Introducing C!!!!!!! All 6 lbs 7 oz and 19 inches of him.
Full disclosure: I have really struggled with this blog post which is why I am writing it six months after he was born. Truthfully, there is a lot I want to remember and a lot I want to forget.
I'll start at the beginning...
The baby was due on the 19th, but my water broke just like it does in the movies a week early at 10:20 pm. Cue Steve and I running around the house frantically and joyfully, but mostly frantically, trying to pull everything together for the hospital.
We get to the hospital and I'm dilated to a one. I get a medication to begin labor and within two hours my contractions are a minute apart and I am begging for the epidural. By the way, epidurals are AMAZING!!!!!
My Mom arrives in the morning and we continue waiting for the baby's arrival. The nurse believes the baby is turned the wrong way and I spend the majority of labor draped over yoga balls trying to get him to roll over. We are unsuccessful. Labor is hard on me and the baby. Every time I'm given Pitocin baby's heart rate drops. We play the Pitocin/heart rate drop game for 18 hours. I am a wreck. My body doesn't dilate because baby's head is pushing on my pelvis instead of my cervix.
I have an on call doctor who refuses to call my doctor though I ask her to staff my case with him since I am not dilating and my contractions are getting weaker. She and the nurses tell me I don't understand the monitors and my body is handling labor just fine. They are wrong. My body stops contracting after 29 hours of labor. I am dilated to a five. I'm exhausted, angry and scared.
I am prepped for a c-section. My doctor finally arrives. I cry tears of gratitude because I have complete trust in him. The c-section is terrifying, horrifying and takes every fiber of my being not to completely lose my mind. I am not okay.
After delivery, they put the baby next to me and wheel me back to the room. I ask my Mom to take the baby as soon as we get back and spend the next hour just trying to breathe while I listen to Steve, my Mom and the nurses talk about what a beautiful baby he is.
I spend the next four days in the hospital, but something is wrong. I am motion sick and my vision jumps up and down one foot in each direction and won't focus. I can't stand and Steve has to help me toilet and shower because I am so weak. I had been given so much IV fluid during delivery that the bottom of my feet have become rounded. I am enormous. I want to breastfeed, but am so weak the lactation specialist hand expresses my colostrum, puts it in a syringe and gives it to Steve to feed the baby. Steve is so busy taking care of me that the baby stays in the nursery a good chunk of the time. When the baby is in the room I can only hold him for short periods of time. We ask our family not to visit or to make their visits extremely short because I am so sick. I ask my family not to bring my children to the hospital. I figure we will all be a family at home by the end of the week. The decision I make to not have our kids visit will come back to haunt me. And somewhere in the haze we choose his name. C.
I am so consumed by how sick I am that I miss the plethora of clues that something is wrong with the baby. After two days he stops latching. He stops eating. He looks frail. He becomes jaundiced. His weight plummets. He stops having wet and poopy diapers. He begins vomiting bile. It was the day of discharge and the pediatrician suggests the baby might need to stay another day to be monitored. I complain to a nurse who asks if she can do a full exam on him. I watch her become concerned. She asks if she can take the baby to the nursery. The pediatrician calls me a half hour later and tells me my baby has almost no bowel sounds and they need to do an upper GI exam to determine what is going on. She then explains they do not do them at their hospital so C will have to be lifeflighted to Primary Children's Hospital immediately. She tells me the nurse will bring him back long enough for me to kiss him goodbye and then he will be gone.
I sort of hold it together long enough to call Steve back from lunch so he can accompany C via lifeflight and to send my Mom to meet them at Primary Children's, but kneeling, hunched over at the window watching lifeflight take my husband and baby away leaves me wailing inconsolably alone in a room that I had hoped would be filled with joy.
All who come in the room are kind...the nurse who stays past her shift to personally remove my staples and eventually wheel me out to the car, the pharmacy tech who asks if she can give me a hug though she is clearly not a hugger and tells me "God heals all", the cafeteria delivery kid and the tech who bring food and water I did not order or ask for because they don't know what else to do, the risk manager who offers me popsicles and listens while I cry and tell her life isn't fair, the doctor who tries to give hope, the nurse practitioner who personally visits and explains what she thinks will happen and the social worker who tries to distract me with the "do you know" game. All are kind, but I cannot be comforted. My sister picks me up and takes me to my Mom's house. I am still so sick and can hardly move and my Mom did not want my kids to see me like that.
At some point Steve calls to tell me C is going in for surgery for a bowel obstruction. And then several hours later he calls to say the surgery was successful and C would recover in the hospital for the next 2-4 weeks. Steve stays in the hospital. My Mom comes home after C is settled in the NICU.
