Giving thanks

Tomorrow will be Corinne's first Thanksgiving.  She has experienced other holidays (well, in the way that an infant can experience holidays), but this is her first major holiday.

Holidays have been really...rough...for me the last 3 years.  My mother died in 2009, just a few weeks after her 64th birthday. She was an active, vibrant, seemingly-healthy woman who was running marathons in her 40s and 50s.  She got lung cancer without any known risk factors (didn't smoke, no family history, no chemical exposures) and died about 2.5 years after her diagnosis.  Her death was not what I had expected it to be.  It was worse.  Much worse.  I hope the images burned into my brain from those last days, hours, and minutes disappear someday.

I considered her my only parent.  I have a father who stopped doing anything fatherly when I was about 8 years old.  In fact, he hasn't contacted me in more than 2 years.  I still send him cards for holidays and his birthday, and I, of course, sent him a birth announcement when Corinne was born.  I've gotten no response.  Of course, he's been long gone, so I stopped expecting anything from him years ago.  So my mom was my parent.  Both my parents.  She was all I really needed anyway.  She was more than enough parent for both of them.  But when she died, I was parentless.  Orphaned.  I came to realize she held us all together, and now we've fallen apart.  My sisters and I spent Christmas together the year she died. It was full of hurt feelings and bitterness.  We haven't done it again but supposedly will repeat it this year.  Who knows what that will be like.  I have no major expectations, but I have had the thought, once or twice, that it might be nice to spend time with my family all together again.  Minus Mom.

Anyway, the holidays just weren't the same after Mom died.  I felt mostly empty and didn't really want to do anything at all.  Let them come and go.  Better not to even try to get excited or acknowledge them.  Just another thing in my life that was bitter and painful.

This year is different for me.  I've always dreamt of sharing the joy of the holidays with my own family, my own children and our little family unit.  This year, my excitement is somewhat renewed, knowing that I'm sharing this with Corinne for the first time.  She probably won't even know it's a holiday until she gets older, but it has a lot of meaning for me.  It's about new beginnings.  It's about reasons to be hopeful.  It's about anticipating many joyful moments with my little one in the future. Establishing family traditions.  Watching her light up at her first glimpse of our Christmas tree.  Someday helping her bake holiday goodies with mommy.  Good things are coming in the future.   For a long time I was just unable to see things that way, and now I can.

So today I am thankful for my beautiful child, who brings joy back into the holidays (and everyday life) for me, who is the most beautiful and meaningful part of my life, and who gives me reason to keep getting out of bed every morning and keep living.

Excuses

What a sorry excuse for a blogger I am.  It's been hard to maintain this blog. I feel as though I give all my time and energy to work whenever I'm not with the baby, and I try to give the baby my complete attention when I'm with her.  I always have work to do at home when she's napping or sleeping as well. Working a full-time job at around 55-60 hours per week and being a full-time mommy when I'm not working just doesn't leave much time for doing anything else. I'm sure there are a lot of moms who can relate to this.  I think I'm lucky I manage to keep enough clean laundry to clothe myself.  I'd like our house to be cleaner too, but I'm not even going to go there.  I'd like to work in time for myself as well, especially for exercise, since regularly working out was such a big part of my life pre-baby, but this is still on the to-do list. 

I'm convinced it will become easier when I'm no longer breastfeeding and pumping all the time.  I figured out that I spend approximately 3-3.5 hours every day feeding and pumping.  Sometimes I think about what I could be doing with all that extra time and it makes me feel kind of resentful, but that's quickly overridden by the many reasons I keep doing this. Nobody told me how challenging it was going to be. I don't know what I thought before.  Like "Oh, I'll just pump a few times a day for like 5 minutes?"  I was kind of clueless, to be honest.  Having gone to medical school and even done a lactation rotation for 4 weeks as an elective, you'd think I would have at least laid eyes on a breast pump before I got pregnant, but I hadn't.  The focus was on breastfeeding itself, not pumping, since I was seeing patients in the hospital before they went home with their babies.  So yeah, I just didn't know what it would entail.  For someone who was that clueless, though, I managed to figure things out pretty well.  We are still going strong.  Corinne breastfeeds whenever I'm home and then takes expressed milk in a bottle when I'm not.  I continue to overproduce on a daily basis, and we filled a large standing freezer (that we purchased solely for this purpose) and our regular freezer, with frozen milk.  It's probably about 3 months worth, if I had to estimate.  Meaning it would be enough for 3 months if I totally stopped producing for some reason.  I had to start defrosting and dumping some out every day because we just ran out of space, so I started replacing the oldest milk with the new stuff I'm freezing. It sort of makes me sad to dump it out, but mostly it makes me glad that we have so much extra that I really don't have to worry about not having enough to last at least until her 1st birthday.

I can see now why women who breastfeed are so proud of it.  It is a really big accomplishment because it's challenging in so many ways and requires a lot of dedication, likely more when pumping after a return to work is involved.  I do feel proud to be able to give my daughter what is supposedly best for her body, and I also really enjoy the connection it allows us to have.  I can probably wax poetic on the joys and benefits of breastfeeding all day.  Weird how you never imagine yourself doing certain things in life, but things like this can come to be so fundamental and important to you down the line.

Anyway, things on the work front are chugging along.  What a disappointment my job is, really.  Maybe I've said this before, but being a parent has changed my perspective on a lot of things.  One of them is healthcare.  Maybe it has more to do with the fact that I spent many months being a patient because I was pregnant, and then post-partum, and whatnot.  Having experienced more on the other side, maybe I'm just more aware of what a sad state healthcare is in.  I also work in the outpatient (clinic) setting now, having transitioned from inpatient, and it makes me more acutely aware of the limitations of my particular specialty, both in terms of treatment options and in terms of insurance and providers/access to care. I almost wish it weren't too late to run screaming in the other direction.  I often feel helpless as I'm not able to do things for my patients that I might otherwise if I could have longer clinic visits or prescribe whatever treatment I thought was best without having to worry about their ability to come back for follow up appointments or the cost of medications.  Always limited by resources and money.  This is not how I envisioned helping people. Of course, it's just reality.  But it's a sad reality.

So, that's the news I guess.  By the way, my little experiment of writing about "topics" instead of my personal life is so over.  It's just not my style, and I find it sort of boring.  At least this feels real and not like I'm writing a term paper or something.

On that note, I'm off to bed.  I'm hoping the next baby wake-up is after 5 AM...

Mommy Wars

I couldn't write a blog about motherhood without talking about "mommy wars."  I became familiar with this term (rather abruptly) when I became a mom.  Perhaps I had heard it when I was pregnant, but I didn't really have a sense of what it meant until after I had a baby.  What is this phenomenon?  Most people use the term to refer to the tension between two groups of moms: stay-at-home moms (SAHMs) and working moms.  I have come to learn that Mommy Wars is so much more than that, though.

