I went out yesterday! We all went out! to a party! it was sooooooo wonderful. I didnt even think I could make it, I was so sore and "depressed" just trying to find an outfit, etc, but the instant we got there, it was just wonderous. Glorious weather, fun fun party, great food, treats, fun, kids....i havent been out not even once since my carride home from the hospital, nor have I even begged to, picturing how STUPID it would be to get us all in the one door minivan....but it all worked out and I had a serious blast.
My spirits remained lifted this entire day, and my attempts to wean myself off of painkillers havent been too horrible, either. I had one Vicodin in 22 hours. I am proud of myself, and am ever grateful for the party and for everything, really. I feel like it is not premature to announce right here and now that I am having perfectly acceptable and non-alarming mood issues that I do not feel worried about myself. Baby doll is only 2 1/2 weeks old....
Monday, June 30, 2008
Saturday, June 28, 2008
im ok
ok, it is a few hours later and i do feel aLOT better. shower, outfit, etc.
I would like to state the obvious here and say that if someone is here taking care of the other kids, and i am all clean and wrapped up snug on the couch with a big drink and food and the baby, I am doing quite well. but when I am alone here with all of them, I am a mess and cant really seem to take care of anyone well, and there is a whole lot of filth and pop tarts going on. It sucks and is depressing, quickly.
Dear baby is NOT gassy, really, but when she gets sip sip sip of nursey and then i have to go running across the house for various bad behaviors by the kids she gets stressed. duh.
i guess right now is suppossed to be psychedelic, but i wish it were a better trip, so to speak. I am trying to enjoy stuff and i do, but man o man i wish the fairy would come and take the darlings to the park or something so i can hurry up and feel better. I am pissed off at how not better i am so far, whether that is the healin' spirit, i really cant be more honest than to say i feel pissed off. I have a MASSIVE headache, along with incision pain and general weakness. I feel like i have the flu, and got into a sword fight in my belly and a medium car crash. Sucky!
Cant wait to get stronger, i have such wonderful plans of how it will be....
new pics of angel baby tomorrow, Daddy had to get more batteries for the camera
xoxox
Mamajoy
I would like to state the obvious here and say that if someone is here taking care of the other kids, and i am all clean and wrapped up snug on the couch with a big drink and food and the baby, I am doing quite well. but when I am alone here with all of them, I am a mess and cant really seem to take care of anyone well, and there is a whole lot of filth and pop tarts going on. It sucks and is depressing, quickly.
Dear baby is NOT gassy, really, but when she gets sip sip sip of nursey and then i have to go running across the house for various bad behaviors by the kids she gets stressed. duh.
i guess right now is suppossed to be psychedelic, but i wish it were a better trip, so to speak. I am trying to enjoy stuff and i do, but man o man i wish the fairy would come and take the darlings to the park or something so i can hurry up and feel better. I am pissed off at how not better i am so far, whether that is the healin' spirit, i really cant be more honest than to say i feel pissed off. I have a MASSIVE headache, along with incision pain and general weakness. I feel like i have the flu, and got into a sword fight in my belly and a medium car crash. Sucky!
Cant wait to get stronger, i have such wonderful plans of how it will be....
new pics of angel baby tomorrow, Daddy had to get more batteries for the camera
xoxox
Mamajoy
thumbs down
found myself alone alone alone upon the raging sea...
lots of Cure lyrics coming to mind this week, my first week without Steve---turned out to be my first week alone, too--my mom came over Tuesday which was wonderful!!!!but besides that, just one me and one screaming nursey/gassy baby two brutally naughty little boys and two big kids who kind of help but mostly seem to instigate all kinds of insanity with the little brothers.
i am filthy and distraught. looking forward to a shower when steve gets home today. i am so gross it is like those old cartoons where the flowers all wilt when i walk by. pepe le pew.
i would say 90% of my day i am walking around holding bitty baby as she nurses on the left boob way too much so i can have my right hand free to run and fetch and intercept all the HORRIBLE things the kids are doing. floods. breaking. biting. hitting. spitting. spilling on purpose. so so so bad. crying and screaming and fighting, running out the front door, lying, sneaking, hobble hobble here comes pepe le pew and her one boob out, bleeding bleeding bleeding to death to come yell at you! eat a pop tart! what do you mean they are gone???? what do you mean they are all wet in the bathroom???
hopefully this was the suckiest week so far. these kids are in for a big f'ing surprise when i am all healed up.
we are all going as a family on my first outing tomorrow, a huge outdoor Bat Mitzvah and I am very excited. Hopefully it will be a new start for me!
lots of Cure lyrics coming to mind this week, my first week without Steve---turned out to be my first week alone, too--my mom came over Tuesday which was wonderful!!!!but besides that, just one me and one screaming nursey/gassy baby two brutally naughty little boys and two big kids who kind of help but mostly seem to instigate all kinds of insanity with the little brothers.
i am filthy and distraught. looking forward to a shower when steve gets home today. i am so gross it is like those old cartoons where the flowers all wilt when i walk by. pepe le pew.
i would say 90% of my day i am walking around holding bitty baby as she nurses on the left boob way too much so i can have my right hand free to run and fetch and intercept all the HORRIBLE things the kids are doing. floods. breaking. biting. hitting. spitting. spilling on purpose. so so so bad. crying and screaming and fighting, running out the front door, lying, sneaking, hobble hobble here comes pepe le pew and her one boob out, bleeding bleeding bleeding to death to come yell at you! eat a pop tart! what do you mean they are gone???? what do you mean they are all wet in the bathroom???
hopefully this was the suckiest week so far. these kids are in for a big f'ing surprise when i am all healed up.
we are all going as a family on my first outing tomorrow, a huge outdoor Bat Mitzvah and I am very excited. Hopefully it will be a new start for me!
Thursday, June 19, 2008
hello
Today I feel like I have turned a corner. I feel like I can envision being a person again, someday soon. It has been a long, long time since I wasnt bedridden, pain filled, almost useless, despairing, quite horrified. Today I feel like I am a person in a house in a neighborhood who watches current tv shows and wears socks and drinks cola and gets the phone herself (well, once)
Yesterday was bad. Steve working so hard, trying to keep the kids away so I could "rest", leaving me alone to hobble around and try to piece together some wierd sandwhich, alone alone cant fall asleep keep having nightmares, very unusual for me, sound like an ingrate--I hate to even type this, he has been so good, too good, working waaaaay too hard, on the verge of spazzing, cleaning, rushing, Casey! Charlie! No! No! No! Jesus what are you guys doing?! Just a second! Just a second! No! No! No hitting! Ohmygodyouguys NO!NO SPRINKLER! NO BITING! NO COOL WHIP! NO NO NO Touching poo-poo!.......While I practice lying on my side just a little but it hurts so bad, (is Steve ok??, man the little boys are being bad for him) to nurse the little cub-let--she is so tiny she isnt even a cub, really, just a tiny tiny little pink snoofing and sniffling cublet, a little girl-cublet, teensy little birdlegs I hate to even change her teensy diaper, she is just so itty bitty, why is this baby striking me as so incredibly small and delicate, Steve feels it, too--she has an aura of pre-newborn, maybe because she was brought inot this world quite a bit earlier than the last few babies, she is so sleepy and so smooshy floppy snuggly, round and fuzzy--all 4 other kids had these huge square heads-- that might sound mean, they were gorgeous babies but just so hefty and strong with these enormous heads and linebacker wide bodies...little Eska is just an apricot of an angel, a little sparrow-doll, so dolly is her little face, she stares at me and I just laugh/cry/gasp/smile why is this little face set just this way in this peachfuzz moonbaby, how can she make such a round little look in the dark, heaven hold on if she is disconnected from her teat, lemme tell ya and I couldnt be happier--at this stage in my life, this thirty three feeling like three hundred thirty three, there is no richer gift than to imagine her being WAYTOOATTACHED, oh how I used to fret and fuss when the grandmas and the old folks would stress me about my babies and how inappropriate it was for them to be so firmly attached to me....like I said, she gets it already, that I am her Mama and that I am good and that we were together forever and she popped out and we are still together, what else is there for this poppyseed, truly what else is there for something so helpless and so ridiculously hopeful and small besides to latch on to her fat milky and to kind of freak out when that latch is broken? Shes a smart cookie, my itty bitty.
anyhow, today is cool. I camped on the couch instead of the bed for a little while, took a shower, drank some Coke. Screw you, diabetes, I have given up dairy already so apricotmoonbaby doesnt get gas, but I am very happy to have delicious beverages back in my life, and Daddy brought home s-o-d-a-p-o-p today and it tastes very great.
I didnt tell you all this, but I had a headcold going into this birth and it only got worse. Coughing and blowing my nose has SUCKED with my incision and all..yeah...but the dear doctor, the OB, honored my request for some amoxicillin--hope we dont get thrush, but dude this was a real-deal sinus infection like I havent had in years...and it is helping. Slowly. but you know what worried me? I am not super hungry or thirsty, which were just the absolute hallmarks of early postpartum for me, always. It isnt cute, it isnt "weight loss", it is scary. I dont think it is right. I have been forcing myself to eat a little bit of food and to drink, even if it was some coke. I looked up a little online about the painkillers I am on, and I still keep trying (sometimes on accident like last night going from 10 pm to 8 am without taking anything SUCKED owwwwwwww uncool) to test if I can wean down yet, but no.
Now I know alot of new moms lament about their bodies etc and this is not that at all--I feel so small, so gentle, so fragile I am at that point where I think I am a skeleton. I just marvel at my feet, so bony and long, my hands, so mobile and thin, my little legs and arms---I was a goddamn HINDENBURG, I was just absolutely swelling up like that blueberry girl, my actual ass is smaller now, how can that be???---basically my entire body is deflated and soft and pale and weak. I feel like I was this ginat red balloon, pufffffff pufffff pufffff growing by the hour, and now I am this liquidy smoosh girl with sore sore bones underneath. I think thte last 4 months my "posture" was just my belly holding me up, because I have not one back muscle, not one. Camping out on the couch showed me that today.
I wonder how much of this is c-section stuff and how much is just tired old mama stuff? I know walking the way I have to for my incision is straining to my body, but I just feel so weak and mushy. I have no idea what will be the best way to come back from this whole thing, this pregnancy and delivery, but I know it will be a slow slow one this time. Its ok. I am sure when I am ready, that walking will be a good one, but I might really want to learn about some upper back exercises.
This blog, as i become more sleep deprived, will most certainly begin to take on the surreal rambling air of the semi-dreaming. I hope it makes sense, but maybe it doesnt and it will be cool to look back and read next year...
goodnite
Yesterday was bad. Steve working so hard, trying to keep the kids away so I could "rest", leaving me alone to hobble around and try to piece together some wierd sandwhich, alone alone cant fall asleep keep having nightmares, very unusual for me, sound like an ingrate--I hate to even type this, he has been so good, too good, working waaaaay too hard, on the verge of spazzing, cleaning, rushing, Casey! Charlie! No! No! No! Jesus what are you guys doing?! Just a second! Just a second! No! No! No hitting! Ohmygodyouguys NO!NO SPRINKLER! NO BITING! NO COOL WHIP! NO NO NO Touching poo-poo!.......While I practice lying on my side just a little but it hurts so bad, (is Steve ok??, man the little boys are being bad for him) to nurse the little cub-let--she is so tiny she isnt even a cub, really, just a tiny tiny little pink snoofing and sniffling cublet, a little girl-cublet, teensy little birdlegs I hate to even change her teensy diaper, she is just so itty bitty, why is this baby striking me as so incredibly small and delicate, Steve feels it, too--she has an aura of pre-newborn, maybe because she was brought inot this world quite a bit earlier than the last few babies, she is so sleepy and so smooshy floppy snuggly, round and fuzzy--all 4 other kids had these huge square heads-- that might sound mean, they were gorgeous babies but just so hefty and strong with these enormous heads and linebacker wide bodies...little Eska is just an apricot of an angel, a little sparrow-doll, so dolly is her little face, she stares at me and I just laugh/cry/gasp/smile why is this little face set just this way in this peachfuzz moonbaby, how can she make such a round little look in the dark, heaven hold on if she is disconnected from her teat, lemme tell ya and I couldnt be happier--at this stage in my life, this thirty three feeling like three hundred thirty three, there is no richer gift than to imagine her being WAYTOOATTACHED, oh how I used to fret and fuss when the grandmas and the old folks would stress me about my babies and how inappropriate it was for them to be so firmly attached to me....like I said, she gets it already, that I am her Mama and that I am good and that we were together forever and she popped out and we are still together, what else is there for this poppyseed, truly what else is there for something so helpless and so ridiculously hopeful and small besides to latch on to her fat milky and to kind of freak out when that latch is broken? Shes a smart cookie, my itty bitty.
anyhow, today is cool. I camped on the couch instead of the bed for a little while, took a shower, drank some Coke. Screw you, diabetes, I have given up dairy already so apricotmoonbaby doesnt get gas, but I am very happy to have delicious beverages back in my life, and Daddy brought home s-o-d-a-p-o-p today and it tastes very great.
