There are three separate weekly blogs here:
See the bar to the right for weekly links. Clearly this blog is not "secret," despite its directory, as it's on the internet. But sometimes I like to pretend.
Everything on these pages is copyright 2004-2007 by me, Sarah Gilbert.
Pregnancy stats: No longer pregnant! I'll be updating occasionally with news of my sisters' pregnancies, perhaps.
2007.08.06. running my blues away
"When I get home," said Jonathan, whose unexpected orders for annual training had come in just over a week ago, "why don't you have your running clothes on and be ready to go."
Why don't I? A brilliant idea, but there were lots of reasons why not. I was exhausted. I had trouble finding time to eat, as Monroe was fussing whenever I'd put him down, going from odd guttural grunt to full-on maximum-volume I'm dying! wails in no seconds flat. My head hurt. I wasn't drinking enough water, I hadn't the energy. And with Jonathan getting home after 6 each night, would the boys ever get back to a normal schedule if I ran instead of making their dinner?
I had plenty of reasons why not, and after my agonizing negotiation around lunchtime (I wanted to go to the coffeeshop for its dark liquid exhaustion salve, Everett insisted on Starbucks -- too expensive! coffee no good!) I almost gave up in tears. But I just did it, managing to clean the cookie sheets and have them ready for their pizza doughs, feed Monroe to his breastmilk limit and put him down, donned my bike shorts, running shorts, jog bra and tee. Just as I was pulling my t-shirt over my head, the sound of gravel crunching in the driveway as Jonathan's ride pulled up. I could do it!
Jonathan came in, energetic and giddy. He held up his uniform, wondering what was wrong with it? Umm... let's recall I am not in the Army. "Were you promoted?" He was, to "Specialist," what always seemed to me one of the oddest-sounding titles in the Armed Forces. "You're ready to run?"
Yes. I took a few swigs of green 'superfood' juice, and a couple more of that delicious coffee, turned on the oven, patted the pizza dough into its pizza-y shape, and headed out, feeling buoyant and full of potential. Why not just go? I thought to myself, reaching back to nearly a year prior, to find my road running tools. Light on my feet, breathe calm and deep, relax my hips and my shoulders. Go go go gogo! I told myself, and I went, managing to hit the 0.9 mile point in just under 9 minutes, taking the downhill as fast as I could, deciding to go through the tony neighborhood to the most privileged local elementary school, a route I knew was at least 3.5 miles roundtrip. I reached the school and looked at my watch -- I was still on the 9:30 mile pace (far slower than my usual 'good' pace but my goal for the Hood-to-Coast this year) and tired as could be, achey and creaky, mentally shot, but yet: so proud of myself!
I kept on running, stretching my legs, pushing myself back to the nearby college campus where I'd slow down, get a drink of water, turn toward home. The last mile was tortured, with several quick stops for a 10-second walk -- but I finished strong.
When I got home, Monroe was wailing, the pizza dough was still waiting for its topping as Jonathan did dishes and laundry, the boys were watching Simpsons, I was beyond smelly, but it was all ok. I finished the pizzas and fed Monroe and accepted the TV and, somehow, knew that I had turned the corner.
2007.08.04. of love and headaches
I have piles of pregnancy and childbirth books everywhere, in every corner of the house, a few on my bedside table, another one on my dresser, three in the bathroom (one near the tub, two within reach of the toilet, where I spend a lot of time these days), three near the couch, one near the upstairs 'guest' bed where I escape from everyone else to nurse once in a while. I read while nursing, pooping, bathing, calming Monroe down (he's a bit of a fusser), during commercials when I watch TV in the evening. I hop from a chapter of an old copy of What to Expect When You're Expecting to the library's Everything Guide to Postpartum Health to this adorable little British book, New Mother's Guide to Pregnancy and Baby (my only whole-hearted recommendation thus far). As I read, my mind buzzes with reviews and just how much better my book will be.
And yet. I am so. So. SOOO. exhausted. I wake up in the morning with a head heavy from wishing I'd slept (but I did sleep, right? right?), though I've been in bed for nine or ten hours; and guilty from not having gotten up at six, or seven, when I first woke to change Monroe's diaper and let the chickens out. I stay hungover and heavy-headed until 2 or 3, when I have an hour of brightness, then fall back into the throes of exhaustion.
I know all the books and nurses and doctors and other mamas say, "sleep when the baby sleeps!" or at least, "sneak in a nap when you can!" but my head buzzes with guilt, ideas, dirty-diapered toddlers and children in need of another reading of Happy Birthday Thomas. While I breastfeed, I read; while Monroe naps, I do errands or make meals, not great perfect healthy homemade meals that I long to make but cobbled-together hurried meals, quesadillas with raisins, frozen meatballs with leftover gravy (for me) and ketchup (for Everett), milk, and cheese sticks, and more milk. I fear the boys are living on dairy products and crackers and the occasional desperately-administered swig of mango-antioxidants juice from Trader Joe's.
I desire to do so many things, I do a few of them, and then sit down again, to nurse, to 'rest', and read a little because at least it feels like something. I walk to the coffee shop, to the grocery store, I go sometimes on long errands with the family and all of the time all I can think is when can I take this sling off? and, if only I could just sit down comfortably. I can now sit without immediate pain, but only for a bit, and not for long squarely on my bottom. Bus trips have me variously sitting, shifting my weight so I'm artfully draped over the edge of the seat, shifting back to the other hip, then giving in and standing up. I'm only truly comfortable when lying on my stomach, though reclining on my side is now almost as good.
I bounce between thinking how lucky I am that I'm not in total pain, that my children are all relatively healthy and gorgeous and seem to adore their little baby brother, to feelings of inadequacy and unfairness and anger at the boys for their constant whiny-wrestly-loudness. I'm lucky! I'm great! I'm cursed! I'm a terrible mother! and oh yes, MY HEAD ACHES! seem to be the components of my (as the rather narrow-minded author of Take the Fight Out of Our Food says) 'tape loop'. What an awful cycle.
Jonathan doesn't help much, though he regularly tells me how great I look. Unfortunately his tape loop is even worse (he has no purpose, he tells me, and I tell him, "I can't give you a purpose, sweetie, you're going to have to find it yourself") and he just doesn't seem to understand how maternal hormones work. As I stood over the stove yesterday morning, sobbing because I'd burnt the first batch of strawberry-blueberry pancakes (half without fruit, naturally, because Everett won't eat fruity pancakes), and because it was nearly 11 a.m., and because Monroe wouldn't lie down in his cradle for two minutes without crying at the top of his lungs, so he had to be slung, giving me only one hand and making me (yes) burn the pancakes, and because I wasn't feeding the children well or early enough, and I really wanted coffee Jonathan's only contribution was, "you're doing this to yourself! You could just give them fig bars!" which of course made me cry more. (Later he did the laundry and told me that I was a good mom, that he loved me, contributions which didn't help at all though of course he means well somewhere in the bottom of his entirely aimless maleness.) Though he is a good loving husband and very often a wonderful dad, his post-partum helful skills are entirely lacking. He's working on it, but I think my bouts of exhaustion will be long gone (I hope) by the time he becomes truly and utterly right.
People are wonderful and offer me lovely things, though what I really need is a brain that's as on fire and full of energy as during my second trimester. I really want to do it myself, and only wish I could have the energy to love the children as much as I imagine myself loving them. And to write.
2007.07.... if i have time...
Things I'll write about if I have time and energy...
--the post-partum lack of bladder control
--my first run at 18 days (my buttocks shook so hard the first two blocks, I thought my coccyx might explode, and my breasts were WAY too bouncy, but I made it 1 mile without injuring myself)
--my subsequent runs, which were much easier thanks to the employment of double layers of support garments, and around two miles each!
--baby noises I can't even recreate
--how little I enjoy riding in cars
--my sweet things craving
--how cheated I feel that Jonathan is spending Monroe's fifth and sixth weeks in the Army, the second week during which he will not come home at night
--how I have decided (in a fantasy kind of way) that I will move to Sweden, or London, for my next baby; six weeks is NOT long enough for maternity leave. Six months now seems like the grandest luxury going (yet, I will admit to having worked 20 or 30 minutes nearly every day...)
2007.07.24. sunlight around the corner
After a few rainy, cloudy, dreary, muggy days, today dawned bright, warm, full of sunlight. And as the day dawned, I'd gone 24 hours without the Percocet, and I could walk, upright, with only the smallest trace of pain.
For a girl who's been stumbling around the house doubled over because straightening up hurt too much, today was brilliant, and I could only think that my coccyx was not, indeed, broken, only harmed quite monstrously -- and healing fast.
It turned out that not only did I have the very painful tailbone, but thanks (I think) to the narcotic pain reliever I was forced to swallow, the most disgusting and messy hemorrhoids.
Now I am only going to describe this because I Googled in vain for what was probably not hours, but seemed like it, for some hint of what hemorrhoids are supposed to look like. I finally found one site where there were illustrations of common hemorrhoids, and mine didn't look anything like those. No. Mine looked like a series of gigantic blisters, extending down the side of the crack in my bottom. And not only were they painful, hot and bubbly with grossness. Worse still? After a day or so, they started to leak a yellow-red liquid. I don't know what to call it, really, but it is highly yucky, and stinks, and looks a little like diluted blood. (After a great deal more searching, I did find one -- and only one -- mention of postpartum hemorrhoids that look like blisters.)
Though sitting squarely on my bottom is still not advisable, I'm now able to sit obliquely to eat dinner or change a diaper without wincing in pain, I can climb stairs fairly easily, and I'm actually getting a little sleep at night.
I haven't gone for a run yet, but I walked to the grocery store with both Truman and Monroe this evening, and carried the groceries home, and thought almost nothing of it. And that, my friends, is way more than a ray of sunlight into my life. It's a veritable summer.
2007.07.22. a little bit
I can only hope and pray that last night was truly my lowest point. Because today, this very morning, I twice let my four-hour mark pass before gobbling up the next dosage of painkillers.
After the last dose, a long shower, and I felt how swollen the area is. Could it just be aggravation, not breakage? At least I have hope.
As I told Krista, who isn't exactly having a pain-free birth recovery, either, one thing all pregnant women should know: please don't spend all of your time and energy with anticipation (or fear, or eager planning) of and for birth. Spend just a little bit on those next few months, during which you will most certainly be tried and tested.
Birth meditations are lovely, and I will always write them for people close to me. But equal energy should be given to looking after the mental and physical health of women in the weeks and months after giving birth. A healing meditation.
A little warm baby snoozes and grunts sweetly next to me as I lie on my stomach on the couch, typing and surfing and concocting a banana coffee cake (or zucchini?), and I gather myself to accept and send healing energy around the globe. Having a baby is a time to treasure, every moment pierced with a special poignancy, the last first time little Monroe will discover a book, sleep cuddled up next to Truman, go to church, blink away soft summer raindrops. But it's not an easy time.
I squeeze away tears, I breathe deeply, I go off to bake and clean and remember to hold these moments dear.
2007.07.21. low, low, low
I want this to be a happy post full of the wonderment of a new baby. He is, after all, entirely sweet, and getting less frog-like every day (my babies always look like frogs when they're teeny, little Yoda alien frogs). It turns out he loves books, at least, the Black on White board book that I could never get Truman to care about when he was a baby. And how smart is he? After a wild pee in his first day on the planet, he hasn't peed while I change his diaper once, making my commitment to never buy one of those silly 'peepeeteepees' a worthwhile one. When I kiss him on the forehead in his sleep, he wrinkles his nose and raises his eyebrows.
But instead I'm sunk in a deep funk, filled with a burning tailbone and angry red eyes. I spent most of the evening in desperate tears as my pain only seemed to get worse and the spaces between pills, shorter. I'm now longingly checking my watch at two hours, 40 minutes, gritting my teeth to make it to the magic fourth hour, rushing to take the pills at the moment it seems close enough.
I'm afraid, afraid that I'll never heal, or not quickly, afraid of the tales of pain lasting a year, or more, on coccyx.org, afraid of never being able to run, of hobbling and wincing for weeks, months, of never having energy to enjoy my rambunctious children, of hurting every time I turn in bed to nurse. I'm afraid that the pain is getting worse, that it will keep getting worse, that I'll have to soon convert to one pill, that I'll lose my strength, my mobility, my love for life.
