting almost 2 hours total every day back and forth to a job I hate for a boss that treats me like a red-headed stepchild for not enough money and did I mention that I only have around 6 “real, awake” hours with the baby per day (at least, when those days are Monday thru Friday)??

I can’t believe I had to turn down this job.

I feel like I am never going to be able to leave the office I am in right now.

My stomach turns into knots when I walk out my door every damn morning.

so. monumentally. depressed.

It took me awhile to get to the point where I realized and accepted that I really needed some professional assistance in dealing with both the trauma of the Pickle’s birth and my post-partum depression.

Once I got to that point, it was apparently another enormous struggle to actually GET the help. Through an odd chain of events that included my insurance only covering psychiatrists and not therapists and but wait! here’s a counseling program for moms that I can do but then the case manager for that program had emergency surgery and was out of the office for 8 weeks and her temporary help misplaced my file after my initial intake and then I had my intake but they cannot begin actual sessions, group or individual for another month because their building is being renovated, etc…and it’s really been a long couple of months.

Ahem.

But. Intake appointments 1 and 2 have been completed. And I have a mammoth 2-3 hour long one on one session in two days. And then (hopefully) will begin with group sessions every week thereafter.

I am more than a bit apprehensive about this next appointment. OK...I am pretty scared about this next appointment - for a number of reasons. As I told the Boy the other night, I feel like I have placed a rather effective band-aid over my emotional hurts, and this whole process is going to rip those band-aids right off. It needs to be done, sure, but I have a feeling that it's going to really suck.

Also...although my insurance will cover counseling sessions at this facility, it only covers sessions with specific professionals at this facility. Which is no big deal, except that all the counselors that I am permitted to see are men.

Men with penises.

With no uteri or vaginai or cervixi amongst the lot of them.

And I wonder how much I will actually be able to open up and eventually absorb, in a tiny 8 x 8 room with a 45 year old man who has never given birth.

I don’t know if I am being unreasonable here (which is very likely) or what, but I guess I just always assumed that when I began treatment, it would be with a female counselor. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I don’t think a man would be an excellent counselor. It’s just that for this particular type of therapy I am a little doubtful that…I don’t know. That a person of the penile persuasion is the most appropriate option.

Am I being weird here? Or do I have a legitimate concern?

We shall see. But it’s obvious to me, in any event, that help is needed.

Exhibit A: I had to drive past a hospital on my way to the freeway a few days ago and nearly had a panic attack. This wasn’t the hospital where I had the baby. This wasn’t even a hospital that I have ever been in, for crap’s sake. Just some…random hospital. And I immediately started hearing the voices of the doctors and smelled blood and felt such a wave of shame, fear and self-loathing that I almost pulled off the road to calm down.

Exhibit B: I had to call the actual hospital where I had the baby last Friday and order my medical records. I was told by the case manager (now back from medical leave, sporting a brand – new, artificial hip none the less!!) that my medical records, detailing the birth and aftermath would be a “helpful tool in assessing the series of events that you will be chronicling with your therapist.” And I was shaking and sweating the whole time I was on the line with the nice folks from the Department of Patient Records.

Fun.

Erk and sigh and oh my flipping Joe Pesci.

So, help is apparently on the way, even if it comes with a penis.

(in case you wanted the final count, the word penis was either referred to or stated outright a total of three times)

(four, counting the above sentence)

As most of you know, the Boy posted a bit of an angst-filled entry a couple weeks back regarding me and my parenting choices vis-à-vis a natural tendency of mine to take after my mother.

To be fair, he cleared the idea of the entry with me beforehand and even asked me to read it before he posted it.

He also asked me to consider posting an entry of my own. A sort-of-but-not-really chance to retaliate and voice my own complaints/concerns/general angst regarding him. And I’ve been working on it, I really have. I think about it and formulate entries in my head and then I shoot it all to dust as I try and put it to paper. And I think I finally know the reason why:

I have zero complaints about the Boy as a father. The Boy is an amazing father. The Boy could not be better as a father.

But wait! Before you all roll your eyes and gag on the sweetness-induced nausea that clogs the back of your throat (don’t you just hate that?), let me rein you back in with this promise:

I have a few complaints about life with the Boy as we SHARE the parenting of the pickle.

To start of with, I really do feel the need to reiterate yet again how tender and instinctive a father the Boy is. He knows the baby’s schedule to the second, yet he also recognizes when she is going to have an off day, with her schedule blown to bits. He navigates the rocky waters of her occasionally schizophrenic personality (screaming her head off with tears running down her cheeks while smiling a huge sparkly smile all at the same time) with patience and love. He is not sent into panic mode by explosive poops, lethargy, a mild fever, teething, never ending crying, etc. He will walk, rock, kiss and coo her fussyness away. He also takes the time to simply sit and bask during her many calm and love soaked “play times,” knowing that precious, loving baby-moments need to be experienced and remembered. He does ALL this, and still manages (most of the time) to have a clean house and finished laundry and dinner ready by the time I walk in the door.

