December 2006 - The Female View

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The Female View - December 2006

To Be or Not to Be a Mother - Part Three

December 29th 2006 14:54

I should have been happy but I was sad. And weepy. And I was still drooling into my spit pot. Alex was so adorable. She was short and chubby whereas Josh had been long and very, very skinny (because he had been premature).

This time my parents brought me a balloon arrangement (I’m allergic to a lot of things so they thought it would be safer) but my in-laws still didn’t bring me anything – did I mention that they sent flowers to both my sister-in-laws (one of which was their daughter) after they gave birth, but to me, not even a daisy (except of course if you count the potted plant my mother-in-law gave me after I came home from the hospital after giving birth to Josh. She instructed me to replant them in my flowerbed in front of the house because she hated how empty it looked.). You know my mother-in-law had always told me she wanted to be friends because she’d had it so hard with her mother-in-law and I’d tried. And she’d seemed pleased with every effort I made to fulfill all her needs and desires. So why didn’t she think I would want flowers like her other daughter-in – law and daughter did? It hurt. But I didn’t say anything. Didn’t want to make her feel uncomfortable or bad. And they were so excited about the baby. And they were great parents to their son and grandparents to Josh so I guessed that was all that really mattered. Right?

My husband also didn’t bring me anything…again. I’d cried to him on the phone after I gave birth to Josh, sad that everyone else (three others) in the room was surrounded by flowers but not a one for me and he’d apologized but now that he could make up for it, he didn’t. I guess he wasn’t really sorry the first time. Or maybe he didn’t want to. This time I didn’t say anything. What was the point? But I felt like I counted less than the other new mothers who were being heaped with gifts and love. Not even a thank you from my husband for all that I had suffered. I knew I was being selfish. I had a beautiful healthy baby girl how dare I ask for more. But still I felt sad. All that seemed to matter was my incubating their grandchild, his child. I know I had to accept what was.

During my 24 hours in the hospital four out of the five Obstetrician’s in my practice visited me and strongly advised me not to have any more children. The incompetent cervix and the high hormone levels/severe morning sickness and hyper-salivation put me up there with their all-time sickest patients. You know what? It was the best advice I’d ever been given and I knew I’d follow it to the letter.

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To Be or Not To Be a Mother

December 27th 2006 21:53

…Within minutes of the epidural I started to feel as if I was fading away. Like everything was moving far away from me and I was being sucked into a tunnel. I panicked. According to the doctors (who by the way never left my side) the epidural had driven down my already low blood pressure (I’m a 90/60 kind of gal) and they immediately injected me with something to correct this drop.

It worked. I was feeling better. Much better because the pain was also subsiding. You know I’d never even tried Pot (too scared my parents would find out and my father would beat the living daylights out of me – he had more than a bit of a temper) but having experienced the miracle of anesthetizing drugs, I’m thinking legalization is the way to go.

O.K. so I’m feeling no pain and therefore not screaming anymore, which pleased Nurse Rachet no end. The doctor performed an internal and happily announced, “she’s 10 centimeters dilated”. At which point they wheeled me into another room (not the delivery room) where I was to begin my pushing. The doctor figured I’d be there for a while so he said he’d be back in 30 minutes or so to check on me. I was left alone with my husband, to push.

The door behind the doctor had not yet swung shut when I gave my first push and watched my husband’s face turn as white as a ghost. “What?” I asked as I once again started to panic (yes, yes, I may be one of those people who leans towards the anxious) but he was already gone. Out the door he flew without one word. Leaving his pregnant and totally in-labor wife to give birth by herself. Without a word he’d left me as another push started, without any urging from me.

Seconds later my husband was back with the doctor in tow, who took one look at “you know what” between “you know where”, pulled a sterile looking sheet out of a nearby cabinet, scooped up my legs, placed the sheet under me and then did something between my legs that I couldn’t see.

“What’s happening? Tell me!” I screamed as my face turned beat red and I felt as if I was trying to rectify (no pun intended) the worst bout of constipation in my life (the doctor had told me that some women actually do have a bowel movement on the table, but that was too gross to even think about).