My knitting projects are all halted; I only read a chapter of Harry Potter; I looked with tears at the blackberry vines in my garden, the scraps of beautiful fabric on my desk. When I bend to change a diaper, it's hard to straighten up; I know I won't be able to bathe easily until the tide turns in this pain. I'm frightened that I don't know when the tide will turn, that there seems to be no solid cure for pain like this.
As I chopped herbs for dinner, tonight, I bawled, achy and scared and desperate, and Everett asked me why are you so sad, mama? and I felt horribly for putting them all through this and kept crying.
Maybe tomorrow will be better. But as I look forward to the summer, one I'd meant to fill with berry picking and bike rides and daily runs with both joggers and sewing and knitting galore, I can only see myself standing while everyone else sits, I can feel the exhaustion already and it closes in upon me like a hot iron fist.
This is not what I expected, this is not what I planned. Please God let me heal, I pray, and another angry tear rolls onto my nose.
2007.07.20. diagnosing my bottom
It was Tuesday. We walked, and we walked, and we walked. The boys had soccer near 12th & Division, and we took Monroe in his new sling, because... how can I not take him everywhere, to see everyone? Only two weeks ago, I'd been heavily pregnant, and now, here I was, still on the heavy side, but with this baby. AND, did I mention the new sling?
I'd taken this sling pattern, made a good dozen mistakes, but, with gorgeous fabric, finally turned out a beautiful new native-style sling in just under, umm, four or five hours on Sunday afternoon. I wanted to wear Monroe in it, everywhere.
So the boys, Jonathan and I hopped on the bus 'round 3:30, the #17 -- we'd have to walk five or six blocks once we alighted. Good for me, right? I was looking so forward to returning to my training, I'd picked up a Nike+ Sport Kit on Saturday while I waited for Everett to finish ballet, and asked my sister if I could borrow her iPod until the Hood-to-Coast was over.
Soccer was fun, Monroe was duly gushed over, and afterward we let the boys play at Abernethy playground. Everett was learning to do tricks on the monkey bars, and was thoroughly excited; Truman was playing his heart out and tiring fast.
It was nearly 6 when Jonathan put Truman in the backpack and we headed back. Everyone still felt perky (and hungry!) so we decided to go to Pokpok, nearly a mile away but just a quick bus trip on the #4.
But the #4 never came. We ended up walking the entire way, with Truman and Monroe both asleep in their respective carriers, arriving at Pokpok a moment before the extremely late bus whizzed by. We cheered, and ate Vietnamese fish sauce wings and prawns with pork belly and spare ribs. It was thoroughly amazing, and we looked out at the crowds awaiting our table with superiority. We had been going to Pokpok long before the restaurant was named the best in the city by the Oregonian; and we had three little boys, two of whom were eagerly devouring the delicious food, and a table.
When we were done, we decided to walk to our bus transfer, another half mile or so. I was starting to wear out, and said so -- and the #75 came, and we were home in the blink of an eye.
That night, I had trouble sleeping. I was starting to hurt, and wondered if I hadn't re-injured my tailbone. All that walking... or maybe it was the hard benches at Pokpok. Throughout Wednesday, it began to hurt worse, and worse. By Wednesday night, I was tossing and turning, gingerly, and developed quite a bruise on my left hip.
The post partum nurse from Legacy called, and I mentioned the pain -- she thought it might be an old injury. Evidently the nerve endings get all curled up in the days and weeks leading up to, during, and right after birth. She asked if I'd taken anything for pain -- I'd kind of forgotten about the ibuprofen -- and urged me to. I walked to the kitchen right then and there, and took 400mg. Then I thought to myself, didn't Dr. Williams say I had some bad perineal bruising? That must be it. Perineal bruising. Yes. I googled 'perineum bruising recovery' and sent Jonathan to Limbo for yarrow flowers, calendula flowers, comfrey root, rosemary, witch hazel, and myrrh. I wanted to slap whoever wrote perkily on eHow, "Perineal pain is perhaps the worst discomfort a woman feels after delivering a child. Postpartum healing can be speedy and natural with some simple herbal remedies and a nice warm bath."
Lovely! I brewed, I typed a post on urbanMamas and watched the comments come in, taking mental notes... Arnica tabs... sitz baths... donut pillows... recoveries from a week or two, to four months (ouch!). I did the math -- it seemed that, the longer one pushed, the longer the recovery. The four monther had pushed for a whopping five hours, so I estimated I'd be feeling better in a few weeks with my tiny 40 minute push.
The next day, the pain was worse. I spent time in the middle of the night crying, trying to do it quietly so as not to wake everyone. I longed to take Truman (who tends to climb into bed every night around 3 or 4, wanting to cuddle -- rather ungracefully) and carry him back to bed, but it was too much, too heavy, walking upstairs wasn't easy. I wished Monroe wouldn't wake and eat so much -- where was the comfortable lying-in-bed nursing I remembered? I started to scoot my ibuprofen dosages closer together, from six hours to five-and-a-half, five, four-and-a-half...
Thursday night, I barely slept at all, rushing to the kitchen when I woke around 3 for my ibuprofen, lying awake for long periods of time wondering when the four hours would be up. At times, I'd walk around for a bit, but I couldn't figure which was more painful -- lying down, or walking. All I knew was that walking upstairs was excruciating, and I could not sit normally.
I was crying a little as I waited for my appointment, wondering just how was I going to do this? 45 minutes on the bus, then the walk to her office from the bus stop, and what would I do on the table? Poor Monroe. I tried to sit down when I first got on the #75, but had to get up and stand after just a stop or two. There was no comfortable way to sit.
Dr. Kehoe had been called away to labor & delivery, and I waited a long time, not getting undressed because that would mean sitting on the table. And that would mean sitting. Uh-uh. When she finally came in she was perky. I told her I thought my perineal bruising was bad, so she figured she should check me out, and I undressed hurriedly and winced as I tried to find a position of not-terrible-pain, finally hanging my bottom completely off the edge of the examination table. She recommended heat, sitz baths (hot ones), three times a day, and said the walking is good for me (and she wanted me to keep it up, I had to keep my circulation moving). She checked everything, the vaginal area, the perineum, none of it hurt in the slightest.
"You look great. You shouldn't be in this much pain," she said. "I think you might have broken your coccyx."
No. Oh no. "How long would it take so I could feel... somewhat normal again?"
"Well, it's a bone. One or two months."
She gave me a prescription for Percocet, and asked to see me back in a month, though she'd typically see 'normal' birth patients back in six months.
I rode home, standing, on the bus, I could barely keep my eyes open. I was rubbing Monroe's head and silently telling him, "sorry." Sorry I won't be very present for you, sweetie, sorry I'm so caught up in this pain and can't find the energy to squat on the ground to take just the right photo of you, sorry I want to pull you away from my breast early because it's uncomfortable to stand and nurse you. Sorry I have to dope myself up -- and you, a little -- to make it through.
Once I hobbled off the bus, I sent Jonathan for my drugs. Dr. Kehoe had suggested 1/2 of a pill to start with, and gradually I felt a release of the pain, and, surprisingly, more energy than I'd had in two days. I made dinner; pork chops with cherries and sage, mashed potatoes with yogurt, corn, collard greens from the freezer (thinking, there's always a chance that maybe I can fix this with diet!). I knelt uncomfortably at our family table, hoping, hoping, hoping.
2007.07.10. monroe's birth: the story
The phrase most-uttered through yesterday's late evening was, "I can't believe it!" followed closely by "she's really doing it!" said with appropriate incredulity.
That the "she" in question was me, and that the "it" involved was pushing a baby out the way God intended, well, I'm sure you'll understand when I can't even begin to pick the right superlative to describe the experience.
Monroe Gilbert Hanson was born at 11:40 p.m. on July 9, much though I expected him to be born sometime in the wee hours of the morning after. He was, incredibly, 7 pounds, 6.7 ounces (rounding up to his brothers' shared weight), 20 1/4 inches, with a head circumference of 13 1/2 inches (I've never known it before). He looks just like Everett, and not a bit like Truman, and as soon as I held his little vernix-covered body I knew he was just the same size as my others.
Much to everyone's continued amazement. As I've said before and I'll say again; as I said right at that moment, I can't believe it.
How did this happen? We last left you at around 5 o'clock, the sun bright outside my window and my cervix still at 3 cm. I was hemming and hawing; would anything happen? Jonathan was sure I'd come home. Dr. Williams had promised to to check me around 5:30. When I'd first gotten up to walk around, probably at 4 or 4:30, I'd done a little yoga, the usual, downward dog and warrior sequence, a little cat-cow. What would stimulate contractions? Maybe some horse. I did it, breathing deep and holding it for 30, 45, 55 seconds.
So I horsed, again, watching myself in the little mirror, the sun sparkling around the room. All was quiet. I sat down again on the little couch, knitting and trying not to fall asleep, occasionally sending a text message, feeling the rare contraction. When I'd gotten off the monitors, the contractions had slowed. Now they seemed to be picking up a bit, 8 minutes, 6 minutes, 4 minutes. Dr. Williams was later than she said she'd be; it was very quiet. I turned on NPR, hoping I'd hear the bit on the low car diet, hoping they would have used a clip from my speech.
I was relatively sure I'd be sent back home.
A few minutes after six, in came Dr. Williams, friendly and matter-of-fact as always. She checked me.
"You're at four! We're having this baby," she said. And took a breath.
In that breath, I knew I had my work cut out for me -- she was all ready to get me prepped for surgery. "I understand you want to try a vaginal birth, and it's just not a level of risk I'm comfortable with," she said with finality. She went on, how she'd only attended one other successful vaginal birth after two ceseareans -- and this woman was on her seventh child, with several non-surgical births in her history, how the risk of a scar rupturing, to her, was too high.
"I've looked through Dr. Kehoe's notes, and I can't find anywhere that she consented," she said.
I looked at her, and set my mouth. "I just want to try," I said. "Dr. Kehoe and I talked about it at length, and she said she'd support me in trying. She told me that the chances were less than 30% -- "
"I think she was being generous," said Dr. Williams.
"-- and, even if it's 20%, that's one in five! Those odds seem like, it's worth trying, to me. Part of it is emotional. I don't want to just hop up onto a table, without even trying." Here in the talk I always get tears in my eyes, thinking of Amey, who really struggles with that. "I don't want to recover from a c-section. I have two kids at home." Practical. Dr. Williams will go for practical, I think.
Suddenly I saw that she had turned the corner. She started bringing up the stats from my chart; this baby was early-ish, the others had been 7-7 ("if the baby was probably going to be eight pounds, I wouldn't try," I said); Dr. Kehoe had sewed me up last time; I'd obviously been thoroughly counselled by Dr. Kehoe "because I know that about her." I had won.
"Well, here's what we're going to do. You've done a very good job today; you've convinced me. But I'm going to keep you on a tight leash. As soon as anything isn't going exactly down the path to labor, we're going to go in for surgery. Gather your troops. We're going to have a baby tonight. And I'll need two hours to get ready anyway, and you'll have to progress one centimeter an hour (I swallowed, knowing that this was far from my control), without Pitocin. I'm going to have you sign the consent forms, I'm going to have the anethesiologist come in and consult with you, we're going to be ready to do a c-section at a moment's notice."
We talked some more, about how I was willing to get an epidural anyway -- the few minutes between deciding to have the c-section and getting the spinal, with Truman, were some of the most excruciating of my life, the urge to push, the terrible pain, the baby that wouldn't come out any other way -- about the risks of surgery ("baby could die, you could die," she said, "if I say it I figure it won't happen," immediately I imagined me, dead, with the boys left motherless, Jonathan left drifting), about what it would feel like if the scar started to rupture -- she said this next two hours was the most risky, that it would feel very, very wrong -- and soon she was off, with encouraging words; "you're very calm, and obviously in touch," and an exhortation to "gather my troops!" and "don't stay pregnant!" She'd return at 8 to check me on my labor progress.
One centimeter an hour; I'd have to be at 6 centimeters by 8 p.m. Could I do it? I didn't know. I started calling, Jonathan, then Abby and my dad to arrange care for the boys, Larissa, my sister Hannah. I sat on my bed in the quiet and worked the last row of 'mulberry' yarn in my blanket between contractions.
I could feel them starting to work a bit more, but they weren't breath-taking-away yet. I tried to focus on the meditations, thinking of my cervix opening, thinking of the contractions' power, my power, trying to imagine myself succeeding. And I knitted.