He has done such an amazing job with her that he has become very firmly set in his parenting “ways.” As he should! They have yielded nothing but success.

The problem here is this, and twofold: from the very second I get home and walk in the door, the Boy expects me to

A) be “on the clock” and taking 100% responsibility of care of the Pickle until I leave for
work the next morning


but


B) using the parenting techniques and theories and systems that he uses.

An example: If I have been rocking and nursing the baby and I really need to put her down to either pee or get a glass of water, etc., I sometimes walk over to the Boy and ask “can you hold her for just a sec? I’m going to grab a drink.”

And the Boy shakes his head and looks at me like I have lobsters crawling out of my ears. No, he won’t hold her for 3 seconds, because it’s not his “time on the clock.” And besides (he says) he does “X” while holding the baby all the time. If he can do it, why can’t I?

So instead I put her down (where I am sometimes told not to, she doesn’t like to be down, she likes to be held, no not like that, you know she likes to be held upright, and jiggle her, remember you have to jiggle her) or try and put her in the bouncy chair (you never put her high up enough in the chair, you need to tighten the belt around her more, great, now she’s going to sink down and hit the backs of her heels on the chair, no, you’re not doing it right)

and so it goes…

And I end up rushing around, trying to pee, comb my hair and grab a water in 4.5 seconds so I can rush back and pick the baby back up before she does something that will make the Boy think that I have not cared for her in his way or that, in his eyes, I have made a poor parenting decision.

In basic terms, I am expected to take care of the Pickle every second that I am not at work, but I sometimes feel like if I make one “mistake” or do things differently than how the Boy does them, I will get yelled at by him and someone will come and take my baby away. There is no break for me. I either work at work or I work at home and there is always someone there…looking over my shoulder.

Now, in a sense this seems really nit-picky and yes, more than a little unfair of me. If this is one of the only complaints I have about the Boy, than WOW. I am doing awesome in the whole “supportive partner and tender father for my child” department. Believe me, I know I have struck gold in having the husband and father of my child that I do.

It’s also very unfair of me, because what this scenario really is is a twisted version of your “typical” stay-at-home-mom-vs-work-full-time-dad scenario. The Boy, in this case, is the mom who, having spent 14 hours a day alone with the child, knows everything about the child and exactly how the child likes to be taken care of and I am the unfortunate sod who, in this case, is the work full time dad who desperately craves every moment spent with the child like I am starving and she is a steak dinner and instead that fleeting time that I do get to spend with her is sometimes marred when I am made to feel inferior as a parent in deference to the “stay at home mom’s” superior parenting skills.

I see this scenario (in its more traditional sense) reflected in our dear friends (Mya’s Mommy and Daddy). Mya’s Mommy (MM) has a personality very similar to the Boy’s and a likewise similarity exists between me and Mya’s Daddy (MD). There have been countless times when MM “catches” MD doing something with/to Mya that MM disapproves of. The subsequent lecture and bickering that follows is eerily reminiscent of “discussions” between me and the Boy. The difference here is that MD does not seem to take these moments as personally as I do. I suspect that this is because

1) MD is more easy of spirit and self-confident than I and
2) MD is not suffering from any post-partum issues (duh) and
3) He expects it.

So, unfortunately, there is nothing strange or unheard of in the way the Boy operates with me vis-à-vis the Pickle. It happens all the time between a million first-time parenting couples. The difference here is that I am on the receiving end. It fucking sucks.

I tell you this though: I will never again assume that it is “easy” to be a work full time dad. It seems in our society that all the support/concern, etc. is focused on helping new, stay at home moms. But everyone forgets about the dad. Society just assumes that it is cut-and-dry and EASY for a man to leave a weeks-old baby at home and go back to work. Everyone assumes that he doesn’t need any help – or a sympathetic ear to listen to his thoughts and worries. Everyone assumes that he has no problems whatsoever in the choice that he has made.

I disagree. Whether father, mother, man, woman, whatever - leaving your child is heart breaking.

Not that I compare my experiences 100% with a new dad. I believe a have maybe a little more on my emotional plate than your average new dad. A new dad does not have the post-partum issues that I do, and a new dad does not nurse (obviously). I think my physical connection to the Pickle makes me leaving her much harder than it would otherwise.