Mommy wars is SAHMs vs. working moms, formula versus breastfeeding, daycare versus nannies, "no-cry" sleep solutions versus "Ferberizing" (or insert other parenting techniques here)...need I go on?  Pretty much anything about which parents have to make a decision in their role as parents sparks mommy wars all over the place.


Why do we need to criticize one another about one more thing?  Don't we spend enough time judging other women by their clothes, social status, level of education, size, shape, face, partner (or lack thereof), etc.?  Why can't we all just support one another?  In my opinion, it all stems from an urge to justify the choices that we make for ourselves (and our families).  We want to be the best parents we can be.  So, as parents, maybe we want to convince ourselves that everything we choose to do is the best thing for kids, in general.  To convince ourselves, maybe we have to convince everybody else too.  So, if what I'm doing is the "best" thing, that must mean that anything other people are doing differently is wrong. 

Societal pressures also play a major role.  In our "melting pot" of a society here in the U.S., there truly is no one "right" way.  That sounds great at first, but, rather than creating an environment in which all choices are supported, it feels more like there are many "right" ways and many "wrong" ways in the eyes of those around us.  Some people still believe in the more traditional family roles, in which mother stays home with the children and father goes out into the world to be the breadwinner.  There are others who believe that women absolutely should work, just as their partners do, and they may criticize mothers who choose to (or must, for whatever reason) stay home with their child or children.  It almost seems as though one cannot win. I should also comment that men are facing the same types of pressures/criticisms these days, and the same issues can apply whether we are talking about same-sex or opposite-sex couples with kids, though I won't delve into those issues in this blog entry.

When I initially returned to work after my scheduled maternity leave, I had a patient who asked me if I had children.  I try not to reveal too much about my personal life to my patients.  You don't want to be too closed off (we're all human, after all), but too much self-disclosure is never a good thing, for many reasons.  I told her I did, and she kept asking questions.  After she asked me how old my little one was, and I told her she was nearly 3 months old, she said "Wow, that's pretty young...to be away from her mom."  I felt like crying.  I just smiled and said "I know."  I don't think she meant to come across as judgmental (and, even if she had, her active mental illness would have excused any malicious intent, in my mind) but it about broke my heart.  I already felt broken emotionally when the long work hours took me away from my tiny baby so early on.  I had told myself "Lots of people go back to work.  It's fine. You need to work."  And, in truth, I did, and I do need to work.  Not just for financial reasons.  I don't feel that leaving my job at this time is an option.  I won't go into that further.  But I'll just say that all it took was one person reminding me of what I really felt inside to make my resolve crumble.  If I had felt defensive, instead of sad at that moment, perhaps I would have felt the need to explain to her why I could not be at home with my daughter at that moment.  After all, who would be taking care of her, as a patient, if I were?  Surely, she would understand.  Or maybe she wouldn't.  But I shouldn't have to explain. 

A few weeks later, I ended up taking extended leave from my job, not for that reason, but because of other things that were happening that actually made it very difficult (maybe impossible) for me to do my job, or at least do it safely.  In a way, I felt fortunate that I got to stay home with my daughter longer, though I have been wracked with guilt about taking more time away from work as well.  It seems I could not have avoided guilt, no matter what happened.  At work, I felt guilty for not being with my daughter.  When I took time away from work (especially since it was more than what's "typical" for other people in my field who have kids), I feel guilty about that too.  That guilt comes from feeling like there is something wrong with me if I'm not able to balance my family life and my job, as it seems so many others do.  No one said a negative word about it.  In fact, people were extremely supportive.  In my own head, though, I wondered if they were judging me for being...well, the word that comes to my mind is "weak."

In the end, it truly was my choice to take more time away from work. No one was forcing me to do it.  I know I made the right decision because I wasn't at 100% (or anywhere close), and I wouldn't have been able to live with myself if I'd made mistakes at work as a result.  When you are dealing with patient care, you don't want to be really off your game, as I felt I was.  We are talking about the health and well-being of patients, who trust you, as a doctor, to care for them.  Right or not in a moral sense, I felt silently judged, even if it was just the voice in my head that was judging me.  That voice represented something that I had been taught, not something innate.  It was about societal expectations.

I'll never forget the conversation I had with a family member about this situation.  I think she was both trying to support my decision to return to work after this extended leave and also help relieve my guilt about having to take the extra time away from work.  For the record, she is a SAHM but has a J.D. and previously worked as an attorney.  She said "Some people say to me 'Why have all these degrees if you're just going to stay home with your kids?,' and I see their point, but at the same time I think 'Why have kids if I'm not going to be here to raise them myself?'"  She told me it's not about right or wrong.  You can work and not feel guilty about it.  You can have your career and kids too.  Or you can choose to stay home with your kids.  It's about what works for you and your family right now.  What works now may also change with time, and some may choose to stay home with their kids until they are a certain age and then start working or return to work.  I can't say I agree with everything this family member has ever said in the long time I've known her, but I think she was right on about this, and I continue to turn to her for support in my new role as a mom with a continuing career.

We make choices to do things differently from others we know because we know ourselves and what works for us, or sometimes we have life situations about which others aren't aware that force us to return to work or take more time away from work.  I think every parent should be applauded for the choices he or she makes.  It isn't just about work.  It's about all the little choices we make every day to try to keep ourselves and our families happy and healthy.  It's about standing by those choices in a society that seems to condemn you either way.  And sometimes you do feel like you have to "side" with one camp or the other to make yourself feel good about your choices.  But I believe we have to support each other to make it all more manageable for the parents out there.  Balancing family life and everything else that today's society demands of us is hard, and we heap guilt on ourselves enough as it is.  The last thing we need is someone else looking in from the outside and telling us what we're doing wrong. 

If the culture could be one of mutual support for different choices and different lifestyles, we could end mommy wars.  We could start to form the groundwork for a culture of women supporting women.  This includes women who don't have children too.  I won't even go into the issue of choosing to have children versus choosing not to (and, believe me, there is criticism on both sides of this as well).  It's not about having a "Kumbayah" moment. It's just about looking at the women around you and appreciating them for what they are and what they contribute to your life and to society.  To all the SAHMs out there, I appreciate and admire everything you do.  I feel the same about all the working moms I know, whether they work part-time or full-time.  To the women I know who don't have children yet but hope to, I'm here to welcome you to the world of motherhood if and when it happens.  To the women I know who don't have children and never will, I support your choice. We're really all in the same boat here.  We all have our own priorities.  I much prefer that women aren't pigeon-holed into a single role in a society anymore.  There are a lot of options available to us, and I support all those options.  That's really what freedom is all about, isn't it?

The Aftermath Part II

Beyond the physical issues, emotions were running high.  This happens to new moms anyway, but I had a little extra drama to go along with it.

