Before giving birth I sent out an email to people I thought cared about me, or people who had gone up to me and said, "OMG! You are having a baby? So excited! I want to baby sit! I'll do it for free! OMGOMGOMG!!!" Or something similar to that. The email said basically, "Holy shit, I'm having a baby and I am a little freaked out about how I will cope with this. As you all remember, I'm a bit insane and have only been off psyche meds for a couple years. So um, please help me this summer, I'm going to need help. HELP!"
And barely anyone replied. Seriously, barely ANY of you sent anything back like, "YES! I will help! I can come over every Tuesday afternoon from 3-5 pm for the first few weeks." Actually, NO ONE gave any specific times or days. A few people said, "uh... yeah, call me sometimes or whatever... I'm really busy." I was trying to rally my community, and found little community to rally. But I figured people would come after the BABY was here, after all... "OMG! BABY! OMG!!" Babies are miracles and stuff like that and mine was actually quite cute as a newborn, he did not suffer from ugly newborn syndrome, and I had several people confirm this for me, so it wasn't just my mommy goggles.
Then I had the baby, and I called my parents and my grandparents and told them to spread the news and told them I was at the nurse midwife unit at HCMC and that, yes, I was OK with visitors from my family. I told co-workers to wait a day, I wasn't quite sure about my presentability as far as people I work with was concerned, but close friends and relatives, were told to come on down!
...
You did not come on down. And come on, my son was born in the morning of Memorial Day, it's not like you had to get to work. My mom stoped by, one of my step-sisters stopped by, my supervisor from work came the second day, and my friend Manda who had been with me during early labor came to see the finished product. And that's it.
I was so confused, y'all. No one else even called. My experience with people having babies in my family is that you go to the hospital to meet the brand new baby. Granted the last baby to be born in my family was a good 10 years previous, and none of my close friends had had a baby, but I figured it was still the customary thing to do. Apparently I was wrong.
I even talked to nurses about it, "where are they?" I would ask. They told me that they would probably come to my home later.
So we went home. Expecting phone calls from people wanting to come over. I even posted on facebook that we were up for visitors, come visit!
You didn't.
You didn't call and you didn't visit.
OK, a few of you did. Brent's mom came into town for a few days, my mom came by several times and one of my aunts came around a few times. I also had one other friend peek in for about 45 minutes, and another bring over some Chinese food. Our moms cleaned up and my aunt brought groceries and some DVDs. No one else offered to help with anything. I am super grateful to those who did help out, but I have to admit, I was expecting way more phone calls and offers of help than we got. I cried about it a lot. I was so upset that none of you called.
I felt like none of you cared that I had a baby. I was so confused and on top of it I figured that I must have been an awful person who actually didn't have any friends. I cried about how I am a freak and how no one likes me and how alone I will always be. I was seriously bummed.
I even tried to reach out a few times to others who I knew had children or who loved children and basically nothing came out of it. I give a total pass to those of you who had babies around the same time as me, I suspect you were going through similar things. No one would set up a specific date with me. Some of you still have yet to meet this baby.
I guess I felt that I must have thought I was more important to some of you than I actually turned out to be. This was a HUGE let down while in the post partum hell. And I still can feel it's reverberations. People care way less about babies being born that I thought they would, it's just a reality shift I've had to accept. Having a baby is isolating as fucking hell and don't let anyone tell you it's not. And on top of it, you have WAY too much time on your hands.
Do you know how much time it takes to take care of a newborn? Not enough. Newborns sleep a bunch. So baby is either sleeping, eating, or getting it's diaper changed, for like a good month. This leaves you with ample time to think about how BORED you are and also about how NO ONE is calling you, EVER. Plus your body hurts so you can't do things like, go for a walk to get fresh air, or even walk around the mall or Target, you can't walk, you can sit. And you feel nuts so other entertaining activities are forgotten about. We watched a lot of TV and movies, mostly for distraction from our crazy reality. Brent put in a new sidewalk in our back yard, and tended to a few other projects on his month of paternity leave. Yes, he had time to put in a new sidewalk in our backyard. This is how much time newborns give you.
I also got so sick of Brent. I love Brent like crazy and he's an amazing person who I feel incredibly lucky to be married to and who is an amazing father, but a solid month of being with him and I was starting to feel excited about his return to work. I am 100% sure that Brent feels the same way about me. We really NEEDED friends to break up our time together, but we just didn't have any come around. Luckily we didn't get into fights or anything, just an annoyance of having only one person to amuse ourselves with.
At 6 days post partum I went to a baby shower (because I was so bored and had to go SOMEWHERE or I would lose my mind) of someone who has been a friend of the family since before she was born (if that makes sense). And I remember, vaguely, sitting on a chair in the back yard and people were talking about the community this person has around them and how they have friends living in their same house and how her brother is near by and how awesome it is, and I started sobbing. I sobbed. And they didn't know what to do. And I continued to sob and someone came over to me eventually and I don't remember who it was but I basically told them that I don't have this wonderful, freaking community and that I'm horribly jealous and alone.
This sobbing didn't change anything. I guess I shouldn't have expected it, but I guess I was hoping that someone would get the clue and like, welcome me to the community, but it didn't happen. No community was brought to me.
I cursed you all for the entirety of my maternity leave, sorry! I totally bashed all of you to my husband. Then would bash myself, because after realizing that you all had failed to provide me with support, I figured that the common denominator was me, I'm the crazy freak no one wants to help.
Then things started to get better. I went back to work, which is a community, but after a month I had to quit because it just wasn't working to work full time. Then I had a month of unemployment and I started to look for my own community. I was finally done wallowing about how no one loves me and decided to go find love for myself. I knew that others like me had to exist and I was done trying to engage the people I already knew (OK I still try to engage you sometimes, but fail often, but now it doesn't bother me as much).
The first thing I did was join the Twin Cities Attachment Parenting Internationl. I totally agree with their parenting style and figured I would find people like me, it took me a bit, but I started going to a play group on Thursdays and now I actually know the names of some people and they know me. I also took an elimination communication class from Baby Love to help me not feel so alone with that aspect of my parenting and a few months later finally started showing up to their nursing moms support group called the Baby Cafe. Some of the moms in that group also do EC. In both of these places I've also found great support for home birth and other crunchy things I'm now very much into.
I also started going to an ECFE class and have tried to get to a few political things with Socialist Alternative.
Working part time also is amazing, I see my baby enough, but I also get away and meet other people and have grown to like the people I work with at my new job. I highly recommend working part time, even if you don't need the money. If you lack community, like me, it can be a great way to get out and meet others. I'm know there are toxic work places out there, but there are good ones too.