I guess all I’m trying to say here is this: It’s not easy playing the role in my family that I do. In fact, it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done. In it’s own way, it’s 1000% more difficult than the labor and delivery and aftermath of Lucy’s birth day. It’s perfectly awful to drag myself away from this baby that I have waited for and struggled for and lived through perfect hell for and leave her every day. The societal repercussions of how our family works makes it even harder. I don’t think the Boy is doing these things intentionally to drive me crazy. Far from it. I think, instead, that I am perceiving it as a personal attack and unfortunately it is adding to my already existing feelings of inadequacies and inferiority. The Boy is doing nothing that’s really wrong here, he’s just being an excellent parent.

But my inner voices constantly tell me that I am not a good woman and not a good mother because I leave my baby everyday for so long. And having my “mothering skills” observed, frowned upon and/or corrected and knowing that the Boy really does a better job with the Pickle then me most times does not help that any.

…wow. Once again, I become the most self-absorbed human on the planet. This post was supposed to be a complaint about the Boy and instead it has turned into a self-critique. Ah, well.

Thus endeth the most convoluted entry yet written. If you are still here, finishing up the reading of this tiresome entry, Congratulations!

The Lucinator and I went and visited my mom the other day, and her neighbor/great family friend took the opportunity to give me some pictures of me that she “just had developed!”

“Ooooo!” thinks I, “maybe she’s going to give me some snaps she took the other week when the baby and I were hanging out at her pool…or maybe from when my sister was here visiting in April.”

yeah…not so much. People, they were of my baby shower. My baby shower. The shower for the baby that is now 5 months old. She just had them developed.

At first, I just glanced at them and did a “yeah, there I am…crap I got really fucking huge there towards the end didn’t I - eh” thing and just threw them in my purse.

But today at lunch I opened up my purse to grab some change and saw them again. And I stared at them for 10 full minutes. And I started to feel so…sad?

angry?
bemused?
embarrassed?

Embarrassed. That’s it.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I had a nice time at my shower. Lovely ladies, lovely gifties – all in all it was a pleasant way to spend 7 hours of my life.

But the pictures reminded me of what I was like right before the baby came. What I was thinking, what I was feeling, what I was expecting to happen.

I was so sure that I knew what was going to happen – what life would be like. No matter how many times I told people that I had a birth plan but “I know that things usually don’t go as planned!” breezily assuring all that “we were totally ready to just roll with the punches” I never in my heart of hearts believed it. I never imagined that MY labor and MY birth would ever be anything but EXACTLY HOW I WANTED IT TO BE.

Because, you see, deep down, I knew. I knew it would go exactly my way. I was so confidant and assured. I was going to have a totally natural, intervention-free labor and birth and my first moments with my first baby would be the most wonderful heavenly nirvana most magical this is exactly how life is supposed to be happysqueebabyjoynothingtoworryabouthereblahblahweepycakes

So smug. So self-assured. So all knowing.

So naïve.

I am starting to see, as I try so very hard to work through this anger and depression and fear and crippling frustration, that the labor and birth that brought my Lucy to me was in fact, my first lesson in this, my new life.

You know nothing. You have control over nothing. You can be forced to go the scariest places your mind and soul have ever traveled and still remain alive and in one piece. You can, and will, sit upright and nurse your baby and care for your child and focus entirely on keeping this new being alive, even while your own body is half-paralyzed and your own life’s blood is rushing out of you. That is how important your child is, and that is how strong you are. You, and whatever you wanted, whatever you thought you were going to get, means nothing now. Fate is in total control, and you are just the hapless schmuck who is along for the ride.

You know nothing.

That girl in the pictures doesn’t know that. She doesn’t know that everything she wanted and expected about how her baby was going to enter this world would be smashed to bits. She doesn’t know that her body will be racked with nearly 3 days of pitocin and an emergency C-Section. She doesn’t know that she will nearly bleed to death, and that it would take a team of over a dozen complete strangers to make sure that she doesn’t. She doesn’t know that she will be unable to get out of bed for the first 48 hours of her first born child’s life. She doesn’t know that she will have to be back at work, 42 hours a week a mere 5 weeks later. She doesn’t know that her heart will go from breaking in pieces to swelling with a love greater then anything she’s ever felt to breaking in pieces at least 4 times every day.

And she doesn’t know that she’s going to survive it all.

If the Boy and I have another baby, I will read a lot about VBACs. I will see more than one doctor. I will be as informed as I can be. And I will try my very best to have as happy and healthy a birth (for all concerned) as can happen. And maybe it will work out for me next time – maybe I will get a birth a little closer to what I wanted. And maybe it won’t.

But I will know something then that I didn’t know before.

I will know that, even as prepared and informed and determined as I can be, the fates are still in charge.

I will finally know that I know nothing.

Before I am “approved” to continue onto either individualized or group therapy at the health center where I am seeking help I am required to undergo a 2 part intake process, the first part of which I completed last week with a chirpy young counselor named Wendy.

