Soul Gardening

Three Days - Conclusion

The third day is the most difficult to write about, I suppose because there are so many things I want to remember about the day Myles was born and so much happened during that time.

I managed to catch a bit of sleep in the morning and the Pitocin drip was resumed around 9am. Jeff snuck in a protein drink for me. I don't do well skipping meals - it tends to make me cranky. So by the third day with no solid food, I was starving and I knew I would need some protein for strength if I intended to push the baby out.

The early part of the day was slow. I encouraged Jeff to get some sleep and I tried to nap too. The contractions started to pick back up again in the afternoon. By 6pm, I was at 6 centimeters but I was starting to really feel each contraction.

The epidural was wearing off. According to the labor nurse, it was almost unprecedented for a patient to go through an entire epidural cycle without delivering a baby. So I have that dubious honor.

Things were really intensifying. Jeff was reading to me from David Sedaris' "Me Talk Pretty One Day" when he made me laugh so hard that my water broke around 6:30.

The labor nurse had me lying on my side but the baby's heartbeat began dipping with each contraction so we changed positions several times. There was a terrifying moment when the heartbeat went too low and the nurse called Dr. George to come in.

And here's where I have to say wonderful things about this man. It was his daughter's birthday and he left her party to come back to the hospital. He sat with us in our room for hours, just talking and helping us pass the time.

At one point, when the baby's heartbeat was fluctuating, Jeff and I got scared. We asked Dr. George if we needed to move to surgery to get Myles out. He looked me in the eye and told me that he was sure we could deliver the baby vaginally and I believed him. 

At 8pm, I was at nine centimeters, but there was a problem with my cervix - something about a band of tissue around the rim that was preventing me from dilating the rest of the way. This was getting ridiculous.

I decided to take matters into my own hands. With each contraction, as we sat with our doctor talking about boating and diving and the Florida Keys, I began using my hypnobirthing techniques to breath the baby down. By nine o'clock, I was ready to push.

It took a total of 48 hours for me to dilate to ten centimeters and 30 minutes for me to push Myles into the world. Once we got to the point where I had control of the situation, I was not messing around. It was the easiest and most empowering part of the entire process.

I felt Myles' head as it was crowning. Jeff cut his cord and then there he was on my chest - a beautiful, tiny, goopy, miraculous baby. I have never felt such a sense of accomplishment. I've never felt such pure joy. From before the time he was conceived, I've never worked so hard for anything or wanted anything more.   

The placenta and cord (decroded pieces of crap) were both in poor shape according to Dr. George. The cord was wrapped twice around Myles' arm, which is probably what caused the dips in his heart rate.

After that, everything is a happy blur. I wolfed down an Arby's roast beef sandwich, something I would never normally eat, in a minute flat and it was the best thing I've ever tasted.

Everything changed in the moment that Myles entered our lives. Now, after only 11 days, I can't imagine life without him. We have a son and he's got my stubbornness and low tolerance for bullshit. I hope he gets the rest of his disposition from his father. 

Although his birth didn't go as we planned, I believe with all my heart that it happened just the way it was supposed to. We saved his life by inducing labor and as difficult as it was to get my body to respond, it was the right thing to do. I have some incredible memories of those three days and the time absolutely brought Jeff and I closer.  

And now Myles is here and nothing else matters.

Three Days - Day Two

Combine a person with lifelong insomnia and a stressful situation. Add several machines that beep and alarm at various intervals and a nursing staff that enters the room to check temperature and blood pressure every few hours and you can understand why I wasn't able to get any sleep.

Friday morning around ten, Dr. George arrived to check my progress. I was pleased and excited to hear that my cervix had softened and thinned and I was ready for the next step in inducing labor. Enter the hospital grade double breast pump and instructions to pump for twenty minutes on, twenty minutes off.

Within the first hour, I began to feel contractions. At the time, I was hopeful and optimistic that we would have a baby by the end of the day. For the next 12 hours, I pumped and I breathed through mild contractions. When I would stop pumping, the contractions would sustain for 15 minutes and then fade.

Around ten o'clock that night Dr. George came back to assess me. I told him that the contractions were not sustaining for long when I was off the pump. He checked my cervix and I was dilated less than one centimeter. My body wasn't cooperating. I was crushed.