And I'm slowly forgiving you all for totally ignoring the fact that I grew and birthed an amazing baby boy. And also realizing how little I have seen of everyone else's babies too.
But, next time I have a newborn. I'M going to make the phone calls, and I'm going to be calling you all way more often, asking for things. Something I didn't feel comfortable doing this time around. I expected offers or people calling me asking how they could help (a few of you did offer, and you rock!). I'm sure some of you didn't feel comfortable calling me, so really, aren't we both kind of silly!
I'm also realizing that some of you were VERY busy, and maybe we actually weren't that close and I can accept that. I can accept this because I'm forging new paths with new people who can better serve me during my motherhood. When you really get down to it, I can be a very brave and proactive person who fights to get what she wants and needs until she succeeds. "Impossible" is not in my vocabulary very often. Sometimes it leads me to do foolish things, but sometimes great things happen.
Monday, February 27, 2012
Thursday, February 23, 2012
Coming out as an Athiest
It's only been recently that I have really realized how unique it is to be without religion in the US. I'm not one of those people who was forced to go to Catholic school and slowly began questioning things and decided that I was no longer a believer. I've never been a believer. I wasn't raised around religion. I went to church a handful of times, mostly for weddings and funerals and major Christian holidays. I never read or studied the bible or any other holy text. It was a given my whole life that there were no super natural forces in the universe. This is a unique environment to grow up in.
As I went through my political "awakening" and became a materialist and a socialist it was further solidified in my mind that I am pretty much 100% sure that there is no God. Though I agree that one cannot prove nor disprove the existence of God. I also agree that many people find lots of joy and comfort in religion.
This does not mean I am not spiritual, in a sense. I strongly lean toward Buddhism. I believe that we can find inner peace within ourselves even when we are in very difficult situations. In fact I believe that we cannot avoid suffering and pain in life. Life is full of pain and suffering and unfulfilled desires. All we can really do is accept what we cannot change and try to change the things we can. And I've come to learn that pretty much the only thing we can change is our own actions; we only have control over ourselves, and sometimes only a fraction of ourselves. This has deep implications for my parenting. This belief helps me a lot. I realize I have no control over my baby, I can only change what I do. It's very relaxing and empowering. I imagine it is similar to those who say thing like, "it's in God's hands now." I actually don't think I am that different from a highly religious person, I just have no belief in super natural activity; I need to see it to believe it.
I feel alone at times, however. I have many atheist friends, or at least agnostic, non-religious friends. We tend to find each other. But Christianity is everywhere. I decided about 10 years ago that I thought it would better to not pray at all then to pretend to pray, so when I'm at weddings or funerals and they say, "let us pray," I keep my head up and look for others who decided to not pray. I don't see it as an act of defiance, I see it as a respectful bowing out, "this is for you, but I will pass." Much like I would never take communion at a service.
I dated someone who was a believer and we would get into fights about religion. Mostly I would get annoyed at how it seemed that EVERY politician and everyone on TV and every sporting event would have some kind of reference to God. As an atheist, sometimes you feel like God is shoved down your throat a bit, because it is so ingrained in our culture. And it's uncomfortable sometimes because you don't know what to say and you wonder what anyone's reaction will be if you tell them, "I don't actually believe this stuff." So he would get me to admit that I felt superior, which I do sometimes, because I find it so hard to understand how the majority of people can believe in supernatural things that they've never witnessed with their own two eyes. Then he would tell me that I was awful for feeling like I was better than others and that I was the reason things were so messed up. Which, amazingly, made me feel the opposite. More like, "you are ridiculous, you are proving my point that I am superior." One of many reasons our relationship didn't work out.
I also once got into a HUGE fight with a religious person once because I was trying to get him to admit that he couldn't prove the existence of God, so therefore, he had to admit that there was a chance He didn't exist. He basically told me that I was going to hell for not believing. I told him that I didn't believe in hell and well... you can see where that would go.
So, I've had some bad run ins with religious people who don't seem to want to understand my point of view.
When I told my husband that I was annoyed at missionaries and people who try to recruit people to their church he came up with an interesting argument, "I'm annoyed when they don't recruit me. I mean, if they really believe that my soul is going to hell, they should do everything in their power to try to save my soul." He was kind of kidding, but it made me look at missionaries differently. I also started to view missionaries more sympathetically when I started my own political work and was trying to recruit people to a socialist organization (OMG hard work!). I imagine some of my stress was similar to theirs.
I do wonder how people judge me. I don't hide that fact that I'm an atheist. I don't announce it, but if people ask me questions about religion, I admit that I am not religious. Do people really fear for my soul? Do people imagine me to be unhappy and lost? Do they respect my decision to raise my own children without monotheistic religion? Do they go home and say, "WTF? Andrea didn't baptise her son? How does her life work? Does she sacrifice goats and dance naked too?" Are they confused? Do they think I'm doing immoral things because I don't have God in my life? These questions honestly freak me out sometimes because I am someone who is overly worried about what people think of me, even though I often act the opposite of that feeling. I act the opposite because more than anything I want to up hold my integrity. I'm an awful liar and rarely do it, which is why I admit to being a socialist, an atheist, a breast feeder, a person who is overcoming mental illness, and many more things. My hope is to help stop the stigma associated with some of these things and to not feel so alone. If I don't admit to them, I will never find others like me out there.
And yes, I respect your religion and sometimes look at it with envy and curiosity, but it's not something I will ever be a part of. I will find and am currently finding community elsewhere, which I do believe is important to find. And you can rest assured that my soul is not dammed for hell and that I'm not out doing immoral things, in fact I'm in a monogamous, happy marriage and I'm fighting for system-wide societal change for the better of the entire world when I have time away from trying to raise my children the absolute best I can.
As I went through my political "awakening" and became a materialist and a socialist it was further solidified in my mind that I am pretty much 100% sure that there is no God. Though I agree that one cannot prove nor disprove the existence of God. I also agree that many people find lots of joy and comfort in religion.
This does not mean I am not spiritual, in a sense. I strongly lean toward Buddhism. I believe that we can find inner peace within ourselves even when we are in very difficult situations. In fact I believe that we cannot avoid suffering and pain in life. Life is full of pain and suffering and unfulfilled desires. All we can really do is accept what we cannot change and try to change the things we can. And I've come to learn that pretty much the only thing we can change is our own actions; we only have control over ourselves, and sometimes only a fraction of ourselves. This has deep implications for my parenting. This belief helps me a lot. I realize I have no control over my baby, I can only change what I do. It's very relaxing and empowering. I imagine it is similar to those who say thing like, "it's in God's hands now." I actually don't think I am that different from a highly religious person, I just have no belief in super natural activity; I need to see it to believe it.