Years later (O.K. maybe it was only seconds but it felt like years) the doctor popped up from between my legs and held up my daughter. Immediately, the nurse appeared (when had she even arrived?) took the baby, mopped her dry, wrapped her in a blanket and then placed her on my chest. She was so tiny. And so cute. I cried.

“She has no hair,” the nurse said smiling. Of course I could see that she was wrong. My daughter, my baby girl had plenty of red peach fuzz covering her head.

Then they took her from me to check her out and my husband explained what had happened. According to him, the baby’s head crowned on the first push so he’d run to get the doctor, but when they’d returned more of the baby was out and the cord was wrapped around her neck. But he said the doctor had been so fast. He’d grabbed the sterile sheet, shoved it under me and unwound the cord from the baby’s neck all before it started to tighten. It was like my daughter knew she had to wait because only then did she finish her journey out of the womb.

“Was she blue?” I demanded. “Tell me!”

“Never, she was always pink and she’d cried immediately”, he swore, the subsequent
Apgar score of 9/10, confirming that my baby girl was A.O.K.

Hail Alexandra (Alex). My daughter had at long last arrived.

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T Be or Not to Be a Mother - Part Two

December 26th 2006 20:19

The first thing they did was wheel me into the delivery room so the doctor could cut my cervical stitch. The one holding my already fully effaced and one centimeter dilated cervix from springing open like time lapse photography on a budding rose. Thankfully it didn’t hurt.

Then it was back to the labor room to be hooked up to fetal monitors and get that Pitocin drip started. It wasn’t too bad at first. I could even get up to walk to the toilet – I couldn’t actually call it bathroom although it had the makings of a stall what with its three walls surrounding a single toilet and sink. The fourth side, however, was open for all the world to see and let me tell you, all the world seemed to pass through my room. Men, women, after a while I was too busy fielding the contractions (picture severe menstrual cramps and then increase the pain a hundred fold) to care if they were wearing an official hospital badge or they were just some pervert with a pregnancy/childbirth fetish.

At one point I looked at the clock and screamed to my husband that he had to make sure one of the parents were at the house to watch Josh because the babysitter had to leave. But apparently I was reading the clock backwards or upside down. The pain had caused me to lose all track of time.

Pain, pain, pain. And I suppose I wasn’t doing a very good job of hiding it because one of the nurses told me keep it down so I wouldn’t frighten the other patients in labor. You know, as in the other pain-wracked moaning and screaming patients in the unit. Guess she was grooming me for “labor- unit poster child for proper childbirth etiquette”. Unfortunately. she didn’t factor in the enormous pain I was in, which made it not only difficult to read a clock but to listen to her stupid, unkind, idiotic and ridiculous commands, as well.

Interestingly, for someone who had had a head start, my labor wasn’t progressing as quickly as the doctor would have liked. He suggested an epidural to 1) relieve the pain and 2) help the cervix relax and dilate further. I wanted to say, “yes doctor, please, please gimme drugs. I want drugs”. But in my head I kept remembering a friend’s recent story of his boss’ son’s wife who had been given an epidural and then the doctor and the staff asked the husband to leave the room with them to allow it to take affect. After 15 minutes they’d all returned to find the woman turning blue, her heart having stopped. Apparently, sometimes (as in that time) the epidural is injected into the wrong space and the respiratory system shuts down. If however the doctors had stayed in the room, they would have caught it immediately and placed the woman on a ventilator until the medication ran its course. She would have been fine a little while later. But because she’d been oxygen deprived for so long she’d lapsed into a coma and was later determined to be severely brain damaged. The baby was delivered and was fine. Motherless, but fine.

Even in my pained state that’s all I could think about as they began to inject the epidural…

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To Be or Not to Be a Mother - Part Two

December 22nd 2006 16:05

Today I was giving birth. It was on the calendar. Scheduled just like any other doctor appointment. Unlike the first time (the Josh time), this time the process was a whole lot more civil.