I didnt tell you all this, but I had a headcold going into this birth and it only got worse. Coughing and blowing my nose has SUCKED with my incision and all..yeah...but the dear doctor, the OB, honored my request for some amoxicillin--hope we dont get thrush, but dude this was a real-deal sinus infection like I havent had in years...and it is helping. Slowly. but you know what worried me? I am not super hungry or thirsty, which were just the absolute hallmarks of early postpartum for me, always. It isnt cute, it isnt "weight loss", it is scary. I dont think it is right. I have been forcing myself to eat a little bit of food and to drink, even if it was some coke. I looked up a little online about the painkillers I am on, and I still keep trying (sometimes on accident like last night going from 10 pm to 8 am without taking anything SUCKED owwwwwwww uncool) to test if I can wean down yet, but no.
Now I know alot of new moms lament about their bodies etc and this is not that at all--I feel so small, so gentle, so fragile I am at that point where I think I am a skeleton. I just marvel at my feet, so bony and long, my hands, so mobile and thin, my little legs and arms---I was a goddamn HINDENBURG, I was just absolutely swelling up like that blueberry girl, my actual ass is smaller now, how can that be???---basically my entire body is deflated and soft and pale and weak. I feel like I was this ginat red balloon, pufffffff pufffff pufffff growing by the hour, and now I am this liquidy smoosh girl with sore sore bones underneath. I think thte last 4 months my "posture" was just my belly holding me up, because I have not one back muscle, not one. Camping out on the couch showed me that today.
I wonder how much of this is c-section stuff and how much is just tired old mama stuff? I know walking the way I have to for my incision is straining to my body, but I just feel so weak and mushy. I have no idea what will be the best way to come back from this whole thing, this pregnancy and delivery, but I know it will be a slow slow one this time. Its ok. I am sure when I am ready, that walking will be a good one, but I might really want to learn about some upper back exercises.
This blog, as i become more sleep deprived, will most certainly begin to take on the surreal rambling air of the semi-dreaming. I hope it makes sense, but maybe it doesnt and it will be cool to look back and read next year...
goodnite
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Story of a name...
When Greta was about one, and I started thinking about more babies, I wanted another Scandinavian-type name but I wanted to invent one. I mulled over so many syllables and sounds in my head, I was fairly obsessed! Little did I know I wouldn't have another girl for 10 years, haha...Ella, Elka, Ilsa, Elsa......
I remember so clearly, I even remember where I was, (sitting in the car) when I came up with Iska and Eska. I loved the sounds of those words and remembered to remember them. Then once a while later there was a model in a magazine named Iske and I thought well, I have to use Eska now! ....
Each time I was pregnant, thinking it was a girl, I Googled the word Eska and nothing came up. Then one time Eskarina came up, i think when I was expecting Charlie, on a list of "beautiful breastfed babies" of all things! I thought that was even better than Eska, but alas, many sons and no daughters...
Now this pregnancy there is apparently some Eska stuff on the internet now--someone named Princess Eskarina from a novel, as well as a blogger named Eska from Europe who seems like a pretty cool girl. So, even though the dream that this was an actual invented name is gone, its cool to know of these other Eska's!
We loved Poppy as a middle name always, mostly for Poppy Z Brite (the author) as well as for a flower middle name and just an all 'round great name. Other contenders were Posey and Marigold but Poppy won out hands down among Steve and the kids.
So that's the story!
I am feeling well, laying in bed, so far all of my experiments with taking less pain killers have gone very badly, so to say I am glad Steve is home is a huge understatement.
My milk came in Saturday without much ado, but probably cuz I am on pills.
Baby is super sweet and snuggly and a precious little dolly-bean. More pics soon!
I remember so clearly, I even remember where I was, (sitting in the car) when I came up with Iska and Eska. I loved the sounds of those words and remembered to remember them. Then once a while later there was a model in a magazine named Iske and I thought well, I have to use Eska now! ....
Each time I was pregnant, thinking it was a girl, I Googled the word Eska and nothing came up. Then one time Eskarina came up, i think when I was expecting Charlie, on a list of "beautiful breastfed babies" of all things! I thought that was even better than Eska, but alas, many sons and no daughters...
Now this pregnancy there is apparently some Eska stuff on the internet now--someone named Princess Eskarina from a novel, as well as a blogger named Eska from Europe who seems like a pretty cool girl. So, even though the dream that this was an actual invented name is gone, its cool to know of these other Eska's!
We loved Poppy as a middle name always, mostly for Poppy Z Brite (the author) as well as for a flower middle name and just an all 'round great name. Other contenders were Posey and Marigold but Poppy won out hands down among Steve and the kids.
So that's the story!
I am feeling well, laying in bed, so far all of my experiments with taking less pain killers have gone very badly, so to say I am glad Steve is home is a huge understatement.
My milk came in Saturday without much ado, but probably cuz I am on pills.
Baby is super sweet and snuggly and a precious little dolly-bean. More pics soon!
Monday, June 16, 2008
Baby Eska is here and she is soooo wonderful!
Well, I did it! I am way too tired to type and should totally be in bed but I am home and it all went really well and all I have the enegry for is some pics and some info. I promise to write the story soon soon soon but Jeez was I touched to see 34 comments on my c-section post! Thank you everyone!
Eskarina Poppy was born at 11:07 am on Wednesday, June 11
She weighed 9 lbs 7 ounces, a tiny little peanut for me-lol but pretty big for 39 weeks
21 1/2 inches long like all the other babies, blondish fuzzy head, super cute and sweet and snuggly and calm and man o man do I love her!!!!! We call her Eska, mostly, along with 55 other nicknames already like itty bitty rosebud and all kinds of obnoxious fun stuff : D
I got home last night, and only just now have ventured out of bed to try and sit at the computer chair and see what was up online....I am feeling pretty good, (pain pills help)...but mostly my husband being home is what this is all about--hip hip hooray for sanity!!!
My doctor was and is a gem and a saint and a good good man, the hospital was pretty ok as hospitals go, you know, a couple of the nurses are psycho-bitches and the vast majority are magical angels and I didnt let them starve me or anything like that : ) We had several pals and family members helping out at home so Steve got to be with me a good chunk of the hospital stay, and, well, I gotta go lay down again but heres some pics and THANK YOU to everyone for the incredible supportive comments! Sheesh! ....and CONGRATULATIONS TO MY DEAR KELLEY!!!!! and our same-day babies!!!
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Like my title says, gather sound advice and trust my instincts. Here we go...
Tomorrow morning, at 8:30 am, me and my husband will be checking into the hospital and registering for my procedure. My procedure is a C-Section birth of our daughter. Followers of my blogs over the past 2 years might be sad, shocked, worried, turned off, disappointed, confused, disturbed, angry, horrified, dismissive, or worse, more, beyond. But there is no shortage of fairy-tale homebirths out there on the blogosphere and I am just a person telling my stories to a computer, same as them. Yeah, I get on soapboxes, and yeah I have beliefs--strong, heartfelt, passionate beliefs. About women and birth and the healthcare system and midwifery and history and feminism and power and medicine and nature and the human condition. But like so many parts of growing up, the ideals and ideas have to fall in where they can, when reality is here. Being in my 30's has been different than being in my 20's for one stark difference: I can be very much ABOUT a cause and yet able to deal with it when I cant be a part of it personally.
The reasons for the c-section are long and yet not really. I have been contemplating "explaining" it all to you for weeks now, but it sounded so defensive-- bordering on exaggerated, that I have never found the right words or made the time to do so. No evil doctor has chopped me in half, no one has threatened or coorced me, there is no sad tale to tell--so I almost didnt know how to tell it.
There will be many many of you who simply do not understand what it is like to have the issues that I have right now with my body and my mind and my life. That is to be expected. Again, agreeing with or even understanding what other people go through isn't always possible, in fact it can be really difficult. some of the things I am going to tell you might really touch nerves, might really roll eyes--and there isn't anything I can do about that. I cant tell you enough how much I do NOT need anyone to tell me "you go girl" or "we totally understand". In fact, the fear of appearing to pander for these kinds of comments have kept me off the computer lately. I overthink things, if you haven't noticed ; )
About a month ago, I was listening to Hypnobabies Cd's***. I was filled with a sense of deep annoyance and frustration at the soothing lady telling me to relax, let my uterus do the work, that my body was perfectly designed to birth my baby, that soon my precious baby would slip into my arms. I was growing from irritated to enraged and then very very sad. I thought about how many women for whom this was just not true and then I "let" myself acknowledge what it was that was truly troubling me, that I felt this was completely not for me. Not truths, not something I needed to do, not something that I needed to delude myself with, and recognizing and facing this "demon" needed to happen that very day. I turned it off.
I started to think about so much of the time and energy that I have poured into this stuff, the BIRTH STUFF in my lifetime. From the first time I got my hands on Our Bodies Ourselves to my own birth experiences, to the thousands of hours of research, films, tv shows, reading, writing, and I knew that something was quite bullshit about what was going on for me, and I was afraid of it, but it had to be dealt with, immediately. This was about 4 weeks ago, when I began to get incredibly honest with myself and how shitty hiding behind what I thought I was suppossed to do was making me feel.
That night, me and my husband had a "big talk". I had no agenda except needed a very very trusted and close sounding board--the one person who truly, truly knows-knows-knows me and what I am about and when I am serious and what life has been for me. We have been together since I was 16 and believe me, he has been there. So I said to him (no use beating around the bush, right?)
" I am not going to be able to have a VBAC. the entire thing is a fricking sham. We found a "cool" doctor willing to let us play out the fantasy that I gave it my all, but Steve, it isnt going to happen. I have never been more sure of anything in my life. this isnt stinkin-thinkin', this is reality. I have a separated pelvis and cannot move my legs apart more than a few inches. I have scar tissue that I can feel ripping and tearing every minute of the day. The baby is breecher-than-breech, her round little head is clearly visible in my sternum and her feet dance and stab my crotch and hip sockets constantly. I am not going to be allowed to be upright or freed from IV fluids or external fetal monitoring, so this means beddy bye on my back and this will mean epidural which will mean loss of the sense of what my pelvis can and should do and alot of fear about the nursing staff not forcing my legs apart. I can suffer permanent damage to my pelvis if this occurs, and have read about women who are in wheelchairs for months after their SPD lithotomy position births. I do not trust my body, I do not think BirthWorks. I think I am in for another exhausting upsetting disappointing sham of a huge huge baby not coming down again, and I have NO interest. I am going to tell all of this to the doctor and see what he says."
My husband completely understood and agreed. To have this NAUGHTY SECRET THOUGHT "out there" for discussion, without having anyone with any agenda to have to be burdened with, to just tell my thoughts to, was very very good.
We discussed what we pictured the differences would be between a planned cesarean and the other kind. We talked about how unprepared and devastating we were and it was the other two times; the 24 hours of exhausting labor, the scrambling and failing to obtain time off work for Steve, or childcare of any kind, the confusion, the questions, the exhaustion, the irony of having the pain of the abdominal incision AND the pain from hours of pushing in the form of hemorrhoids, bruising and swelling and minor tears from the nurses constant perineal fiddlings and urgings to push right down here, Mom, right down here (rub rub rub rub stretch stretch stretch rub rub rub rub invade invade invade...) We talked about how we imagined just showing up one fine morning and getting a c-section would be SO WEIRD like some goofy celebrity, and yet so so so much different. TO be clean and rested, at a decent hour, to have childcare all lined up and to have time off of work, to not be alone and in pain for a week with my devastation and nightmares but to be cared for and supported...this had the potential to be something very different than we had ever known before.