I'd been banned from all food and drink, in case of emergency surgery, and fitted with an IV ("I hate to start these in the hand!" said the nurse, though I barely cared after the first painful poke. She'd done a much better job than the IV with Truman and it was comfortable, relatively) for fluids and antibiotics. I longed to have just one drink of ice water, a gulp of something solid. I started remembering the emergency sweet treat I'd made a few nights ago -- instant cheesecake pudding, with raspberry sauce -- whose leftovers were in the fridge at home. What I wouldn't give for a big spoon and that bowl of cheesecake pudding, right now. But though I thought darkly of the stories of food and drink snuck to laboring women, the very real possibility of a ruptured scar hung over my head too heavily, and I tried to focus on other things.
Larissa was there soon, bearing gifts (the 'melted crayons' shawl I'd loved as I watched her finish it), and Hannah wasn't much behind her. We sat, talking and describing the ways of labor to Hannah as we knitted (Larissa still had ends to weave in), and soon I was at the end of my mulberry row, with only a few inches of yarn left. I held it up as evidence that today was the day, the baby was just waiting for me to finish his blanket.
All through this evening I couldn't help but refer to the baby as "he," even though everyone but me agreed that, not only did they hope it was a girl, but they were "feeling" girl. Dr. Williams' evidence was the blanket, colors for a girl, she said (the nurses and doctors were smitten with it, though one thought that I was knitting, not a big round blanket, but a cocoon of some sort). I kept knitting, though the contractions were getting bigger, impossible to talk through. I guess I was, really, in labor. I told Larissa how I thought that, this time, I was so proud of myself for just waiting, for not having tried to encourage labor (but for the shortlived experiment with strong feminine herbs) by running up and down stairs, or having sex. I'd always resorted to this with the others, and look how it had ended up -- pitocin, pain, c-section.
Erica arrived soon, too, and the room was full of happy supportive women. A little after 8, Dr. Williams returned for a check. "Ummm... four-and-a-half, almost 5," she said, and I bit my lip, sure this would not be enough for her. Then I could see in her face, it was, she wasn't going to give up on me, I was moving, and entirely on my own. "You're progressing," she said, "I'll check you again at 9:30. "Besides, my errant husband still hasn't arrived," I said. I called his grandma and uncle's house, where he'd gone to borrow the car and drive over. His grandma seemed vastly confused, why was I calling? After several moments of odd responses to my questions, she confirmed, he had picked the car up. I sighed. Jonathan still didn't really believe we were having the baby tonight.
Dr. Williams had told me she intended to put a monitor on the baby's head, so we could know exactly what was going on with baby, and take off the monitor around my belly -- "so we don't have to run in here any time you sit up," as they'd done a half-hour before. Baby's health was, after all, one of the conditions to my continued TOLAC (as she explained to Jonathan later, I'd had now two Trials Of Labor After Cesaerean, but only a chance at one VBAC). She broke my waters ("Owww!") then stuck in the monitor, which seemed too easy, too fast, too simple. As the nurse, Liz, was changing the now-soaking pads and towels beneath me, she must have disconnected the monitor somehow. Dr. Williams had to do it, again (this time, with less discomfort). Immediately the nurse and Dr. Williams stood at attention. "Have you ever seen this before?" said Liz. "Whoa... no," said Dr. Williams. "Freaky." They stood there, mouths agape, staring at the monitor.
"That IS baby, right?" said Dr. Williams. Evidently the baby's heart rate had spiked through the top of the charts -- as high as 203 bpm -- as soon as he was attached to the monitor. I could feel him wildly kicking and turning in my belly, Larissa could see my belly virtually erupting with activity. Liz put the monitor back on my belly for a minute, verifying the same numbers.
The sight of doctor and nurse, staring dumbfounded at the monitor while my baby went bonkers inside, was not exactly re-assuring. "If baby doesn't calm down, we'll have to get him out NOW," said Dr. Williams. I had faith that it was just a blip -- after all, they just had stuck a probe in his head! -- but it wasn't exactly a wonderful moment. Fortunately, after four or five minutes, his heart rate was back to the calm 130s. Another reprieve.
I was getting close to the end of my blanket, binding off, I'd made it 2/3, 3/4 of the way around. I had to put it down frequently, to continue a conversation, for a blood pressure check, for a sudden gush of fluid. I had been getting IV pumped in for hours, after all, without having left the bed -- it seemed too difficult, what with the IV stand, the monitor on my belly, and now baby's head monitor. My cervix felt very loose and all at once I was peeing, I thought, all over the bed. I felt I should stop, go use the restroom, but there was no stopping. I had no bladder control! I felt badly, but not extraordinarily so. I couldn't do anything but just let it happen, so I called for a change, feeling a bit like a kid who's just had an accident.
I picked up the blanket again, and soon I had reached the end of the row. In the diminishing light, Larissa and Erica and Hannah spread it out on the floor. It was huge, bigger than I thought, it was perfect and gorgeous. I was so happy to have it done. "I can block this for you, you know," said Larissa, and in my haze I wondered if she meant right now, before the baby's born, but knew that probably wasn't it. Exactly.
"Alright, I've bound off, I can have the baby now!" I said, proud of myself for my accomplishment, and relieved I didn't have anything more to do between contractions. They were steadily getting bigger, a little more painful, I was now having to breath through them. I wondered if I shouldn't change position, but it seemed too hard.
It was an upbeat atmosphere, and though I kept checking the clock imagining what could possibly be keeping Jonathan, I was having fun, laughing and talking with the women in between contractions, giving my sister "labor school," still having hope, often idly wondering where is that anesthesiologist? The contractions were increasing in pain and I would like to at least be prepared. I was suddenly worried about my mental readiness for the task at hand. I hadn't even visualized labor, this time, I think I had never really thought I'd be allowed to make it this far -- despite my best hopes, my stubborn desires, I'd let myself become partially resigned to the fate of surgery. I knew that, above all, I was not prepared to do labor like I'd done with Truman, hours and hours of pain and pushing, without anesthesia. This time, I would accept it if I needed it, and I was starting to wonder if that time wasn't approaching.
At about 9:30, Jonathan finally arrived, followed closely by Dr. Williams and Liz, full of jokes as usual. "We brought your errant husband!" Dr. Williams said, laughing. They had met him at the nurse's station, asking if he was, indeed, the errant husband I was searching for. He was. "Oh good, the other one just left," quipped Liz, providing plenty of fuel for Jonathan's comedic machine.
Jonathan was clearly on edge, immediately getting on the phone, worrying that my mom wasn't ok with the chickens. Evidently Mom and Dad were taking the boys home with them for the night, which was partially good (I wouldn't have to worry about them being happy at Grandma & Grandpa's house), and partially a little sad (it would be some time before they'd meet their new brother or sister). Not to mention Jonathan's worry. Were the chickens actually ok? Was the house secure? And he'd forgotten the cell phone's charge cord. He had to go home and come right back.
We all had to keep telling him, "no!" The baby was coming, now, tonight, soon, and if he left he'd surely miss it. I think he was kind of hoping for that. He was thoroughly freaked. He kept saying, "I'm not ready to have three kids. I wasn't ready for two!"
Dr. Williams checked me, laughing to Liz. "Didn't I tell you?" she said. I was five-and-a-half, maybe six. "She's six. We'll say six," said Dr. Williams, and told me that, despite my inability to make the centimeter-per-hour goal, I was progressing just too much for her to have the heart to stop me now. She was still on the team. "Don't stay pregnant!" she said peppily, and was off.
Evidently, my body was now taking the reins. It was not staying pregnant, it was not putting up with Jonathan's repeated insistence that he just had to go home and come right back, variously halted by my yelling at him, something along the lines of "this baby is coming any time!" or Larissa again reminding him that I could be rushed into an emergency section at any point.
I was trying to find a comfortable-yet-effective way to sit, and having trouble. The contractions were coming faster now, and I was having to turn away from everyone and breathe through them, blowing out my mouth and clutching my pillow. Jonathan and Larissa's joking had reminded me something I'd utterly forgotten from Truman's birth -- when he said he'd walked in on everyone chanting, he wasn't exaggerating (though he was exaggerating about the cow's blood and the pentagram, thank goodness). I had been "EEEEEeeeee!"-ing through the harder contractions, and in order to remind me to come down the scale in pitch -- evidently a lower pitch makes it more manageable -- Larissa and Destiny and my mom were chanting "ooo, ooo, oooo" in low tones to modulate me. "Ooooooohhhh..." I tried in the next one. "ooohhh...ooooooo...." bringing it down lower "oooooooohhhhaaaooo."
The contractions were now moving up the pain scale, 7s or 8s, and the best way to describe them is incredibly sharp and long-lasting gas pain, in a flexible cylinder that presses in so tightly on your abdomen, bladder, liver, creating a hard roundess that feels like it might explode. The only thing that was getting me through was remembering that they were only a minute long, and that the anesthesiologist must be coming soon. I asked the nurse, who came in a few minutes later, to find that anestheisologist immediately. "I'm not mentally prepared to endure labor without medication!" I said, quietly, desperately. "Maybe that's a good thing!" said someone hopefully. I wasn't ready. I couldn't do this! The anesthesiologist had been paged, she would come as soon as she could. "She had better have someone aspirating," I said a little grumpily. About that time I remember apologizing to Hannah, that I hadn't expected her to have to see this much pain. "It's ok!" she said somewhat brightly. I didn't really think it was ok, but I couldn't worry too much about it now.
In what seemed like moments, I was starting to feel a bit of a push urge at the end of the contractions. It must have been 10:20 or 10:30, I wasn't able to watch the clock, I was trying to find a space that allowed me to curl around my contractions and yet not bury my face in the pillow. I occasionally heard people saying things like, "good breathing!" and Erica and Jonathan were taking turns rubbing my back a little. "Just tell me if you want me to stop," said Erica, and for a while it was helping. At some point I wanted it lower, and asked her to go lower, then realizing that it just increased the pain and pressure. By the next contraction I couldn't take it anymore and simply barked, "NO MORE!" I didn't have the facility to talk in anything but one- or two-word orders, waves of the hand, I remember throwing my hand wildly in the direction of the bathroom door when Hannah was trying to find me a tissue to blow my nose. Between contractions I talked somewhat calmly, but I wasn't having much time, I was hot and kept trying to take things off but didn't want to go totally naked, besides, it was too much work to negotiate the gown with wires and cables and tubes. Still, we kept having to remind Jonathan that he couldn't go anywhere.
When I felt the poopy/push urge, I first had to remind myself not to fight it but to accept it, to move into it, relax, and then I started to panic, what if I didn't get to have an epidural? I thought I couldn't go through Truman's labor again. Things were happening too fast, they were getting out of control. At this point I wildly indicated to Larissa, anyone that I needed the nurse, gesturing incoherently at the call button that was on a table, far too far away for me to reach it in my curled-up position. She couldn't find it and dashed out into the hall, almost dragging in a reluctant woman who was not my nurse, and not happy about being drug. "I'm starting to have a push urge!" I said, and she told me where the call button was (but went to get my nurse). Thanks Ms. Helpful. "She knows where it is!" Larissa yelled at her as a parting shot. "She just can't tell us!"
I didn't have time to think about it. Liz came in and checked me between my next contraction, though it scared me (what if I have a contraction in the middle of a check?!?), at least they were giving me my full minute between. "Eight centimeters!" she said. I knew it. I also knew that there would be no two hours from now until 10. I was going to be pushing in 20 or 30 minutes. I was panicking.
A minute or two later, Liz told me Dr. Williams had been called, and the anesthesiologist was finishing up an epidural and would be 10 or 15 minutes. "What if it's too late!" I wailed, thinking of stories I've heard of women getting to complete and then being refused an epidural (later, I'd realize that this must be ancient practice -- I don't think the so-called "window" really exists anymore, except maybe for people who might only push a few minutes). Larissa understood this and explained to Liz. "She's coming, I promise," said Liz. I had no faith, I was now having to focus on relaxing my pelvis, allowing myself to curl around the poop urge instead of tighten up and fight it, oooooh-ing and wishing I could scream, trying to breath but feeling frantic instead. Each contraction was doing huge things, getting closer and closer to the push urge. I knew I only had minutes, a few contractions, until I would have to start pushing.
Dr. Williams and the anesthesiologist arrived virtually at the same time. I've never been so relieved as when she started explaining what she was going to do, talking fast in an Eastern European accent, I was nodding and saying yes, do it, I've done it before, I know, before I dove into the next contraction. She had the paper I'd filled out (there was a back portion I was supposed to sign in her presence), she didn't even try to get me to sign it, I was thankful. She went quickly to work, between contractions, and in three or so she'd inserted the needle. "When will it start working!" I wailed to no one in particular. I could feel sharp pains in my upper hips, I could still feel the contractions. "One more contraction," said Dr. Williams. "But it wants me to push!" I said, being flipped onto my back with much pain. Dr. Williams was checking me. "She's complete," she said. "And plus one."