This time there was NO hopping around my house in excruciating pain as my husband phoned the doctor and told him I was in labor and the doc told my husband to leave for the hospital in 8 hours, at 8 A.M. But fearing that I’d give birth in my Honda Accord while stuck in rush hour traffic on the LIE (Long Island Expressway) we’d left immediately. By the way Josh was born at 5 A.M., you do the math

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To Be or Not to Be a Mother - Part Two

December 22nd 2006 16:05

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To Be or Not to Be a Mother -Part Two

December 20th 2006 02:56

My OB/GYN gave me a gift today. He told me I could pick a day and he’d induce labor. Not that he did this often. But since I was 3 ½ weeks away from my due date he said he could safely induce labor the following week or anytime thereafter. Such a nice gift I thought, but since I knew he was more the conservative type I asked why he would do this for me? Because, he said, because I was the sickest patient he’d ever had and he wanted my suffering to end (at the earliest possible date). An end to my suffering? Alright!!!!

And more good news. My soon to be brother-in-law was graduating from medical school and my husband and I were invited to attend a dinner in his honor at a fancy restaurant. I had no nice clothes that fit (as you well know I had no reason to shop this pregnancy) and I would have to bring my spit pot and drooling ways along with me, but my in-laws and his parents were O.K. with this. Their only stipulation? That we didn’t bring Josh, who was nineteen months old and all over the place

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To Be or Not to Be a Mother - Part Two

December 19th 2006 15:50

I just started my ninth month and guess what? I’ve been given my walking papers. Yup, I’ve been released from captivity. My confinement has ended. I’m free to roam the earth again with all the other upright homo sapiens. Which, most people are probably thinking, is no big deal. But if you’d been stuck in bed, lying on your back or your side 23/7 - remember I did get 40 minutes/day of vertical living - for nearly six months straight, I bet you too would be viewing standing and walking with new found joy.

Unfortunately, I was still drooling like Hooch in that Tom Hanks movie Turner and Hooch, carrying around that spit pot to drop the drool into every few minutes. But you know what? Even though my bangs were hanging past my mouth and the layers in my hair had somehow managed to grow-out lopsided (I hadn’t been allowed to get out of bed for a trim) and my mouth and cheeks were chapped, cut, bleeding and swollen from all the drooling and I was retaining a huge amount of water because I was so thirsty that I had been drinking a gallon of water a day and I no longer looked remotely like that pretty girl hanging on the living room wall (family photo from my P.P.W.S.C. – pre-pregnancy with second child – days) I was still thrilled to be up and moving around

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To Be or Not to Be a Mother -Part Two

December 17th 2006 22:22

Many months had passed of me lying in bed. At first I’d hoped that I’d be able to go back to that premo job at the bank. But then when my cervix opened and I was told I’d have to lie in bed all day and all night I knew that was no longer an option. Another opportunity gone. Yes, it really bothered me. But what could I do? Get depressed. Think that it wasn’t fair. Yes, I did all that. And then one day it stopped. I felt so gross and lonely that I stopped thinking about the job I wanted to go back to. After a while I tried not to think about reality at all. What was the use anyway? It wasn’t as if I was part of the living. And after a while the living had mostly forgotten me anyway.

During the evenings after the babysitter had to go home and before my husband came home from work at 8:20 P.M. (he left for work at 7 A.M.) my parents and my husband’s parents took turns watching Josh and making dinner for my husband so that when he came home he’d have a good meal. As for me, most days I ate frozen fried chicken and frozen vegetables. I was O.K. with his home cooked (or take-out) meal and my defrosted one since that was what I seemed to be craving. The part that bothered me was that no one seemed to remember that like my husband I needed some human contact as well

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To Be to Not to Be a Mother -Part Two

December 14th 2006 18:21

Day after day. Night after night. Lying in bed. That’s all I ever did. So boring. So lonely. So empty.

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To Be or Not to Be a Mother - Part Two

December 13th 2006 15:27

There wasn’t much to report on in my day. I’d lay there and watch T.V. I’d never much been into soap operas but by my sixth month I was a General Hospital regular.