I saw the doctor that week and opened up the floodgates. I cried through my whole speech, bumbling and stammering and over explaining and, with boogers and tears literally all over my entire front, he came around from behind his desk, this man who was and is completely willing to support VBAC ladies, in his special and rare status in our state, and his trustworthy and kind Mister Rogers way, gave me a hug. After offering me the entire box of Kleenex, he hugged me and he talked to me. He told me that I was very brave and very mature and that I was, without a doubt, making the best decision for my situation. We took out a calender and looked at it together. He told me more than once that I could change my mind. He answered all my questions and when I told him over and over just how WEIRD it seemed, he was right there with me agreeing. It was a genuine moment and I felt at peace after the visit.
Over the past few weeks, my physical condition has only gotten worse. I am in such astonishing pain that it has become isolating, and I have actually stopped talking about it for the most part. My pains I have in my lower abdomen are now to the point that I no longer fear surgery whatsoever. I AM living with terrible hobbling pain, and taking care of the children and the house, too. My dislocated crotch and creaking ribs are just part of my life, now, as is almost no sleep and terrible, terrible mood swings. For the first time in my life, having a special birth experience is literally one of the lowest priorities ever to me. I NEED to have my baby, and I NEED this pregnancy to end.
I have joined the legions now, I suppose, of the just-be-glad-your-baby-is-here, and I am looking forward to it with a clear and peaceful heart. There are many, many causes that I support and believe in, many of which do not directly touch my personal life, and that does not affect my ability and determination to devote my time or energy or passion towards. Homebirth is now definitely one of them and I am OK with that. DO you have any causes that you support that might not pertain to you personally? Save the Whales? Stop Apartheid? Bio-Fuel?
I am having a baby tomorrow, and my husband has two weeks off of work. My mom, my sister, my mother in law, and my best friends are all pitching in enormously to share childcare responsibilities so that Steve can stay with me most of the time and that my recovery is a normal one. My gratitude for this gift of not having to worry about my children or about being abandoned in hospital will never end. This really was the only factor which made me ok with this, the knowledge that I would not be all alone in the hospital this time, fending off nurses and being left to die in unattended showers and in charge of a baby I cannot lift or feed or change....god the horrors of all that, I shudder. Never again is all I can think to say.
I am very excited to see the dear baby and to move forward with my motherhood. Thank you for reading and think of me tomorrow. I will have Steve post her name/weight/etc probably Thursday when he comes home to sleep.
MamaJoy
The reasons for the c-section are long and yet not really. I have been contemplating "explaining" it all to you for weeks now, but it sounded so defensive-- bordering on exaggerated, that I have never found the right words or made the time to do so. No evil doctor has chopped me in half, no one has threatened or coorced me, there is no sad tale to tell--so I almost didnt know how to tell it.
There will be many many of you who simply do not understand what it is like to have the issues that I have right now with my body and my mind and my life. That is to be expected. Again, agreeing with or even understanding what other people go through isn't always possible, in fact it can be really difficult. some of the things I am going to tell you might really touch nerves, might really roll eyes--and there isn't anything I can do about that. I cant tell you enough how much I do NOT need anyone to tell me "you go girl" or "we totally understand". In fact, the fear of appearing to pander for these kinds of comments have kept me off the computer lately. I overthink things, if you haven't noticed ; )
About a month ago, I was listening to Hypnobabies Cd's***. I was filled with a sense of deep annoyance and frustration at the soothing lady telling me to relax, let my uterus do the work, that my body was perfectly designed to birth my baby, that soon my precious baby would slip into my arms. I was growing from irritated to enraged and then very very sad. I thought about how many women for whom this was just not true and then I "let" myself acknowledge what it was that was truly troubling me, that I felt this was completely not for me. Not truths, not something I needed to do, not something that I needed to delude myself with, and recognizing and facing this "demon" needed to happen that very day. I turned it off.
I started to think about so much of the time and energy that I have poured into this stuff, the BIRTH STUFF in my lifetime. From the first time I got my hands on Our Bodies Ourselves to my own birth experiences, to the thousands of hours of research, films, tv shows, reading, writing, and I knew that something was quite bullshit about what was going on for me, and I was afraid of it, but it had to be dealt with, immediately. This was about 4 weeks ago, when I began to get incredibly honest with myself and how shitty hiding behind what I thought I was suppossed to do was making me feel.
That night, me and my husband had a "big talk". I had no agenda except needed a very very trusted and close sounding board--the one person who truly, truly knows-knows-knows me and what I am about and when I am serious and what life has been for me. We have been together since I was 16 and believe me, he has been there. So I said to him (no use beating around the bush, right?)
" I am not going to be able to have a VBAC. the entire thing is a fricking sham. We found a "cool" doctor willing to let us play out the fantasy that I gave it my all, but Steve, it isnt going to happen. I have never been more sure of anything in my life. this isnt stinkin-thinkin', this is reality. I have a separated pelvis and cannot move my legs apart more than a few inches. I have scar tissue that I can feel ripping and tearing every minute of the day. The baby is breecher-than-breech, her round little head is clearly visible in my sternum and her feet dance and stab my crotch and hip sockets constantly. I am not going to be allowed to be upright or freed from IV fluids or external fetal monitoring, so this means beddy bye on my back and this will mean epidural which will mean loss of the sense of what my pelvis can and should do and alot of fear about the nursing staff not forcing my legs apart. I can suffer permanent damage to my pelvis if this occurs, and have read about women who are in wheelchairs for months after their SPD lithotomy position births. I do not trust my body, I do not think BirthWorks. I think I am in for another exhausting upsetting disappointing sham of a huge huge baby not coming down again, and I have NO interest. I am going to tell all of this to the doctor and see what he says."
My husband completely understood and agreed. To have this NAUGHTY SECRET THOUGHT "out there" for discussion, without having anyone with any agenda to have to be burdened with, to just tell my thoughts to, was very very good.
We discussed what we pictured the differences would be between a planned cesarean and the other kind. We talked about how unprepared and devastating we were and it was the other two times; the 24 hours of exhausting labor, the scrambling and failing to obtain time off work for Steve, or childcare of any kind, the confusion, the questions, the exhaustion, the irony of having the pain of the abdominal incision AND the pain from hours of pushing in the form of hemorrhoids, bruising and swelling and minor tears from the nurses constant perineal fiddlings and urgings to push right down here, Mom, right down here (rub rub rub rub stretch stretch stretch rub rub rub rub invade invade invade...) We talked about how we imagined just showing up one fine morning and getting a c-section would be SO WEIRD like some goofy celebrity, and yet so so so much different. TO be clean and rested, at a decent hour, to have childcare all lined up and to have time off of work, to not be alone and in pain for a week with my devastation and nightmares but to be cared for and supported...this had the potential to be something very different than we had ever known before.
I saw the doctor that week and opened up the floodgates. I cried through my whole speech, bumbling and stammering and over explaining and, with boogers and tears literally all over my entire front, he came around from behind his desk, this man who was and is completely willing to support VBAC ladies, in his special and rare status in our state, and his trustworthy and kind Mister Rogers way, gave me a hug. After offering me the entire box of Kleenex, he hugged me and he talked to me. He told me that I was very brave and very mature and that I was, without a doubt, making the best decision for my situation. We took out a calender and looked at it together. He told me more than once that I could change my mind. He answered all my questions and when I told him over and over just how WEIRD it seemed, he was right there with me agreeing. It was a genuine moment and I felt at peace after the visit.
Over the past few weeks, my physical condition has only gotten worse. I am in such astonishing pain that it has become isolating, and I have actually stopped talking about it for the most part. My pains I have in my lower abdomen are now to the point that I no longer fear surgery whatsoever. I AM living with terrible hobbling pain, and taking care of the children and the house, too. My dislocated crotch and creaking ribs are just part of my life, now, as is almost no sleep and terrible, terrible mood swings. For the first time in my life, having a special birth experience is literally one of the lowest priorities ever to me. I NEED to have my baby, and I NEED this pregnancy to end.
I have joined the legions now, I suppose, of the just-be-glad-your-baby-is-here, and I am looking forward to it with a clear and peaceful heart. There are many, many causes that I support and believe in, many of which do not directly touch my personal life, and that does not affect my ability and determination to devote my time or energy or passion towards. Homebirth is now definitely one of them and I am OK with that. DO you have any causes that you support that might not pertain to you personally? Save the Whales? Stop Apartheid? Bio-Fuel?
I am having a baby tomorrow, and my husband has two weeks off of work. My mom, my sister, my mother in law, and my best friends are all pitching in enormously to share childcare responsibilities so that Steve can stay with me most of the time and that my recovery is a normal one. My gratitude for this gift of not having to worry about my children or about being abandoned in hospital will never end. This really was the only factor which made me ok with this, the knowledge that I would not be all alone in the hospital this time, fending off nurses and being left to die in unattended showers and in charge of a baby I cannot lift or feed or change....god the horrors of all that, I shudder. Never again is all I can think to say.
I am very excited to see the dear baby and to move forward with my motherhood. Thank you for reading and think of me tomorrow. I will have Steve post her name/weight/etc probably Thursday when he comes home to sleep.
MamaJoy
***Hypnobabies is a fine product and my story is in no way against this type of thing. I appreciate all of the women it has helped and I hope that it helps many more women to come.
Saturday, May 31, 2008
ok seriously...
My hands are too swollen to type
My bones are too seperated to sit at the computer anymore
My feet are too swollen for stepping on
I cant breathe
I have contractions all day
I think if I were a guy I would have taken myself to the E.R. thinking I was having a heart attack
I think if this were my first baby I would have taken myself to the E.R. thinking this must surely be labor.
So anyways, I am huge and miserable and have nothing to say. By the looks of me this baby will be about 17 pounds. Maybe I will be on the news!
By the sensations I have inside of me, this baby will be born with stilletto heels on and will be wielding a sword of some kind.
My blood pressure is fantastic, 119/75 and even though I only gained 22 pounds until last week, I gained SEVEN pounds in the past week. Its all water the doctor says and he said if I wasnt swollen he would be concerned. Very lovely except how the hell am I suppossed to live like this?
They are all rhetorical questions,
there is nothing anyone can do for me,
there is nothing anyone can do for me,
trying to enjoy this sacred time
meaning
to cry less and to shut my mouth when the mean words come close to coming out and to just be very still and very patient because I am SO HOT AND IN SO MUCH PAIN I AM SERIOUSLY GONNA FREAK OUT FOR R E A L I WANT TO SCREAM THIS IS SUCH SUCH BULLSHIT WHY AM I SO BAD AT BEING PREGNANT THIS IS NOT SUPPOSSED TO HURT THIS BAD !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Well, someday soon I will have the baby and the posts will be different.
Monday, May 19, 2008
A blog can have mood swings, too, right? : )
I cant believe how much I have been griping lately! I guess when I am feeling good, I dont go sit at the computer, I take care of my house and kids. So you all get to only read the bad stuff...whoops.
Well, I had a ton of fun at that birthday party. It was a BEAUTIFUL day, and I didnt get why the people were shivering and even wearing coats until I heard on the way home that it was 54 degrees! HAHHAA! I thought it was about 70!
My precious niece turned 2 and she is about as cute as a human can be, like a little doll. All the cousins played and had fun, it was at a gorgeous park with a river and there were geese and ducks and swans and the kids fed them bread and cupcakes and chips( poor birds! hope they are ok!) and it turned into a petting zoo practically. So so fun.
My pubic bone pain is the same at a party as it is at home or at walMart so hey at least we all had fun. I think 54 degrees is my new favorite temperature! It was sunny and super windy and I did not feel like I was going to puke or faint or yell at anyone whatsoever. amazing. Poor Birthday girl was shivering in her dress but Auntie Joy was not evil, so it was a success, haha
I felt different last night and today. I would not say the baby has "dropped", because there are still hard baby parts way high up in my actual sternum but the feelings down low are different. I feel literally ready to pop but for some reason my attitude is different. I have contractions all the time, even "real" ones that hurt my back, but I just feel excited and in some kind of "home stretch" now. I was SO cool when I was pregnant with Charlie, I was all into "enjoying this last baby" HAHAHAHAHHA and I really didnt complain too much. Maybe my friends will disagree, but I didnt get like, depressed-complainy. I was trying to savor it all, and even went to nearly 42 weeks. This time is different--maybe I wasted all my cheer working as a bartender until midnight for the forst 6 months, but I have been VERY upset and sad about how painful this pregnancy has been physically.