I feel alone at times, however. I have many atheist friends, or at least agnostic, non-religious friends. We tend to find each other. But Christianity is everywhere. I decided about 10 years ago that I thought it would better to not pray at all then to pretend to pray, so when I'm at weddings or funerals and they say, "let us pray," I keep my head up and look for others who decided to not pray. I don't see it as an act of defiance, I see it as a respectful bowing out, "this is for you, but I will pass." Much like I would never take communion at a service.
I dated someone who was a believer and we would get into fights about religion. Mostly I would get annoyed at how it seemed that EVERY politician and everyone on TV and every sporting event would have some kind of reference to God. As an atheist, sometimes you feel like God is shoved down your throat a bit, because it is so ingrained in our culture. And it's uncomfortable sometimes because you don't know what to say and you wonder what anyone's reaction will be if you tell them, "I don't actually believe this stuff." So he would get me to admit that I felt superior, which I do sometimes, because I find it so hard to understand how the majority of people can believe in supernatural things that they've never witnessed with their own two eyes. Then he would tell me that I was awful for feeling like I was better than others and that I was the reason things were so messed up. Which, amazingly, made me feel the opposite. More like, "you are ridiculous, you are proving my point that I am superior." One of many reasons our relationship didn't work out.
I also once got into a HUGE fight with a religious person once because I was trying to get him to admit that he couldn't prove the existence of God, so therefore, he had to admit that there was a chance He didn't exist. He basically told me that I was going to hell for not believing. I told him that I didn't believe in hell and well... you can see where that would go.
So, I've had some bad run ins with religious people who don't seem to want to understand my point of view.
When I told my husband that I was annoyed at missionaries and people who try to recruit people to their church he came up with an interesting argument, "I'm annoyed when they don't recruit me. I mean, if they really believe that my soul is going to hell, they should do everything in their power to try to save my soul." He was kind of kidding, but it made me look at missionaries differently. I also started to view missionaries more sympathetically when I started my own political work and was trying to recruit people to a socialist organization (OMG hard work!). I imagine some of my stress was similar to theirs.
I do wonder how people judge me. I don't hide that fact that I'm an atheist. I don't announce it, but if people ask me questions about religion, I admit that I am not religious. Do people really fear for my soul? Do people imagine me to be unhappy and lost? Do they respect my decision to raise my own children without monotheistic religion? Do they go home and say, "WTF? Andrea didn't baptise her son? How does her life work? Does she sacrifice goats and dance naked too?" Are they confused? Do they think I'm doing immoral things because I don't have God in my life? These questions honestly freak me out sometimes because I am someone who is overly worried about what people think of me, even though I often act the opposite of that feeling. I act the opposite because more than anything I want to up hold my integrity. I'm an awful liar and rarely do it, which is why I admit to being a socialist, an atheist, a breast feeder, a person who is overcoming mental illness, and many more things. My hope is to help stop the stigma associated with some of these things and to not feel so alone. If I don't admit to them, I will never find others like me out there.
And yes, I respect your religion and sometimes look at it with envy and curiosity, but it's not something I will ever be a part of. I will find and am currently finding community elsewhere, which I do believe is important to find. And you can rest assured that my soul is not dammed for hell and that I'm not out doing immoral things, in fact I'm in a monogamous, happy marriage and I'm fighting for system-wide societal change for the better of the entire world when I have time away from trying to raise my children the absolute best I can.
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
I'm Already Planning a Home Birth
I've thought about this for a long time. I wasn't unhappy with my first birth, but it wasn't quite what I wanted. I really wanted a home birth, but was afraid and had little support for it and knew very few people who had had them. I also had never witnessed a birth and went into the whole thing not completely informed (sometimes very confused during the actual labor). Though I think I was perhaps more informed than average. I had a natural hospital birth, which is what we planned. But I'm not going to plan my next one to be in a hospital.
Plans can change. I know that. Even with my first birth I told people, "we are planning a water birth with the midwives at HCMC for now." Because I knew that my pregnancy could turn high risk and I'd have to switch to an OB, I also knew that I could go into labor early, I also knew that I basically had to have NOTHING go wrong to be allowed in the tub, and I also knew that if HCMC was full they would send me somewhere else. In the end I never saw an OB and I had a natural birth at HCMC, but I didn't get to use the water tub.
I don't want to go back to the hospital to give birth. It's been solidified in my mind now. I will if I have to, but it will not be the initial plan. I didn't really need the hospital the first time, but it was there. It was intrusively there sometimes. I wrote about the problems I had there in a previous blog. And the research is showing that home births are as safe as hospital births for low-risk pregnancies who plan a home birth.
I have also since this met several women who have had successful home births. I have people I can talk to about it, who can point me in the right direction. And I've already done it once, without complications, without drugs, even without the pain-reducing effects of warm water. I feel triumphant in my decision. I don't think I will change my mind again and this feels very empowering to me. Just to feel like I've made an informed choice without doubts. I had so many doubts the last time around, times when I cried that I was "NOT going to that damn hospital, you can't make me." Times when I was in the hospital and felt a lack of control and knowledge. Times where I felt my decisions were questioned over and over again.
No, I'm not pregnant, or at least I shouldn't be. But we plan on having another one in a couple years and I'm already thinking about it. I've already got a plan for a midwife, possibly an apprenticing midwife, a birth doula, and a post partum doula. A warm tub and a lot of interviews. I kind of wish I had planned a home birth the first time around, but I do not regret my decision, because given my knowledge and experience I think I made the best decision for me at the time, even if the outcome wasn't perfect.
So maybe you can read about my home birth sometime in 2014.
Plans can change. I know that. Even with my first birth I told people, "we are planning a water birth with the midwives at HCMC for now." Because I knew that my pregnancy could turn high risk and I'd have to switch to an OB, I also knew that I could go into labor early, I also knew that I basically had to have NOTHING go wrong to be allowed in the tub, and I also knew that if HCMC was full they would send me somewhere else. In the end I never saw an OB and I had a natural birth at HCMC, but I didn't get to use the water tub.