Though the epidural was only just beginning to work, and I was so exhausted I didn't know if I could make it through hours of pushing, I was instantly amazed and thrilled. "Plus one!?!" I said. "I've never been plus one!" I remember Erica, smiling and hopeful, leaving at this point, telling me good luck! Don't stay pregnant, I thought to myself.
But still I didn't believe, didn't believe it could happen. Through the next 40 minutes I'd go on not believing, every moment thinking that she was going to say, "too bad, it's not working enough," and send me off to surgery. I think Jonathan felt the same way, disbelieving. No one really believed. At some point, even in the midst of pushing perhaps, I thought of the Everywoman's Health business office, who had sent me a bill to pre-pay for Dr. Kehoe's services during a c-section. I'd paid half on June 15, thinking smugly to myself that, thanks to their miscalculation of the due date and my own tendency to be early, I'd probably have already had the baby by July 15, and they'd just have to bill me. It seemed that the cost for a c-section was twice the cost for a non-surgical birth, and I hoped that I would prove them wrong -- AND not have already paid for their lack of faith in me. Hah! I thought to myself. You'll never get your other $310.
Jonathan and Larissa were holding my legs up, I was on my back, Dr. Williams was telling me the time-honored advice: "Curl around your baby. Push down toward my hand." She told me to hold my thighs, and already I had to push, the pain was mostly turned to pressure. I could do this. I remembered everything I knew about pushing in an instant. I let my jaw go slack, my neck, my eyes, my lips, I tried to put every single thing I had into the push, just where I was supposed to and nowhere else, imagining the way my upper belly was pressing down on the baby's feet, how I was just pushing the head through my birth cavity. Nothing more. I pushed with everything, everything, forgetting at first until exhorted to hold my breath, but remembering not to make any noise while pushing.
As I pushed and she counted, Dr. Williams was calmly, rhythmically, vigorously working the bottom of my vaginal opening, in a half-circle, back and forth, back and forth. I was so happy I had the epidural, otherwise I'd surely be screaming in pain with such force, instead it felt rubbery, flexible, like the right thing. Later both Jonathan and Larissa would comment to me on how they thought this made all the difference, that she very literally opened the way for the baby's head. Between each 10-count they told me to release and take a new breath, and it always seemed like too much time wasted, I didn't want to breathe out and in, but did to pacify them, never taking a deep one, always trying to hold on a bit longer than 10 if I could, or do a fourth 10-count if I felt the urge.
"Good pushing, good pushing!" said everyone at every push. Liz was doing the "pushpushpushpushpushpushpushPUSH!" each time, which I don't think really helped, but certainly added to the rah-rah atmosphere. I kept hearing, "you're really doing it!" and "I can't believe it!" Despite all my belief to the contrary, it seemed that the baby's head really was getting closer, and I was so determined and amazed that I wanted to push the instant the urge came each time; I tried to push in the occasional doubled-up contractions I seem to have, littler ones moments after the big ones. I didn't care how tired I got, I was not going backwards.
I don't know if I said it out loud or not, but I remember thinking after the second or third contraction, when there had been some marked movement, "I always thought I was a good pusher!" I'd been told "good push!" a hundred times before, with Everett, with Truman, and I'd thought it was true, but never had any evidence. I'm such a strong, athletic person, I'm so coachable. Much of my disappointment was that I wondered if my pushing was not, in fact, that great. It had, after all, never worked before.
But it was working, it was. At some point I was told to reach down and touch the head, and I did, and it was there. There was brown hair (I knew it was a boy), Jonathan kept talking eagerly to him, "come on little guy!" And it was going so fast.
About 20 minutes in, Dr. Williams grabbed someone and barked that they get the transition nurse. We all must have thought simultaneously, "is something wrong? Is it not progressing fast enough?" because a few of us asked at once what, indeed, was a transition nurse? It's the baby's nurse, said someone, and I didn't believe that the baby was really going to need it that soon. It's only been 20 minutes.
But it couldn't have been more 5 minutes more before I could feel that the head was so close to the edge that it would be silly to go back now. I was. I was really doing it. I can't believe I'm really doing it.
People were almost jumping up and down, it was so close. In a few minutes more, I could feel that the head was emerging, that it was in the "ring of fire" state (though I, fortunately, felt no fire, just elastic pressure), and everyone was saying the head was round. Somehow I knew there would be no conehead, this baby hadn't stayed in the cavity for two hours like his brothers. A few more pushes, each one with more purpose, more force, more belief than the one before, and Dr. Williams was wiggling his head, his head was there, I could see his face, and then his shoulders and like a SPLOOSH! he was out, I kept pushing him the whole way.
It was, of course, a boy. He was handed to me, grey and wrinkled and grumpy with vernix, he was crying little sad bursts, I was telling him "it's ok little guy!" Jonathan was telling everyone his name and I was saying over and over, "I can't believe it, I can't believe it, I can't believe it." I kept saying that I didn't know what to do, that I'd never done this before, never had a baby right there and felt so good, so mobile, so able to do anything. "Right now I'm usually shaking on a gurney downstairs next to some guy who's just had his kidney stone removed," I said, shocking Liz and requiring me to tell the whole story of the uber-busy night of Truman's birth, where there were so many c-sections -- seven or more -- that I had to be taken to recover to the general surgical recovery downstairs. I remembered later that the man next to me was old and frail enough, and the operation (not a kidney stone, I don't know what it was) severe enough that someone from the hospital was explaining over and over again to a clearly fraught woman (sister? wife? daughter?) that he might be ok after the surgery, but he might not, he might never be the same, he might not even be able to talk, they didn't know yet. I remembered, too, thinking that I was lucky to be recovering from a c-section for a healthy, beautiful baby, and not in this position, and my heart was going to burst from the sadness of it all. The woman who monitored the recoverees kept apologizing to me for having me down there, and it seemed like a small price to pay for a family whose health was all secure.
While this conversation was going on, Dr. Williams was quickly delivering the placenta (I asked if she needed me to push; she said she didn't, but I gave a couple of little bursts just in case) and I distantly remember Jonathan being shown the placenta, and being amazed and intrigued despite himself. "You only have a little first-degree tear," said Dr. Williams, "and I'll stitch you up now." I was proud and happy. One stitch. Hurray for me! I also had a bruise on my perineum. This was new territory... I wondered how that would feel?
But Monroe. Monroe was now on me, and I asked incredulously, "should I try to nurse him?" He was crying still, I was saying, "it's ok little guy!" and wondering if he was, indeed, as cute as Everett and Truman. I'm such a skeptic, I always doubt the cuteness of my children until it's been guaranteed. He looked nothing like Truman, nothing at all, and soon we'd decide that he looked identical to Everett as a baby. Everett's little brother. It was right.
I was given the go-ahead to nurse, Larissa and Hannah were leaving, and Liz brought me a new gown, the you're-a-mom-now gown that actually has nursing openings. For a moment I hesitated, then realized that there was nothing to hide after an hour of half-a-dozen people looking at my vagina in awe, and shed my labor gown and waited for the new one.
It's now 10:45 p.m. on the night after Monroe was born -- he's nearly a day old now -- and I'm thoroughly exhausted, I've slept but only in bursts of a few hours apiece. Monroe has slept nearly all of the time, in jags as long as six hours. He's developed the cuteness that I was doubting last night (I'm still holding out for that one-year-old threshold when they change from baldish baby to handsome toddler, though) and he loves to snuggle next to me, squeaking his funny baby sounds. I'm so exhausted but I have to keep typing so I'll always remember how I felt after the birth.
It was such a feeling of utter freedom and elation. I kept saying how I didn't know what to do, I've never done this before, and it was wonderful. I felt like I could get up and run across the room (though of course I could barely move), I felt like I could stay up for days, I felt like the world had just opened up to me. I had a baby, I had pushed him out the way babies are supposed to come out, and he was sitting right here with me and that was SO right, so perfect.
Jonathan and I were talking and he was crying, little bursty quiet baby cries, he couldn't seem to get the nipple in his mouth though the baby nurse and I kept trying, and his crying didn't bother me at all. Eventually I got him to latch on a bit by squeezing my breast (for some reason doubting that he was getting anything -- I've not had any leaking this pregnancy, not the tiniest bit of colostrum), but I had to keep readjusting and squeezing for him to keep on it. For the first hour or more of his life, he cried almost nonstop, but it didn't make me sad. "He's a fussy one!" I said happily, imagining a colicky baby, a screamer. And figuring, I'll just deal with it.
All I can do now is to sit back in amazement. Monroe was nearly identical in size to his brothers, and as both Drs. Kehoe and Williams now agree, probably closer to 38 weeks than 37 -- surely not good odds for my success. I attribute the outcome to simply having learned to wait, to not try to hurry labor, to let things take their course, to going without Pitocin, to accepting that I might, at any time, be sent home.
What's more, my scar doesn't hurt a bit.
The one thing I've noticed today, as I've learned to adjust to this very different kind of recovery (and been frightened as all hell of my very-swollen vagina), is that it is indeed true what the say -- the after-birth pangs get worse with each baby. A few hours today have seen me literally writhing on my bed as I nurse Monroe, or now, as I wait for him to get back from his weighing and endure the contracting-back-to-size uterus. It's a terribly sharp gas pain feeling, and it's extraordinarily uncomfortable, the way I imagine the worst period pain to feel. As I said to a nurse who told tales of women with five or six babies, "nature manages to balance things out" -- your labors are so much easier, the aftermath is harder. It's tough not knowing that these contractions will end in one minute. But, they'll never get worse, and that makes it all right.
I can't wait to go home with my baby and bask in the relative ease of this recovery. I can't believe my good fortune, I can't wait to tell everyone that it's always worth trying.
2007.07.09. five-ish . so. so. tired
I got here, got strapped in, and immediately started having frequent contractions, every four minutes or more often, and rather uncomfortable, so it was hard to talk during them. Naturally, baby was moving fine the whole time. DURING the contractions, you stinker.
After 30 or 45 minutes of this, Susan came in to check me. She's a pretty rigorous checker, especially as compared to Dr. Kehoe (though it didn't hurt much). As promised: lots of wet stuff going on. But her verdict was: still 3 cm.
Really? All I wanted to do at that point was go to sleep. Not for giving up purposes, but just because I was so, so tired. And, for that matter, hungry -- I realized I hadn't had anything to eat all day except half of Tati's leftover scone (part of the festivities in Pioneer Square, and from Three Lions Bakery: yum). But instead of offering a nap, Susan asked if I wanted to get up and walk around, procuring slippers (also known as uncomfortable baby blue socks) and a bathrobe for the purpose.
I walked around my room for a minute, then sat down for some knitting. I was just too tired. Fortunately a couple of gigantic contractions came along to keep me from discouragement.
And as I knitted away on my pinwheel, all I could think was, this is going to take me so so long to finish!, and I'm so hungry.
I sure hope I get on the docket for a spare dinner. All that delicious, nutritious food that's stocking my fridge and freezer at home, and I'm stuck in the hospital, longing for rather tasteless chicken and polenta.
YAWN...
2007.07.09. nearly 3 p.m. . feeling stupid
It took me so long to get through to someone who would tell me whether or not I should come in to the office, or the labor & delivery ward (they're in the same complex), that by the time I did, the contractions seemed to have slowed. I sat on 'hold' with the doctor's office for at least 20 minutes, perched on a low concrete wall in the shade of palms, in front of House of Louie -- where Everett and I have waited to switch buses so many times. I stuck my cute shoes out in front of me, hoping I'd get something going, depressed that the contractions had slowed to 12, 16, 8 minutes. I hopped on the bus feeling stupid, and still, though I'm having some they're not big nor long nor This Is It.
Not to mention, I can't get online. I am sitting in a hospital hallway feeling exhausted and silly. Should I just hop a bus and go home? But the space between my legs feels enormous.
Dr. Williams is on call today, and she must be at the beach or something. She seems Hard To Reach (it's a day for capitals). I just want to sit here, waiting until I have the Contraction That Counts. Or go home and sleep until Dr. Kehoe's on duty (Wednesday, I think, I suppose I could get up for a bit between now and then).