I have another super happy announcement, my sister is giving me a baby shower!!!! It is next weekend and the people are supposed to be bringing different sizes of diapers and a frozen food item like pizza or lasgana! But the most incredible thing is that we are going to get real, assigned help for my hospital stay and afterwards. As in, I wont be alone. As in, my kids will be taken care of. As in, I will be able to experience......I cant even put it into words.......but some normalcy, some peace, and the overwhelming burden of stress that has plagued me and my husband around our births may just be gone, or lessened a great deal and I cannot even tell you how that is going to feel. Indescribable?!
I hate to jinx anything, but if this goes well, I will never be the same. the thought of just being a normal person who has her husband there and who gets to focus on nursing the baby and resting a little blows me away. there is nothing I want more in this world. I will let you know how the shower and sign up thing goes for sure!!!!!!
Happy Day
Well, I had a ton of fun at that birthday party. It was a BEAUTIFUL day, and I didnt get why the people were shivering and even wearing coats until I heard on the way home that it was 54 degrees! HAHHAA! I thought it was about 70!
My precious niece turned 2 and she is about as cute as a human can be, like a little doll. All the cousins played and had fun, it was at a gorgeous park with a river and there were geese and ducks and swans and the kids fed them bread and cupcakes and chips( poor birds! hope they are ok!) and it turned into a petting zoo practically. So so fun.
My pubic bone pain is the same at a party as it is at home or at walMart so hey at least we all had fun. I think 54 degrees is my new favorite temperature! It was sunny and super windy and I did not feel like I was going to puke or faint or yell at anyone whatsoever. amazing. Poor Birthday girl was shivering in her dress but Auntie Joy was not evil, so it was a success, haha
I felt different last night and today. I would not say the baby has "dropped", because there are still hard baby parts way high up in my actual sternum but the feelings down low are different. I feel literally ready to pop but for some reason my attitude is different. I have contractions all the time, even "real" ones that hurt my back, but I just feel excited and in some kind of "home stretch" now. I was SO cool when I was pregnant with Charlie, I was all into "enjoying this last baby" HAHAHAHAHHA and I really didnt complain too much. Maybe my friends will disagree, but I didnt get like, depressed-complainy. I was trying to savor it all, and even went to nearly 42 weeks. This time is different--maybe I wasted all my cheer working as a bartender until midnight for the forst 6 months, but I have been VERY upset and sad about how painful this pregnancy has been physically.
I have another super happy announcement, my sister is giving me a baby shower!!!! It is next weekend and the people are supposed to be bringing different sizes of diapers and a frozen food item like pizza or lasgana! But the most incredible thing is that we are going to get real, assigned help for my hospital stay and afterwards. As in, I wont be alone. As in, my kids will be taken care of. As in, I will be able to experience......I cant even put it into words.......but some normalcy, some peace, and the overwhelming burden of stress that has plagued me and my husband around our births may just be gone, or lessened a great deal and I cannot even tell you how that is going to feel. Indescribable?!
I hate to jinx anything, but if this goes well, I will never be the same. the thought of just being a normal person who has her husband there and who gets to focus on nursing the baby and resting a little blows me away. there is nothing I want more in this world. I will let you know how the shower and sign up thing goes for sure!!!!!!
Happy Day
Saturday, May 17, 2008
Come buy tickets to stare at the screaming swollen blimp lady!
This Mama is so awesome for telling a true and real story and I wanted to link it to y'all.
i am currently the MEANEST MAMA in the world, and the people in my "homeschool group", the ones who i thought might understand, seem to be looking at me with that look lately, too. I could of course be insane and paranoid, but it seems awfully bad timing that what used to pass as Joy Is Funny is now leaning a bit towards the Joy Is Evil side of things? Dont these freaks remember being pregnant and having little ones around and trying to do something as simple and as stupid as show up to the park and how much it sucks??? I am blacking out, contracting, spinning with nausea and extreme thirst, sweating attack, heart palpitations, and deep deep confusion---is it really that rare? And this is me just getting around to the back of the van to open up the trunk and brace for the stroller to fall on my belly or shins....let alone getting all out of the vehicle, asking my poor little spoiled darlings to please carry their own WATER CUPS, running away from me like a bunch of deaf brats, (Sorry! Sorry! Angels I meant!) and I am standing there with the 44 pound baby, the rickety stroller, 4 water cups, bag o snacks, my diaper bag, the keys....and if I yell at them to COMEBACK HERE I am "mean"???? What about they are bad??? What about I dont wanna go to the f#$% PARK, because it doesnt have an ice machine, a body pillow, a bathroom, shade, fencing, or for that matter, my bed?
I am so pissed off. It makes me want to just stay home, curtains drawn. But I know that that is bad and that i am supposed to keep on boppin, and ignore all of the people who judge me for being so cross. I have fantasies that people try to step into my shoes for 10 minutes while i stare at them with pity and judgement. I dont want pity, but maybe just someone to crack up laughing with me.
2 moms did help me alot at the park this week. They put Casey in and out of the baby swings (he is 4 but LOVES them) and one mom even walked waaaaaaaaaaay far to the bathroom to see if it was open for me so i didnt have to. It was but it was too far so i just didnt go. I may have died if i had to walk that far.
Basically it is bullshit to be this pregnant and to be expected to just keep on bopping along. I have to go to a birthday party tomorrow and my husband is not able to come and i know what the drill is gonna be. If I dont be-bop, my kids will run away and drown, so i will have to completely be in hot contracting hell. If I pant or sit or look like i am dying, there will be the guaranteed "Well, she shouldnt have gotten pregnant". "Maybe she shoulda thoughta that". "Those poor kids" etc
I want to fly around the town, just bringing cold icey drinks to pregnant women and chasing their kids for them so they can lie on their left side and eat their burritos. I feel so strongly about this, and I am going to do it. What goes around comes around and I bet they will remember it and pass it on to their friends, too, you know?
Well, typing this made my feet turn navy blue so i had better go lay down again while Charlie rubs playdoh into the windowsill. He has been doing this all day while Casey "washes money" in the bathroom sink and somehow it always involves toothpaste and I am really one of those moms now whose kids just do rogue bizarre things and I dont stop them. damn damn damn. I wish I was unschooly enough to think it was all so precious and wonderful but it isnt --it is chaos and it sucks. Right? Who even knows anymore.
i am currently the MEANEST MAMA in the world, and the people in my "homeschool group", the ones who i thought might understand, seem to be looking at me with that look lately, too. I could of course be insane and paranoid, but it seems awfully bad timing that what used to pass as Joy Is Funny is now leaning a bit towards the Joy Is Evil side of things? Dont these freaks remember being pregnant and having little ones around and trying to do something as simple and as stupid as show up to the park and how much it sucks??? I am blacking out, contracting, spinning with nausea and extreme thirst, sweating attack, heart palpitations, and deep deep confusion---is it really that rare? And this is me just getting around to the back of the van to open up the trunk and brace for the stroller to fall on my belly or shins....let alone getting all out of the vehicle, asking my poor little spoiled darlings to please carry their own WATER CUPS, running away from me like a bunch of deaf brats, (Sorry! Sorry! Angels I meant!) and I am standing there with the 44 pound baby, the rickety stroller, 4 water cups, bag o snacks, my diaper bag, the keys....and if I yell at them to COMEBACK HERE I am "mean"???? What about they are bad??? What about I dont wanna go to the f#$% PARK, because it doesnt have an ice machine, a body pillow, a bathroom, shade, fencing, or for that matter, my bed?
I am so pissed off. It makes me want to just stay home, curtains drawn. But I know that that is bad and that i am supposed to keep on boppin, and ignore all of the people who judge me for being so cross. I have fantasies that people try to step into my shoes for 10 minutes while i stare at them with pity and judgement. I dont want pity, but maybe just someone to crack up laughing with me.
2 moms did help me alot at the park this week. They put Casey in and out of the baby swings (he is 4 but LOVES them) and one mom even walked waaaaaaaaaaay far to the bathroom to see if it was open for me so i didnt have to. It was but it was too far so i just didnt go. I may have died if i had to walk that far.
Basically it is bullshit to be this pregnant and to be expected to just keep on bopping along. I have to go to a birthday party tomorrow and my husband is not able to come and i know what the drill is gonna be. If I dont be-bop, my kids will run away and drown, so i will have to completely be in hot contracting hell. If I pant or sit or look like i am dying, there will be the guaranteed "Well, she shouldnt have gotten pregnant". "Maybe she shoulda thoughta that". "Those poor kids" etc
I want to fly around the town, just bringing cold icey drinks to pregnant women and chasing their kids for them so they can lie on their left side and eat their burritos. I feel so strongly about this, and I am going to do it. What goes around comes around and I bet they will remember it and pass it on to their friends, too, you know?
Well, typing this made my feet turn navy blue so i had better go lay down again while Charlie rubs playdoh into the windowsill. He has been doing this all day while Casey "washes money" in the bathroom sink and somehow it always involves toothpaste and I am really one of those moms now whose kids just do rogue bizarre things and I dont stop them. damn damn damn. I wish I was unschooly enough to think it was all so precious and wonderful but it isnt --it is chaos and it sucks. Right? Who even knows anymore.
Monday, May 12, 2008
When did your milk "come in" and other tales from the nursing crypt
I would like to hear about this subject matter from all kinds of Mamas, and Mamas-to-be. It was one of those millions of things that I did not really "get" during my first pregnancy, because, well, I just didnt. Blame it on What To Expect, blame it on complete ignorance, blame it on the hospital staff, but no sirree I did not get this one at all. Here are my 4 milk stories. Enjoy and please do share!
First baby:
I had Greta in a hospital, and after they did some stuff to her, she was all mine. I would say she was about 2 hours old when I got up the nerve to ask the nurse "Should I try to feed her?" and she said yeah! I was so shy to do it, these people who just saw it all and then some, now I didnt want to see my whole boob--hahaa but the nurse right away said that I would definitely need to bust the whole thing out. So there I was, one little bundly baby, one big ole boob hangin out, still paralyzed from the waist down from the epidural (hard to adjust in the bed, but very good for still not knowing the extent of the pain from my birth and stitches and all...) and I sort of held her up and it was WEIRD! I felt so WEIRD! I felt like a perv! But I knew I wanted to breastfeed, but had imagined some kind of 6 month old in a rocking chair, I guess, not this itty bitty runty blanket pile, not this awkward having to hold her up stuff---then the nurse just grabbed a hold of my breast and sort of wiped it back and forth on the baby's lips until she opened her mouth really wide and then she jammed the baby on. A Good Latch, I was told. Cool. she looked like she was sucking and it didnt feel like anything, really, and I think I asked how long I was supposed to do it for and maybe she said 5 minutes or 20 or something. (This was all so insane and so counter intuitive, unnatural, ridiculous and endearingly silly but I am going to leave out all the LOL's just to save space!)It was a Monday night when Greta was born, and here and there I would do this supposed nursing. Nurses would come and go, each one with their own little chimey, conflicting advice. Great latch! Oh no, terrible latch! Let her nurse alot. Get her off the breast or you'll be sore. Don't worry too much about the clock. When was the last time she was fed and for how long? Don't hunch over. Relax your upper body. Never lay down with the baby. Try feeding her lying down. etc etc etcTuesday we did the same thing, and she did seem to be swallowing. Tuesday night their progressive and hip rooming in policy kind of clashed with my pain and exhaustion and the baby nip nip nipped all night long while I wished the bars on the bed were much higher because I was very convinced I would nod off and drop the dear baby onto the cement floor of the hospital room. Somehow, I did not. I had read enough to be all prepared to demand "No formula! Dont take the baby away to any germy nursery!" but I what I was not prepared fpr was the fact that there was no nursery, and that I had to keep her with me.