I don't want to go back to the hospital to give birth. It's been solidified in my mind now. I will if I have to, but it will not be the initial plan. I didn't really need the hospital the first time, but it was there. It was intrusively there sometimes. I wrote about the problems I had there in a previous blog. And the research is showing that home births are as safe as hospital births for low-risk pregnancies who plan a home birth.
I have also since this met several women who have had successful home births. I have people I can talk to about it, who can point me in the right direction. And I've already done it once, without complications, without drugs, even without the pain-reducing effects of warm water. I feel triumphant in my decision. I don't think I will change my mind again and this feels very empowering to me. Just to feel like I've made an informed choice without doubts. I had so many doubts the last time around, times when I cried that I was "NOT going to that damn hospital, you can't make me." Times when I was in the hospital and felt a lack of control and knowledge. Times where I felt my decisions were questioned over and over again.
No, I'm not pregnant, or at least I shouldn't be. But we plan on having another one in a couple years and I'm already thinking about it. I've already got a plan for a midwife, possibly an apprenticing midwife, a birth doula, and a post partum doula. A warm tub and a lot of interviews. I kind of wish I had planned a home birth the first time around, but I do not regret my decision, because given my knowledge and experience I think I made the best decision for me at the time, even if the outcome wasn't perfect.
So maybe you can read about my home birth sometime in 2014.
Monday, January 30, 2012
Post Partum Hell: Part 1 of ? (Pergatory)
I have dealt with a good dose of psychological issues in my lifetime. Err... I should say, I'm in the process of dealing with them. I used to take a lot of psyche meds, most of them didn't work for shit. A few years ago I got off of all psyche meds, and felt pretty good. I had a small freak out during the planning of my wedding and the doctor gave me an SSRI, which immediately made me feel manic and restless, and scatterbrained, so I stopped it. He also gave me Klonapin, which is an awesome anti-anxiety med. Of course I really don't like feeling drugged, so I often cut the pills into fourths, yes, fourths. I think I only took a few doses and the rest were stashed away.
Then I got pregnant. Pregnancy raised the craziness from a 15% average to about 30%. I did not want to take any meds during pregnancy. It was hard. There were days when I really, really wanted Klonapin, there were days that I really, really, REALLY, wanted a glass of wine and I felt so trapped by the stupid uterine dweller that I felt resentful and just wanted it to all be over.
But I pressed on and survived and went a whole nine months on Caffeine, Tylenol, Advil (for weeks 14-24), regular Tums, a few doses of Unisom (for nausea), a couple doses of cough syrup, and one course of antibiotics for an ear and sinus infection. Literally those were the only substances besides food and water that I took. Next time I'm taking better nausea meds (if they exist) and heartburn meds. But I just won't risk the possible complications with psyche meds.
Pregnancy stated out very emotional, then the physical symptoms outweighed the emotional ones, then I just felt dumb for two months, and then the third trimester just slowly got me more and more crazy and more physically uncomfortable. I was so ready for pregnancy to be over. So ready to be a mom.
Ha ha ha! PMS, pregnancy, even birth, do not compare to post partum hell. I would have gone through the whole birth again to relieve my post partum symptoms.
And the thing is, it doesn't start right away, you get about a 48-72 hour honeymoon where you feel sore, and your kind of nuts, but you are also high on the birth and mesmerized with your baby, and stupidly in love with your baby and your husband (or partner, or boyfriend, or sperm donor, or whatever). So you think all is well, "sure I'm ready to go home from the hospital!" "No problems here!"
I remember getting home and sitting on the couch, holding my 2 day-old baby, and saying to my husband, "this feels so right." It did feel so right. I had felt like a mother without a baby for so many years and now I had my baby. I was also incredibly horny.
Too much information? Something about the hormones of birth made me want to go try to make another one, over and over again. It was so weird, I've never been so horny and simultaneously so ill equip to have sex in my life. We did our best considering.
The first part of hell I noticed the most was the physical pain. I had no idea that giving birth hurt you so goddamn much. I also got reports form other people in my family that it's not as bad as they think. My mother in law even claimed that once you're home from the hospital, you're pretty much fine. Oh my god, no. I didn't have a C-section, an episotomy, or even an IV or an epidural. I had one, minor tear.
I actually woke up about 24 hours after his birth with pain in my body from head to toe. Aching pain as if every muscle in my body had been strained and pushed beyond its limit. Then about 6 hours later I got a terrible headache on top of it. I was on the max dose of both Tylenol and Ibuprofen. The all over pain was mostly gone by the time I left the hospital.
I gladly took the wheelchair ride all the way to the car. Who the hell turns down a wheelchair ride 48 hours after birth? Wizards? In fact I was back for a lactation visit at 5 days post partum and demanded a wheelchair then too. I could still not walk long distances.
I really had no idea how much it interfered with your walking. For about 3 weeks, I really could not walk far. If I pushed myself, I got horrible pain in my hips. I also had to walk slowly. I wanted to go on walks, but it was so hard. Next time I'm going to walk to the park and sit down and eat a picnic instead. But at 4 weeks I was fine; I walked a few miles with the baby strapped to me, not quite a month old at Pride.
You also bleed, a lot. They tell you that the bleeding will last 4 to 6 weeks, mine lasted about 7. Although by the end you are just spotting. It's the first week that sucks the most because it's equivalent to the heaviest goddamn period you will ever have. A period where something went very wrong.
And you pee, A LOT. My water weight came off so fast that even in the hospital I noticed how small my legs looked. At two days post partum, when I weighed myself at home I was only about 8 pounds lighter than right before the birth. At about a week post partum I was already over 20 pounds down. Which means I peed out about 12 pounds of water in 5 days. At my 6 week appointment I was down 32 pounds (most of it gone in the first three weeks). I believe at least half of this was water. Still on me was about 23 pounds of fat and boobs. It's almost all gone today!
Anyway, when you lose 20 pounds in a week, you notice it. I noticed myself shrinking. I could tell from day to day that I was shrinking. Looking down and not recognizing your own body is a strange feeling. Add on some post partum hormones and you feel detached from your body. I remember thinking that I was turning into an infant, like some kind of female Benjamin Button. And I felt weak, so I wondered if my muscles and bones were wasting away.
Then I got pregnant. Pregnancy raised the craziness from a 15% average to about 30%. I did not want to take any meds during pregnancy. It was hard. There were days when I really, really wanted Klonapin, there were days that I really, really, REALLY, wanted a glass of wine and I felt so trapped by the stupid uterine dweller that I felt resentful and just wanted it to all be over.