The next day I am no better. My Mom takes my blood pressure and drives me to the ER to be evaluated because it was sky high. In the waiting room the tech cuts off the hospital bracelet I had worn when C was born. I sob. It feels like he has severed the only tie that bound me to my baby and what was supposed to be a time of happiness. Instead I am five days postpartum without my husband, children and baby sitting in a wheelchair in an ER waiting room, wearing my mother's clothes, sobbing, while my milk comes in. The ER nurses and doctors are kind and I am given medication to reduce the water my body has retained. The doctor also tells me he suspects my motion sickness and vision changes are due to the pain medication I am prescribed. I stop taking it.
Steve picks me up from the ER and we drive home. M, J and D run to the car to welcome us home and immediately ask to see the baby. It was while I am barely able to stand hunched over in the driveway that I realize no one has told the kids that the baby had surgery and it would be weeks before they would be able to see C. In that moment I have crushing guilt over not having them visit the baby in the hospital. If I would have known where we would be at the end of the week I would have put on a brave face and have had them meet their baby brother.
I know I am supposed to visit my baby in the hospital. Isn't that what a "good" mother does? But I can't. Emotionally, physically, but mostly emotionally, I can't. My Mom and Steve convince me to visit C by telling me he looks wonderful. They tell me his color is good and he looks like a healthy little baby. 48 hours after he was lifeflighted I see him for the first time and realize immediately that Mom and Steve have lied. I send Steve out of the room because I cannot bear for him to see me cry again.
C is hooked up to a wall of machines with eight different lines and tubes tying him down. His face is swollen and he isn't moving. I sit in the wheelchair and sob into my open palms. The nurse and neonatologist crouch down next to me and ask if I am okay. "No! I am not okay!" I breathlessly choke out, while violently shaking. I am physically ill staring at my baby laying helpless in his bassinet. "You are a horrible mother" I silently tell myself because I do not want to touch him. Eventually, I have the nurse go through every tube and its purpose. After knowing what is going on I feel like I am ready to hold him. It does not go well. The Anderson tube that is draining the contents of his stomach so his intestines can heal is not placed far enough down so he chokes on it and vomits bile on me twice. I watch my baby suffering and I am heartbroken.
While there the baby next to us, also born to an infertile couple, dies. I listen while the mother pleads for her baby to live and then tells her baby of her love and to return to God. My tears fall on C while my soul screams at God. Where is Your loving kindness? Why are You making it so hard for people who want children to be parents? You freely give children to individuals who harm them. Where is Your love and mercy? Why are You doing this? I am bereft and devastated, sad and so angry with Heavenly Father. All I have ever wanted is to be a wife and a mother. Why has it been so hard to bring children into our home? Aren't the desires of my heart righteous? Why is it so necessary to my story that I, and others like me, go through Hell to be a mother?
I have no answers and I feel hollow.
Full disclosure: I have really struggled with this blog post which is why I am writing it six months after he was born. Truthfully, there is a lot I want to remember and a lot I want to forget.
I'll start at the beginning...
The baby was due on the 19th, but my water broke just like it does in the movies a week early at 10:20 pm. Cue Steve and I running around the house frantically and joyfully, but mostly frantically, trying to pull everything together for the hospital.
We get to the hospital and I'm dilated to a one. I get a medication to begin labor and within two hours my contractions are a minute apart and I am begging for the epidural. By the way, epidurals are AMAZING!!!!!
My Mom arrives in the morning and we continue waiting for the baby's arrival. The nurse believes the baby is turned the wrong way and I spend the majority of labor draped over yoga balls trying to get him to roll over. We are unsuccessful. Labor is hard on me and the baby. Every time I'm given Pitocin baby's heart rate drops. We play the Pitocin/heart rate drop game for 18 hours. I am a wreck. My body doesn't dilate because baby's head is pushing on my pelvis instead of my cervix.
I have an on call doctor who refuses to call my doctor though I ask her to staff my case with him since I am not dilating and my contractions are getting weaker. She and the nurses tell me I don't understand the monitors and my body is handling labor just fine. They are wrong. My body stops contracting after 29 hours of labor. I am dilated to a five. I'm exhausted, angry and scared.
I am prepped for a c-section. My doctor finally arrives. I cry tears of gratitude because I have complete trust in him. The c-section is terrifying, horrifying and takes every fiber of my being not to completely lose my mind. I am not okay.
After delivery, they put the baby next to me and wheel me back to the room. I ask my Mom to take the baby as soon as we get back and spend the next hour just trying to breathe while I listen to Steve, my Mom and the nurses talk about what a beautiful baby he is.
I spend the next four days in the hospital, but something is wrong. I am motion sick and my vision jumps up and down one foot in each direction and won't focus. I can't stand and Steve has to help me toilet and shower because I am so weak. I had been given so much IV fluid during delivery that the bottom of my feet have become rounded. I am enormous. I want to breastfeed, but am so weak the lactation specialist hand expresses my colostrum, puts it in a syringe and gives it to Steve to feed the baby. Steve is so busy taking care of me that the baby stays in the nursery a good chunk of the time. When the baby is in the room I can only hold him for short periods of time. We ask our family not to visit or to make their visits extremely short because I am so sick. I ask my family not to bring my children to the hospital. I figure we will all be a family at home by the end of the week. The decision I make to not have our kids visit will come back to haunt me. And somewhere in the haze we choose his name. C.