Ok...Wednesday I was getting sore. they asked me if my milk had come in. Over and over. Has your milk come in, Mom? I said I think so. But really, I didnt even know what the hell it meant. She hadnt pooped and I was being told that she needed to pee more. I was also being told not to feed her quite so often and she seemed to be swallowing something.... Nobody even mentioned Colostrum, and to be honest, it was just another one of those icky new terms being bandied about: colostrum, meconium, perineum, lanugo, umbilicus...whatever. I got to go home that evening which was cool and ridiculous. They slipped some formula powder in my mint green care-bear bag of flim flam but gave no instructions, just like the breastfeeding.
Wednesday night, me and Daddy and the baby all got into bed. Of course. No political stance, just a shredded to bits throbbing splitting falling out swollen aching burning private area and a one bedroom apartment and well, we got in bed. I laid on my side and nursed her most of the night. She pooped and peed and I thought that my "milk had come in" and that all of the hype was bizarre. Breastfeeding was a breeze, I was starting to think.
Thursday, I sat around and nursed the baby. She pooped alot and we learned about Blow Outs and how sometimes you just need to give her a bath, umbilicus be damned, because she is 75% covered in blackish poo and so is the couch. I think she had 3 baths, and wow did it take both me and Steve to wash the squalling red naked slippery little critter--and it was so much work! I was starting to hate Johnsons and Johnsons commercials with their one year olds in the kitchen sink-- my sink had dishes in it, and all sorts of other scariness, certainly no place for a poo covered neonate....but I digress.
Thursday night, with maybe one or two outfits left for her that were clean (no baby shower and no washing machine, we had a very small stack of onesies that my mother in law got for us at a garage sale which seemed like "lots" of clothes but was probably 8 to 10 onesies) she slept with me and nursed off and on all night.
Friday morning, and I was on the couch, watching TV, drinking something and eating some breakfast, when I noticed my shirt was all wet. Wow, I thought, I must have spilled all of my drink! We really need to get to the laundromat, this is crazy how we are going through our clothes so fast! I remember getting up to go change my shirt and that my breasts really hurt when I walked. they hurt even worse when I took off my wet (last clean) bra, and I went and looked in the mirror. Whoa. Who got implants? I gave a little squeeze and was disturbed to find them both really, really sore and firm. What was going on? I put on a new t shirt, no bra, thank you very much, ow, and went back to the couch. I wondered if I had something wrong, infected, blocked, where were those dumb books again? And I nursed the baby. As she nursed the one side, I felt my front get all hot and was honestly shocked to see the spreading flood coming out on the fabric near my other boob---was this "leaking?" The baby seemed agitated, pulling off and sputtering, crying, and I was back to trying to latch her again like in the hospital, but over the last 10 minutes, the pain and hardness of my boobs was becoming alarming! Now baby was getting pissed off and I was getting frantic, annoyed, scared. did I have a disease? Did I do something wrong? Did I feed her too much or not enough? Like a water balloon filling, filling, the engorgement was taking over my entire chest and my nipple was being flattened so she couldnt get any of it in her mouth. I think I called my mom, and then the Hotline at the hospital. Somehow the advice was to take a hot shower and painkillers and keep nursing. I left her wailing in her carseat just outside the bathroom door as I myself wailed in the shower. It didnt do much except I learned that we were out of towels and that hot showers made me bleed extensively. I got into bed with the baby, and we nursed and we cried. My husband was already back to work, and I laid there in my mesh undies (if you dont know what these are, bless your heart, they give them to you in the hospital, they are huge and stretchy and they spare your own undies from blood) and my jumbo pad, and milk poured out of the breast that wasnt in use, getting the whole bed sticky and I wondered why things like Waterproof Mattress Pad, Laundry Service, many many bras, and for heaven;s sake, Breast Pads never made it on those retarded lists they like to put in all those books and magazines. Would I have listened? didnt matter now, but in my leaky, leaky, pain and filth, what I really could have used (besides the obvious help from people) was a whole lot more clean linens, stat! Towels, sheets, underwear, bedding, tshirts-- I was literally naked, alone, and the hamper had been full of rot, rot, rot for days. My mind started to wonder about that little formula packet in the care-bear bag, but we didnt have any bottles anyways and who the hell knew where that bag was, so we layed there, 2 naked girlies with just our diapers on, and we nursed.
By evening, I had called the breastfeeding hotline again and this time someone was merciful enough to tell me that My Milk Had Come In. On Day five. "It happens later when you have an epidural", the voice on the phone said. Oh. I started little fanatsies about writing What They Dont Tell You when You are Expecting--and living off of the money from the book sales (perhaps a precursor to my eventual blog? Hee hee)The next week was hard, and I dreaded feeding time. I curled my toes and bit my lip and wanted to run away to the forest, to the soft clean dry forest where no one would ever, ever touch me again. No decimated vagina, no filthy sheetless mattress, no using winter clothes as towels, and no bleeding, burning, rugburnt nipples scraping around in Daddys tshirts, being offered up to little wailing mouths of babies every hour. I would be a celebate lesbian nun, some kind of intellectual monk, perhaps bald, but certainly wrapped in clean dry white gaze, tightly bandaged, encased in robes and headdress, in all white, alone and clean and whole and sealed.
A girl I barely knew from our coffee shop hang out days came over to see me and the baby, and after I told her a bit on the phone about the hell I was in, she brought me an old breast pump. It was a terrible cheap battery run thing and putting my breast in there was a feat of terror--but nothing compared to the horror once I turned the contraption on and its monstrous suction split my nipple and blood came out, no milk, and I vowed to never try a breast pump again. I looked hard for that care-bear bag but it really was lost. I felt that formula must surely be healthier than blood for the dear baby lovey to drink, but Daddy had the car at work and well, we just nursed.
Why I stuck with it, I will freely admit, I do not know. I had no knowledge of breastfeeding being super wonderful, no stance, no role models. I guess I just knew that it was right and that the baby seemed to love it and I knew it would most likely get better. It did. But it took about 3 weeks at least, 3 weeks with no soothie gel packs, no Lansinoh, no good bra, no herbs or teas, no boppy pillow (yet), and no store bought breast pads (I was using washcloths or just laying on towels).
I went on to nurse her for YEARS, right through the next pregnancy, prematurely but understandably feeling quite certain that after 3+ years, I was surely an old pro.
Baby #2
Mickey was born by csection after a miserable induction cavalcade. His time of birth was 12:40am, but I was not sewed up and returned to my room until 4:30. (I now have a lot of questions about that, but of course as I had nothing to compare it to, didnt know to even question it. Hmmm.) They gave him to me to nurse and he was very sleepy. I wasnt worried, I was tired, too, and I "knew" that with a nursing child at home, it would all work out. He seemed to be nursing by the middle of the next day, but he was turning jaundiced and losing weight. I was in the hospital for 6 days, and by day 5, I felt that familiar old oww...owww...WOW...and yep, even with a nursing older kid, I found out that the milk still COMES IN again, same old engorgement, but this baby was different. He would fall asleep each time I nursed him, to the point where we were tickling him, rubbing him with cold washcloths, jostling him to stay awake at the breast for more than a minute.
I had a friend with a new baby who would walk around talking on the telephone, nursing her newborn with one arm and using her little Avent hand pump with the other hand. I was so impressed that I begged my mom to buiy me an Avent pump. I wasnt quite as adept, I guess. My pumping experience was an ordeal, to say the least. I would have to load the non-pumping breast with piles of washcloths, no little pad would hold the flood, and then I would have to get completely topless and lean waaay over to crane my neck and see if any milk was indeed coming out on the pump-side. This sucked extra due to the c section and all, and due to the fact that during this ridiculous exercise, I would have to lay my actual baby down and listen to him scream! Yippee! It helped a bit with engorgement but all the little frozen milk bags for "the babysitter" (HAHAHAHHAHAHAHAhahahahahahahaaa..........) ended getting used by me at the grocery store or whenever he would flip out and it was almost impossible to actually nurse him. Then he got colic/gas.
We bought bottles and bottles of Mylicon and then Gripe Water. He smelled like black licorice all the time. It kind of worked. After 3+ years of breastfeeding, no one ever told me about hindmilk or foremilk and he was indeed getting only sip-sip-sippys of the watery "foremilk" which gave him explosive green farty pain and ended al sleep as we knew it. By day 7 after surgery my husband was back to work and I was alone with this debacle. That first day I held my pee from 7:30 am until after 6 pm. I was in too much pain and in too much worry about the 3 year old and the new screechy baby to figure out how to get down to the bathroom.
I wouldnt say he was a happy or good nurser until he was about 5 weeks old. But we eventually were a great team, and again, I nursed him for years, right through the next pregnancy!
Baby #3
This was my homeborn, drug free baby Casey. He was born on a Sunday afternoon, and really did seem to be nursing real milk. He had yellow poo on the very next day...but sure enough, Wednesday night, that throbbing, aching, swelling began again, and it was actually my worst case of engorgement ever! My milk came in, alrighty, my breasts were like concrete footballs, and I cried and cried and cried. I didnt want a stupid bath, I didnt want to go looking for that old pump, I wanted to sleep and maybe some hardcore painkillers, this was STUPID!
It was about 3 days of this, but then our nursing relationship was very very easy and smooth from then on. No gas, no issues, and he even seemed to nurse on a "schedule", about every 2 hours, which was just bliss!
Baby #4
CSection, my Charlie,but they had me back in a room, all sewed up, and nursing in less than 2 hours. The baby was completely disinterested, but again, I felt like it would all work out and that he was just sleepy from all the drugs. This went on for days, and soon they were feeding him formula and colostrum pumped on a scary professional pump out of a little cup. There was talk of palette issues, weak suck, tongue tied, and I cried ALOT. I imagined being sent home, chopped in half, in charge of 4 children, with some baby who wouldnt nurse, and it was just about the final straw to this miserable birth. I learned to quickly stop crying when the nurses came in the room because they were always on me about "Are you depressed, Hun?" along with riding me about how much help I was gonna need when I got home. I actually had to sign stuff saying that I had people to help me and that yes I understood the discharge instructions of no lifting and no driving and no stairs etc as I knew none of it was going to happen but it got them off of me with their counseling handouts.
He was born on a Tuesday morning and My milk came in Friday. It was the least dramatic engorgement of all the children, but still was painful, awkward and difficult. When I was sent home on Saturday, he had lost over a pound, and still nursed weird. These last 2 babies were our closest-spaced kids and the nursing frenzy of my dejected angry jealous two year old helped ALOT. We didnt prepare him for the birth whatsoever, (it was going to be a homebirth, and we expected him to be gone maybe 12 hours, tops.)
Instead, his Mama was gone for almost a week. (He really hasnt ever been the same since.) My memory is fuzzy because that first week home was filled with so much drama, but I guess he was a good nurser within that second week, but I know we were back on the gas drops, etc. They gave me Lansinoh cream in the hospital and it really was amazing stuff. I am still nursing him now, about once or twice a day/
Well, those are my stories. They sound horrible, and it really kind of was. The way the whole thing all comes together seems like such a cruel joke by Mother Nature, right when your sleep deprivation is starting to become outrageous, right when your hormones have crashed and utterly bottomed out, right when all the secondary aches and pains of birthing like the sore arms and neck and wrists and hips, your chest inflates to demented proportions and you have to go through a horrible ordeal that seems so, so useless and hopeless---at those times I wonder what the Cave-Mamas did. I like to think that they just layed there and gritted their teeth and that pretty soon it all worked out. I might get a breast pump for this baby, and I might just let Charlie handle that. I have Lansinoh cream for sore nipples, and plenty of Tylenol, Motrin, Motherwort, Arnica, and Rescue Remedy. I have rice-bags to microwave for heat and can whip up an ice pack if need be. I love breastfeeding, once it gets to the good part, and am looking forward to my new baby--especially when she is about 2 weeks old ; )
So, when did your milk come in, and what stories do you have to drudge out from the nursing crypt?
Sunday, May 11, 2008
35 1/2 weeks and what I am looking forward to
We have had no internet for almost 2 weeks. Our computer died, fizz-boom-dead! But my husband fixed it, somehow, slowly, for free. He is awesome! I am back.