But I pressed on and survived and went a whole nine months on Caffeine, Tylenol, Advil (for weeks 14-24), regular Tums, a few doses of Unisom (for nausea), a couple doses of cough syrup, and one course of antibiotics for an ear and sinus infection. Literally those were the only substances besides food and water that I took. Next time I'm taking better nausea meds (if they exist) and heartburn meds. But I just won't risk the possible complications with psyche meds.
Pregnancy stated out very emotional, then the physical symptoms outweighed the emotional ones, then I just felt dumb for two months, and then the third trimester just slowly got me more and more crazy and more physically uncomfortable. I was so ready for pregnancy to be over. So ready to be a mom.
Ha ha ha! PMS, pregnancy, even birth, do not compare to post partum hell. I would have gone through the whole birth again to relieve my post partum symptoms.
And the thing is, it doesn't start right away, you get about a 48-72 hour honeymoon where you feel sore, and your kind of nuts, but you are also high on the birth and mesmerized with your baby, and stupidly in love with your baby and your husband (or partner, or boyfriend, or sperm donor, or whatever). So you think all is well, "sure I'm ready to go home from the hospital!" "No problems here!"
I remember getting home and sitting on the couch, holding my 2 day-old baby, and saying to my husband, "this feels so right." It did feel so right. I had felt like a mother without a baby for so many years and now I had my baby. I was also incredibly horny.
Too much information? Something about the hormones of birth made me want to go try to make another one, over and over again. It was so weird, I've never been so horny and simultaneously so ill equip to have sex in my life. We did our best considering.
The first part of hell I noticed the most was the physical pain. I had no idea that giving birth hurt you so goddamn much. I also got reports form other people in my family that it's not as bad as they think. My mother in law even claimed that once you're home from the hospital, you're pretty much fine. Oh my god, no. I didn't have a C-section, an episotomy, or even an IV or an epidural. I had one, minor tear.
I actually woke up about 24 hours after his birth with pain in my body from head to toe. Aching pain as if every muscle in my body had been strained and pushed beyond its limit. Then about 6 hours later I got a terrible headache on top of it. I was on the max dose of both Tylenol and Ibuprofen. The all over pain was mostly gone by the time I left the hospital.
I gladly took the wheelchair ride all the way to the car. Who the hell turns down a wheelchair ride 48 hours after birth? Wizards? In fact I was back for a lactation visit at 5 days post partum and demanded a wheelchair then too. I could still not walk long distances.
I really had no idea how much it interfered with your walking. For about 3 weeks, I really could not walk far. If I pushed myself, I got horrible pain in my hips. I also had to walk slowly. I wanted to go on walks, but it was so hard. Next time I'm going to walk to the park and sit down and eat a picnic instead. But at 4 weeks I was fine; I walked a few miles with the baby strapped to me, not quite a month old at Pride.
You also bleed, a lot. They tell you that the bleeding will last 4 to 6 weeks, mine lasted about 7. Although by the end you are just spotting. It's the first week that sucks the most because it's equivalent to the heaviest goddamn period you will ever have. A period where something went very wrong.
And you pee, A LOT. My water weight came off so fast that even in the hospital I noticed how small my legs looked. At two days post partum, when I weighed myself at home I was only about 8 pounds lighter than right before the birth. At about a week post partum I was already over 20 pounds down. Which means I peed out about 12 pounds of water in 5 days. At my 6 week appointment I was down 32 pounds (most of it gone in the first three weeks). I believe at least half of this was water. Still on me was about 23 pounds of fat and boobs. It's almost all gone today!
Anyway, when you lose 20 pounds in a week, you notice it. I noticed myself shrinking. I could tell from day to day that I was shrinking. Looking down and not recognizing your own body is a strange feeling. Add on some post partum hormones and you feel detached from your body. I remember thinking that I was turning into an infant, like some kind of female Benjamin Button. And I felt weak, so I wondered if my muscles and bones were wasting away.
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
What You Find At Babies R Us
I hate Babies R Us. I keep ending up there. I can't stop. If you don't know what kind of car seat or stroller or frickin' bouncy chair you want and you want to be able to choose from 500 styles, it's the place to go. I like to see things in person. I like to touch them and see how they fold up before I buy them. Last night we went there to buy a more compact stroller to take on vacation with us. The stroller I chose off of Amazon.com barely fits into our hatchback, so we can't really bring it on a plane and hope it fits into our economy rental car.
But this store sucks. I hate it. I usually end up throwing some sort of tantrum in there. It took us over an hour to decide on a stroller. I drew a floor plan of the store to illustrate the crappiness of this place:
But this store sucks. I hate it. I usually end up throwing some sort of tantrum in there. It took us over an hour to decide on a stroller. I drew a floor plan of the store to illustrate the crappiness of this place:
Because Babies R Us sells everything imaginable for some items, stuff that probably shouldn't be sold. And then for other items they have a very crappy selection, or no selection at all. The store is huge and by the time you find the one item you need, you've become overwhelmed by the crap you've seen.
Babies do not need very much. This is the truth. Some clothes, a few toys, a surface to sleep on, a car seat, and a carrier or a stroller or one of each, and that's about all. Everything else is pretty optional. We registered here and ended up with barely anything on it. Which means we got repeats of a lot of stuff. We picked out his new car seat at BRU and then bought it for much cheaper on Amazon.
Avoid this place as much as possible.
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Things I Thought of While In Active and Transition Labor
I don't remember there being a significant difference between active and transitional labor. My labor had two phases: before my water broke and after my water broke. The first one being very painful and the second one being hellishly, please dear God, kill me painful.
But for reference active labor went from about 1 am until approximately 4:30 am and transitional labor was about 4:30 am until 6 am. This is based on a rough estimate of where my cervix was in centimeters. Active labor is 4 to 7 centimeters and transitional labor is 7 to 10 centimeters.
Things that popped into my head during the peaks of the contractions, which were happening God-only-knows how close together, but way too close together in my opinion:
"I am NEVER doing this again!"
"We are adopting the next one."
"I don't care if the baby dies, I want the pain to stop."
"Natural birth is a bunch of crap, I'd rather be dead right now."
"This is not worth it, I don't want to be a mom if this is what it takes."
"Make it stop, please make it stop."
I do vaguely remember getting a break from the contractions. I believe I basically collapsed on the bed to rest. People were telling me to rest in between contractions, so I did. I had the freedom to move around with the external monitor, and I did a little in the beginning. But the external monitor sucks because it slips and baby moves and the monitor constantly looses the baby and alarms go off in the hall. I agreed to an internal monitor. I didn't move off the bed much after the internal monitor was put on, and I frankly didn't have the energy to do it. I did change positions in bed many times. I barely remember how I was positioned or even where other people in the room were.