The day after my C section, I received an email from a close family member, whom I'll call Jane.  Basically, the email said that she and her husband were upset about the way they "were treated" by my husband when they had come to see me on the day of the delivery.  It said a lot of other things that I've already forgotten because I chose to.  It was mean.  It was rude.  It was insensitive. It was way out of line.  She has actually become notorious for sending such nastygrams to many people, so I guess I shouldn't consider myself special.  It was the fact that she sent it to me the DAY AFTER I became a mom for the first time.  When I was in the hospital, recovering from a long, emotionally and physically taxing labor and from a C section after that, adjusting to being a new parent, feeling the rush of hormones and emotions that follow delivery, in pain, not sleeping, and feeling vulnerable.  It was the most vulnerable I have ever been.  She kicked me when I was down.

She has a kid herself.  She should know what it is like.  She was too busy thinking about dumping her anger on someone else to think about it.  Or worse, she thought about it but chose not to care.  Oh, and I forgot to mention that she didn't just send it to me.  She cc'ed all of my immediate family on it, effectively announcing to everyone what she thought of my husband (and me, by proxy).  Nobody else responded to the email, and that had me wondering if they were all thinking the same thing (but perhaps had the class not to say anything at the moment, unlike Jane herself).  I worried that I had hurt the rest of my family.  But, otherwise, all I could think when I read it was that Jane was a bitch.  A selfish, egocentric bitch.  I did feel bad about my family having to stay in the waiting room instead of being welcomed into the room while I was laboring, but this is not a rare occurrence.  Couples decide to keep family out of the room until the baby is born all the time.  Plus, I would argue that many (maybe the majority of?) people who go to the hospital awaiting the birth of a family member do not expect to be in the delivery room during the labor and pushing.  What, are you going to come in and stare at "the business end" of things?  Or just watch in horror as I struggle?  I don't know.  Some people choose to invite their entire families into the room for the labor and delivery.  To us, it was logical for it to be just me and my husband.  To me, it makes sense to wait to be invited into the room after the baby is born.  To be fair, I also have no idea exactly what conversations were exchanged between her and my husband in the waiting room.  I was a little busy.  Maybe he was short with her.  Maybe he's not the best communicator, especially when under stress.  But she could have had a little understanding.  And if you're showing up to be supportive, you should be that.

It's worth mentioning that she had chosen to come when Everett informed her I was in labor.  I didn't request her presence.  It is a 2.5-hour drive.  So I thought it was nice that she wanted to come and certainly didn't tell her otherwise, as I wanted her to feel welcome to be part of things (to the degree to which we were comfortable with others' involvement).  When they had called asking about things and said they were coming, we also asked them to come that afternoon, not right away, since I had just started pushing.  We did that intentionally, thinking they wouldn't have to sit in the waiting room when they arrived that way.  How were we to know the timing wouldn't work out like we thought it would? Sorry, I didn't know I would be pushing for 5 hours.  I genuinely (and reasonably) thought the baby would be out by the time you arrived, so you wouldn't have to wait.  My bad.  So inconvenient for you.

If someone close to me has an issue with me, I definitely want to talk to them about it so we can sort it out.  The manner in which the message was delivered, however, and, more importantly, the timing of it, were absurd.  I felt no sympathy for her.  I felt some guilt, but that was because I felt guilt over a lot of things in my state of "baby blues."  But I mostly felt angry.  What I wanted to tell her was that she had a big chip on her shoulder and that she shouldn't take things so personally because not everything is about her.  I wanted to say that she was a selfish, self-centered asshole.  I wanted to tell her that I was shocked that she would burden me with all her negativity during this very sensitive time in my life.  I wanted to tell her to f- off and never talk to me again.  Ever the diplomat, and too worn down to fight any battles anyway, I instead apologized for any hurt feelings and tried to explain our decision to keep everyone else out of the delivery room. This was met with a brief, seemingly dismissive response that demonstrated a total lack of understanding and a clear lack of acceptance of my apology.  Something like "I've already moved and given you the information I felt you needed to know."  After that, Everett called her personally to apologize, and she seemed accepting of that and even left me a message telling me she really admired and respected my husband for taking the time to apologize personally to her. 

So I thought it was over, which was a bit of a relief, but it still left a very bad taste in my mouth.  Rather than feeling love and support from my family, I felt isolated from them. (It later turned out the rest were just staying out of it).  I felt blamed for something that I didn't think was really my fault.  I felt betrayed by her.  I felt defensive of my husband who had only been trying to do what we had planned and what we had agreed was best to protect ourselves.  I felt disappointed in the rest of my family for their silence and feared they were angry with me too.  It gave me this horrible sick feeling in my stomach.  I felt heartsick, like I had lost something very dear.  I was sad and cried a lot those first few weeks, and, most of the time, it was when I was thinking about her and the things she had said and done and thinking about how I wanted to talk to someone but feeling like I couldn't call my family.

It was made worse less than a week later when she sent me another nasty email accusing me of posting something negative about her (and the rest of my family) on Facebook.  This was full of even more insults.  She said something about how she thought we had resolved the issue and felt like she "got played" when she heard about this Facebook posting.  I didn't even read her whole email.  I read the first 2 sentences and realized what it was, so I decided not to continue.  I had no idea what she was talking about, for one.  I later discovered it was regarding some vague status update I'd posted about how I'd found that other people were trying to compare their birth experiences to mine without really knowing what I went through.  I can't see how this could have had anything to do with my family, since I had exactly zero conversations with any of them about my birth experience.  Secondly, I was pretty much outraged that she continued to bombard me with her paranoid bullshit while I was still recovering and trying to adjust to my new life.

I called her immediately.  This time I was not so nice about it.  I gave her a piece of my mind and told her she was borderline delusional for thinking anything I posted on Facebook was about her.  Again, does she think everything in the world is about her?   She confessed that her husband and her brother-in-law had seen my vague status update and told her it was about her and the rest of my family, and she believed them.  She even admitted she didn't even look at it herself!  She had just taken their word for it AND told my other family members about it, basically trying to convince them that I had turned against them and was bad-mouthing them online.  I advised her to look at it herself so she would realize there was no way she could construe that to be about her or anyone in our family.  I had no idea why her brother-in-law was meddling in our business either, but that was another point entirely.  And what kind of man is your husband anyway?  A high-school girl?  What grown man goes on Facebook, reads status updates and gets angry because he thinks they are about him?  Further, what kind of man tries to stir up more drama between family members?  She apologized for misinterpreting and blowing things out of proportion.  She did seem very sorry. I told her it was fine but said she should just call me and ASK me what was going on if she was concerned about something, instead of making assumptions about things and writing these mean emails. 