I am so consumed by how sick I am that I miss the plethora of clues that something is wrong with the baby. After two days he stops latching. He stops eating. He looks frail. He becomes jaundiced. His weight plummets. He stops having wet and poopy diapers. He begins vomiting bile. It was the day of discharge and the pediatrician suggests the baby might need to stay another day to be monitored. I complain to a nurse who asks if she can do a full exam on him. I watch her become concerned. She asks if she can take the baby to the nursery. The pediatrician calls me a half hour later and tells me my baby has almost no bowel sounds and they need to do an upper GI exam to determine what is going on. She then explains they do not do them at their hospital so C will have to be lifeflighted to Primary Children's Hospital immediately. She tells me the nurse will bring him back long enough for me to kiss him goodbye and then he will be gone.
I sort of hold it together long enough to call Steve back from lunch so he can accompany C via lifeflight and to send my Mom to meet them at Primary Children's, but kneeling, hunched over at the window watching lifeflight take my husband and baby away leaves me wailing inconsolably alone in a room that I had hoped would be filled with joy.
All who come in the room are kind...the nurse who stays past her shift to personally remove my staples and eventually wheel me out to the car, the pharmacy tech who asks if she can give me a hug though she is clearly not a hugger and tells me "God heals all", the cafeteria delivery kid and the tech who bring food and water I did not order or ask for because they don't know what else to do, the risk manager who offers me popsicles and listens while I cry and tell her life isn't fair, the doctor who tries to give hope, the nurse practitioner who personally visits and explains what she thinks will happen and the social worker who tries to distract me with the "do you know" game. All are kind, but I cannot be comforted. My sister picks me up and takes me to my Mom's house. I am still so sick and can hardly move and my Mom did not want my kids to see me like that.
At some point Steve calls to tell me C is going in for surgery for a bowel obstruction. And then several hours later he calls to say the surgery was successful and C would recover in the hospital for the next 2-4 weeks. Steve stays in the hospital. My Mom comes home after C is settled in the NICU.
The next day I am no better. My Mom takes my blood pressure and drives me to the ER to be evaluated because it was sky high. In the waiting room the tech cuts off the hospital bracelet I had worn when C was born. I sob. It feels like he has severed the only tie that bound me to my baby and what was supposed to be a time of happiness. Instead I am five days postpartum without my husband, children and baby sitting in a wheelchair in an ER waiting room, wearing my mother's clothes, sobbing, while my milk comes in. The ER nurses and doctors are kind and I am given medication to reduce the water my body has retained. The doctor also tells me he suspects my motion sickness and vision changes are due to the pain medication I am prescribed. I stop taking it.
Steve picks me up from the ER and we drive home. M, J and D run to the car to welcome us home and immediately ask to see the baby. It was while I am barely able to stand hunched over in the driveway that I realize no one has told the kids that the baby had surgery and it would be weeks before they would be able to see C. In that moment I have crushing guilt over not having them visit the baby in the hospital. If I would have known where we would be at the end of the week I would have put on a brave face and have had them meet their baby brother.
I know I am supposed to visit my baby in the hospital. Isn't that what a "good" mother does? But I can't. Emotionally, physically, but mostly emotionally, I can't. My Mom and Steve convince me to visit C by telling me he looks wonderful. They tell me his color is good and he looks like a healthy little baby. 48 hours after he was lifeflighted I see him for the first time and realize immediately that Mom and Steve have lied. I send Steve out of the room because I cannot bear for him to see me cry again.
C is hooked up to a wall of machines with eight different lines and tubes tying him down. His face is swollen and he isn't moving. I sit in the wheelchair and sob into my open palms. The nurse and neonatologist crouch down next to me and ask if I am okay. "No! I am not okay!" I breathlessly choke out, while violently shaking. I am physically ill staring at my baby laying helpless in his bassinet. "You are a horrible mother" I silently tell myself because I do not want to touch him. Eventually, I have the nurse go through every tube and its purpose. After knowing what is going on I feel like I am ready to hold him. It does not go well. The Anderson tube that is draining the contents of his stomach so his intestines can heal is not placed far enough down so he chokes on it and vomits bile on me twice. I watch my baby suffering and I am heartbroken.
While there the baby next to us, also born to an infertile couple, dies. I listen while the mother pleads for her baby to live and then tells her baby of her love and to return to God. My tears fall on C while my soul screams at God. Where is Your loving kindness? Why are You making it so hard for people who want children to be parents? You freely give children to individuals who harm them. Where is Your love and mercy? Why are You doing this? I am bereft and devastated, sad and so angry with Heavenly Father. All I have ever wanted is to be a wife and a mother. Why has it been so hard to bring children into our home? Aren't the desires of my heart righteous? Why is it so necessary to my story that I, and others like me, go through Hell to be a mother?
I have no answers and I feel hollow.
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