We were out of options and the only thing left to do was to move to chemical inducement. I had heard a lot of things about Pitocin, none of them great. But this was the only remaining choice.

The Pitocin drip was added to my IV immediately, to be dialed up every half hour thereafter. Contractions started again within 30 minutes but the quality was different. They were stronger from the beginning and increased in intensity as the night wore on and the dosage became progressively higher.

I breathed through each wave. Jeff massaged my back. We walked the halls of the hospital, stopping so I could squat with each contraction. I sat on a birth ball. I leaned over the bed. I stood and swayed my hips. I listened to every mix CD that you all sent to me, some of them twice. It felt like you were there with me, cheering me on.

Between surges, Jeff and I talked and even joked and laughed. He was amazing. After six hours, the intensity was really increasing. It was getting harder to get up and walk around.

At this point I was on my second night with no sleep and no food and my body was working hard. I was beginning to tire and the contractions were still gaining momentum. I kept telling myself it wouldn't be much longer and I would be able to start pushing.

Dr. George arrived around 4am to check my progress. I was dilated 2.5 centimeters. I don't think I can express how it felt to hear that I had made so little progress after 18 hours of contractions and six on Pitocin. I was devastated and exhausted.

We decided to turn the Pitocin off for the night so I could get some rest and resume in the morning. But my body had other ideas. After the Pitocin was turned off, my body continued to labor hard. Each contraction was stronger than the last. I had no strength left to deal with them.

And that is when I lost my mind. Somewhere during that time I took a shower and also got into the whirlpool tub, but nothing was helping me relax enough to deal with the contractions the way I needed to.

I turned into a crazy babbling mess. In my mind, I kept telling myself that I would just go home, that I was done. Out loud, I told Jeff that I couldn't do this anymore, that I needed something for pain.

We tried a mild narcotic in my IV, but it didn't even take the edge off. I don't remember asking for the epidural, nor do I remember getting it. I had a brief moment of lucidity after it was administered in which I had to talk myself down from a panic attack because I couldn't feel my legs.

But the intensity of the contractions was gone. It felt more like mild pressure, rather the freight train I had been dealing with earlier. I could relax and rest a little bit.

It was 6am on Saturday - the third day.   

Three Days

Day One:

Thursday, April 26th started out as usual. I was in the 40th week of my pregnancy and had a routine appointment with my midwife that morning. After a successful fetal non-stress test, which I had been undergoing weekly for the past month to monitor the baby's heartbeat, I had my physical exam. I was disappointed to find that I wasn't effaced or dilated at all, so it would probably be at least another week until I went into labor.

Toward the end of the exam, my midwife mentioned that it seemed the amniotic fluid was a little low and that my measurements hadn't changed significantly in a few weeks. She said that rather than waiting until the following week, she wanted to go ahead and do an ultrasound that day to make sure everything was okay with the baby. She told me that she suspected my placenta may have stopped working - a condition that can happen to anyone at anytime during a pregnancy.

At that point I was nervous, but I still believed everything was fine and that my pregnancy would progress  normally. It was a long wait until the 4:30 ultrasound.

We met with an OB/GYN who is actually my midwife's husband. He's very progressive and supportive of natural childbirth, even though he works in a traditional hospital setting.

The ultrasound revealed our worst fears. The amniotic fluid was low and the baby's measurements were small in some areas, indicating that my placenta had been slowly declining over the last month by his estimations, depriving the baby of nutrients.

The prognosis was that the baby, while not in immediate danger, would fare much better outside of my body than inside at that point. If we had waited another week for the ultrasound, the outcome could have been very different and the baby might not have survived. Our plans of a water birth at the birthing center were dashed. I would be admitted to the hospital that night and my labor would be induced.

There were so many thoughts crowding my mind. Worry for the baby, crushing disappointment that the birth we had imagined and planned for was not to be, guilt that somehow my body had let the baby down.

After a few tears and some time to really think about the situation, we discussed our new birth plan with George, our OB and his wife Samantha, who was my midwife. Before medical intervention, we would try to induce labor naturally. I would still be able to labor using the hypnobirthing techniques I had been practicing . Samantha would be with us in the hospital and as long as the baby stayed out of distress, I would still be able to have a natural childbirth, albeit in a hospital setting.