The majority of the bajillion questions I answered were rather standard and expected – along the lines of “have you harbored any unusual thoughts of harming your baby?” and “what is your insurance group ID number?”

..to which I answered “isn’t any thought of harming your baby unusual?....um, no I have not.” and “BAF649817, “ respectively.

We plowed through query after tedious query:

“Have you noticed any changes in your appetite?” – No.

“Are you currently taking any pharmaceuticals, either legally prescribed or otherwise?” – um…no. Should I be?

She then asked me a question that gave me, shall we say, pause.

“Have you been experiencing any feelings of anger?”

….blinkgaspemptystare….

And the air in the room suddenly became very difficult to breathe.

It was a concept that I had not given a great deal of focus to the past few months, but as soon as she said the word “anger,” a tremendous anger filled me. It was horrible.

Yes, yes I am angry. I am so, so angry.

I thought I was sad (which I certainly am, to an extent). I thought I was worried and paranoid (not so much right now). And I may be these things to certain degrees on certain days. But it became evident to me, at the moment chirpy counselor girl Wendy asked me that particular question, that indeed, the primary horribleness in me is anger. I hadn’t even realized it until just then.

I am angry that Lucy’s birth was so completely not what I wanted nor what I had prepared myself for. Naïve, stupid, STUPID me.

I am angry that people want me to “just get over it” and “not focus on that anymore” because “the birth really does not matter.” To which I say: bullshit. The birth matters so incredibly much.

I am angry that I had to leave her and go back to work 42 hours a week when she was only 5 weeks old. That I was not done healing to any extent, but it did not seem to matter to anyone.

I am angry at every single pregnant woman I see. Anywhere. I am angry because I am so bitterly jealous. Because more than anything, I want to go back in time to the few days leading up to the week I had the baby, so I can “do it right.” And any woman currently expecting a baby has that chance. The chance to do it right. A chance I am not going to have, ever again.

I am angry at my sister’s best friend. Who is a wonderful woman. Who has been like another sister to me since I was 11 years old. Because she just gave birth to her first child this past Thursday. 1 day past her due date. With no dialation or effacement of any kind, they still decided to induce her. And, after 18 hours of relatively easy labor and a nice epidural, she easily birthed her first child. And was home with him 36 hours later. And I am so angry at her for having a first time birth that I will never have.

I am angry at the very sweet and kind girl in my office who is currently 24 weeks pregnant. See previous two points above as to the reason why. Every time she walks by my desk to go to the Ladies Room (approximately 2 times per hour, she IS 24 weeks people) I see her rounded little belly and I want to yell at the top of my lungs.

I am angry that no one seems to care how miserable I am. Everyone is all concerned and fussy and happy and pampering you when you are pregnant. And when you are in labor. But literally…the very SECOND the baby is born, you cease to matter to anybody in any capacity. No one wants to hear any longer about how hard it was to endure 2-3 days of pitocin saturated labor with no pain relief and then to be suddenly strapped to a table and cut open and then the baby is there and…and…Lumi? What Lumi? Who’s that? Is she the mom? Oh…you mean the USELESS VESSEL THAT GESTATED THIS GORGEOUS ANGEL BABY BUT WHO COULD NOT EVEN MANAGE TO PUSH IT OUT.

(see what I mean? Ugly and unreasonable anger)

I am angry that some days I don’t even feel like a “real” mother. That, much as I want to, I don’t have the TIME to perform as a “real mother.” I feel like a robot. A machine that provides money and milk. That is my primary function in my family. I need to make money and milk. And the really hysterical thing is that I cannot seem to provide adequate amounts of either of these things. Evidence to support this: at least twice a week, the Boy will either

a) complain that we don’t ever have enough money in the account or
b) ask me how much milk I managed to pump that particular day or
c) sigh and comment that he STILL needs to make up a few ounces of formula a day to supplement the breastmilk that seems to disappear by noon or
d) all of the above

Money and Milk. These are the things I struggle to provide so that the Boy can stay home and mother the baby.

But most of the time? I am angry at myself. I am SO angry at myself. I have not found a way yet to see myself as anything but inadequate. I could not birth my baby naturally and gently. I could not stop myself from nearly bleeding to death when she was a mere 4 hours old. I still cannot keep her on 100% breastmilk. I cannot buy her every single thing I want her to have. I cannot be there 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. I cannot be filled with sunshine and joy and birdsong all the time, because I am still infected with this anger, and I fear that she will somehow sense it. I don’t always know what every cry means. I cannot be the best mother in all the world, and because I cannot be the best, I somehow feel that I am therefore wholly inadequate.

I am angry at myself and I am also angry that I am angry.

Oh, yes, I have been experiencing feelings of anger.