Things were smoothed over.  I'm great at smoothing things over.  Throughout all of this, I never called her names.  I never called her out for being the very opposite of supportive to me when I needed support the most.  I did my best to take the high road.  I could not truly forgive her, however.  I don't have the time or energy to continue thinking about it all the time, but I will never forget what she did in those days after our first baby was born.  Though I don't remember the exact words she wrote or said, I will never forget the way she made me feel.  She managed to further poison an event in our lives that was already very difficult and painful.  She managed to bring more anger and sadness into a time in our lives that was supposed to be joyful.  Maybe it was jealousy or insecurity.  I'll never know.  She acts like it never happened and tries to continue our relationship as usual, but I know it has changed our relationship forever.  I don't easily write people off, especially family.  I try to be understanding of what other people are going through and to forgive when people make mistakes.  Yet, there are things you can do or say to others that you can never take back.  I lost all respect for her, and I don't think she'll be able to earn it back, especially after all the things she has said and done to other family members since then.  As I said earlier, she has gone on to make accusations toward other family members and create a lot of other drama that has nothing to do with me (Thank God), with no shortage of nasty emails that have been shared with many parties. Interestingly, her husband is intimately involved in these conflicts as well.  I think it really says something about both of them.  All I can say is that I'm glad I have good, supportive people in my life, and it's a shame I can't count on her to be one of them. Further, I never received any kind of apology from her husband, or any acknowledgement of his role in the whole thing, and, truthfully, I'd be happiest if I never had to see him again.  I think I never really saw his true colors until this.

She may read this someday, but I actually hope she doesn't.  I'm certainly not going to make her aware of this blog or make it easy for her to come across it.  I didn't write these words to hurt her.  I wrote them to try to heal myself.  That's why I never said them to her (and never will).  But I had to say them, somewhere and somehow.  And this is the most cathartic way for me to say them.  Maybe I should wait until the day after she has her next baby and send her an email telling her what I really think of her and her husband.  No, wait, I wouldn't do that.  I'm better than that.  I realize that now I really am bad-mouthing her online.  Oh, the irony.  But all I'm doing is telling the truth.

So that's just one thing I was dealing with in the first week after becoming a mom, as though there isn't enough "normal" stuff to deal with in the first weeks after bringing home your newborn.  My family member's words and behavior, unfortunately, had a great impact and really stand out in my memory of this time period. I think it was actually the single most difficult part of this period of my life, when all my energy should have been focused on my baby and my new family.  I hope the impact she had will change with time.  I hope to forget all of that. It's not worth remembering.  The only thing worth remembering from the experience is that I shouldn't trust her or turn to her for support in the future.  I admit I should have learned that years ago, knowing what I know about Jane, but it took something this upsetting to open my eyes.

Everything else was sort of a blur. A blur of falling asleep and waking up, changing diapers, wiping up spit-up, feeding (and cringing at the pain from that), pumping, crying, eating, and hurting. But also loving.  A lot of loving.  I do remember all the tender moments holding my beautiful baby and feeling her warm little body against me as she nursed.  I remember watching her face and marveling at all the facial expressions she made, holding her tiny fingers and thinking about how cute they were, seeing her stretch and make little sound in her sleep, kissing her head and smelling her sweet baby smell. 

So much happiness.  Mixed with hurt, anger, guilt, sadness and disappointment.  It's no wonder I felt so emotionally drained and unstable.  It didn't get better either.  At 6 weeks, I decided I needed help.  I really thought I was outside the range of the "baby blues" phenomenon, but I still felt depressed.  I desperately needed to talk about everything that had happened in a space where I felt safe.  I needed someone to listen with empathy and not judge, to validate my feelings without trying to give advice.  Though it made me feel ashamed and the last thing I wanted to do was admit it was real by seeking help, I knew I had to get better, for the sake of my daughter.  I sought out a therapist.  It was a great decision.

That's enough for today.

The Aftermath Part I

The hours and days following the birth were challenging.  A few hours after the C section, having held and nursed my baby and sent her off to dreamland, all I really wanted was to take a shower.  I hadn't, in fact, taken one in almost 48 hours, and I had really exerted myself for hours pushing.  Plus, everything had been so...bloody.  I felt disgusting.  They told me I couldn't shower until the next day.  I secretly plotted to at least sponge bathe myself in the bathroom when the nursing staff weren't around, whether they liked it or not.  I later realized I couldn't even get up.  My legs were still numb until sometime during the night.  I was still bleeding a lot too.

Everett and I allowed the nursing staff to take Corinne to the newborn nursery so we could get a little more sleep that first night.  They agreed to bring her in to our room for feedings.  This is a hospital that supports "rooming-in," so that the baby can have unrestricted access to the breast for feeding.  It didn't really seem like she spent much time in the nursery.  We were awakened repeatedly by Corinne crying.  I don't know how many times it was.  I just know I was exhausted and didn't get much sleep.  Everett stayed in the hospital room with me at night (and pretty much all the time) and got up with me every time the baby woke up, which I really appreciated.  I was glad that the nursing staff were changing diapers and otherwise helping to take care of her but bringing her in for me to feed her.  I later discovered that she had received some supplementary formula feeds in the nursery without my permission.  I didn't make an issue out of it.  I'm sure they thought they were helping by letting us sleep a little more. But I knew I needed her to nurse as much as possible to get my supply going, especially having had a C section.  I asked the nursing staff for a breast pump and parts and started pumping to try to stimulate supply another way.  We did end up giving her some  supplementary feedings ourselves because my milk was a little slow to come in, likely because I had had a C section (another thing I had feared about this particular medical intervention).  We did "finger feeding" with a syringe so she wouldn't get "nipple confusion" because I was very dedicated to succeeding at breastfeeding, which is a huge feat in itself.  Perhaps I'll write more about that later, as it has been such a big part of my journey as a new mother.

I was in a lot more pain than I had thought I would be.  It wasn't just my incision (though that was definitely the worst part).  My body was sore all over.  It was like I had suddenly done a CrossFit workout after months without exercise.  I realized it was from all the weird positions I had been in, the repetitive rocking, and especially the pushing.  I wished aloud that we hadn't had to go through all that and then have a C section anyway.  Not that wishing could change anything.

Little Corinne's sore head was managed with some baby Tylenol, per the pediatric team.  It did seem to help.  The pediatric team also diagnosed her with a medical condition the day after her birth. In the interest of protecting her privacy, I don't want to disclose what that was.  It wouldn't fall under the category of "minor," but it certainly was not life-threatening either. It was something that required treatment, a treatment that made our lives that much more interesting (as though new parents don't already have enough to deal with) on a daily basis for the first six weeks of her life.  It involved a lot of doctor's appointments and the like.  It resolved, though, with strict adherence to the treatment plan.

When she was diagnosed, Everett and I already felt so..raw...emotionally.  Hearing this diagnosis made us feel even more hurt and sad.  They reassured us that she did not feel any pain or discomfort from it.  It hurt us, though, to know she had a medical problem that would have to be treated, and it was hard not to think there was something we could have done to prevent it (there was not) or something we did to cause it (again, there was not).  It's just something that happens, not uncommonly in newborn babies, and it's not life-threatening or even "serious" by most definitions of the word, but it can cause some problems (which I would definitely call minor problems) later in life if it's not treated.  In fact, it used to go undiagnosed and its frequency has only been recognized in recent years, and it's probably a good thing that it gets diagnosed early and treated so it doesn't cause problems later in life.  However, a lot of people probably never even find out they have it, if it wasn't diagnosed in childhood.  The initial treatment, when it is diagnosed at birth, is very non-invasive and does not involve any medications or surgical procedures.  Sorry to be cryptic, but I just don't want to be posting all the details of her medical history all over the internet.  For anyone who wants to talk with me privately about it, I am open to telling you more.