We rushed home to repack our bags. We hadn't planned for an overnight stay at the birthing center and now we would need to anticipate a few days in the hospital. After dashing around, and making phone calls to let everyone know we were headed to the hospital, we were on our way.

I had been holding it together pretty well, but when we walked into the hospital room, everything hit me and I started crying. I didn't want to be there. The uncertainty of what would happen over the next 24 hours was almost too much to take, and it had all happened so fast I hadn't had a chance to adjust to my new reality.

Within the hour, I was hooked to an IV delivering fluids and a hormone called Cervadil had been administered to help ripen my cervix since I wasn't dilated or effaced at all at that point. The Cervadil would need 12 hours to take effect, so all that was left to do was get through the night and try to get some sleep.

This was the beginning of the first sleepless night. 

 

U-Turn

There's a lesson I'm told it's important to learn early on in the parenthood experience. It's really a lesson that everyone should know, parent or not - No matter how much you plan or hope or try to exert control, sometimes things don't go the way you expect.

Yesterday we were operating on the assumption that everything was fine and that we'd be delivering our baby in the water via midwife at a birthing center. Tonight I'm in a hospital room hooked to an IV delivering fluids with hormones in place to induce my labor.

At the moment, the baby is still doing relatively well, but today we learned that my placenta has been slowly degrading over the last month. It happens sometimes with older first time mothers. What this means is that the baby hasn't been getting the optimal levels of nutrition for proper growth and as a result my amniotic fluid is very low.

The good news is that we caught it before it was too late. Nature is an amazing and powerful thing and the baby has been diverting all the nutrients he has been getting to his brain and organs so he is still relatively healthy. He's a little small and his abdominal measurements are off by about a month but according to the doctor he still has a great chance to be perfectly fine.

The bad news is that there's a fairly good chance he won't tolerate the strain of delivery well, which is why we have to be in a hospital where he can be monitored closely and intervention can be taken immediately if anything goes wrong.

I'm feeling very conflicted at the moment. I'm a little sad, trying to wrap my head around a completely different labor and delivery than what we had hoped for. I'm worried about the baby, and worried for myself. It's hard not to feel sorry for myself and wonder if this is a result of somthing I did or didn't do.  

Suddenly, being in a hospital surrounded by medical equipment and hooked to various machines makes this whole endeavor of having a child seem so much more serious, so much more real than it was this morning and I haven't had time to adjust. I feel like I'm on one of those carnival rides that spins incredibly fast while you stick to the wall and the floor drops out. 

Jeff is here beside me and he's been an incredible advocate already. I'm going to try to get a few hours sleep and we'll start the active process of inducing labor tomorrow morning around 10am.

Please send good thoughts our way. 

Not Exactly The Back, Not Quite The Ass

Throughout this pregnancy, the biggest surprises have been how atypical my symptoms have been. With less than eleven weeks to go, I've gained about 20 pounds and I haven't experienced any of the common complaints that most women have. Thankfully, I've had no constipation, no hemorrhoids, no indigestion or heartburn.

I haven't had any skin discolorations and I don't have any stretch marks to speak of, but I know they're coming. I suppose it will be the last ten pounds that throw me over the edge.

On the other hand, I've been a sneezing, watery-eyed mess since last August. I've suffered from contact dermatitis that has nearly driven me over the edge with itching and scratching. I've been afflicted with flatulence that would make a sailor proud and I've had hormonally induced migraine headaches. These are symptoms never saw coming.

And now, the worst thing yet; I have a pinched nerve in the lower part of my back/upper part of my ass that is causing such spectacular muscle spasms, I see entire constellations of stars every time I bend, sit, stand or walk.

Holy Jesus, Mary and Joseph, what I wouldn't give to be able to take a muscle relaxant right now. Oh, sweet, sweet Flexoril.  Or perhaps a few shots of tequila.

After about a month of just hoping it would get better on its own, I made an appointment with a chiropractor who focuses on total body wellness. Yesterday she examined me and told me that this type of injury is common in pregnant women and she should be able to fix it in just a few visits.