I did express some of the above things out loud. At one point I said, "I don't care about the baby anymore." My doula said, "that's not true." Which I guess it wasn't, but I really needed to express how much pain I was in. I wanted them all to know I was not fucking around here. I was in PAIN. I also told my husband to kill me, please kill me.
But I was also at the same time determined to do this without drugs.
I was not aware of time, but at about 5 am I knew it had been a while and I knew I wouldn't last much longer without pain relief. I believe I said something like this, "No! I can't do it anymore. The pain needs to end now." My doula this time agreed with me and along with the midwife we all decided to do another cervical check just to see how far I was. The midwife checked me and told my doula, who looked very happy. "Do you want me to tell you the good news?" "YES!" I wanted the good news. "You are 9 cm!" Only 1 cm to go. I decided to hold off. By the time they would be able to get the anesthesiologist in and prep me for an epidural, I probably would be pushing.
I was still in the very awful transitional phase, but my mood changed a bit because I knew it was almost over, I believe I did a lot less yelling and was a bit less suicidal. I had made it this far, what's one more centimeter?
I had heard that you don't need anyone to tell you when to push. That your body knows and it tells you to push. I also heard that pushing can be hard and that you can hold off on pushing and let the contractions push your baby down farther. This can prevent tears. But I found that if I didn't push during a contraction, the contractions hurt, and if I did push during a contraction, the contractions barely hurt. Plus I wanted this to be over. I wanted to meet my baby. So at 6 am, I felt the urge to push, and I began to push.
I guess I would say that pushing was hard, but compared to transitional labor, pushing was amazing. So at the time I was pushing, I loved pushing because it provided a huge pain relief. I pushed as hard as I could and I was told my pushing was very effective, but I still had to push for nearly 2 1/2 hours, which is common for first births.
It did not feel like 2 1/2 hours to me. I believe I was either falling asleep in between contractions or was totally dazed and out of it and unaware in between contractions, because to me, pushing lasted about 45 minutes in my head. And it seemed like the contractions were right on top of each other with no end. I do remember collapsing in between the contractions and closing my eyes and relaxing my body fully. The nurses brought me juice to drink. They called it special pushing juice. It was apple.
They gave me little guidance, mostly encouragement, and told me I was pushing very well. My husband says he was nearly falling asleep. He had been up for over 24 hours by the time our son was born.
Because of the meconium-stained amniotic fluid they wouldn't let me in the birthing tub, had me on continuous fetal monitoring, and had an infant resuscitation team in my room while I was pushing. This is the one thing that did not go as planned. I really wanted to be in the birthing tub. There was also a chance that my delayed cord-clamping would not be allowed and that I would not get immediate skin-on-skin contact if he did not breathe and cry right away after birth. This was explained to me. It didn't freak me out at the time, because I knew he was alright, but it would have been scary had they cut the cord immediately and taken him away from me to resuscitate him.
At 8:27 am, he was born and he did cry right away and was put on my chest for immediate skin-on-skin contact and breastfeeding a few minutes later. I am very grateful for this. This was the most amazing few minutes and I'm so glad I got to have them. It made everything else worth it and in those moments I knew I would do it all over again someday.
But for reference active labor went from about 1 am until approximately 4:30 am and transitional labor was about 4:30 am until 6 am. This is based on a rough estimate of where my cervix was in centimeters. Active labor is 4 to 7 centimeters and transitional labor is 7 to 10 centimeters.
Things that popped into my head during the peaks of the contractions, which were happening God-only-knows how close together, but way too close together in my opinion:
"I am NEVER doing this again!"
"We are adopting the next one."
"I don't care if the baby dies, I want the pain to stop."
"Natural birth is a bunch of crap, I'd rather be dead right now."
"This is not worth it, I don't want to be a mom if this is what it takes."
"Make it stop, please make it stop."
I do vaguely remember getting a break from the contractions. I believe I basically collapsed on the bed to rest. People were telling me to rest in between contractions, so I did. I had the freedom to move around with the external monitor, and I did a little in the beginning. But the external monitor sucks because it slips and baby moves and the monitor constantly looses the baby and alarms go off in the hall. I agreed to an internal monitor. I didn't move off the bed much after the internal monitor was put on, and I frankly didn't have the energy to do it. I did change positions in bed many times. I barely remember how I was positioned or even where other people in the room were.
I did express some of the above things out loud. At one point I said, "I don't care about the baby anymore." My doula said, "that's not true." Which I guess it wasn't, but I really needed to express how much pain I was in. I wanted them all to know I was not fucking around here. I was in PAIN. I also told my husband to kill me, please kill me.
But I was also at the same time determined to do this without drugs.
I was not aware of time, but at about 5 am I knew it had been a while and I knew I wouldn't last much longer without pain relief. I believe I said something like this, "No! I can't do it anymore. The pain needs to end now." My doula this time agreed with me and along with the midwife we all decided to do another cervical check just to see how far I was. The midwife checked me and told my doula, who looked very happy. "Do you want me to tell you the good news?" "YES!" I wanted the good news. "You are 9 cm!" Only 1 cm to go. I decided to hold off. By the time they would be able to get the anesthesiologist in and prep me for an epidural, I probably would be pushing.
I was still in the very awful transitional phase, but my mood changed a bit because I knew it was almost over, I believe I did a lot less yelling and was a bit less suicidal. I had made it this far, what's one more centimeter?
I had heard that you don't need anyone to tell you when to push. That your body knows and it tells you to push. I also heard that pushing can be hard and that you can hold off on pushing and let the contractions push your baby down farther. This can prevent tears. But I found that if I didn't push during a contraction, the contractions hurt, and if I did push during a contraction, the contractions barely hurt. Plus I wanted this to be over. I wanted to meet my baby. So at 6 am, I felt the urge to push, and I began to push.
I guess I would say that pushing was hard, but compared to transitional labor, pushing was amazing. So at the time I was pushing, I loved pushing because it provided a huge pain relief. I pushed as hard as I could and I was told my pushing was very effective, but I still had to push for nearly 2 1/2 hours, which is common for first births.
It did not feel like 2 1/2 hours to me. I believe I was either falling asleep in between contractions or was totally dazed and out of it and unaware in between contractions, because to me, pushing lasted about 45 minutes in my head. And it seemed like the contractions were right on top of each other with no end. I do remember collapsing in between the contractions and closing my eyes and relaxing my body fully. The nurses brought me juice to drink. They called it special pushing juice. It was apple.