------------------------------------------

I am NOT, however, angry at the writers of HBO’s DEADWOOD and the bad-ass wondernous that is Ian McShane. Boy’s Howdy was last night’s episode fucking fantastic!

I have a very good friend here at work. She was the first person who found out about my pregnancy (she walked in on me in the ladies room last May, as I stood there at the bathroom sink, stupidly staring at a barley positive HPT) and has been a source of constant advice, humor and support.

She is 38 and has a 6 year old daughter. Single mom. Great gal.

Her father died last night.

He was only 68 years old. He went in for an outpatient surgery about 3 weeks ago. Hernia repair. No biggie. Then about a week later, the whole family dragged him back to the hospital becuase his pain was pretty bad and something seemed off.

In about 4 hours time, he went from perfectly fine to unconcsious and bleeding out from a huge bleeding ulcer in his gut that nobody seemed to pick up on during his surgery. He lost a huge amount of blood and after days that stretched into weeks in the Surgical ICU and countless blood transfusions, infections, 2 more surgeries and 2 minor heart attacks, he died last night around 11 pm.

I am sitting here in shock, feeling so awful for her. She and her dad were so close. And I feel so awful for her little girl. My friend's daughter was asking countless times over the past 2 weeks to see her Grandpa, and she was always told she could not (children are not allowed in the ICU). At one point, she was certain that she was not allowed to see Grandpa becuase maybe she had done something bad and everyone was mad at her.

Is that not totally heart wrenching?

Anyway. I guess that's it. It's just so sad. It's shitty seeing bad things happen. It's even shittier seeing bad things happen to really good people.

Here's my friend holding my little pickle when she was only 3 weeks old...

You know that it’s been indescribably tough for me, being back at work.

You know that most days I am pretty miserable, being away from her.

You know that I have been determined to make breastfeeding a success – I’ve been talking about it from the time I was barely pregnant.

You know that I love to nurse her. That she loves to be nursed. That it’s the only thing I feel I have right now that is exclusively mine. Other people watch her. Other people care for her. Other people dress her in her little clothes and take her places while I am away. Other people rock her, comfort her, play with her, talk to her. I am so happy that she is so well cared for. I am so happy that you and our other family members are able to spend so much time with her, grow close and bond.

So other people feed her, yes, but not nurse her. That’s mine.

You know that I have been really upset lately at seeing my milk supply start to diminish. I know that you have been giving her several ounces of formula a day. I know that the 7-8 ounces of breastmilk that I struggle to pump and leave in the fridge isn’t enough to get her through until 5:30. It hurts to pump. My skin is pinched and raw. My breasts are always hurting. My nipples are cracked and even bleed a little bit sometimes. But I still do it. I HAVE to do it.

Because if I cannot stop my milk supply from diminishing, it’s going to disappear completely. And then there will be one more thing tacked onto the ever-growing list of “things that I was unable to do for my baby.” Just stick it right underneath “give her a gentle birth” and “stay home and be there for her, every moment of every day of her tiny, fleeting baby-hood.”

Knowing all this, why in the world would you think that it was a good idea to remind me that, becuase I went back to work, I am now completely unable to keep up with her enormous appetite? That I did “the hardest part” and it’s over now…just because she is starting to develop her own immune system? That she’s “past the time where you are vital. She is getting to a point where formula and cereal are OK.”

That “really, all the nursing means now is cost-effectiveness.”

Cost-effectiveness?
And me nursing her is just not important anymore?
…the hell???????

She is only 3 ½ months old! How can you NOT see that your words were like tiny little daggers being dragged through my heart?

I know that hurting me was not your intention at all. That you didn’t really think about how that conversation would make me feel. Maybe you think that you were alleviating my guilt that I cannot exclusively feed my own baby.

But seriously. The fact that every other sentence of yours started with “I know you don’t want to hear this but…” or “I know that you don’t want me to say this but…” might have clued you in that you were about to make me feel very worthless and upset.

DISCLAIMER #1 : This is a not-fun post. It’s really just an attempt at some emotional release of some nasty-ass, scared and generally negative shit that has been brewing inside me since the baby was born. So if you? Want to skip? I? Will not hold a grudge.

(on the other hand, I, as always, value and treasure all y’all’s views and opinions. So if you will read and maybe let me know what you think, it would be 1000% appreciated.)

DISCLAIMER #2: It’s also really freaking long. And tedious. You may want to take a pee and grab a coffee or some wine before you settle in.

OK.

So. There is something that I have been wanting to write about for awhile.

Actually, no. That’s not true. I don’t want to write about this. I feel I have to write about this. About 2 months ago is when I wrote the first part of the story.. If you haven’t read it yet, g’head and hop over to http://aradiailluminare.typepad.com/Illumination_Maybe. It's the second to last post (I think)

................................................................................................................