This is good news since one of the movements that causes the muscle to spasm the most is bending and sitting. Yeah, pregnant women don't have to do that very often. There's nothing like being half asleep, and trying to stay that way, to make your second or third bathroom trip in the middle of the night and then being rudely awakened by a feeling as if your ass has just exploded into a million tiny stretched out pieces of raw nerve endings.

It gives new and very colorful meaning to the term "pain in the ass".

Babble

I love language in all its forms. I'm fascinated by the concept of an agreed upon form of communication, be it verbal or non-verbal and all that it allows us to accomplish. In fact, I love language so much, I have a Masters degree in Communication.

Although the focus of my study has been communication in organizations, I took classes in Linguistics and Speech Development. One of the things I am most excited about with this baby is that I get to not only witness the development of language skills in my son, but also participate in the process.

I believe that pre-verbal children, both hearing and hearing impaired, can be taught signs and symbols that allow them to communicate. Usually this process begins in tandem with a child's hand-eye coordination development beginning at around six months. In return, teaching pre-verbal children these skills will help them to better understand the process of communication and language.

Recently, Tink sent me this incredibly interesting DVD.  The basic premise was developed by a woman in Australia who has a eidetic, or photographic memory for sound. She developed a theory around the repetitive sounds made by pre-verbal babies as young as newborn to three months and has conducted years of research around interpreting pre-verbal communication.

I'm hooked. If Dunstan's research is accurate, I should be able to begin responding to verbal cues from my son in a much more accurate and reliable way right from birth. Tink, I can't thank you enough for this DVD. I am so excited to try it out!

I'd like to know what you guys think about these concepts. It is a bunch of rhetoric, or do you think these theories have merit? What about those of you with children?

Simply, Beautifully, Perfectly Normal

The baby is developmentally and structurally normal and so am I. No signs of spina bifida, organ problems, Down Syndrome, hydroencaphaly or cleft palate. No placental or amniotic issues.

The thing I've thought about the most since becoming pregnant is how many opportunities there are for something to go wrong. It seems like such a precarious thing, such a huge effort involved in bringing a baby into the world. It is sometimes mind boggling to consider everything that has to go right for it to happen at all.

I've tended to take a wait and see attitude toward things as much as I possibly can. There are so many things that you could worry about if you let yourself and I just couldn't see going through nine months of that kind of torture. But truthfully, it is so difficult not to think about those possibilities every once in a while and it is so good to know that all is well.

Now I'm thinking about other things. I want this baby to be brilliant and funny and compassionate and beautiful and kind. I want it to have its father's sense of self and good humor and my sensitivity and ability to see beyond what lies on the surface of things.

My hope is that this child will always know how much they are loved and that they will laugh heartily every day of their life. I want our baby to have every opportunity to become something wonderful and to know that it has our support in all things. In short, I want it to know how miraculous and amazing and truly wonderful life can be. 

It's a boy. I've had a feeling since the very beginning that it would be. He will be named for his great-grandfather, in whose house he was conceived and where he will spend the first months of his life.

We will teach him everything we can and he will change our lives and teach us many things in return.

We're having a son.   

The Shape Of Things - Notes From The Halfway Point

I'm twenty weeks pregnant. If I carry the baby to full term, that means I'm halfway there.

Thus far, pregnancy has been easier than I expected from a physical standpoint. The worst and most enduring symptom has been marathon headaches that last three or four days. The pain sits just behind my eye and makes it impossible to sleep, read,write, drive. Tylenol, the only thing I'm allowed to take, barely scratches its surface.

I've gained around 12 pounds and I'm finally starting to look pregnant to people who don't know me. The biggest change has been my boobs, which have grown two cup sizes. sort of like the Grinch's heart. I'm finally over my fascination with them. For a long while, I couldn't stop looking at them in wonderment. Now, they just itch all the time and the utilitarian nursing bras I purchased last week are anything but sexy. 

The changes in my body have been fascinating from a purely scientific standpoint. Pregnancy has done some really crazy things to my physiology that I never would have expected. From a personal perspective though, I could really do without the dry flaky itchy skin and flyaway hair. Where the hell is my pregnancy glow?