So, my dear freinds, how I wish to give sunny and poetic tidings to you all, on this, the week that I turn "Nine Months"--but I really dont know if I am that kind of person, I am sad and honest to admit. I love my baby, perhaps more fully than I have ever loved any not yet born baby, but alot of really ugly, ironic, sad and very unexpected shit has occurred in the last month, some emotional, lots physical, which, in combination with my pain and frustration in these last weeks has really really left me unable to write things about feeling like a ripe and glorious peach, or composing little sonnets to the sweet baby who dances under my heart--I am sorry. I LOVe that stuff, I love to read it, I love pregnant women who can write it, but I know there is a place here in blog world and Real World for sadness and fear and disappointment in our bodies and the day to day drudgery of waddling from couch to bathroom to couch to bathroom, each step grinding our separated pubic bones against each other, gasps as the little knives that poke poke poke us in the cervixes, as the reality sets in that today is another really, really pathetic day for our other children, and that it will be long and it will be pain-filled and that no one really gets it and that there isnt anything anyone can do about it and that all there is coming up is WAY more pain in the form of trying to birth vaginally over what feels like broken bones, or having another cesarean. @#$%$#@ Can I get an epidural now, just for fun? A spinal? A fricking Vicodin? A milkshake, not sugar free?
What a depressing mother! Arent I happy for my baby? Arent I looking forward to the orgasmic birth? Wont it be AWESOME? Dont I love being full of child? Isnt it all so beautiful? Isnt grinding bruised constant pain so fantabulous? Isnt it magical hoping your kids dont run into the street because you cant catch them anyways if they did? Isnt it glorious being so thirsty for a tasty drink but only being able to have DISGUSTING diet pop or water? Isnt throwing up every morning again so wistful? (This started again last week. Yay)
Look, how can my life, my truth, my reality not count as much as the golden poem mamas? Why do I want to not even publish this post? Maybe because as much as it is Hip and Righteous and Kick Ass for books about this stuff to come out, i have real people in my real life who completely freak out when I get honest. Always have. BUT HELLO This is motherhood, too, because I am a mother! A mother with dislocated bones and diabetes and anemia and exhauation and 4 kids who think I am Satan---this is what is going on right now. You clicked the link to see what was going on with me and this is it. If you want glossy lies, go pick up a copy of some schlocky magazine or go watch some idiots on television measure each other's stomachs with toilet paper.
Anyhow, I look forward. I look forward and this is what I look forward to.
This is what will be Awesome. Glorious. Golden. For me. My children. My family.
Seeing my baby angel doll girl. Holding her. Kissing her. Staring at her all day all night all day all night for months and months and months of co sleeping and nursey nursey nursey land. Walking. Breathing. Eating great heaps of luscious foods, pastas with fancy cheeses and fresh from the garden spinach and deeply colored soups and crusty breads and fruity icey smoothies and watermelon and strawberries with no heartburn, no protein counting, and please god please, no bleeding my fingertips onto a glucometer every 2 hours. I am looking forward to being nice again, kind and loving to my other precious children, and enjoying mamahood as a whole and sane person, a person who is not crippled or confused or haunted or worried about how I will survive the day, the week, the birth, the postpartum. A Mom with five kids. 2 bigs, 2 littles, and a baby. A real live working breathing walking talking HUMAN. It is so hard to imagine right now, but thank God I have done this before and I do remember, I do.
I am looking forward to being strong and providing milk and kisses and laughs, mac and cheese and bandaids, lifting the boys in and out of their high chairs, shaving my legs, doing my toes, did I mention walking? Oh, the walks in that kick-ass shiney new red double stroller that I so coveted and finally got, oh to walk walk walk with my babies, eat and walk and breathe. A Mother of five. I am so ridiculously blessed, but I dont feel like it right now. I look forward to that appreciation replacing this misery, to the poetry coming back to me, to rebecoming Me. To many women, newborn time is anything but--but for me it was always alwasy better than pregnancy. Always. Exponentially. My boobs already hurt and I dont sleep now anyways...
I really do know that these plans and dreams might not sound like anything remotely close to life-with-a-new-baby. You might think of overwhelming exhaustion, sore breasts, incisions and stiches and endless bleeding, loss of self, loss of time, feeling like you went from being a full ripe Queen to a drained and droopy dishrag, from being the center of attention as the Pregnant Mama to being a lowly cow, alone and aching. But for me, as much as I get that whole thing, and as much as I truly will devote my life to women in these situations someday, that is not what it is like for me, to have a baby. Never has been. Not a single one of these FIVE pregnancies has been like that for me, and I can really only write about my own experiences, as different or odd as they might be from the average, the norm, the whatever. Pregnancy has never been a time of Special Joy Pedicures and Artsy photographs of my belly with a single rose, nor have my newborn days been necessarily hell. This is my truth, this is my life, and here are the times when I "shine" and here are the times when I so, so, do not. I dont sleep now, but to be not pregnant and holding my little dear baby--oh I am so looking forward to it, and really, believe me, not in the regular wistful way, but like I do not know how I am going to possibly make it another month kind of way.
Even after the 2 c sections, with disappointments in my births, and my family, and my short sightedness and my naivete, and my friends and my body and my doctors and my nurses and society in general, I look back and also remember laughs and outings and pictures and videos and holidays and first trips out with the new baby and it was GOOD. So good. SO much better than split coochie bones and vomiting and swelling and insomnia and restless leg syndrome and acid reflux and itching skin and nightmares and acne and lack of oxygen and worry worry worry......
So.
I am not feeling well at all. I feel like dog crap. I am holding onto some little shard of guilt that keeps me from laying in bed all day and just shaking some Doritos all over the floor and hoping the kids find that to be a suitable breakfast and lunch. Because I love them and because I know that to everybody else, I am just Joy who has a big round tummy hooray yippee arent pregnant mommies so cute. But honestly, I am totally just hating this whole thing, and cannot ever express to anyone what utter bullshit this pubic bone thing has been for me. I guess my analogy to my husband will have to suffice-- the other day I told him to just imagine that he had a broken bone, that was not set, that he had to walk on, here's 4 kids, two are quite young and crazy--see you tonight at 6! He said he was so so sorry. Theres really nothing else to say.
I love my baby and I cannot WAIT to be a Mom again. I am really really good at being Mama Joy and so so not good at this.
Wishing I had beautiful poems for you all,
but knowing that my voice is just another truth that someone will want to read,
thanks for all the awesome well wishes on my last post--I got to read them all today--
Housefairy
So, my dear freinds, how I wish to give sunny and poetic tidings to you all, on this, the week that I turn "Nine Months"--but I really dont know if I am that kind of person, I am sad and honest to admit. I love my baby, perhaps more fully than I have ever loved any not yet born baby, but alot of really ugly, ironic, sad and very unexpected shit has occurred in the last month, some emotional, lots physical, which, in combination with my pain and frustration in these last weeks has really really left me unable to write things about feeling like a ripe and glorious peach, or composing little sonnets to the sweet baby who dances under my heart--I am sorry. I LOVe that stuff, I love to read it, I love pregnant women who can write it, but I know there is a place here in blog world and Real World for sadness and fear and disappointment in our bodies and the day to day drudgery of waddling from couch to bathroom to couch to bathroom, each step grinding our separated pubic bones against each other, gasps as the little knives that poke poke poke us in the cervixes, as the reality sets in that today is another really, really pathetic day for our other children, and that it will be long and it will be pain-filled and that no one really gets it and that there isnt anything anyone can do about it and that all there is coming up is WAY more pain in the form of trying to birth vaginally over what feels like broken bones, or having another cesarean. @#$%$#@ Can I get an epidural now, just for fun? A spinal? A fricking Vicodin? A milkshake, not sugar free?
What a depressing mother! Arent I happy for my baby? Arent I looking forward to the orgasmic birth? Wont it be AWESOME? Dont I love being full of child? Isnt it all so beautiful? Isnt grinding bruised constant pain so fantabulous? Isnt it magical hoping your kids dont run into the street because you cant catch them anyways if they did? Isnt it glorious being so thirsty for a tasty drink but only being able to have DISGUSTING diet pop or water? Isnt throwing up every morning again so wistful? (This started again last week. Yay)
Look, how can my life, my truth, my reality not count as much as the golden poem mamas? Why do I want to not even publish this post? Maybe because as much as it is Hip and Righteous and Kick Ass for books about this stuff to come out, i have real people in my real life who completely freak out when I get honest. Always have. BUT HELLO This is motherhood, too, because I am a mother! A mother with dislocated bones and diabetes and anemia and exhauation and 4 kids who think I am Satan---this is what is going on right now. You clicked the link to see what was going on with me and this is it. If you want glossy lies, go pick up a copy of some schlocky magazine or go watch some idiots on television measure each other's stomachs with toilet paper.
Anyhow, I look forward. I look forward and this is what I look forward to.
This is what will be Awesome. Glorious. Golden. For me. My children. My family.
Seeing my baby angel doll girl. Holding her. Kissing her. Staring at her all day all night all day all night for months and months and months of co sleeping and nursey nursey nursey land. Walking. Breathing. Eating great heaps of luscious foods, pastas with fancy cheeses and fresh from the garden spinach and deeply colored soups and crusty breads and fruity icey smoothies and watermelon and strawberries with no heartburn, no protein counting, and please god please, no bleeding my fingertips onto a glucometer every 2 hours. I am looking forward to being nice again, kind and loving to my other precious children, and enjoying mamahood as a whole and sane person, a person who is not crippled or confused or haunted or worried about how I will survive the day, the week, the birth, the postpartum. A Mom with five kids. 2 bigs, 2 littles, and a baby. A real live working breathing walking talking HUMAN. It is so hard to imagine right now, but thank God I have done this before and I do remember, I do.
I am looking forward to being strong and providing milk and kisses and laughs, mac and cheese and bandaids, lifting the boys in and out of their high chairs, shaving my legs, doing my toes, did I mention walking? Oh, the walks in that kick-ass shiney new red double stroller that I so coveted and finally got, oh to walk walk walk with my babies, eat and walk and breathe. A Mother of five. I am so ridiculously blessed, but I dont feel like it right now. I look forward to that appreciation replacing this misery, to the poetry coming back to me, to rebecoming Me. To many women, newborn time is anything but--but for me it was always alwasy better than pregnancy. Always. Exponentially. My boobs already hurt and I dont sleep now anyways...
I really do know that these plans and dreams might not sound like anything remotely close to life-with-a-new-baby. You might think of overwhelming exhaustion, sore breasts, incisions and stiches and endless bleeding, loss of self, loss of time, feeling like you went from being a full ripe Queen to a drained and droopy dishrag, from being the center of attention as the Pregnant Mama to being a lowly cow, alone and aching. But for me, as much as I get that whole thing, and as much as I truly will devote my life to women in these situations someday, that is not what it is like for me, to have a baby. Never has been. Not a single one of these FIVE pregnancies has been like that for me, and I can really only write about my own experiences, as different or odd as they might be from the average, the norm, the whatever. Pregnancy has never been a time of Special Joy Pedicures and Artsy photographs of my belly with a single rose, nor have my newborn days been necessarily hell. This is my truth, this is my life, and here are the times when I "shine" and here are the times when I so, so, do not. I dont sleep now, but to be not pregnant and holding my little dear baby--oh I am so looking forward to it, and really, believe me, not in the regular wistful way, but like I do not know how I am going to possibly make it another month kind of way.
Even after the 2 c sections, with disappointments in my births, and my family, and my short sightedness and my naivete, and my friends and my body and my doctors and my nurses and society in general, I look back and also remember laughs and outings and pictures and videos and holidays and first trips out with the new baby and it was GOOD. So good. SO much better than split coochie bones and vomiting and swelling and insomnia and restless leg syndrome and acid reflux and itching skin and nightmares and acne and lack of oxygen and worry worry worry......
So.
I am not feeling well at all. I feel like dog crap. I am holding onto some little shard of guilt that keeps me from laying in bed all day and just shaking some Doritos all over the floor and hoping the kids find that to be a suitable breakfast and lunch. Because I love them and because I know that to everybody else, I am just Joy who has a big round tummy hooray yippee arent pregnant mommies so cute. But honestly, I am totally just hating this whole thing, and cannot ever express to anyone what utter bullshit this pubic bone thing has been for me. I guess my analogy to my husband will have to suffice-- the other day I told him to just imagine that he had a broken bone, that was not set, that he had to walk on, here's 4 kids, two are quite young and crazy--see you tonight at 6! He said he was so so sorry. Theres really nothing else to say.