Done?

OK. First, the facts: I didn’t get to see Lucy for about 10 minutes after she was born. They were cleaning her up and getting her all warm and bundled. I could hear the Boy talking excitedly with the nurses. He came back to where I was lying periodically to check on me and assure me that she was beautiful and wonderful and totally OK. He was finally allowed to bring her over to me and I saw her gorgeous face for the first time. But they would not release my hands (which were bound to the table) to let me touch her. The Boy was so thoughtful – I think he could sense how desperately I needed to feel her, so he held her down by my head so I could smell her and kiss her little face.

I distinctly remember him saying “She looks just like Pappa Rudi!” (his grandfather. Heh)

They eventually made him leave. I didn’t want him to leave, but they made him. He left to inform the grandparents and I lay there for another 30 minutes. Getting stitched and put back together. And it was all of a sudden very cold and sterile and scary and I was unbelievably sad. I desperately wanted to be given my baby and to be left the fuck alone. Random strangers had been poking and proding at me for nearly 4 days without interruption and I felt like I had reached the end of my line. I was looking around the operating room for a familiar face, but there was none. My midwife? Gone. The nice anesthesiologist assistant who sat by my head during the delivery? Over in a corner, writing her notes. The random group of OBs and surgical nurses? On the other side of the blue curtain, doing…whatever the fuck they were doing. Not that it would have mattered if one of them had bothered to speak to me – they were all complete strangers.

It was a very lonely and sad 30 minutes. I felt terribly claustrophobic. I HATE HATE HATE lying flat on my back, and here I was, immobile. I could hear my baby crying, but could not see her. My vision was blocked by the damn blue paper. STUPID FUCKING BLUE PAPER HANGY-THINGY!! It was all so medical and sterile and lonely and not how I wanted the first 30 minutes of my daughter’s life to be. Aside from a brief kiss on her cheek, I had not even touched her.

I was finally transferred to a gurney (and finally put in an upright sitting position) and they tried to hand me the baby. But I was shaking so hard from all the pharmaceuticals of the previous 2 hours that I could not safely hold her. So I was sternly told to not pick her up. Imagine. My baby is 30 minutes old, and I am too weak and shaking and BROKEN to hold her for the first time. They wheeled me into the recovery room, with the baby cradled on top of my legs, sort of wedged between my knees.

The next 4 hours involved grandmothers in the recovery room, my first nursing session with the baby (about 10 minutes after they brought me into the recovery room), having my epidural line removed, begging the bitch nurse in the recovery room for a glass of water (my lips were cracked and bleeding, they were so raw and dry), begging the bitch nurse in the recovery room to give me something to stop the incredible shaking (which was getting worse) and getting transferred up to my postpartum unit.

They took the baby away for about an hour to bathe and examine her and the Boy and I crashed in my new room for a much needed nap. (nap? heh. We both could have probably slept like the dead for 24 straight hours at that point. But, I took the 60 minutes of blissful unconsciousness without argument).

During these four hours immediately following the surgery I was still very much in a state of shock, but my main focus was on the baby and how incredible she was. I was dimly aware of some truly angry and negative feelings regarding how the last stages of labor and delivery had played out, but I was stubbornly ignoring them, deciding that I was going to concentrate on the baby. I was trying to regain a sense of peace and keep the angry shit at bay - floating around the edges of my periphery until I had time and energy to deal with them.

There was a shift change in nurses at the hospital right about this time. All joking and snarkiness aside, I thank the heavens for the nurse who was starting her shift and in charge of my care for the next 6 hours. I think she saved my life. I cannot remember her name, which is a real shame, so I’ll call her Karen.

Karen came in the room to introduce herself. She was an excellent combination of caring, personable, smart and competent. There were some kind comments made about how beautiful our baby was, and how she read through my chart and my goodness, I had a bit of a rough time of it, hadn’t I and if we needed anything here was the call button.

She left.
I started to feel…odd.
I started to feel…wet. Very wet.

I told the Boy that I thought I needed a change of my pads already. You see, a “certain amount of vaginal bleeding will probably happen, even after a C-section, because your uterus is losing the last small amounts of blood that were not suctioned away during the surgery” or so I was made to understand. So, I had been wearing mammoth-the-size-of-a-Cadillac-sanitary-pads to try and absorb the blood. I was also told to NOT try and change them myself (I was not yet even allowed to get out of bed), but call the nurse to have her change them for me. Bear in mind that I was still catheterized up the hooha (and into the bladder) at this point, and they didn’t want me jostling the tubing.