They gave me little guidance, mostly encouragement, and told me I was pushing very well. My husband says he was nearly falling asleep. He had been up for over 24 hours by the time our son was born.
Because of the meconium-stained amniotic fluid they wouldn't let me in the birthing tub, had me on continuous fetal monitoring, and had an infant resuscitation team in my room while I was pushing. This is the one thing that did not go as planned. I really wanted to be in the birthing tub. There was also a chance that my delayed cord-clamping would not be allowed and that I would not get immediate skin-on-skin contact if he did not breathe and cry right away after birth. This was explained to me. It didn't freak me out at the time, because I knew he was alright, but it would have been scary had they cut the cord immediately and taken him away from me to resuscitate him.
At 8:27 am, he was born and he did cry right away and was put on my chest for immediate skin-on-skin contact and breastfeeding a few minutes later. I am very grateful for this. This was the most amazing few minutes and I'm so glad I got to have them. It made everything else worth it and in those moments I knew I would do it all over again someday.
Saturday, January 7, 2012
Many Small Things Add Up To a Big Deal
More than anything, what might push me to have a home birth for my next child was how awful I thought recovering in the hospital was.
About the only thing I liked about the hospital was the 24 hour service. Want a snack at 2 am? Push the button. Baby do something weird? Push the button. Run out of something? Push the button. The button is great. But no one explained to me where the button was. I figured it out, but the first time I wanted to push the button I couldn't find it and wondered around my room searching for it and ended up pushing a button on the wall. It worked, but I thought it was a very inconvenient place to have the button.
Basically a bunch of little things went wrong and a bunch of little annoying thing were said to me that the accumulative experience of being in the hospital made me not want to go back.
But there were times during my pregnancy when I found myself crying to my husband telling him I didn't want to go to the hospital. "I'll just stay at home! I can't go there!" One was when I was talking to my midwife about how people were asking if they knew when the baby was coming and how I would say, "You really have to give yourself a three week buffer on either side of the due date." My midwife said, "actually it's two weeks." And in my pregnant mind I thought, "NO! They are going to induce me for no reason if I go over due and something is going to go wrong! I'm out of here! I'm finding a new birth place! They can't make me go to the hospital!"
The next time was when I asked my midwife exactly what happens when you go to give birth with the midwives at the hospital. She explained it all. Which was good. There were no surprises. But it freaked me out. This is basically what got through to me, "you have to labor in bed for 20 WHOLE minutes hooked up to a monitor. Then we're going to use the doppler up to every five minutes on you to monitor the baby." For whatever reason all this monitoring freaked the hell out of me and again I thought, "Nope! Not going to do this! Going somewhere else! Finding a home birth midwife now!"
I'm sensitive to begin with, you see.
So here I am holding my 30 minute-old baby. And the nurse says something about pitocin helping to prevent hemorrhaging, can I jab you with a needle full of it. And I agree. And now my thigh hurts. But I have no arms available to help me deal with this hurting thigh. So I say, "rub me where they gave me the shot, rub me where they gave me the shot. Rub me where they gave me the shot!" Eventually my husband, who was just as bleary-eyed and out of it as me at this point thinks to rub my thigh. When you are holding a 30-minute-old baby, the room is not empty. But no one seemed to listen to me and I didn't know anyone's name.
Then there was the bed. I didn't know anything was wrong with my hospital bed until sometime during labor when I wanted to lower the whole bed down and it wouldn't go down. It was broken. Then about 5 different nurses said the exact same thing, "Hmm... your bed is really high up. Do you want to lower it?" Then I would explain that it was broken and wouldn't go down. And then nothing happened. I assumed that this was the bed I was stuck with. It made things hard during recovery because I really had to hoist myself into the bed, and my table didn't fit over the bed that was so high, so I had to eat leaning over the side of my bed to reach the table. Then the morning we were supposed to be discharged yet another nurse came in and said, "hmm... your bed is really high up, do you want to lower it?" And I again told her it was broken. And she said, "Oh we can get you a new bed." To which I said something like, "a what?! I can get a new one and I've been dealing with this broken one for nearly three days now!" "Oh yeah, that's no problem."
I fucking kid you not, a new bed was there in less than an hour. I was so pissed.
And there was the time a nurse came in, took my vitals and left and then about 30 minutes later another nurse came in and said, "Uh... let's see... uh... I think it's time to take your vitals now." I didn't give me the best feeling about my quality of care. And there was the nurse who was totally unsupportive of my breastfeeding difficulties.
And for God sake. I don't care if the birth is over. Read the birth plan! Birth plan includes vital things like: "we are not going to circumcise," "Andrea will be rooming with the baby for the whole stay," "no E-myacin in the eyes," "no Hep B shot." I was asked three times if we were going to circumcise. I was asked quite a few times if I wanted the baby to go to the nursery for a bit. And had two separate pediatricians insist on getting the eye goop put in his eyes. Skipping the Hep B everyone seemed to think was cool. I was so annoyed because I had written the birth plan and given it to my midwife who looked it over and approved it and signed it and put a copy in my file and they referenced it when I go to the hospital. This seemed to be an important document. Then all of a sudden it was like, "you had a plan? What?"
So all of the above things were relatively minor and maybe I would have forgiven them if it weren't for the one that broke the camel's back.
First of all imagine you have this tiny 8 pound being you are suddenly responsible for and you've never had one before. It's an overwhelming time to begin with. Pediatrician Dyad One enters when he is just a few hours old. It's a 30-something male with a very kind demeanor and a younger woman he is teaching; HCMC is a teaching hospital. Baby looks great! They say. Er... except he's a *little* jaundiced. They order a biliruben test which they assure me is pain free.
Many hours pass.
Suddenly I think to ask about it. I tell a nurse, "hey, they were supposed to do some jaundice test on my baby, but it hasn't been done and that was like 10 hours ago." "Oh I can do it." She says and starts to wheel my baby out of the room. I immediately start to sob and tell me husband to follow the baby. Baby cannot be more than a few feet away from me or I freak out. Brent follows and the baby comes back. It is evening now and we go to bed. Err... as much as you can with a baby who is 18 hours old.
The next day the PKU test is done and baby screams. But it should be all the blood work they need. Then Pediatrician Dyad Two enters and they look at his record and they look worried. They talk to a nurse and say that our baby's biliruben test was high enough to need a blood test done. And why wasn't this done? The nurse says she had no idea. I lose it now. I sob. I sob and sob and sob and sob. My baby has a problem and it was ignored and I have never felt more vulnerable in my life and I am scared. I am so upset that Pediatrician Dyad One actually comes back to personally do the blood draw for my baby, so that no nurses get in the way this time.