I did feel protective of her and really didn't want anyone except immediate family to know about it.  I didn't want anyone to think there was anything "wrong" with our baby.  Another mom whose baby had the same problem saw some of the things I had posted on Facebook and sent me a message asking about it (it's really something only someone who has experienced it would have recognized or noticed).  We exchanged some messages about our experiences.  I was actually so relieved to know someone else was dealing with the same problem.  It made me realize how common it really is.  It also helped to be able to talk about it, especially to someone who knew what it was and what it was like to deal with it...and who knew it wasn't our "fault." 

In the end, we were actually lucky.  Lucky that it was diagnosed early, and lucky that it improved so quickly with the early conservative measures.  It could have gone undiagnosed, in which case it might have required more aggressive management in the future.  Or it could have improved slowly (as it does for many babies) and required much longer treatment.  She will continue to see a specialist just a couple times during her infancy and early toddler years to make sure things remain good, but it looks as though it's over and done with now.

We dealt with a few other medical problems in the first 2 months of her life, the details of which I will spare you.  I would definitely label those as "minor," though minor doesn't mean they don't have a big impact on day-to-day life.  It was no picnic.  She had 2 ER visits before she was 6 weeks old.  Sitting in the ER waiting room for hours with a several-week-old baby (and having to breastfeed there) is not my favorite thing in the world.  It's really not the best place to bring a newborn, given the potential for exposure to infectious illnesses.  The good thing is that all the issues were addressed.  Just not without a lot of time, energy, and heartache on our part.  I don't really think Corinne was too bothered by any of it.  It was mostly hard on mom and dad!

Anyway, I fared ok myself.  They told me my hematocrit (blood count) was 27 (quite low) the day following the C section.  At my last doctor's appointment before the delivery, my hematocrit had been 39 (very good).  I had never been anemic, even though most people experience some anemia during pregnancy.  They put me on an iron supplement (ugh, like I need more nausea and constipation right now).  I refused the Percocet they prescribed (pretty typical post-C section) after the first 24 hours because it just made me feel drowsy and gave me a headache, and it didn't seem to help much with my pain anyway.  I stuck to ibuprofen, which seemed to give me the most relief.  I took regular Tylenol for additional pain relief.

I was surprised by how limited I felt.  Even with the adjustable bed in the hospital room, getting up to get to the baby was so painful.  It seemed I had to move slowly and delicately no matter what I was doing to try to avoid a lot of pain.  Coughing and sneezing were the absolute worst.  If you ever wondered how much you use your abdominal muscles to do those things, you definitely find out after a C section.  Every time I had to cough or sneeze (or laugh hard, which I really didn't do very often those first couple of months), it brought tears to my eyes (for weeks afterward). My body was incredibly swollen, which I hadn't expected.  I had only mild edema during the pregnancy; it had been hardly noticeable.  During the first week after delivery, my legs were so swollen that they looked like tree trunks.  I couldn't squeeze my feet into my shoes.  Everything else swelled too, including my abdomen, my hands, my cheeks and eyelids.  It was bizarre (but apparently normal). I felt enormous.  I will say that my first shower (the next morning) was so nice.  I had a hearty appetite and ate well, even though the hospital food was less than great.  I was having sweats and chills, mostly at night.  Nursing staff told me it was just hormones.  The docs were more concerned about infection, since we had labored so long before going to surgery.  They kept us in the hospital 2 nights for that reason, though 2 nights is actually typical for post-C section.

A week after the delivery, once the swelling fully subsided, I was 20 pounds (which was probably just fluid, baby and associated things like the placenta) lighter than I had been at my last Ob appointment.

Breastfeeding was painful at first, and it remained painful for weeks.  I don't care what anyone says; this is NORMAL!  You're just not accustomed to having your nipples "used" in this way for hours a day, and it hurts at first.  Our little one had a great latch and was a good feeder.  It just took some getting used to, from my end of things.

Sleep...well, need I even mention sleep?  You don't do it when you have a new baby.  That's normal too.  We had sleep problems beyond what was typical down the road, which I may describe more in future posts.  But nobody sleeps very much those first 2 months at least.  So we were tired.  No big surprise there.

It took me at least 3 weeks to start to feel remotely better physically, but the pain persisted long after that. It was around 6 weeks that I started to feel able to do things like take little walk around the block with the stroller.  Heck, I still have pain around my incision sometimes, and it has been more than 5 months.

I hadn't anticipated all the different kinds of physical discomfort I would have, and I knew there would be "baby blues," but I really hadn't really anticipated feeling the way I did emotionally, which was made about 100 times worse by some family drama.  I'll talk about this more in my next post.

We made it through, but I'm not planning on reliving those first weeks with a new baby any time soon, and, I don't want to set myself up for disappointment, but I hope I never have to have a C section again.

A Birth Story

3 years ago, I thought the most life-changing event I would experience would be the death of my mother, who passed away in August 2009, when I was 25.  Almost exactly 5 months ago, in February 2012, I learned that the defining moment of my life was not losing my own mother but becoming a mother myself.  Becoming a mother to a beautiful baby girl, whom I will call Corinne for the purposes of this blog, has been quite the experience, and I'm only 5 months into it.  I have always intended to write a blog about motherhood, from birth until...well, until I get tired of writing a blog about motherhood.  I've been a little busy adjusting to this new life the last 5 months, so I'm getting a bit of a late start, but better late than never.  The most logical (though perhaps predictable) way to start this blog, in my opinion, is to start with Corinne's birth story.  I'll preface this by saying I have struggled with coming to terms with how our birth experience went, which may have been part of the reason I procrastinated when it came to starting this blog.  To write about it honestly is my goal, but I know it will be hard, even though I've had 5 months to process it.  Here goes.

I want to start by saying that we had planned for a "natural" birth.  I'm not into holistic medicine or against pharmacology.  I'm a medical professional myself, and I happen to work in a field in which we use a lot of pharmacology.  The drugs we regularly use tend to be somewhat controversial. So I'm no stranger to modern medicine, and I "believe in" the power of pharmacology.  But I am the kind of person who doesn't take any drugs I don't think I really need.  And I do believe that my body was designed to bear children.  I wanted my body to do what it was meant to do naturally.  Of course, being a medical professional, I also know that you can't "plan" your labor and delivery, and you can't control everything, so we just made a list of what we hoped for and called it our "birth wishes," not our "birth plan."  Yet I fantasized, throughout the whole pregnancy, about giving birth to my daughter in the "natural" way, and holding her in my arms immediately to comfort after she entered this strange, new world, enjoying the quiet, alert time she would have immediately after the delivery, getting to know her, and nursing for the first time in that first hour of her life.  I didn't think it was likely that things would go awry during the labor.  I had had a nearly-perfect pregnancy, other than the baby descending into my pelvis and having some cervical dilation several weeks early.  In the end, we didn't get what we wished for, partly because of things that were beyond our control and party because of decisions I made in the process. 