Well, perhaps they'll send me home again. And then I'll sleep. My feet hurt from my cute-as-all-getout shoes, and I just feel stupid.
After eight minutes of just sitting here, finally I got a Contraction That Counts. Now, now, I can go to the second floor.
I hope I can get wifi there.
2007.07.09. noonish . close and yes...
I'm working at Souk with Olivia, and oddly I've suddenly lost connection from the internet. It's a good thing, as it gives me a few minutes to just type this. Not so long after I sat down (and had a glass of water, for good measure), I started in on the every-four-minutes contractions. (well, four-to-six.) They're the biggish ones (not painful yet but definitely THERE), and after losing my mucous plug and my crazy nesting spree, I think this is it.
Amazingly, I'm so close to the hospital that it will take only 15 or so minutes to get there via walking to the bus... faster than it would have been, had I been in the position to drive from home. Boy this will make for a good car-free story when the time comes!
Thankfully, I took some photos in windows on the way over here. I think I'll be really well self-photographed, this pregnancy.
2007.07.09. close but no...
It is 9:44 a.m. and I am on the #17 bus on the way downtown for a "speech" (i.e. a two-minute rah-rah) I'm giving at the low car diet kickoff.
And, I just lost my mucous plug. At home, que fortunado!
The past 24 hours have been pretty, well, wet and wild. There has been more than the usual extras when I'm using the facilities, and wiping has been a more involved process than usual. But today, I knew I couldn't be far away. Last night was full of contractions, so much so that I could hardly sleep. I know I was having them all night long, perhaps not every four-to-six minutes, but...
This morning, I alighted the toilet, and was surprised that I didn't have a gush of something immediately. I was loose, so loose that yesterday for a minute at the bins with Larissa, her mom, and the boys, I thought I might just have a part of my anatomy -- or a wash of fluid -- falling right out of me.
If I could guess, I'd say I'm currently dilated to almost-four.
When in labor with Truman, I spent a night at the hospital at four, and was given pitocin around noon the next day to speed me up. Heck, this time, maybe I'll do the four-to-five thing while out and about. The TV cameras should be at the ceremony in Pioneer Square. It would make for a great human interest piece on the 5 p.m. news if I were to suddenly start screaming in pain while waiting for the head of Trimet to finish his talk.
But I'll want to remember this, so I'll write about last night. Jonathan was in a mood -- he'd started taking antibiotics given him by one of his many pharmaceutically-supplied co-workers (seems like there's always someone doling over-the-counter medicines from a large purse), as we'd agreed that he had an infection, what with the sleeping and the fever. Our intention is to call a few dentists this morning, and indicate that it's an emergency -- his wisdom teeth are beyond urgent at this point. What timing.
Anyway, he doesn't react well either to (a) pain or (b) antiobiotics. So he was alternating between sweet and helpful and really, really annyoing. The sweet and helpful parts were coming fewer and fewer between. He had no patience with my so-called "freaking out" (which I called "the natural response to my impending labor"). We were not getting along.
In an attempt to make peace, he kept taking Everett out on bike rides, you know, to "leave me alone and let me calm down." But for me? There was no calm to be had. I was frantic, exhausted, focused, introspective, mostly insane.
I'd have to sit down a lot, because the contractions were getting more pronounced, more frequent (not four painful contractions an hour, but I knew when one started, when it stopped, I often had to wait a bit) and my feet hurt from hours in the kitchen.
I'd take breaks, with Truman cuddled up against me, with my laptop, or my knitting, and buzz while I contracted and drank mango black iced tea. My brain wouldn't stop, flitting from planning to worrying to preparing for labor.
Truman was sleeping and sleeping in the early evening; he fell asleep in the stroller while grocery shopping around 5 (I bought frozen waffles, and cans of tomatoes, and ice cream, and pounds and pounds of pasta, and huge quantities of fresh veggies -- now almost all cooked up and in the freezer -- and my favorite potato chips, and everything I know the kids will need for the two-to-five days I'll be unavailable). I was feeling anxious, and close, very close. Almost here. It's crazy how I still don't imagine the sight of the baby.
In the stillness, I try to find space to connect with the coming days of labor; I can feel the contractions matter more. But there is no stillness in my brain, and instead of focusing on contractions, meditations, the image (never distinct) of my baby, I focus on all the food I should make. White bean stew? Some sort of soup, with all those carrots and celery I bought, but what kind will we eat? Should I wait until the zucchinis ripen a bit more? I've got a half-dozen or more in the junior high stage. And baking, I should make pancake mix and scones and banana bread and...
In the end, I cook, chopping up so much garlic, imagining how wonderful these greens will be mixed into pasta and quiches and mozzarella tomato sandwiches, expectant of the time we will all eat pizza with roasted vegetables, planning for a luxurious meal with stuffed mushrooms and grilled meats with feta cheese. I cook, and I cook, and I cook.
2007.07.07. no longer lucky
Really, I wasn't hoping to have the baby today for its auspiciousness, it was more just an idle thought. Still, as I watched a friend's sister give birth on Twitter (in the most superficial of ways), I was a little jealous. Because of her very, very auspicious birthday (PLUS the year of the golden pig!)? Not as much as her very speedy birth -- five hours from "water broke!" to sophia is here!.
I started composing this post around 11:43 p.m., after which it was quite obvious there would be no 07.07.07 baby for me. And now, it's entirely certain, though I still have 07.08.07, 07.09.07, and 07.11.07 under consideration (for some reason, the 10th just sounds.... boring).
I'm not much for numerology, although symmetry tickles my fancy. I still hold out the hope that maybe the baby will be born on Everett's birthday, giving our little family only three birthdays to remember! So much simpler (and then, I suppose, I'll have to have another baby on my OWN birthday, so we're all matchy-matchy).
Today, while not having a baby or going into obvious active labor, it was still quite clear that my body is moving and shaking. Or else I've become every husband's perfect wife (and my own husband's gobsmacker). I, the woman who does not clean, continued on my wild rampage, finishing what hadn't been done in the kitchen, putting marinara and pinto beans in freezer bags (two cups each), planning a dozen other dishes for tomorrow's cooking, gardening, cleaning the front porch, vacuuming every available surface in the living room and preparing several bags of things to go to Goodwill. When Jonathan gets home from work, he might just faint dead away. I'd better get a soft landing ready.
Of course, given how much this is wearing me out, I missed yoga (waking up 'round 9:30) and could barely drag myself home from ballet (where they learned new moves, Everett thinks! and acted like birds! he now wants to go to ballet forever, so I guess I'd better just add that to my budget... $1000 a year... sigh. There goes the tax credit, as if dental bills weren't already munching it up hungrily.) My sister called as I sat at the bus stop only 3 stops away from Fred Meyer, alerting me to an amazing closeout on butter (99 cents a pound!), and much though I longed to stock my freezer, too, I just couldn't do it.
All afternoon long I scurried around after the boys, the chickens, my own clutzy self, picking up and vacuuming and wiping after everything we all did (darned pullets got in the kitchen after the cat's food TWICE, pooping on my so-clean floors). I maintained the clean and added to it in admirable fashion, I was the very picture of a motivated homemaker. Problem is: not only am I exhausted, it's just not me. I really hope this doesn't last, because it's kind of scaring me. Nesting. It HAS to be nesting.
And. My sister Jenny, for whose fertility I was worried when I heard she'd been trying to get pregnant for nearly a year: evidently, that exhaustion she was feeling? Those heart palpitations? Ummm, she's pregnant. I'll have to send her a note reminding her how short of breath I was in my first trimester.
I've got to write my book. I've already composed the dedication: To Jenny, and Eden, and Hannah, who needed to know. Presciently, I came up with this last week. I just think it's really cool that, even for a moment, four siblings were with child(ren) at once.
When will that moment, for me, end? All those out there who miss their own pregnancy should know: I'm now enjoying all these moments, just for you.
2007.07.06. much later . urges
If you had seen me tonight, you would have been worried.
I had decided while en route to home that it was the right thing to do to make pasta for dinner. Jonathan wasn't feeling well at all, we had pasta, and I could use up that gigantic zucchini I'd been meaning to pick, and all that yummy basil (the sweet basil and purple basil were doing especially well).
There was just a little bit of cleaning up to do first. Jonathan had finally gotten to washing the dishes (the kitchen is entirely his job, except for cooking and the occasional pitch-in by me -- and I can very literally count the times I've mopped the kitchen floor on my fingers, in the five-some years we've owned the house) and the dishwasher was standing at attention, clean and ready.
But I'd need a little space to cook, right? And I noticed he'd started sweeping and not finished. And that's when it began.
I swept, and while I was sweeping, I found some recycling that needed to be put away, and while I was breaking it down I saw some things that needed to be re-organized. I swept three times, just to be sure I got it all. And instead of mopping, I chose scrubbing the floor with a handy rag -- that way I'll know it's really clean, and I could wash the walls, too, which I noticed were really dirty.
The neighbors, the ones we like with the woman who's five or six months pregnant, whose back deck is visible from my kitchen window and our back porch, were having a party. There were people milling about the deck, walking in and out of the dining room, just a few feet away from me. As I wandered indoors and out, picking all the ripe produce just for good measure, weeding, watering, cleaning out Gilda's tub, filling chicken food and water, sweeping and cleaning garbage and toys off the deck, out of the yard, finding recycling everywhere, filling up the compost heap, and oh yes, this is compost too!, I must have been quite a spectacle.
As I took Truman upstairs for his bath I realized how very, very dirty were the walls in the stairwell, and washed them, too, for good measure. It seemed that I should cook more than just one meal's worth of pasta, if I had that huge zucchini after all, and all these carrots that must be used immediately, and those onions.
I whizzed around wondering occasionally, are the partygoers seeing this? Don't they know how significant this behavior is? and, alternatively, how can all those people just be sitting around talking when there is so, so much to do on a Friday night? and cooking a gigantic pot of very-vegetable-rich tomato sauce, and an even more gigantic pot of Mexican-flavored beans, my legs kept reminding me how tired I was (must. press. on) and I often had to stop and sit on the stool or just wait a bit to let the moment pass. Contractions? I wasn't paying attention, and restarted my timer on the watch to 0:00. Oh, I should watch my handmade watch band...
It's 1:47 a.m., now, and the cans of tomatoes are in the recycling; the pasta sauce (augmented with cream and fresh basil and absolutely amazing) is cooling in the refrigerator in preparation for freezing and the wonderful beans are reaching the perfect state of mushiness on the stove. Everett's ballet clothes are all prepared near the door for the morning; I've decided I should go to prenatal yoga, as it may be the last and only time I have to go this pregnancy. But for the dirty dishes, which are neatly rinsed and stacked, the kitchen is spotless, organized, pretty damned perfect.
And I'm trying to convince myself to go to bed and not do a little more knitting... just 20 more minutes until I've finished my baby pants... just four or five more rows on the pinwheel...
2007.07.06. time to think
I woke up in the same funk I was in when I went to bed. The world was laughing at me, I thought, even more so when I went to Truman's vaccination appointment.
You see, I'd gotten a postcard in the mail, which said that Truman was due for immunizations. I'd called, surprised, and gotten a very quick appointment -- I thought to myself, well, it must be urgent!
So I walked into the little exam room, and I sat Truman down, and in walked the nurse. She opened the chart. "Well, it looks like Truman's up to date until he's four!" she said cheerfully. Four? Evidently, there was a mass mailing. And they weren't -- even very often -- true. Usually, she checked the chart before the appointments came in, but...
All was not lost, I could start Hepatitis A. I know you're supposed to not want extra shots for your baby, but I decided to go ahead with it... after all, I'd come all this way. And it would be the sort of thing you might need, were you to (say) visit your sister in Panama.
Strangely, the nurse's husband turned out to be Panamanian, too, and she met him on a medical missions trip. Somehow, that made me want a shot.
So by the time I left for my appointment 45 minutes later, I was literally in tears. Jonathan was sick (it's his damned wisdom teeth, I'm going to rip them out myself I think -- really I'm going to make him an appointment Monday, when my mom's favorite dentist is back from vacation), and not even close to giving me the support I needed. I might have to have another surgery! I was distraught. I was alone. It was all so unfair.
Everywhere I went, I had to wait, at the point-of-transfer between bus lines (though, knowing a wait was coming, I enjoyed a nice cup of Ethiopia Yirgacheffe and a manchego-and-mushroom biscuit, unusual and brilliant), in the waiting room, in the exam room. I must have been there quite some time as I blazed around the pinwheel blanket, one round, two rounds, very nearly three rounds, before she finally came in.