But my tension doesn't ease up and I find myself sobbing and telling them about all the other little things that went wrong.
Eventually I got to talk to the head of the Midwives at HCMC and complain to her. She apologizes, but I'm already pissed.
Our baby ended up not having too bad of a jaundice after all. He was fine. But it was scary anyway.
So that is why I am very hesitant to go back to a hospital to deliver a baby.
About the only thing I liked about the hospital was the 24 hour service. Want a snack at 2 am? Push the button. Baby do something weird? Push the button. Run out of something? Push the button. The button is great. But no one explained to me where the button was. I figured it out, but the first time I wanted to push the button I couldn't find it and wondered around my room searching for it and ended up pushing a button on the wall. It worked, but I thought it was a very inconvenient place to have the button.
Basically a bunch of little things went wrong and a bunch of little annoying thing were said to me that the accumulative experience of being in the hospital made me not want to go back.
But there were times during my pregnancy when I found myself crying to my husband telling him I didn't want to go to the hospital. "I'll just stay at home! I can't go there!" One was when I was talking to my midwife about how people were asking if they knew when the baby was coming and how I would say, "You really have to give yourself a three week buffer on either side of the due date." My midwife said, "actually it's two weeks." And in my pregnant mind I thought, "NO! They are going to induce me for no reason if I go over due and something is going to go wrong! I'm out of here! I'm finding a new birth place! They can't make me go to the hospital!"
The next time was when I asked my midwife exactly what happens when you go to give birth with the midwives at the hospital. She explained it all. Which was good. There were no surprises. But it freaked me out. This is basically what got through to me, "you have to labor in bed for 20 WHOLE minutes hooked up to a monitor. Then we're going to use the doppler up to every five minutes on you to monitor the baby." For whatever reason all this monitoring freaked the hell out of me and again I thought, "Nope! Not going to do this! Going somewhere else! Finding a home birth midwife now!"
I'm sensitive to begin with, you see.
So here I am holding my 30 minute-old baby. And the nurse says something about pitocin helping to prevent hemorrhaging, can I jab you with a needle full of it. And I agree. And now my thigh hurts. But I have no arms available to help me deal with this hurting thigh. So I say, "rub me where they gave me the shot, rub me where they gave me the shot. Rub me where they gave me the shot!" Eventually my husband, who was just as bleary-eyed and out of it as me at this point thinks to rub my thigh. When you are holding a 30-minute-old baby, the room is not empty. But no one seemed to listen to me and I didn't know anyone's name.
Then there was the bed. I didn't know anything was wrong with my hospital bed until sometime during labor when I wanted to lower the whole bed down and it wouldn't go down. It was broken. Then about 5 different nurses said the exact same thing, "Hmm... your bed is really high up. Do you want to lower it?" Then I would explain that it was broken and wouldn't go down. And then nothing happened. I assumed that this was the bed I was stuck with. It made things hard during recovery because I really had to hoist myself into the bed, and my table didn't fit over the bed that was so high, so I had to eat leaning over the side of my bed to reach the table. Then the morning we were supposed to be discharged yet another nurse came in and said, "hmm... your bed is really high up, do you want to lower it?" And I again told her it was broken. And she said, "Oh we can get you a new bed." To which I said something like, "a what?! I can get a new one and I've been dealing with this broken one for nearly three days now!" "Oh yeah, that's no problem."
I fucking kid you not, a new bed was there in less than an hour. I was so pissed.
And there was the time a nurse came in, took my vitals and left and then about 30 minutes later another nurse came in and said, "Uh... let's see... uh... I think it's time to take your vitals now." I didn't give me the best feeling about my quality of care. And there was the nurse who was totally unsupportive of my breastfeeding difficulties.
And for God sake. I don't care if the birth is over. Read the birth plan! Birth plan includes vital things like: "we are not going to circumcise," "Andrea will be rooming with the baby for the whole stay," "no E-myacin in the eyes," "no Hep B shot." I was asked three times if we were going to circumcise. I was asked quite a few times if I wanted the baby to go to the nursery for a bit. And had two separate pediatricians insist on getting the eye goop put in his eyes. Skipping the Hep B everyone seemed to think was cool. I was so annoyed because I had written the birth plan and given it to my midwife who looked it over and approved it and signed it and put a copy in my file and they referenced it when I go to the hospital. This seemed to be an important document. Then all of a sudden it was like, "you had a plan? What?"
So all of the above things were relatively minor and maybe I would have forgiven them if it weren't for the one that broke the camel's back.
First of all imagine you have this tiny 8 pound being you are suddenly responsible for and you've never had one before. It's an overwhelming time to begin with. Pediatrician Dyad One enters when he is just a few hours old. It's a 30-something male with a very kind demeanor and a younger woman he is teaching; HCMC is a teaching hospital. Baby looks great! They say. Er... except he's a *little* jaundiced. They order a biliruben test which they assure me is pain free.
Many hours pass.
Suddenly I think to ask about it. I tell a nurse, "hey, they were supposed to do some jaundice test on my baby, but it hasn't been done and that was like 10 hours ago." "Oh I can do it." She says and starts to wheel my baby out of the room. I immediately start to sob and tell me husband to follow the baby. Baby cannot be more than a few feet away from me or I freak out. Brent follows and the baby comes back. It is evening now and we go to bed. Err... as much as you can with a baby who is 18 hours old.
The next day the PKU test is done and baby screams. But it should be all the blood work they need. Then Pediatrician Dyad Two enters and they look at his record and they look worried. They talk to a nurse and say that our baby's biliruben test was high enough to need a blood test done. And why wasn't this done? The nurse says she had no idea. I lose it now. I sob. I sob and sob and sob and sob. My baby has a problem and it was ignored and I have never felt more vulnerable in my life and I am scared. I am so upset that Pediatrician Dyad One actually comes back to personally do the blood draw for my baby, so that no nurses get in the way this time.
But my tension doesn't ease up and I find myself sobbing and telling them about all the other little things that went wrong.
Eventually I got to talk to the head of the Midwives at HCMC and complain to her. She apologizes, but I'm already pissed.
Our baby ended up not having too bad of a jaundice after all. He was fine. But it was scary anyway.
So that is why I am very hesitant to go back to a hospital to deliver a baby.
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