On February 25 (which was actually our due date based on an early ultrasound at 8 weeks gestation, though our provider at that time was using February 23 as the due date based on last menstrual period), my husband Everett (again, not his real name) and I were planning to make a trip to the mall.  We thought spending some time walking would help bring on labor.  Yes, don't you know?  Everyone says you can start your labor by walking, having sex, or drinking castor oil.  In truth, having sex is the only one that has any clinical evidence behind it.  We did that too, a few days before.  I thought I was going into labor that night because I had tons of painful contractions, but it had subsided by the next morning (but only after I was up most of the night in pain).  It was not meant to be.

Apparently it was meant to be on February 25.  As we were getting ready to leave the house that day, around 1:30 PM, I noticed I felt some fluid leaking into my underwear.  Anyone who has been pregnant before knows that the 3rd trimester of pregnancy is a blessed time when you could feel fluid leaking into your underwear 90% of the time, whether it be the copious vaginal discharge or the urine leaking from your bladder (which is being squeezed by the comparatively immense weight of your baby).  This felt different, though.  I went into the bathroom and checked but couldn't find any clear evidence of amniotic fluid.  Anyone care to guess how I checked?  If you've been through labor, you probably know.  Anyway, I wasn't entirely sure my water had broken.  It could have been normal discharge.  I decided to lie down on the couch for a minute to see if fluid would pool and then gush out when I stood up.  There was no gushing.  So I decided we should just go on with our plans.  Maybe it's nothing, I thought.

At the mall, I felt some contractions, but I thought they easily could have been Braxton-Hicks, and I only had 3 in 45 minutes, so it didn't really feel like labor as far as I knew.  While at the mall, we decided to get some lunch. We went to the food court and got some Chik-fil-A.  As I started eating my sandwich, seated at one of the tables at the food court, I felt a big gush of fluid.  My eyes grew wide as I looked at Everett and said something like "Ok, that was definitely amniotic fluid."  I felt really excited and nervous all of a sudden and rushed to the bathroom to put on a fresh pad.  I didn't see any other signs like the "bloody show" some people talk about, but I didn't really need to.  I was pretty sure.  We left the mall and headed home.  I wasn't really having any contractions at that point.  I called our doula on the way home, and she told me that I did not need to rush to the hospital and that I should try to stimulate labor if I was not having any contractions.  She suggested nipple stimulation and brisk walking.  We did some of both at home.  I still remember walking quickly with Everett through our mildly hilly neighborhood in the cold, crisp February air.  It was a very sunny day, and I could see my breath in the air.  Pretty soon, contractions started.

I couldn't quite tell if there was much of a pattern.  They seemed irregular.  So I turned on a contraction counter from a website I had used throughout the pregnancy, thebump.com.  I recorded frequency and length of contractions for about an hour, and we finally realized that there was a pattern.  They were happening about every 10 minutes at first, then increasing in frequency.  They became progressively more painful, until I got to the point at which I had to stop and kneel down with every contraction.  Once they reached 4-5 minutes apart and about 60 seconds in length, we decided we should head to the hospital shortly.  It had been our goal to labor at home for as long as possible to avoid any unnecessary medical interventions (the rate of which increases if you go to the hospital too early in your labor).

We had almost everything packed way in advance (as I had been expecting an early delivery, in fact), so we just put everything in the car.  We called before we left, and the triage nurse on the phone did encourage us to come in.  I knelt in the backseat because it had gotten too painful for me to sit upright in a seat in the car for the entire car ride (which is only about 15 minutes).  When we arrived at the hospital, we discovered that the parking ramp closest to the L&D unit was full.  How convenient.  We parked in another parking ramp and got me a wheelchair, as it was a little bit of a trek from that area of the hospital to L&D.  We had to keep stopping so I could bend over the chair during my contractions, as I couldn't tolerate sitting through them.

They didn't send us through triage on arrival.  They just put us in a room.  I remember looking at the clock and seeing that it was about 9 PM.  Nursing staff came in and asked some intake questions.  I answered their questions in between my kneeling, rocking, and groaning during contractions.  It seemed like quite a while before the Ob/Gyn resident on call came in to check my progress.  I told him the story about the gush of fluid and the contractions starting and gradually increasing in frequency and strength.  He said it sounded like "a pretty good story," and checked my cervix, announcing that I was 4 cm dilated and 80% effaced.  He enthusiastically said that was "a good start!"and probably told me something about coming in to check on me periodically and such.  They did some kind of general informed consent, telling me it was best to do it ahead of time rather than in the throes of late labor, in case I needed to have a C section or anything like that.  I signed it, but I thought to myself I was certainly not expecting it to come to that.

After that, I just remember a lot of kneeling and breathing and rocking and trying to mentally escape from the pain.  I remember a few specific things that happened amidst the seemingly unending contractions.  One was realizing I was kneeling alone on the floor and could really use some assistance.  At that moment, I became aware that my husband was sitting in a chair in the room texting on his phone.  Of course, he was probably informing people of what was happening.  Of course, he probably didn't really know what else to do (although, isn't what we took that stupid childbirth education class for anyway?).  Of course, I was in too much pain to concentrate enough to even tell him what I needed.  Not that he asked.  But he probably thought the last thing he needed to do was open his mouth.  I remember the attending Ob/Gyn on call that night coming in to introduce himself and try to chat with me.  He was cheerful and somewhat loud, in my recollection.  I was on my knees on the floor, leaning over a balance ball and rocking back and forth, and couldn't even look at him.  I don't remember much of what he said, other than calling me a "trooper" and saying something about how labor is really "intense" when it starts with your water breaking.  He also made some comment about how they could "help" me with the pain if I wanted.  No shit, dude.  I tried to be polite but was thinking to myself that he should shut the f- up and get out because I couldn't focus enough to have a conversation with him.  There was also an anesthesia fellow who came in to talk to me about pain control options.  Similar situation, though he was not quite as loud, and he resorted to talking to Everett when he realized that I couldn't really pay attention to him or answer his questions about my medical history.  I remember when our doula showed up, and I felt her hands apply counter-pressure to my lower back as I went through a contraction.  I remember feeling relieved (emotionally) that someone who knew what to do was there.  I was also grateful that we had chosen someone who had a calming, quiet way about her, who could help tremendously without even speaking a word.

Things seemed to progress very slowly from my perspective, but it was not quite midnight before they announced I was at 8 cm and 100% effaced.  They brought in the "baby warmer," and it seemed like everyone was expecting things were going to happen soon.  I was becoming less and less focused and more and more distressed about my pain, and our doula decided to have me move into the tub.  This is supposed to give you some pain relief when you reach a critical point.  I'm not sure if it helped my pain.  It was a change of scenery anyway, but, at that point, I felt like all I was doing was writhing and yelling and fearing the start of the next contraction every time one of them ended.  They were so close together at that point that I hardly had a chance to brace myself for the next.  I don't know how long I was in the tub before I started saying I just really needed some relief and was afraid I didn't know how much longer I could take it.  I think my doula was telling me to try to take it one contraction at a time, but all I could think about was how there could be so many more and it could go on for several more hours, which seemed like an eternity.  Feeling like I got no help (no suggestions for what to do next) when I was asking for it, and also feeling like someone was stabbing me in the abdomen and the lower back, I eventually announced I wanted an epidural.  I had intended to go without.  Months before this, I had told both the doula and my husband not to argue with me if I said I wanted it.  I felt so confident, at that time, that I would not speak the words if I wasn't utterly sure.  It was wrong of me to think that, but how was I to know?