While I waited in the exam room, I thought. Lynn Siprelle (who's in Larissa's book and, also, has chickens) says that, while she's knitting, she broods, but spinning clears her mind. I brooded, first wishing I would have a few contractions and get something going (I had one, sort of), then thinking through all my options. I had come to the conclusion through last night's blog-trospection that the process of birth was very important to me, held great weight for me emotionally. I didn't mind so much if I ended up with a c-section (although I didn't want one); it was the contractions, the straps, the nurses, the changing, the trying, that meant so much to me. I wanted to feel the birth.
I started thinking about the potentialities, and suddenly wondered what the exact likelihood was that I would, indeed, need a c-section once more. Was it one in 10? One in 100? I considered, rolled the numbers over in my mind and realized that a one in 10 chance was plenty good enough. After all, I could be that one. If the chance was at least that good, I decided, how could I not try?
So when Dr. Kehoe came in, I told her about my only changes (shooting pains in my inner thighs, sometimes, when I walked) and asked. "Well," she said, reviewing my history yet again, two times pushing for two hours, two babies 7 pounds 7 ounces, one of those at 37 (and a little) weeks... "it's definitely less than 50%." She started telling stories, about how it used to be that you had no choice, that the doctor told you whether or not you had to make a "trial of labor," and that most women, did. "Well, it's less than 30%. But it's not zero."
Less that 30% sounded fine to me. She went on, reviewing the risks ... there was the possibility of the uterine rupture (she'd only experienced one in all the times she'd attended births, and it was a doozy -- she discovered during the c-section that the scar had opened cleanly, with almost no bleeding, and the baby was found clutching a piece of mom's bladder. Everyone was fine), and if you labor to complete and have a c-section, then you've got all the risks of labor, plus the risks of surgery.
I told her about Amey, who'd said something along the lines of, "it felt very surreal to just hop up on the delivery table." To me, that wasn't at all what I wanted. I had tears in my eyes. I wanted the experience of birth, I said, it was important to me. "Is that a good enough reason?" She said no without really saying no.
"To me, the only thing that matters is the outcome," she said, which is of course the only thing that should matter to me. "But I'm willing to let you make the decision; you're informed, you have a good background, you're motivated enough, and I'll support you in whatever decision you make."
There was more (if the baby is bigger than the other two, we don't even try, for instance), and she checked me. I was three centimeters! Which seemed like amazing progress, to me, having been two or two-to-three for four weeks now. Like, worth putting off the decision at least one more week.
And she left me with a parting piece of advice, which was, "if it's not me who's there, they'll try to talk you into a c-section," and all I could think was, go ahead and try, nameless on-call doctor, just go ahead and try.
As I took the bus home and thought about what Dr. Kehoe had said, I felt more peaceful about waiting, about uncertainty, about that less-than-30% chance. But I also had to wonder: shouldn't I, too, just be concerned about the outcome? Was I placing too much importance on how I feel about everything?
Maybe I am. But for the next day or two, I think, I'm just going to accept my crazy hormonal self, and if anything happens, I try.
Incidentally, if I have the baby tomorrow, and he's the same weight as Truman and Everett, that would be 7 pounds, 7 ounces, on 7.7.7. Which would be very, very symmetrical (though Shetha prefers 7 pounds, 0 ounces, 07.07.07, just for the record).
2007.07.05. giving up
I can't try to go into labor any more.
After three or four days of heavy doses of not-recommended herbs, I've thrown up my hands in disgust. No longer will I struggle to send myself into labor; no longer will I plan every night what might happen if I go into labor sometime around dawn.
I am giving up.
I barely even remember that the goal here is a baby, though I have his or her little knitted pants almost finished and stacks and stacks of newborn diapers at the ready. I have a just-started crib quilt, an all-finished crib mattress. I hurtle topsy-turvy toward new motherhood without proper introspection, in a world entirely lacking peace or even a tiny empty space in my brain.
I keep hoping for a stretch of time for preparation, for sewing and cleaning and maybe an hour of prenatal yoga, and instead am stuck with floors in need of vacuuming and children in need of healthier diets, with overscheduled weekends and frighteningly late nights working.
All day yesterday I tried to work on the project-that-must-be-completed-before-July-5th, instead uploading photos slowly and adding projects to Ravelry and being a bad mother to the children. At some point I slowly, slowly walked to Trader Joe's, pushing the double jogger with very deflated tires and thinking I might explode into large, ugly shards of pregnant grumpiness at any moment. Later we went to a party at the house of a customer of Jonathan's (I do want to write all about it, it was a strange but fun night full of contradictions from the woman who I pegged as a nut when she launched into a detailed description of her speech at a Kucinich rally, only to decide I loved her when she told a birth story from 1959, when the nurses kept reprimanding her for wiggling out of her straps on one of those awful birthing cots; to the host and hostess themselves, who kept bees in a wild very Portland-y backyard and yet... had not one but two projection screens in excess of 90 inches) and when we came home, I sat in front of my laptop for hours and hours and hours, until the sun started to rise and people from the east coast started IM-ing.
I finished my project, inexpertly but completely, I awoke before 9:30, I muddled through my day, I did not go into labor, I never even really thought I might, imminently. I worked, I put spinach into quesadillas and got the boys to eat it, I cleaned chicken poop, I knit, I finally, finally, painted my toenails.
And now I sit, toenails drying, not having painful contractions, wishing achingly that I did not have a doctor's appointment tomorrow at which, almost certainly, I will make a date for a surgery.
The baby kicks and turns, I wish I could have months more to prepare, I wish it were already born, I wish my fate were different. I feel trapped in a mental limbo, uncertain what I should even hope for anymore, yet ready, ready, ready. I miss already being pregnant, being hopeful, having a chance to labor and breathe and push, I feel a contraction -- not a huge one -- and wish for true, great, pain, so overwhelming that for once I know what is happening to me.
Instead, I put down my laptop, I go to sleep, as baby stretches and turns in his round, warm space, far, far away from me.
2007.07.02. of blue cohosh and pregnant bipolar disorder
I am slipping and sliding through the telling of my story, not because there is nothing to tell, but because every keystroke is another realization that I don't get what I want! I feel like a petulant little girl, I am a petulant little girl, always wanting what she doesn't have, only, not quite wanting it.
I want to go into labor, really I do. But am I ready for a baby? Ummm, no. I still have the pay stuff to do (and I put it off so long that I'm now the only one who can do it, without holding up the entire company), and when I ran around today buying just the necessities (15 roles of my most-desired portrait film, a couple of new lightweight stretchy cottony things from American Apparel -- most deliciously, the "sheer sleeveless v-neck" in eggplant, and yes, I DO look like a very attractive eggplant in the shirt), I realized afterward that I'd vastly overspent my budget.
Realizing that Jonathan was working the next night was a relief instead of a moment of panic. These past few weeks, I've wanted him to stay close, sure at any moment I could need to rush to the hospital and angry if he was gone for more than a few minutes at night, sure that in that hour I'd go from the occasional painful contraction to dozens.
But no.
All my signs are not signs, all my indications are that I'll be pregnant until I hop up onto a surgical table. No bloody show. No fluid leaking. No mucous plug. No nothing.
Even the poopiness I had all day yesterday has melted away, perhaps an indication of poor dietary choices instead of impending labor.
Oddly, today I feel full of energy, though not very efficient. In the early afternoon I go on errands, and instead of waiting for the bus I walk seven blocks, even in my sparkly thongs that aren't exactly made for walking. After my unwise splurge on lightweight cotton clothing (reminding myself that I can nurse in both garments), I walk another six blocks back to the #75, cheerfully answering someone who asks, "do you have a minute for the environment?" with a "no, I'm walking and bussing for the environment though!"
At home, I alternate between manic energy and exhaustion, feelings of well-being and very. not. well. being. At some point I start getting shooting pains in my leg, more crampy than heart-stroke-y, that I know are simply related to my prodigious maternal weight and not anything more exciting.
Before dinner, I errand again, to Limbo for bag after bag of herbs and teas. Blue Cohosh. Pennyroyal. Passionflower for a sedative (I'll go into labor right after sedating all the men in the house). "Root 66" tea for the boys (it's good for urinary health!), "Triple Berry" to mix with my witch's brew. I also buy plants, peppers, cilantro (I keep accidentally killing my cilantro starts to replace my gigantic flowering plant), purple zucchini. I buy corn and raspberries and grapes and a nectarine. I am shocked when the bill comes to only $18.
At home, I plant madly but carefully, making my mix just right, watering the roots, gently piling the dirt so that I don't crush any tender leaves. I weed and pick vegetables for dinner, zucchini, peas, basil, chocolate mint for tea.
And then it's brewing time. I heap in teaspoons of blue cohosh and pennyroyal, I mix up iced tea for the boys and for me, a little sugar just for good measure. And I start drinking, timidly, steadily.
While I do have a few contractions, I mostly have discomfort, and after a few hours of sort-of-good TV and late night snacks I fall asleep, certain there will be no labor tonight but in a funk of mild, all-over discomfort and anger at the slow, slow course of this baby-bearing.
In the middle of the night I awake to find Jonathan sleepless and roaming, telling tales of raccoons trying to get the chickens, but he scared them away. An hour later he wakes me again. Genevieve has been slaughtered, the daddy raccoon must have returned and found a way to tear apart the cage she shared with Gilda (bigger but far less fiesty). He buries her, what he can find of her, with a makeshift cross near the sandbox.
I go back to sleep and dream awful dreams of old jobs and inexpert subterfuge. I am disappointing everyone. I worry about the baby -- have I felt it move lately? -- and soon it's melting away my worry with a couple of sharp jabs to the rib.
I am sad, disappointed, hot, and my c-section scar is aching with the pain of anticipation, that it will be, despite all my best hopes, joined by a third cut before long.
2007.06.30. things i'm going to do
I woke up this morning with the uncomfortable realization that I was only a few days away from my calendar's 37 weeks. This weekend, my mom had asked all her daughters out for a women's "retreat" at her home about 20 miles from the coast. It's a wild place, full of hummingbirds, purple foxglove, and the occasional meth palace (a.k.a. falling-apart trailer with a couple of car shells outside). My mother has, naturally, made it her own and the hillside behind the house is now terraced with strawberries, lavendar, peas, corn, and every showy and colorful flower she can find.
Hannah, who has just entered her third trimester, couldn't stop talking about how eager she was to meet her baby, while I had to shake my head at her newbie-ness and wish that I'd go into labor immediately, have the baby without surgical intervention, and then somehow magically fall asleep for a few weeks. I am eager to meet my baby, but really, I'm so not ready for those newborn days. I guess I know how hard they can really be... and now I'm so free! So untrammeled!
Instead of regaling her with horror stories of rock-hard, milk-leaking breasts and through-and-through exhaustion, though, I kept checking my list. "Have you found a pediatrician yet?" I asked. "You should really sign up for Birthing from Within classes immediately. And if you'll want the baby in daycare, you need to get on waiting lists now." I had so much to tell her! Most of all, I realized she was clueless when it came to the entire process of birth (note to self: make chapter in book all about mental preparation for birth, and another about what it feels, and looks like). "You'll have to come to my birth... unless it's a c-section."
The real truth, the ugly truth, is that my chances of having this baby without a c-section are now tiny. If I don't go into labor in the next 48 hours, I'm pretty much without hope, and I've decided that I will schedule a c-section sometime between the 11th and 16th if I'm still out and about, walking around in the world, by Friday at 1:20 p.m., my next appointment. I want so badly just to have a chance, a good ol' college try at having this baby without having to lie on an operating table, numb from the neck down, eager to see the baby but dreading hours of shaking on the recovery table; days of burning pain in my abdomen; weeks of bone-chilling weakness.
I just want to try! I beg God late at night, when I can't sleep in the little twin bed in Mom's guest room. Can't you please give me a chance? SOON?
I decide that it's time I took matters into my own hands. I look forward to making a list of the herbs ("emmenagogues") that stimulate uterine contractions: pennyroyal, angelica, savin, rue, tansy, asafetida, blue cohosh, Vitamin C, celery seed, birthwort. Blue cohosh, cotton seed, and angelica are known to have "oxytocic properties." I plan to go to Limbo around noontime Monday, buy them all and make a strong, strong, bitter tea. But before then I'll accomplish the list of other things known to stimulate contractions, most notably, sex. Also, running up and down stairs.