Anyway, it seemed that the next 30 seconds played out in slow motion. The nurse came in the room in response to the Boy’s request, I explained that I thought I needed my pads changed and I’m feeling a little odd and can she check me please and then she pulled back the warm covers of my bed and there was blood and so much blood and I heard a “ssshhhlllllump” and felt some very large and very wet things slide out of me and the Boy said “Oh my God” and there was more blood and the nurse yanked the back of the bed down into a completely prone position so I was once again flat on my back and I hate being flat on my back and she told me to not move and she ran out of the room and the blood kept coming and coming and coming out and all over me.

It was soaking the sheets and the mattress underneath. It was gushing down the bed and all over the floor. It kept coming and coming. And the nurse came racing back into the room.

The events of the next 40 minutes are simultaneously kinda blurry yet etched distinctly in my mind. The nurse paged the on-call OB, who was in my room in a matter of seconds. He threw back the covers and plunged his hand up my vagina, trying to locate and assess the reason for the bleeding. There was lots of loud and urgent speaking. There were many decisions being made very quickly. I was not informed of any of it. There were nurses. And then more nurses. It ended up that there was a total of 2 doctors and 12 nurses in my room. And then the doctor was so angry, constantly yelling at the nurses that they “Weren’t moving fast enough” and “Dammit, I needed that IV in her 10 minutes ago!” and “Page Dr. M____, we need him here STAT” and “Book another OR..tell them I need OR 3 ready in 5 minutes. We’re taking her back down.”

Then Dr. M_____ showed up. The head of Maternal-Fetal Medicine. This is the part where (later on) the Boy told me he got scared. This entire time they had him shoved in the far corner of the room, out of the way. I could see him. He was holding the baby tight against his chest, staring unbelievingly at the proceedings. He seemed to be keeping a relatively cool head, occasionally calling out things like “You’re going to be OK, honey” and “Hang in there…hang in there with me, OK?” But when Dr. M_____ showed up, the Boy told me that he started to get really worked up. Dr. M___ rushed into the room, dressed in a very nice suit. They didn’t ask for another on-call doc. They didn’t ask for a P.A. They asked for the head of Maternal-Fetal Medicine, a specialist who heard what was going on with me and apparently felt it serious enough that he rushed into the room to assess and assist. A guy…in a suit. That is what made the Boy seriously worry.

Another strange hand up…way WAY up inside me. And then one hand inside me and another two hands pressing down onto my uterus from the outside. And my catheter tube was yanked out of my bladder. This was absolute agony. These two men rubbed and massaged and pressed and pushed for endless minutes. Minutes that stretched into an eternity. The nurses were still rushing about. By this time I had a total of 5 IVs in me, with various tubes leading to various bags filled with various kinds of fluids that were separated amongst 3 IV stands surrounding my bed.

My perception of reality was so amazingly skewed at this point that this entire episode could have been 5 hours long, or only a matter of seconds. I later realized that it was about 30-40 minutes. Slowly things began to calm down from “emergency” to “critical” and then to “serious.” They cancelled the operating room. I was not going to need a D&C. I was not going to need an emergency hysterectomy. The bleeding was slowing. Then the bleeding was nearly stopped. The first doctor stopped yelling at the nurses and even took a moment to look me in the face (for the very first time since he entered the room) and said:

“I know this is scary. But you need to continue to stay very still. You’re going to be fine, but stay very, very still.”

I whispered, “I know.”

And the thing is, I think that I did know. I could see all the blood. I could smell all the blood. I could feel the blood pouring out of me. I did not know why I was losing so much blood, but I think I realized, even in my dim frame of mind, that if I screamed or panicked or tried to sit up or got worked up in any fashion, it would only make it worse. I need to stay still. To stay quiet. To breathe slowly and deeply and try and keep my heart rate low. If I got upset and my heart rate increased, the blood would start pumping out of me at an even faster rate.

So I knew. And I was quiet. And I stared for endless minutes at the Boy in the corner. Not allowed to come to the side of my bed. Not allowed to hold my hand. Clutching the baby to his chest. I am crying right now as I type this. I won’t forget that image ever, I don’t think.

This was the fifth hour of my baby’s life.

And then it was all over. And someone (I honestly don’t remember who) explained to me what happened. The uterus is just one large muscle. And my uterus, having been through 2 inductions, 21 hours of hard-core labor, way, WAY to much pitocin and then the incisions of the C-Section, no longer had any strength and was no longer working as a muscle. It completely gave out. All the blood in that area starting pouring through the uterus and out of me like a sieve. The doctors had been “vigorously massaging” (ahem) the uterus both internally and externally to get it to shrink down and had to actually push it back into it’s proper place inside me. The IVs were providing me with saline, antibiotics and more pitocin (does anyone else think that this last one is absolutely hysterical??). I was also the happy recipient of 2 (or maybe 3) blood transfusions.