During my labor, I was thinking about the epidural long before the words ever came out of my mouth, but I wanted to hold out.  I held out and held out.  And then I just felt like I couldn't hold out anymore.  I needed something.  My brain didn't even think to ask for something like Nubain alone first to see if that would take the edge off long enough for me to hold out through transition.  Or maybe I just needed a different kind of encouragement but wasn't able to ask for it.

So I held myself still (somehow) through a contraction in the tub while a nurse came in and placed an IV, as quickly as she could.  Then they helped me out of the tub, and I shuffled over to the bed so the anesthesia fellow could place the epidural.  I had to stay absolutely still.  I began to shiver violently as this process began.  I had really hit transition.  My body was releasing all kinds of chemicals intended to help me get through this process.  They gave me some Nubain, and I barely felt the contraction that was happening as they placed the epidural.  At that moment, I was already questioning myself.  Should I not do this?  I seem to feel better already.  Was it the Nubain?  Was it my body getting ready for the big moment?  I didn't know.  I was just afraid of the pain coming back and lasting for 2-3 more hours or longer.  Plus, I knew they had already started the process. So I let them place the epidural.  To this day, I question this decision.  Perhaps I changed the entire course of this labor and delivery by making this one choice that I had always intended not to make.

Anyway, it happened.  I had relief.  For a little while.  About an hour after the epidural was placed, it stopped working on one side of my body, and I started to feel the contractions again.  The worst part, though, was that starting the epidural had put a damper on the momentum.  We had been rushing head on toward delivery, my labor being practically precipitous for a first-time mom.  And suddenly it stopped.  Contractions decreased in frequency and strength.  Everyone went to sleep, except me.  I lay there in the dark for 8 hours, anticipating, wondering when I was finally going to have this baby.  I rocked back and forth in pain.  I could not sleep.  I couldn't get up to walk or anything to pass the time.  I called the nurse in a few times to help me reposition myself to deal with the pain on one side of my body, only because I was too numb to move my muscles myself.  I was so thirsty.  I felt very alone.  I was upset that everything seemed to have stopped. The doula was asleep in a chair, and my husband was asleep on the couch.  I didn't even have a hand to hold. I tried to wake my husband a few times.  I was successful at one point, and he got me some water and held my hand for a little while.  Eventually, he lay back down on the couch while holding my hand and fell asleep again.  I figured he might as well sleep and thought to myself that I should be doing the same, if only I could.

We had called our birth photographer earlier in the night, and she showed up at about 3 AM and sat quietly in the room for a while before retreating to the waiting room, telling us to let her know when we were ready to push.  I wanted to be ready to push right then. I really did.  I felt helpless.

Everyone else started to wake up as the sun was streaming into the hospital room the next morning.  Around 8 AM, our doula brought me my toothbrush with some toothpaste and a cup of water so I could brush my teeth in bed.  She also brought me some facial cleansing cloths I'd packed in my suitcase so I could wipe my face.  It was slightly refreshing but not enough to make me feel really invigorated.  I felt so tired already.

It was 9:30 AM before they told me I was fully dilated and ready to push.  But I couldn't feel much of anything.  My legs were numb and I couldn't even get into a reasonable position to push.  And I couldn't feel what my body was doing or "where" to push from.  It was frustrating.  These were the fears I had had about the epidural: slowing down my labor, reducing the strength of my contractions, making it hard for me to move the way I wanted to, making it hard for me to feel what my body was asking of me. These are all things that get in the way of a successful vaginal delivery.  This is exactly what I had not wanted for me and my baby.  But I could not change it.  I tried to work with what I had.  I did my best.  I pushed.

I insisted on continuing to push even after 2.5 hours when the resident came in and made some comments about how I'd been pushing for a while, and they were worried about me being fatigued after having been in labor so long.  I looked her in the eye and told her I felt fine and had plenty of energy to keep pushing, trying not to give myself away by looking tired.  My voice was steady, at least.  I was exhausted, of course.  I hadn't eaten anything in more than 24 hours and had been through some of the worst physical pain and exertion of my life.  I must have been somewhat convincing.  She left me alone.  I ate a popsicle and went on pushing.  In the end, I pushed for 5 hours, with the doula, Everett, and the L&D nurse cheering me on.  For the last hour or so, I watched the mirror and saw the downy hair on my baby's head start to poke out with each push, but it inevitably would just disappear as soon as I stopped pushing.  Why wasn't she just coming out?  What else was I supposed to do?  They assured me I was pushing effectively.  Why wasn't it working?!?

I don't know why it wasn't working.  It could have been that she was in the OP position (occiput posterior) and just couldn't get out that way being as big as she was (and as small as I am).  Or maybe I couldn't push as hard as I needed to due to the epidural.  Or maybe I needed stronger contractions to help me push her out.  Whatever it was, she didn't come out, and she didn't come out...

Corinne held out like a champ through all of it.  There was one point at which she must have looked to be under a bit of distress on the monitor, as they put some oxygen on me, but it was only for a few minutes.  Overall, she did very well.

The Ob/Gyn team came in again and told me they were concerned that I had been ruptured for so long and had not yet delivered. They had to admit, however, that she was moving downward in the birth canal.  She just...hadn't made it out yet.  They offered me some options, including starting some Pitocin to strengthen my contractions and doing a vacuum-assisted delivery.  Our doula said that it would be possible to exhaust myself trying to push more on the Pitocin and perhaps not be able to take the vacuum-assist option after that.  Not wanting to take the chance of continuing to push to no avail on the Pitocin, I agreed to vacuum-assist.  But, when the resident checked the baby's station, she said she felt the baby was still a little too high for them to attempt it safely.  So she told me she "would offer [me] a C section."  I don't know what else she said because I sort of stopped listening after that.  I just looked at her face and watched her mouth moving and thought to myself that there didn't seem to be anything else I could possibly do.  What other option did I have?  I felt defeated.  I did not feel like I could keep pushing and manage to accomplish anything.  I started to cry.  I could not hold back the tears.