I love my baby and I cannot WAIT to be a Mom again. I am really really good at being Mama Joy and so so not good at this.
Wishing I had beautiful poems for you all,
but knowing that my voice is just another truth that someone will want to read,
thanks for all the awesome well wishes on my last post--I got to read them all today--
Housefairy
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Ow
Found this link today, hobbled to the computer desk to sit long enough to look up some help--oh the pain! Yesterday I was semi-normal and I guess today I am paying the price. I ate meals at the table, walked about in the backyard with Charlie, drove around a little on short errands. You'd think I did a decathalon and got in a car accident-- I can literally feel the "fracture" in the front of my bones. Nothing feels good at all, side-lying, nothing.
Trying to keep the anxiety and terror about what I am going to do all week w/out my husband at bay by enjoying him today. Can barely, barely walk. : (
Being somewhat hobbled and in charge of 4 kids is speeding up my plans to obtain helpers after I have the baby, but also freaking me out with the re-remembered reality, vulnerability, danger and complete ludicrous-ness of that.
Have drafted up a big email to send to people, with the idea that by mid-May we will have everyone we know who has ever, ever tossed out a casual "Let me know if you need anything!" signed up and committed to varying degrees of childcare for postpartum.
Ok got to get out of the chair...
Trying to keep the anxiety and terror about what I am going to do all week w/out my husband at bay by enjoying him today. Can barely, barely walk. : (
Being somewhat hobbled and in charge of 4 kids is speeding up my plans to obtain helpers after I have the baby, but also freaking me out with the re-remembered reality, vulnerability, danger and complete ludicrous-ness of that.
Have drafted up a big email to send to people, with the idea that by mid-May we will have everyone we know who has ever, ever tossed out a casual "Let me know if you need anything!" signed up and committed to varying degrees of childcare for postpartum.
Ok got to get out of the chair...
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Sugars and movements and such
I am chuggin along with my blood sugar testing, except the "bedtime" slot is almost all empty...I fall asleep on the couch, sorry! A few times I took it in the middle of the night and it was always "good". All of my readings are good, all below 120, every single reading. So, part of me is all proud that I am doing so well on my diet and part of me will always wonder how diabetic I really am/was. I am showing compliance to the Obstetrician, and if there is a chance the baby will be smaller, then awesome!
This past Saturday morning, I had a VERY non-compliant breakfast, instead of 2 eggs and one toast at 7 am it was huge bagel (sweet kind, too, raisins, brown sugar, the works!) AND coffee with all sorts of choco-whippy stuff in it, AND took some slugs off of Daddy's real pop. Oh yeah, this all took place around 11 am. BAD GIRL hahaha
but my 2 hour blood sugar reading after that insane breakfast was 91. So.....hey I was glad. That is no way to eat but if the reading would have been high then somehow things would have maybe made more sense? it was fun to have a treat, thats all.
I have not minded this diet one bit, and in fact, I have actually concluded that a very specific "eat-this-at-this-time-and-this-amount" might actually work for me, if I ever do an official "diet" like weight watchers or something someday. A hot topic, very loaded, but maybe another blog post down the line...diets and such...grrrr
The baby is so easy to feel, and me and my husband do fun little exams in the evenings. The head is down, and when she is curled up on either side, I feel and look quite reasonable for how far along I am--but sometimes, there is this huge distortion and there is a huge hard thing right at my sternum and all down my front, and it hurts really badly and I cant do much but look down at my middle in astonishment! What this is, we are pretty sure, is her going from right side to left side, spine outward---yeeowch! I worry that if I had a fundal height measurement during one of these moments, it would be like 45 and everyone would freak out! But outside of these moments, my uterus is nowhere near my ribs yet--another perk of being 6 foot 1 no doubt.
Not too much other preggo news to report, hope all is well with all of you, and that spring has finally come to everypart of the country by now. The fresh air has helped me tremendously to feel like it really is "nearly June", etc. Thanks for the abundandt feedback on the epidural thing...I just know it is no magic bullet and that for me it always lead to big trouble and tons of extraneous hoses and tubes-- so disturbing.
This past Saturday morning, I had a VERY non-compliant breakfast, instead of 2 eggs and one toast at 7 am it was huge bagel (sweet kind, too, raisins, brown sugar, the works!) AND coffee with all sorts of choco-whippy stuff in it, AND took some slugs off of Daddy's real pop. Oh yeah, this all took place around 11 am. BAD GIRL hahaha
but my 2 hour blood sugar reading after that insane breakfast was 91. So.....hey I was glad. That is no way to eat but if the reading would have been high then somehow things would have maybe made more sense? it was fun to have a treat, thats all.
I have not minded this diet one bit, and in fact, I have actually concluded that a very specific "eat-this-at-this-time-and-this-amount" might actually work for me, if I ever do an official "diet" like weight watchers or something someday. A hot topic, very loaded, but maybe another blog post down the line...diets and such...grrrr
The baby is so easy to feel, and me and my husband do fun little exams in the evenings. The head is down, and when she is curled up on either side, I feel and look quite reasonable for how far along I am--but sometimes, there is this huge distortion and there is a huge hard thing right at my sternum and all down my front, and it hurts really badly and I cant do much but look down at my middle in astonishment! What this is, we are pretty sure, is her going from right side to left side, spine outward---yeeowch! I worry that if I had a fundal height measurement during one of these moments, it would be like 45 and everyone would freak out! But outside of these moments, my uterus is nowhere near my ribs yet--another perk of being 6 foot 1 no doubt.
Not too much other preggo news to report, hope all is well with all of you, and that spring has finally come to everypart of the country by now. The fresh air has helped me tremendously to feel like it really is "nearly June", etc. Thanks for the abundandt feedback on the epidural thing...I just know it is no magic bullet and that for me it always lead to big trouble and tons of extraneous hoses and tubes-- so disturbing.
Friday, April 11, 2008
As nice as it might sound at the time, I do not want to get an epidural:
I do not want to get an epidural. I am not "against" them, the theory is very good. It gives you a rest, while you are totally awake. You can "relax" and dilate and then they can "turn it down" and you can push out your baby. This is pretty much how my first birth went, and with the Mag Sulfate, the IV's, and of course, the Pitocin, I was very glad to go from immobilized and in crushing pain to immobilized and numb as a corpse. Plus I didnt feel a thing when they unecessarily cut my vagina in half and sewed it shut afterwards! Yay.
But as we all know too well, the epidural can go very differently than that. It can slow labor, it can not work, it can partially work, it can lower blood pressure in you and the baby, and it can cause headaches and even paralysis and death in rare cases.
But none of this is why I personally do not want to get an epidural with this baby. The reason that I don't want to get one is this: I see it as a direct route to a C Section. and I see it as them taking away my ability to run away. Yep, I said it. To get the hell up. To move. To switch about. To stand. To empty my own bladder and bowels. To run out the door if it gets too psycho. (I am sure that that is EXTREMELY rare, but I like the option) To rock and roll and rock and roll and rock and roll my baby out. Call me fat call me tall but I don't have very wide hips, and for me, layin there like a flounder does not equal vaginal birth.
Its gonna hurt, labor. Its gonna hurt alot. Its gonna feel like a truck is parked on my back, like my bones are breaking, like my body is exploding, like I am drowning. Go ahead, think that is bad, think that is negative--but I don't. I think it is just how it feels, and my point is that it feels like that for a matter of hours.
A C Section hurts in so many different ways and for so so so much longer. Some people would say forever. Some people think that is dumb. Some people actually prefer a cesarean. Bla bla bla.
But for me, for my family, for my life with baby, this might just be the thought that gets me through the labor pains. That it will soon be over. It will soon be over. Each one brings me closer to the end of pain. Each contraction showing that my body works fine and that everything is going as it should. All the ladies on the birth videos, all the stories in the books, all the women leaning forward, leaning forward, rocking their hips, moaning in low tones, eyes closed, this is Birth. I really feel like I have a chance. But I am not going to try it paralyzed, no matter how nice it sounds, no matter how much it hurts, I cant risk it.
If I need a cesarean, it isn't going to be because I couldn't push while laying flat on my back and completely numb.
My interest in focusing on flowers or beaches or spirals or muzak is lessening as the date draws nearer. Although I do have one distinct memory of "traveling" up into the holes in the drop-ceiling tiles of the hospital when I was in labor with Charlie, for the most part, I am ok with feeling it all. Maybe its a by product of being behind that blue curtain, head lower than my body, stark naked, paralyzed up to the neck ("sorry, Mom, sometimes it can feel like you cant breathe, but you can") arms strapped out, crucifix-style with industrial strength straps that makes me okay with feeling. Feeling is real and feeling is normal and feeling is really my only hope. Do I love pain? Ummm no. But I know what the score is, and had a baby at home. I remember making it through each contraction, and living, obviously. It wasn't easy, it wasn't ecstatic, it wasn't orgasmic, but oh the afterwards sure was! For MONTHS I was glowing, healthy, empowered, optimistic, proud, sane, whole.
I also remember my three other births, and the cuts and the staples, the stitches and burning, the aching and pinching, the fevers (all 3) and infections, the incapacitation, the ice packs and hot packs and pain pills and crying, the not being able to walk or rock or feed or lift or change or dress my baby or toddlers.....THAT is pain. THAT is intolerable pain. Not a contraction. Not a sore coochie or achy shoulders.
Well, this is my reality. I am just a person, putting my thoughts down onto my blog. Just like you and thousands (millions?) of others. You don't need to email my midwife and tell her you are "concerned" about me. You don't need to tsk tsk or shake your head at what I have to say. You don't have to agree with me or refute me. I am sad to say that I am this close to shutting down this particular blog, and I don't want to. I am not sure if I have exhausted all there is to say, or if there is more. I started this almost 2 years ago, before any thoughts of a 5th child were on the horizon. I never knew what a pregnancy of my own would do to this blog. I still have lots of opinions about the state of maternity care in our country, but now feel like I have to be "careful" what I say, lest it speak for my own situation and flip everyone out. This pregnancy and its grey-zone semi-high-risk wierdness has knocked me off my soapbox and has ruined the quality of my writing. On many levels, this pregnancy has turned this blog into a nerve-wracking chore. I am sorry to all of you for all of the ways that it has changed.
I am looking forward to everyone's input about epidurals, etc.
Love to all!
Housefairy Joy
But as we all know too well, the epidural can go very differently than that. It can slow labor, it can not work, it can partially work, it can lower blood pressure in you and the baby, and it can cause headaches and even paralysis and death in rare cases.
But none of this is why I personally do not want to get an epidural with this baby. The reason that I don't want to get one is this: I see it as a direct route to a C Section. and I see it as them taking away my ability to run away. Yep, I said it. To get the hell up. To move. To switch about. To stand. To empty my own bladder and bowels. To run out the door if it gets too psycho. (I am sure that that is EXTREMELY rare, but I like the option) To rock and roll and rock and roll and rock and roll my baby out. Call me fat call me tall but I don't have very wide hips, and for me, layin there like a flounder does not equal vaginal birth.
Its gonna hurt, labor. Its gonna hurt alot. Its gonna feel like a truck is parked on my back, like my bones are breaking, like my body is exploding, like I am drowning. Go ahead, think that is bad, think that is negative--but I don't. I think it is just how it feels, and my point is that it feels like that for a matter of hours.
A C Section hurts in so many different ways and for so so so much longer. Some people would say forever. Some people think that is dumb. Some people actually prefer a cesarean. Bla bla bla.
But for me, for my family, for my life with baby, this might just be the thought that gets me through the labor pains. That it will soon be over. It will soon be over. Each one brings me closer to the end of pain. Each contraction showing that my body works fine and that everything is going as it should. All the ladies on the birth videos, all the stories in the books, all the women leaning forward, leaning forward, rocking their hips, moaning in low tones, eyes closed, this is Birth. I really feel like I have a chance. But I am not going to try it paralyzed, no matter how nice it sounds, no matter how much it hurts, I cant risk it.
If I need a cesarean, it isn't going to be because I couldn't push while laying flat on my back and completely numb.