Throughout the following 36 hours, the nurses were charged with checking my blood pressure, heart rate and temperature every 30 minutes. Every 30 minutes for 36 hours. Then it was every 60 minutes, then every 2 hours, then every shift change. There were many comments made from people wandering in and out of my room for the next few days…

“Oh! So you’re the one that I’ve been hearing about. Wow. What a rough time you’ve had.”

and

“Wow, you’re looking so much better then the last time I saw you.”

and

“I’m so happy that you ended up alright after all.”

and

“I just had to come and see you…see how you were doing.”

And every time they would leave I would ask the Boy, “Who was that?” He would answer “They were here in the room. When it happened.”

When it happened.

When it happened.

The natural, loving, gentle, friendly, happy birth with my Boy, my doula and our wonderful midwife that I so wanted was replaced with a cold, sterile, MEDICAL, stern, terrifying and ultimately, life threatening birth amongst total strangers.

I was in the hospital for one full week.

Most of the time I just kind of smiled and slept and answered questions and nursed the baby. And for several days – kind of pretended that it didn’t happen. Or at the very least, sort of down played the seriousness of it all, even to myself. Mostly to myself. I think I was not yet ready to acknowledge the horribleness of it all. And besides, there was my wonderful baby to take care of. So for the majority of the first several weeks, I concentrated on that. On her. Because the joy she was bringing me and the Boy was (and is) monumental. Mind-alterting joy. And I really, REALLY didn’t want that joy infected by all this negative shit.

I think that a lot of this is now re-surfacing and I am compelled to look at this whole thing full in the face because we are gradually moving past the initial “survival” phase. The baby is doing wonderfully. She is eating, growing, thriving. And thanks to the Boy’s determined efforts, she is on a (kind of) schedule of sorts. I am back at work (grrr….). Life is calming down and falling into place. Sort of.

The point is, I now have a moment or two every day to think. And thinking? Ain’t always good.

I can categorize all the muck-ity muck into two big “issues” (gah – I hate that word):

1) I feel horribly inadequate regarding the “birthing” aspect of being a mother. I am still so sad that Lucy’s birth was not anywhere near what I wanted. I wanted to push her out into the world with the Boy at my side, encouraging me and cheering me on. I wanted to hold her on my belly and wipe her off and hand her to her father. I loved the dim, quiet, homey-looking room that I labored in for days on end. I was really looking forward to birthing the baby in that same room – the room that I came to know so well from hours upon hours of rocking, squatting, moaning and laughing – soaking in the tub. I knew that room and I trusted that space. It felt safe and good. The operating room, in contrast, was so bright and sterile and unknown and scary. I felt so angry and frustrated with myself that I could not see her, hold her, comfort her. To hear her cry and cry in the OR and not be able take her in my arms and tell her I loved her and welcome her into the world. To not be the very first person to cradle her in my arms and have her hear my voice. It’s awful. And to feel so….violated. I wanted a midwife and a doula because I wanted to surround myself with women that I knew and trusted. I wanted the moment of the baby’s birth to be such a happy time. Instead, so many strangers were put in charge of my care and the delivery of the baby. Sometimes I think that I could do it better, do it right if I had the chance to have a “do-over.” I want to take back those last few hours and put right what went wrong. I guess…in simpler words…I feel guilty. I feel like it was my fault.

2) We want more children. And I am absolutely terrified that this will happen again. My midwife had a serious talk with me at my 6 week post-partum appointment. She told me that any future pregnancies would be “carefully monitored” and that my chances of another C-Section are greater than normal due to the post-surgical hemorrhaging. Also, I will not be allowed to go past my due date. I will not be induced. If I do go into labor on my own, I will only be “allowed” to labor for about 10-12 hours tops. There will always be a rather significant concern that my uterus will give out at any point towards the end of a pregnancy or during labor. If that happens, I could start bleeding out again, and they may not be able to stop it next time.


Great.

So. I guess that’s about it. In summation: I am very pleased with the care we received at the hospital I was at. They saved my life and took very good care of Lucy. (they charged the Boy nearly $75 total in parking for the whole week we were there, but hey, can’t have everything). But it was scary and I feel sort of traumatized and violated by what had to happen in order for all of us to come out on the other side alive and in one piece. One thing that I am eternally grateful for is that none of the events surrounding Lucy’s labor, birth and the aftermath have affected my relationship with her. Not one thing has interfered in our bonding and nothing has diminished my incredible love for her.

But there is all this…leftover stuff. And it’s ugly and it hurts. And I want to come up with a way of expelling it somehow so that it does not plague any future pregnancy and birth of future children.

That’s all. I love my baby and I love my husband and I sure am glad that I didn’t die.