I said something to the effect of, "Well, if that's what we have to do, I guess that's what we have to do."  She said something to me about how it was "nobody's fault."  I just nodded.  It was about 2:30 PM.  My sisters, who had been waiting in the waiting room for a while, came in to see me before the C section.  I felt emotionally and physically ravaged.  I felt afraid.  It was a relief to have my family there.  I should say that we had decided ahead of time we didn't want anyone in the delivery room while I was laboring.  I didn't want anyone else to come in until after the baby was born, so they had been made to wait in the waiting room.  I knew they wouldn't like it.  My family, being very enmeshed, is not used to being held at a distance.  And Everett and the hospital staff had to keep them in the waiting room for me, though they were anxious to get in to see me.  I obviously could not go out and tell them to their faces that I needed them to give me some space.  I felt guilty about it, even at the time, but I didn't want them to see me that vulnerable.  2 of my sisters have had children of their own, but neither have been through labor, just C sections that were either planned or done in an emergency situation.  I also didn't want to be distracted when I knew I would be dealing with a lot of pain and would need all my energy to cope with it.  Maybe it was something I should have told them ahead of time, but I didn't know how to say it.

But, when the decision was made to go to the OR, I wanted them there.  I needed that.  As I waited nervously to be wheeled out of my hospital room, still rocking back and forth in pain during my contractions, one of my sisters stroked my hair and told me it was going to be ok.

It was a while before they wheeled me into the OR.  They would not allow the doula or the birth photographer in, which was very disappointing.  I did know that Everett would be coming in before they started the procedure, though.  He was waiting outside in the meantime.

I was shivering again.   I felt so defeated and tired that I didn't even want to look at anyone, even though the Ob/Gyn resident assisting came to talk to me before the procedure and was very kind.  They placed a spinal, choosing not to use the epidural that had already been placed when I told them it stopped working on one side of my body about an hour after it was started.  They put something cold (an ice cube, maybe?  I couldn't see it) on different parts of my body several times, asking if I could feel it.  The sensation gradually decreased as they kept checking, but it did not go away.  I figured, since it was decreasing, it should be fine by the time they started the procedure.  It was not.  I could feel them cutting into me with that first incision.  Of course, I didn't feel all the pain.  It was duller than it would have been without the spinal, but it still felt sharp, and it did hurt.  It's scary to know you are going to have major abdominal surgery and to feel that first incision.  I told them I could feel it.  I felt more cutting and painful tugging.  Of course, you do feel tugging, and that's normal, but you should not feel sharp pain.  I yelled out.  The anesthesiologist, seeming nervous, decided to give me some nitrous by mask, which just made me feel like I was floating and couldn't breathe for a little while.  Then I must have pretty much lost consciousness.  Or maybe I was so drugged up that I just have no memory of the rest of it.  Everett was taking pictures with my camera, for which I was so grateful.  He captured the moments of her birth.  This is a big deal because my husband doesn't like taking pictures and usually has to be coerced to do it.  These were some of the most important pictures ever taken, in my opinion, especially since I have no actual memory of it.  I "woke up" when I first heard her cry. Everett brought her over to me.  I have a vague memory of touching and kissing her little face as he held her next to mine.  The anesthesiologist took some pictures of the 3 of us together.  It all felt very fuzzy and dream-like.  It was about 3:30 PM.

Then Corinne and Everett disappeared, and I was closed up and taken to recovery, where I waited for until past 5 PM before I got to see my baby again.  When the anesthesia wore off, I was in so much pain that all I could do was lie there with my eyes closed and breathe deeply, trying to breathe through the pain.  They gave me extra morphine, which seemed to have no effect whatsoever.  (So far, in my experience, opioids aren't that great for pain relief but are great for making me feel nauseated and headache-y.)  Finally, they gave me some Toradol, which is a lovely non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug, and I felt better.  My sisters dropped in one by one, some bringing me gifts.  A couple of them left before the baby had come down to the recovery area, but one stayed to see my little darling before she took off.  I lay there thinking about how my little one was probably scared and needed her mommy.  I tried to console myself by reminding myself that Everett was with her, but it still was devastating to me that we were missing those first moments after her birth when mother and baby are supposed to bond.  It was even more heartbreaking when I later saw the photos the birth photographer was able to capture.  They were photos of her in the NICU in a warmer, wearing just a diaper and a knit hat that the hospital provided, with a pulse oximeter on her foot.  She was crying in some.  In others, she was sucking on a gloved finger, which was all that daddy was able to offer her for comfort.  Everett looked like he was going to cry.  It made me so sad to think that my tiny baby had to lie in a warmer with just a gloved finger for comfort, when she just really needed mommy.  The birth photographer later shared 2 of these photos on Facebook, as a "sneak peak" of our birth photos.  Everett and Corinne looked so vulnerable and sad that I could not bear to share them with anyone at the time.  Here's one of the less-upsetting ones:

I remember when they finally brought my baby to me and put her in my arms.  At last, we were reunited and I could envelop her in warmth and love.  I didn't feel any pain at that moment.  What I felt was a mixture of pride, relief, and deep love.  I felt such a great connection to her.  Like we had survived something harrowing together.  Like we were part of each other.  I kissed her beautiful little face. I looked at her little features and her little body, touching her tiny fingers and holding her hand in mine. She was perfect, in my eyes.  Her sweet little head was swollen from the long labor and all the pushing, and it was obvious that it hurt because she cried when it was touched.  She had a few scratches on her head and face and little indentations in her forehead, just above her eyebrows, which seemed to be from where she had been lodged in my pelvis, pressing up against my bones.  I didn't notice those things at that moment.  I wouldn't notice until later.  It would all resolve with time anyway.  She nursed for the first time.  I quietly told her I would always take care of her and love her. I felt I could "love away" any part of this that had hurt or was scary.  This was what I had been waiting for for so long.

I later learned she had gone to the NICU immediately after delivery, just for a couple of hours to be monitored, because she had had some nostril flaring and grunting after coming out.  She had great APGAR scores, though.  The pediatric resident who had made the call later told me she didn't really want to send her to the NICU because she didn't think it was necessary but knew the nurses in the newborn nursery would get nervous about the grunting and would end up sending her anyway.  If she had not gone to the NICU, I would have been able to hold her as soon as I got out of the OR.  Instead I had to wait far too long, in my opinion, to finally hold my little one in my arms.

This really isn't a story about failure, though it has been hard for me to avoid seeing it that way for a long time.  I was caught up in what went "wrong," which I attribute partially to the "baby blues" but also partially to an event that occurred almost immediately afterward that made me feel very disconnected from my family, who have been my major social support in recent years.  The days and weeks after having a new baby are a very sensitive time.  There is a lot of pain, lack of sleep, learning, and adjusting.  Sadness is normal for a lot of new moms too.  What you need is love and support, not criticism.   But I'll save more about that for another entry.

I could also tell you where I think I made mistakes.  I've replayed it in my mind over and over again and thought about what I'd like to do "next time" to increase the likelihood of achieving that "natural" birth for which I had hoped.  There's really no point in doing that, though.

What I really want to say is that this is a story about new life and about meeting my child for the first time.  For that, it is amazing.  For that, it is a story that defines my life.  It's the most incredible thing that has ever happened to me, and that's what I want to remember about it.

On February 26, 2012, my beautiful baby girl came into my life, and I love her more and more every single day.

*Photos by Laura Eckert, New Creation Photography & Design