My interest in focusing on flowers or beaches or spirals or muzak is lessening as the date draws nearer. Although I do have one distinct memory of "traveling" up into the holes in the drop-ceiling tiles of the hospital when I was in labor with Charlie, for the most part, I am ok with feeling it all. Maybe its a by product of being behind that blue curtain, head lower than my body, stark naked, paralyzed up to the neck ("sorry, Mom, sometimes it can feel like you cant breathe, but you can") arms strapped out, crucifix-style with industrial strength straps that makes me okay with feeling. Feeling is real and feeling is normal and feeling is really my only hope. Do I love pain? Ummm no. But I know what the score is, and had a baby at home. I remember making it through each contraction, and living, obviously. It wasn't easy, it wasn't ecstatic, it wasn't orgasmic, but oh the afterwards sure was! For MONTHS I was glowing, healthy, empowered, optimistic, proud, sane, whole.
I also remember my three other births, and the cuts and the staples, the stitches and burning, the aching and pinching, the fevers (all 3) and infections, the incapacitation, the ice packs and hot packs and pain pills and crying, the not being able to walk or rock or feed or lift or change or dress my baby or toddlers.....THAT is pain. THAT is intolerable pain. Not a contraction. Not a sore coochie or achy shoulders.
Well, this is my reality. I am just a person, putting my thoughts down onto my blog. Just like you and thousands (millions?) of others. You don't need to email my midwife and tell her you are "concerned" about me. You don't need to tsk tsk or shake your head at what I have to say. You don't have to agree with me or refute me. I am sad to say that I am this close to shutting down this particular blog, and I don't want to. I am not sure if I have exhausted all there is to say, or if there is more. I started this almost 2 years ago, before any thoughts of a 5th child were on the horizon. I never knew what a pregnancy of my own would do to this blog. I still have lots of opinions about the state of maternity care in our country, but now feel like I have to be "careful" what I say, lest it speak for my own situation and flip everyone out. This pregnancy and its grey-zone semi-high-risk wierdness has knocked me off my soapbox and has ruined the quality of my writing. On many levels, this pregnancy has turned this blog into a nerve-wracking chore. I am sorry to all of you for all of the ways that it has changed.
I am looking forward to everyone's input about epidurals, etc.
Love to all!
Housefairy Joy
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Whats up with ole' Joy today
I am no longer a bartender! I am just a Mom! Whooooooopie! I lay down at 9 pm! I dont have to make dinner at 4! I don't have to get dolled up at 5! I don't have to work until midnight! YAY! The Curling Club is closed for the season. They melted the ice, it is over.
I also went to my Gestational Diabetes class and it was actually very cool. Very informative. I completely understood what they were telling me to do and I am on day 2 of this new way of eating. I take my blood sugar with a finger-stabber thing when I wake up, 2 hours after breakfast, 2 hours after lunch, 2 hours after dinner and at bedtime. It doesn't hurt at all, very cool surprise. I like this, actually and have already noticed a steady feeling today. It cracks me up that I HAVE to have all these snacks, at 10 am and 2 pm and 9 pm AND 11pm if I am awake. Yum! : ) I bet the baby likes it, too.
My numbers today were right around normal, and it was good to see. They wanted each reading to be under 120 and they were like 112, 119, 128. My "fasting" number upon waking was higher than they like, but I was warned that that might occur.
The baby is nice and active, and is now getting to the part where she can actually kick hard enough to hurt. Not too often, but here and there, especially in the evenings! What she does do for sure is completely switch positions still, but at 30 weeks I am not worried about "breech" yet and am quite amused at how easy it is to tell how she is lying. By the way, all this SHE stuff is still so bizarre to me, knowing the sex of the baby, argggg so strange!
Charlie is showing a lot of signs of verbal maturity lately which I think will help alot when the baby comes. Although I still stand by my feeling that 3 years apart is the closest one should go between children, this is going to be a 2 1/2-er and all I can say is thank goodness it isn't only 2 years, as at 2 Charlie was a B-A-B-Y and it could have been bad bad bad. Of course tons of families have kids much closer together than this, but for me, WOW it is too hard. Casey and Charlie were 26 months apart and well, it was pretty horrible. He was the angriest of all the siblings upon arrival of the new baby, and I was least able to help him. But they are best little pals now, so it all works out.
Well, I am supposed to go on a walk one hour after dinner so here we go. Slow, but hey. At least I am not standing behind a bar, dying of braxton-hicks, drinking pop : )
I also went to my Gestational Diabetes class and it was actually very cool. Very informative. I completely understood what they were telling me to do and I am on day 2 of this new way of eating. I take my blood sugar with a finger-stabber thing when I wake up, 2 hours after breakfast, 2 hours after lunch, 2 hours after dinner and at bedtime. It doesn't hurt at all, very cool surprise. I like this, actually and have already noticed a steady feeling today. It cracks me up that I HAVE to have all these snacks, at 10 am and 2 pm and 9 pm AND 11pm if I am awake. Yum! : ) I bet the baby likes it, too.
My numbers today were right around normal, and it was good to see. They wanted each reading to be under 120 and they were like 112, 119, 128. My "fasting" number upon waking was higher than they like, but I was warned that that might occur.
The baby is nice and active, and is now getting to the part where she can actually kick hard enough to hurt. Not too often, but here and there, especially in the evenings! What she does do for sure is completely switch positions still, but at 30 weeks I am not worried about "breech" yet and am quite amused at how easy it is to tell how she is lying. By the way, all this SHE stuff is still so bizarre to me, knowing the sex of the baby, argggg so strange!
Charlie is showing a lot of signs of verbal maturity lately which I think will help alot when the baby comes. Although I still stand by my feeling that 3 years apart is the closest one should go between children, this is going to be a 2 1/2-er and all I can say is thank goodness it isn't only 2 years, as at 2 Charlie was a B-A-B-Y and it could have been bad bad bad. Of course tons of families have kids much closer together than this, but for me, WOW it is too hard. Casey and Charlie were 26 months apart and well, it was pretty horrible. He was the angriest of all the siblings upon arrival of the new baby, and I was least able to help him. But they are best little pals now, so it all works out.
Well, I am supposed to go on a walk one hour after dinner so here we go. Slow, but hey. At least I am not standing behind a bar, dying of braxton-hicks, drinking pop : )
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
initial findings
My fasting result was 104.
My one hour result was 224.
My two hour was 140.
My three hour was 40.
I was told that those numbers "weren't too too bad", but that I will still need to go to the classes and follow the new diet. There was no mention of a glucometer, but we'll see.
What I found online was this:
The following are the values which the American Diabetes Association considers to be abnormal during the 100 g of glucose OGTT:
Fasting blood glucose level ≥95 mg/dl (5.33 mmol/L)
1 hour blood glucose level ≥180 mg/dl (10 mmol/L)
2 hour blood glucose level ≥155 mg/dl (8.6 mmol/L)
3 hour blood glucose level ≥140 mg/dl (7.8 mmol/L)
So, to me, it looks like I just have a hard time with initial sugar-loads. Duh. I am pregnant and it only seems normal if you drink some nasty glucose drink after starving that you will be funky for a bit.
I am 100% on board with dietary changes, maybe a new lifestyle even. But I am happy with these initial findings and glad I did the darn thing.
My one hour result was 224.
My two hour was 140.
My three hour was 40.
I was told that those numbers "weren't too too bad", but that I will still need to go to the classes and follow the new diet. There was no mention of a glucometer, but we'll see.
What I found online was this:
The following are the values which the American Diabetes Association considers to be abnormal during the 100 g of glucose OGTT:
Fasting blood glucose level ≥95 mg/dl (5.33 mmol/L)
1 hour blood glucose level ≥180 mg/dl (10 mmol/L)
2 hour blood glucose level ≥155 mg/dl (8.6 mmol/L)
3 hour blood glucose level ≥140 mg/dl (7.8 mmol/L)
So, to me, it looks like I just have a hard time with initial sugar-loads. Duh. I am pregnant and it only seems normal if you drink some nasty glucose drink after starving that you will be funky for a bit.
I am 100% on board with dietary changes, maybe a new lifestyle even. But I am happy with these initial findings and glad I did the darn thing.
My 3 hour glucose test fun fun fun
Yesterday morning I went in for my 3 hour glucose tolerance test. I had to fast for 12 hours prior so it sucked already...I had to conquer my almost paranoid fear of being starved and sugar-crashing by trying to absolutely NOT think about it. I brought good books with me and went to the hospital.
7:50 am I drank the stuff. Mine was like a lemon-lime concentrate, like soda syrup. It was presented cold with a straw and I tried verrrry had to pretend I was just chillin on the beach havin a Sprite. I gagged and even cried a little, but mostly out of fear of peeing/barfing. I drank it all!
Then I was told to basically take a hike and come back in an hour...tell us if you vomit, Honey...Absolutely no leaving the building
It was a long hour. I felt really hot. Like a hot flash, like the kind I get when I get very freaked out. I tried to read 2 cool birth books but it was getting hard to read. I tried to watch TV but it was too dumb, Regis and Kelly too quiet. I went to the bathroom and splashed cold water all over my hands and face. I got really really panicky about just sitting there rotting for 2 1/2 more hours. My legs were swelling up from the waiting room chairs, but walking around made me hotter and dizzier. I went to the bathroom again and resplashed my hands and face.
About 5 minutes early, 8:45 am, I returned to the lab room and the lady asked me how I was feeling. I hung my head down and told her "not too good". I fully expected her to chastise me but she said to come on in. She told me that the first hour is the hardest, which made no sense, as I only envisioned getting hotter and sicker until finally I exploded (I didn't feel like barfing, just like I needed to go lay in some snow or go swimming or something--a distinct suffocating and hot and swelling type of sensation that didn't really make sense to me--was this "high blood sugar?" I didn't know but it was yucky)
She took my blood and took me to a new waiting area, one that appeared to be for ladies in hospital gowns who had drank Barium. There she showed me to a little bench where I could lie down. That sounded SOOOO much better than sitting in the main lobby. I laid down and listened to louder TV. Still feeling incredibly hot and cagey, I made about 10 trips to the bathroom to get my hands and face wet with cold water. By now,I looked like a greasy drenched freak, but sort of avoided eye contact with the barium ladies and curled up with my face to the wall. I couldn't sleep, but did rest.
I went in for the second blood draw, 9:50 am. This time I was so sad (the only word I can think of here!) that I really didn't even talk to the lab lady. She asked if I was feeling any better and I just shook my head. She drew the blood and told me to hang in there.
I went back to my little bench-bed but couldn't deal with it anymore, so I broke the rules and went outside. Oh, was it great! It was humid and cold and I felt ALOT better. I sat out there for about 5 minutes, nobody cared, what could they do, arrest me? Cancel the whole test? I couldn't have cared less. It was very very good weather for someone having a stifling, nauseating, upsetting, overheated experience. Very windy and misty, like the seashore or something.
I went back in the regular waiting room and read Elle. So trivial that it did pass the time better than anything else. Finally, finally, it was 10:50 and I went in for my last blood draw. they offered me juice, which sounded sick after having only a sweet drink in the last 15 hours, but I did take it, a little can of cranberry juice. I staggered out of there into the surreal weather and had a really hard time finding my minivan in the parking structure. I fought harder than even the entire test period to not completely LOSE IT and cry cry cry...wandering in the fume-y parking garage, braxton-hicks almost stopping me from walking at all, sipping on my tinny cranberry juice, it took me almost 15 minutes to find my car.
I bought some lunch on the way home but was not ravenous, and only took little nips of it for about an hour. My husband had taken the morning off, but after greeting me sweetly with a hug and walking me into my bedroom, he had to go--now!!--and that was it.
I was extraordinarily "wipedout" for about 3 hours. The children were really, really good, just playing toys and totting around playing xylophones and flutes "to cheer me up" and watching shows. By late afternoon I was fine.
I was supposed to go to some diabetic class at noon to learn about how to eat, but there was no way I was doing anything besides going home after that morning. It is rescheduled for next Tuesday. The only time you can take it is 12 to 3 pm--what kind of time is that for people? My friend is going to bring her kids over and babysit, thankfully! In my old neighborhood, really all of my adult life, I had nobody. I could never ever go do anything. I was years behind on dentists and Gyno's and all of that. anyhow, very grateful to have some great friends now.
So, I guess they'll tell me how it all went. Sucky, but I lived :)
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