Since I didn’t fall asleep at night until about 5 A.M. I usually woke up around 11 A.M. and Josh’s babysitter gave me something I could eat lying on my side. I’d never really liked fried food, especially not fried chicken but during this pregnancy that was something I at every day. Weaver’s frozen fried chicken. I figured my soon-to-born daughter was going to come out clucking

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To Be or Not to Be a Mother - Part Two

December 12th 2006 17:15

I was in my fifth month when the doctor told me my cervix was fully effaced and one finger (one centimeter dilated) so I had to have an emergency stitch. I was back in bed for the remainder of the pregnancy. Pregnancy two. Stuck in bed round two. I had to lay flat or on my side until I hit my ninth month and then I could get out of bed, they said. I had to lay there for all those months, except for two twenty minute periods when I could sit up to eat my lunch and my dinner. Oh and once a month I got to actually get out of bed and leave the house to go to my doctor visit where they’d shove a finger inside me to make sure the stitch was still holding. And did I mention that I was salivating. I mean hyper-salivating, as in drooling into a small hospital dish designed for vomit, nonstop?

There I was lying in bed and drooling like a dog. At least most of the hyperemesis (nonstop morning sickness) had subsided and I could eat solid foods again. Then again try eating and then lying down immediately thereafter when you’re not pregnant and think about how much more awful it would be if you had to do it when your stomach was growing to the size of a watermelon, pressing on your bladder and your esophagus and you already had continual nausea to begin with. Not pretty

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To Be or Not To Be a Mother - Part Two

December 8th 2006 21:17

Every week I talked to my boss, Duke hoping that, that was the week that I’d feel well enough to get out of bed and go back to work, but it wasn’t looking so good. Not only did I have zippo zilcho energy for my fifteen month old son who had mastered the art of running and was into everything on every corner of this planet, but I felt just awful.

I couldn’t even watch a Burger King commercial without rushing to wretch over the toilet bowl. And get this, after all the nonstop vomiting I’d been through with both pregnancies, my husband (and no I didn’t remarry in-between pregnancies) was so annoyed when I asked him to change the channel during the food commercials that he actually accused me of milking my nausea. I’d lost a full scholarship to law school, the first go round, and I was on the verge of losing the best job I’d ever had, the second go round, did he think I wanted to be nauseous all the time? Would anyone want to feel as awful as I did if they had the choice

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To Be or Not To Be a Mother - Part two

December 5th 2006 15:28

…wow, I thanked him profusely stunned at the generosity of this small bank that I had applied to on a lark. I’d been bored after Josh was out of the colic phase and I’d seen this job ad for someone with my skills. It was a savings bank that I’d never heard of, when in the past I’d only worked for major commercial banks. But I decided to apply thinking that I wasn’t really interested. Then they’d called me, interviewed me, offered me the job and tailored it to my babysitting needs. My husband told me I was crazy not to at least give it a chance and since I knew the money would come in handy and even though I felt awfully guilty leaving Josh, I took it. And it was one of the best decisions I ever made in my life. Bigger obviously isn’t better because this small bank may have been a fraction of the size of my other employers but they treated me with ten times more respect and kindness than the others ever did. And though I knew that a company of this size couldn’t possibly match the health and disability benefits of the larger banks, I was deeply touched by their generosity.

And since I’d needed to keep Josh’s babysitter despite my lack of income (someone had to watch Josh while my husband and family members worked and I was too sick to keep my head above the toilet for very long) I knew I’d be happy no matter what tiny financial crumbs they sent my way

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To Be or Not To Be a Mother - Part Two

December 4th 2006 17:54

[I was home again and still puking up my guts. The good news was that I was fully re-hydrated and ready to take on another round of pregnancy hormones. The good news was that apparently there was one thing I could actually keep down for more than twenty minutes…Yoo Hoo. You know, that fake milk drink. My family raced all over town to get those juice box-sized containers in Vanilla, Chocolate and Strawberry. Funny thing is that I couldn’t remember having had any since I was a kid and then when my sister was trying to think of things to feed me that I might be able to keep down she thought of Yoo Hoo (not an unusual choice for a mother of young children) and… it worked. Well better than everything else.

So there I was lying in bed in my third month and slowly trying to drink and hold down Yoo Hoos in-between vomiting. Definitely, not the picture of the perfect employee. So even though I’d loved my job for the 2 1/2 months I was there, I knew I had to call my boss, Duke and tell him I wasn’t ready to come back yet

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