As I wrote on Friday, Jeff and I have been able to feel the baby move which has been crazy and wonderful and strange. We have an ultrasound scheduled for a week from tomorrow to make sure that all is well developmentally and we should be able to determine the baby's gender as well. I am fairly sure it is a boy. Just a gut feeling I have, although every time I dream about the baby, which is surprisingly not very often, it's been a girl.

Somehow, I thought pregnancy would make me feel differently, as if some great mystery would be revealed to me, but thus far, I just feel like me. I haven't spent a lot of time thinking or worrying about how things will be because I figure no matter what I am able to dream up, the reality will be nothing like I expected. Every now and then I do have a flash of "Oh my god, what the hell did we do? This is actually happening!" but it doesn't last long.

There are minor annoyances that I know are going to get worse in this second half of pregnancy. The changes in my body simultaneously pique my interest and me and freak me out. It's as if some alien has taken over. It's becoming more and more difficult to find a comfortable position for sleeping as my stomach keeps getting in the way. Bending at the waist is getting harder all the time.

So  here I am. I haven't done anything to prepare for having a baby in the house. We haven't purchased or registered for a single item or read a book or taken a class. But somehow, none of that seems to matter. Like millions of new parents before us, we'll figure it out when the time comes.

I have a feeling that our lives are going to change in ways I could never anticipate. Is is glib or paradoxical for me to also believe that we are ready for it?

My Brain Is Melting

Have you ever filled out one of those reminders at the doctor or dentist's office and then six months later when you received it in the mail, gotten all excited thinking you were getting a card from someone? Yeah, me neither.

When I was running errands yesterday, it took me four times to actually get out of the driveway because I had to keep going back into the house for things I forgot.

I left a message on my cell phone earlier this week as a reminder to pick up the drycleaning and two hours later when I saw the message icon and clicked through, I didn't recognize my own voice for a second.

On Monday, I forgot to shave my left leg in the shower. I didn't notice until I was putting on lotion after drying off.

And I still haven't picked up the dry cleaning.

Also, not entirely unrelated, did anyone see Sandra Bullock on the Tonight Show last night? I swear I could see her left nipple through her black dress the entire time.

Transit

I am not a patient person when it comes to biding my time. As is usually the case when I am waiting for something, time in the last few months has taken on the sticky, stretchy quality of fresh salt water taffy.

The days and minutes of this first trimester have ticked relenlessly by, the passing of time marked by new symptoms and my slowly expanding stomach.

I started out looking like this, last summer.

And now at the end of the first trimester, look more like this.

I'm still in the in-between stage where I don't really look pregnant as much as I look like I may have eaten too much cheese. Which, in actuality, I probably have lately.

There have been some real perks along the way though. Not having PMS symptoms for the last three months has been heavenly. And my fingernails are longer and stronger than they have ever been.

Additionally, I seem to have become something of a synesthete. I haven't suffered traditional morning sickness, but I have developed aversions to strange things. The color of the walls in my living room makes me quite ill and the sound of squeaking vinyl or styrofoam cannot be tolerated.

Also on the down side, my toe nails are growing just as fast as my fingernails. I looked down at my feet the other day to see what can only be described as goat hooves. I managed to whip them back into presentability, which is important since I now live in a climate where sandals are worn year round. No more hiding behind wool socks and Dr. Martens for five months.

Since quitting the progesterone supplements last week, the marathon headaches I had been getting seem to be abating and the dizziness that kept me on the couch for hours at a time has completely disappeared.

But there is a down side. During the 12 weeks I was taking it, the progesterone caused my lifelong insomnia to all but disappear. I had three entire months of uninterruped, eight hour a night sleep. I literally cannot recall the last time in 20 years I have slept that well. Sadly though, my insomnia is back now that the hormones have left my system.

In an effort to find clothes that are comfortable, fit my style and my growing body, I have taken to collecting fabrics that can be used as wraps, sarongs or shawls.  I should be able to use these for the duration of my pregnancy and beyond.

And so I continue to wait. I anticipate the next few months when all of this will begin to look and feel less abstract, more tangible. I look forward to feeling the baby move inside me, to learning if it is a boy or a girl, to confirming as best we can that it is healthy and whole.

I suppose this is why they say a woman is expecting.