I just need another two boxes of portrait film first (in case this is someone who's visiting me at the hospital while I'm in labor, Kodak Portra VC 400 please, and maybe some Portra NC 160, too). Yes, I really have gone through 12 roles in four weeks. Monday morning it is.
2007.06.29. signs and signals
I woke up this morning entirely not in labor, and distracted entirely. Jonathan was grumpy (later I'd realize it was a full moon), I was a little peevish that, despite my hopes, I wouldn't be standing in line to purchase an iPhone today. I spent the morning negotiating disputes between everyone, helping Everett clean his room, trying not to be entirely angry at the world.
I arrived at the doctor's office a little late, having purposely chosen the bus route that would avoid many encounters with the curious ("have you dropped?" "It's a boy, right?"). I've started answering the inevitable question ("when is the baby coming?") with either "I don't know!" or "SOON."
Luckily, no one ever cares if I'm late, it is a doctor's office after all. The woman who was put on the monitor last week -- who I'd waited for -- was also waiting near me, with her son Jaden, who likes to spread all the stickers out on the floor before selecting his prize each week (and one for a friend, or a sibling, or maybe the unborn child, who knows). We got the usual head-turning smiles for our big, round bellies (well, mine seems way rounder than hers, maybe I'm a bit further along).
I bloodpressured (126 over 72, or something, normal as usual), weighed (one. more. pound.), peed, hopped up on the table. Today I was knitting baby pants, and almost done, too, just sewing up the wee baby crotch.
Dr. Kehoe checked me again.
No change.
Grrrr....
But suddenly I started seeing signs and signals everywhere. As she asked me, "so, what are we going to do?" I realized she was writing on the very last line in her prenatal appointment sheet. "I'm just going to have to have the baby," I said. Then I went to make an appointment for next Friday, and what do you know? There were no openings. A sign.
Although an opening was made for me, I promised to give birth beforehand. It's all that a girl can do.
2007.06.27. disappointment, realization, hope, fear, tears
Though Krista's birth went well (hurray!), Destiny's was less than easy. Thankfully, her labor was far less painful than that with her first baby (51 hours of excruciating back labor that went nowhere for a very long time), but still ended in the same place: no progression after 7 cm of dilation, no matter how much pitocin was pumped in her veins.
So despite having temporarily moved to Portland for the birth to find the most VBAC-friendly doctor possible; despite having a thoroughly healthy body, an active pregnancy, all the knowledge from her doula training (not to mention an actual doula attending her), and, what's more, my birth meditation wafting over the air through Portland's hills and trees to her... still, the labor ended in a c-section.
As my dad drove us home from the hospital last night after seeing the (very sweet, very much looking like my brother -- and, thus, me) healthy babies, he marvelled over how all his grandchildren (five so far!) have been born via c-section, despite the two mothers' obvious good health and fervent desires to avoid said operations.
I think both Destiny and I are in the mental place now that we don't actively mourn our lost births. But still, it is a disappointment, and I wonder if I will again be disappointed with grandchild #6. Surely I don't have much time left.
I woke up this morning determined to give birth immediately, if not sooner. By my very rough calculation, I only have a few days' shot at giving birth to a baby small enough to avoid a c-section. So all day I worked furiously to finish the spreadsheets that must be done before I take my two-month's-vacation; I weeded the blackberry shoots that popped up into my beds, I hoped.
Late in the evening I went on a walk to collect St. John's wort for an infused oil in my neighborhood. For some reason, though it grew wild in my backyard a few summers ago when I first typed in that recipe, it hasn't since; I've resorted to harvesting the plump buds from parking strips and obviously neglected edges-of-yards. As I returned, my bag loaded with enough for a cup of oil (and having scoped out future harvesting spots), I noticed a weed in my yard that looked to me like chamomile, and thought about harvesting that, too, for late-summer tea.
As I flipped through my excellent book on herbs and their medicinal uses, I saw the plant. Not chamomile, but feverfew, noted for its help in relieving migraines and other aches. But the warnings had me snapping to attention: "pregnant women should avoid it, as it can act as a uterine stimulant."
Well then. If I'm still achy-pregnant-y at this time tomorrow, maybe I'll head out and start nibbling some of my feverfew's bitter leaves... that or, ahem, a little time alone with my husband. Friday could be a good day for birth.
Despite my eagerness to take my chances with a five-pounder, I'm afraid. As I put the boys to bed tonight (a long and arduous process) all I could think of was how much harder it will be with a tiny baby. Just watching the new mothers I know with their tired eyes and their always-awkard-at-first attempts at nursing the tiny ones, well, it reminds you that it's just not easy.
As I told my boss, who's easing back into work with a 10-week-old, there's a reason why you can't change your mind at this stage. She said she coped by not thinking about it, keeping herself busy, busy, busy.
No wonder she got so much done in that day before she went in for her (very New York-y) scheduled c-section. At the time, I was humbled and amazed. Now, I'm just scared.
Still, I go to the bookshelf and reach for one I bought when Truman was kicking me from the inside, a thorough and lovely children's book about a baby born near a fire in New Zealand, told through the eyes of his older brother. Everett was only interested in the picture of the just-born baby the last time I read it to him.
This time, as I wipe away plentiful tears, as I watch the baby's older sisters help hold mama's legs, as he asks questions like, "mama, why is she pooping the baby?" and "mom, is having the baby at home called a home birth?", I long for what can't be, and have to again come to terms with my 21st-century body, the one which would have died twice already in childbirth were it not for the advances of medicine.
At once, I'm thankful and mournful, for what is, for what can't be, for what never seems quite fair. And I cry and look at my beautiful children, I kiss them goodnight, I push back on a tiny foot lodged in my ribs, and I wait for the welcome unknown.
2007.06.26. a meditation for birth for destiny and krista
Yesterday evening, I walked around my garden picking herbs to bring to Destiny. Some of them were from my garden -- flowering chervil, cilantro, stunningly aromatic (and beautiful) tangerine sage, rosemary, lavendar -- some were growing wild, lemon balm, dark purple clover. I set them all in a little silver pitcher and breathed in their complex, tangy aroma, and thought of birth.
Today two women close to me, with whom I've shared this pregnancy, are in labor ... my sister-in-law, Destiny, who I visited last night and brought the aromatics; and Krista, who lives in British Columbia and is thus too far away for the herbs to safely travel. So for both of them, laboring under different roofs but under the same warm, sunny sky, I write this special birth meditation (here is my original birth meditation, written a little more than two years ago, when it rained). Throughout today I will read it and remember, and honor, them and all the other women in labor today.
Today you give birth. Today, the sun shines warmly on the earth for you; today the breeze shifts through the windows for you. Today the robins stand guard over their nests, the squirrels run swiftly, the bees ride home heavy with pollen, for you.
As I take a breath, deep into my belly, swelled with life, taut, heavy and real, baby, another being, I am filled with the air of the earth, busy, purposeful, growing. Its heat, its cool, its smell ... bright, tangy, sour, sweet, peppery ... it gives me calm. Everything is in me, everything is me, I take power and restfulness from the trees whose leaves rustle for me, the clouds whose white whisps wander over the light, deep, dark blue sky for me, from the scent of the lavendar, devotion, I whisper it to myself like a prayer, a song, a truth that is deep to my spine. Devotion, lavendar, full of ancient peace.
As I exhale, I expel my worries, my questions, my belief in the what if?. The uncertainties blow through the sparkly tiny white flowers of chervil (for serenity) and cilantro, they shatter into spicy nothingness, letting go of them brings me to my center, it is empty now, clear of breath, clear of care.
In its place I breath in the sweet complexity of citrus and sage, I see the brightness of crimson, color of blood that pulses through my veins, making them stronger than before, feeding life into the babies who I have given life, sage for wisdom. I am wise, filled with the knowledge of my body, the quiet constant presence of dozens, hundreds, thousands, millions, billions of women who have gone before me, on this very earth from which I breathe in strength, who have breathed and labored and wailed and keened and loved and suffered in childbirth and in life. Their wisdom fills me as the brilliant scent of tangerine sage rushes in through my nose, over my palate, deep into my lungs. Now my whole being is full, full of the wisdom of mothers, full of sweetness, full of comfort.
And as I breath out, again, it roots my body into the earth. I am centered, I am the center, I know where the deepness is. From the rosemary I have remembrance, I have everything in me, a million fears conquered, a million hopes thrilled. I have remembrance of the first time I desire to be a mother, of when I was a child, how I knew that one day, I would be this woman, this mother, that I would be ready in this moment. And I am. I know everything, I know all, my body is as strong as the mountain's foundation, as powerful as the mighty October waves.
As I breath in, the waves surround me with their salty coldness, wash over me in the power of each contraction. I can feel the wetness in my hair, it comes from the earth, it gives me power. The contraction gives my body strength, it rises deep from my back, my cervix, swelling through my uterus, surrounding its roundness with a more fundamental shape, building in power that almost blinds me with its might. I say silently to myself the word intensity, and think, force, muscle.
Everything in me is muscle, creating a drive that will quietly, intensely, calmly and authoritatively push this life out into the world. I feel the slipperiness, the sticky odors, the heat of my breath and the cool of the air, all of this, blood, sweat, fluid, all working together toward life, toward our goal. Motherhood, I say to myself, and it is the most commanding and malleable word I know, it powers me with its scent of sage, rosemary, lavendar, lemon balm, blood, sweat, sun, wind, tears and love.
Today you give birth. Today, you are strong; today, I send you serenity, wisdom, devotion, joy. Today you are a mother.
2007.06.25. other people giving birth!
My sister-in-law, Destiny, is in labor as of mid-afternoon today! She may have two new babies by tomorrow morning. Instead of making what I'd decided to make for my own baby -- little knitted pants to go over the onesie -- I'll be knitting a few for desinty's babies.
Will Krista be next? She's at 40 weeks and one day, today.
2007.06.24. chicken little
Larissa (affectionately ... right?) keeps calling me "Chicken Little." And these days, I very much feel like the greatest of exaggerators. One minute I'm sure that labor is coming, that I'll be spending the rest of my days-as-mother-of-two in the hospital... the next minute, nothing could be further from my mind.
Take today, in which I have surely had a few big contractions, but nothing even really worth marking. I've zero-ed out my watch more times this weekend than I've thought, maybe the time is now.
Still, the body, it is obviously getting close to being ready, what with my wild tears to get things done at all costs -- last night, at 8 p.m., I suddenly became filled with the urgent desire to dig up the weeds that have grown in my front flower beds since I tried to plant lavendar, echinacea, calendula, and fennel, none of which appears to have germinated at all -- now a new euphorbia plant, sage, lavendar, and a spare watermelon seedling (just for good measure) grow there. And I still made it to Limbo before 9, for cilantro, another Genovese basil plant (love how spicy its leaves are), more lavendar, more lettuce to replace that-which-the-chickens-decimated -- and my disgustingly fluctuating digestive system.
In decidedly good news, (a) I don't have heartburn any more, at all, and it seems my dairy intolerance is vanished altogether and (b) I can drink all the wine I like without problem.
In fact, maybe it's the wine, tonight, that's keeping my uterus calm. Julie keeps reminding me that "any midwife will tell you a shot of whiskey calms contractions!" and it appears the same goes for two glasses (yes! two! I will go to hell) of rioja rose (new from Trader Joe's and highly recommended for those fans of not-sweet inexpensive-but-not-cheap pink wine).
Nonethless, I have done many and amazing things this weekend, discovered and fallen in love with foundation block paper piecing (thanks to the proud new mama of a little girl named Lydia, whose mailorder was just right for me this time around), almost made a quilt, almost cleaned my craft room / office, started a to-do list, planted and weeded and watered and finished a sweater for me. If it's cold in the delivery room, I'll be cozy.
Hmmm. What will the baby wear home from the hospital? I never really thought too much about that...
2007.06.22. so, so sad
I hope it's just the hormones.
Yesterday I awoke and, as usual, picked up the Oregonian to read my oh-so-anticipated Thursday 'In Portland' section. The lead article was on the raid at Fresh Del Monte -- 160-some illegal immigrants were picked up and placed into custody in a maddeningly senseless crackdown on the poorest, hardest working in our society -- told from the perspective of the teachers and students at the schools that most of the workers' children attend.
In moments, I was crying angrily, huge tears falling down my cheeks, not just the little emotional moments of pregnancy but serious, real sadness. It shocked me, but I couldn't stop, the tears just kept coming.
Later that night, and today, I felt it again, this out-of-control sadness that sweeps over me. I've nearly broken into tears several times.
Today it happened at Dr. Kehoe's office, where I weighed in after a long (but productive) time in the waiting room at 171 (ouch), and measured at 2-3 centimeters, again.
Dr. Kehoe was relieved, but worried about my report of frequent ("less regular but more intense," I said) contractions. She wanted to put me on the monitor, but another pregnant mama was just strapping in, so I had time to run for a drink and a sugary slice of Beaverton Bakery cake.
I couldn't stop feeling so, so sad, I didn't even have a subject this time, I was just blue.
I got on the monitor after a long wait, many rows of my sweater completed, and the sadness just went on. Despite my feeling of intensity and the vast, complicated kicks of baby, I went for 20 minutes or more without much movement on my half of the chart. Finally, just as Dr. Kehoe came in to let me off, a big contraction said, "it's not all in your head sweetheart."
I left, took the bus home, and knitted and knitted and knitted, choosing a route I knew would have fewer riders (hence fewer "so, how long do you have?"s -- I say, "I don't know!" but want to say, "what do you think I am, a fortune teller, you bonehead?"). "Are you having a boy?" says a friendly woman on the 75. She seems rather sure. Evidently: I've dropped.
Everyone seems to notice my much-lower belly, they say I've changed, I look different. I can't zip or button or slide on my belly panels, anymore. Whatever is to come, I have a much narrower wardrobe for the remainder of my pregnant days.
As the bus pulled away from Emanuel, I realized we were turning down Monroe Street. Maybe I am having a boy.
2007.06.20. about contractions
I remember Dr. Kehoe telling me sometime before Truman's birth that contractions are always at least two minutes apart, and never last longer than a minute, that you get that one minute's rest, guaranteed. And in all the books and in all the videos and birthing classes, you're told that contractions last one minute. One minute long. At least a minute's rest, even in the hardest, worst, most painful parts of labor.
It's so universal and regular that sometimes I wonder, is this where the minute was first devised? After all, the month is about the length of a woman's cycle; an hour, the average time someone must push before a baby's born. Maybe a minute was born in the same way a baby was, the regular contractions of a laboring woman.
Contractions, as it turns out, sometimes last longer than a minute, and sometimes don't give you that promised one-minute break between. My memory lives in proof of that, and I felt cheated enough that I watched the monitor carefully to ascertain that it wasn't just my feeling of pain and quickness, but actual factual truth. Yes. There were contractions that lasted 90, 95 seconds, followed by a second one 15 or 20 or 30 seconds away.
But still, as I continue to contract (as usual these past few days, late at night, when I get truly sleepy and start giving up on finishing all the work that I've promised myself I'd do, they come), I continue to be amazed at the regularity of a true contraction. I hit the 'split' button on my watch every time I feel a big one starting, and as I feel it taking over my body, my uterus rising hard and pressureful into my ribs, pressing down on my thighs, my pelvis, radiating into my lower back and sides, I look down at the timer and 18, 19 seconds have passed, I know that there will be 22 more before I can start to talk again, and then another 17, 18, 20 until the pressure has passed altogether and I can put my hand on my belly, push down, feel softness and peace.
I look at my watch and worry, they've been too close, they've lasted a bit too long, 1:07, 1:11, the children are asleep and so is Jonathan, my c-section scar is burning as it has been this past week or more (a slow, steady heat, not a fiery unbearable pain but nonetheless occasionally worrying, I know too well the stats: I have a 10% chance of rupturing my c-section scar. Usually that seems small, remote even, but tonight, it seems huge, one in ten.
And there is another one, 12 seconds is pressure, 32 is pain, by 44 I know the end is near, at 54 I can breathe deeply. At 2:06 I look back, feeling the relaxation in my spine, letting my shoulders droop.
I should take a bath, a shower, should lie down, should breathe yoga breaths and let it fall away, but I am tired of bathing, I have too much I want to do, I'm not ready. So I endure the contractions and think, tomorrow, maybe, tomorrow if it's like this I'll go, or Friday and hope that I can hold out another five, six, eight days.
I have, after all, come this far.
I click my watch, another one, 5:32 between. Wait, baby, mama's not ready for you yet.
2007.06.19. hangover
I'm glad I didn't have the camera nearby when I looked in the mirror this morning.
As I wrote on twitter, I looked (and felt) like I had a rollicking hangover. My eyes were glassy, my face bright red, my hair a rat's nest. My head felt like I imagine the head of a person who drank two bottles of champagne and struggles with an addiction to cold medicine, might feel. It wasn't just the hangover of the drunk, it was the hangover of the drunk and drugged. Ohhh, whoooaaahh, as Truman says.
I was able to shake it off, a bit, and get my vim back. The mid-day was pleasant, Truman and Everett had their first soccer class of the summer and jumped into it ecstatically. I took the bus to meet them, dropping off my latest rolls of film and wandering into the fabric store across the street. Oh, that's going to really put a dent in my bank account over time. I walked out with the most gorgeous selection of fabric, including a yard of amazingly beautiful oilcloth (the woman called it "kale fabric," making me immediately think of this Kale) in purples and greens, so gender-neutral, and a purple gingko leaf fabric that makes me swoon, plus a brown understated floral. If I ever get a nesting urge that involves the sewing machine, boy will this baby be the most stylish ever. Good for a Monroe or a Ruth.
I walked the half-mile or so to soccer feeling pretty good, enjoying the mild heat and the beautiful gardens in the neighborhood, the one in which I grew up. When I arrived, so many of my mama friends were there, and they said I looked great. Haha. But a lovely sentiment. Everett was playing his heart out, he was happy, I was knitting.
Jonathan took Truman home in the bike trailer in tired meltdown, and Everett and I walked back to the photo lab to pick up my goodies, alternately having a lovely and an explosive trip. Once home, it was almost time for our parenting coach to appear, and we quickly did our family dinner.
As she gave us her verdict (we're doing great!) and told us we looked relaxed, I knitted and drank tea and started in on the contractions. They were coming pretty often, certainly more than four an hour, but they weren't huge or painful. After she left, we all ran in the backyard, composting my 'potager' bed, watering plants, catching chickens, admiring the beauty of the 'infrared' sunflower that's already blooming higher than my head. It was peaceful and happy.
I almost fell asleep with the boys when I put them to bed, but they weren't 'taking' sleep and suddenly I was frantic with stress. I let Jonathan deal with them (when Green Eggs and Ham didn't work, he used a DVD, which worked perfectly) and soon began hard, forceful contractions, through which I couldn't talk. When I had two in two minutes (timing them, as they do in the hospital, from start-to-start), I got the phone book (somehow, I can never find the number to labor & delivery. ever.) and decided to start a shower to calm me down.
It must have worked, because around 2:30, I slept, and it was a sleep full of strange dreams and the feeling (not the reality) of feverishness. I awoke with a pounding head and, soon, more contractions, fast, powerful, frightening.
I have so much to do.
2007.06.17. happy, happy father's day
Our Father's Day was much better than our Mother's Day.
This year, I did not make Jonathan a t-shirt featuring a photo of him and the boys. (Ahh, 2004, where have you gone?) I did not organize the children for a daddy-centric craftstravaganza. We did not give him breakfast in bed.
However, I took us all out for bagels and coffee (me) and hard cider (Jonathan) for breakfast, and included a can of crab meat in my grocery shopping trip later that day. We grilled out (carne asada, onions, red peppers), I made a garden-fresh salad (plus cherry tomatoes -- mine need a couple more weeks -- and crab meat) with a spicy-mayonnaisey dressing. Larissa came over with Sebastian for a while in the afternoon, and we shopped for crib pads and oilcloth (for Sebastian, and the baby), knitted, and watched the boys in their ever-more-exuberant wrestling-playing-crying-happy cycle.
I realized, much into the day, that although I'd spent most of the weekend in a mad whirlwind of toy cleaning, blog organizing, and general focus on the order of my household (I swept the living room!), the contractions had come almost not at all. Oddly, as I'd almost run out of my labor-stopping drugs on Friday afternoon (and realized it about 5:30, late enough that it was a long shot to catch Dr. Kehoe without the pager), I'd decided to just not take them and call in for a refill if there was an emergency, I'd not taken them at all the whole weekend. And... not needed them.
A relief? An annoyance? A piss-me-off-because-I've-had-so-much-minor-pain- and-it's-sure-to-continue-for-weeks? Yeah, something like that. While I'm looking forward to having more days of working, sewing, knitting, readying the garden, perhaps finally strong-arming Jonathan into finishing the chicken coop before winter sets in (we have so many ideas, so many raw materials for its foundation, so little actual progress, grr), I hate to give in to the reality that maybe this whole thing was a false alarm. The idea of me going into mid-July without a baby, though it would make my career easier and my household more peaceful, is somehow making me feel like Chicken Little.
For now, as I put a box of ugly, broken, dirty toys on the front porch; as I admire my living room that's actually become orderly; as I prepare mentally for the things that must be done this week and stay up late sending emails I put off; no contractions works.
2007.06.15. of certainty and its opposite, birth
I had an idea that I'd progressed at least a centimeter in the week since my last appointment (I'm not Catholic, but every time I head to the doctor I get this mental image of me slipping into a little confession box, and having Dr. Kehoe open the screen, and having me say, "It has been 75 minutes since my last contraction. And since last Sunday, I have done 128 contractions, and gained one pound"). There had been a few times in which I'd been sitting on the floor, or in my chair in my office, and had a contraction so big that it took my breath away, that I could feel it radiate from cervix to back to my ribs, powerful and true. Surely, a half-dozen of those, mixed with the littler stuff, would change a girl's cervical dilation.
But no. Well, not one centimeter changed, anyway. In Dr. Kehoe's office, there were many bellies this day. There was red-head-in-an-Army-shirt, with her young cute obviously Army reservist husband, so huge that I wondered if she was having twins. She was not at all glowing, more like bursting. I thought about something I'd read in one of my pregnancy books (I've been reading the "competition" readying to write my book proposal), that a boy steals a mother's beauty while she's pregnant. For this woman, it was true, though I had an idea she'd get it back quickly.
She was chatting with the wonderful receptionist, and said she was due to be induced tomorrow, the day before father's day. Her husband wasn't getting a gift, she laughed, and shuffled uncomfortably to her chair.
Another woman walked in, with a belly not quite as big as mine (but close), slender and tall and well-dressed. Despite the two of us (evidently) not-so-cute fatties sitting in the waiting room, a woman rushed out from behind the desk, maybe someone who worked in the billing office, one I didn't really know.
"I just had to come out and tell you that you have a really cute belly!" she squealed, effusing. "And I see a lot of bellies!" I wanted to jump up and ask, hey, isn't my belly cute? How about this poor uncomfortable woman across from me? "I mean, NOT ALL BELLIES ARE CUTE. You know."
I don't swear in the blog much, but, fuck. Why don't you just come pour saltwater on our swollen feet or something, lady, instead of insulting us by omission?!?
After this I was happy to be called in for my exam. I did the thing, weight (170, gained a pound), pee in the cup, blood pressure (122 over 62, nice and normal despite the Nefedipine), get undressed, sit my large, not-cute behind on the exam table with my knitting (a robot for Nehalem, very cute). Dr. Kehoe came in to do the exam: "unchanged, two-to-three centimeters," she said, satisfied.
Oddly, I felt no pain this time being examined. Things are loosening up, I suppose.
"Well, I didn't do a thorough exam," she said, "as I don't want to stir the pot." I supposed more than two is a little progress from two, meaning my contractions were doing something (not that I truly want to have the baby so soon, mind you, but I want to feel legitimized, that my discomfort and discomfiture aren't all imagined). "I want you to have a vaginal delivery," said Dr. K, "but I also want you to be able to take the baby home. We're just limping along. Let's try and get you to 35 weeks, and then, I don't care what happens."
"You're taking it easy around the house, right?" she asked. "Well, I'm not going out for runs," I said. "I'm trying to take it easy."
She seemed satisfied, and gave me the usual exhortations -- fluid leaking, dripping, bleeding, dizziness, more than four painful contractions an hour, come in -- and I set up an appointment for a week hence.
According to her pregnancy calendar, 35 weeks is June 26 -- according to mine, it's the 20th, but I'm happy accepting her interpretation of 35 weeks and waiting until then. My phone call to Unum Provident, which handles disability claims (a.k.a. the maternity leave people -- why must they call it a disability? -- I swear motherhood does not disable me. Could they call it "life alteration" leave or something?), had bro