Procreation

Many of my friends are very private about their parenting journeys.  While this is something I totally respect, I have trouble being private about my own.  I've always had an inherent bad reaction to anything involving secrecy. I grew up in a household with so many secrets, some of which I still don't know the truth.  It seemed like so much work and stress to constantly keep up a pretense.  I hate having to pretend so much, that I end up being an oversharer.  TMI if you will.  When I was pregnant with Javi, so many people knew before the 12 week mark.  How the hell are you supposed to get through the worst part of pregnancy, without any support from friends, family or coworkers?  I figured if anything happened, I would need those people to lean on and wouldn't want to be telling them everything at once.  So, a big thanks for those dear friends that put up with my oversharing!  I realize I probably make you uncomfortable.

In retrospect, my pregnancy with Javi went pretty smoothly.  If you had asked me in the moment, I would have said otherwise.  I had so much anxiety about every little thing, especially during the first trimester.  It eased up in the later trimesters, but did not go away.  I suffer from bad allergies that can occasionally result in asthma, and one night during the second trimester, I had a mild attack and frantically had Ryan take me to the ER.  I was convinced the baby wasn't getting enough oxygen (all totally untrue).  Other than a BS modified bed rest for a few weeks during my third trimester, overall it was a pretty uneventful pregnancy.

Here I am, the day before my due date, sightseeing with my mom.

On my due date, I woke up to get ready for a doctor's appointment.  As I was plugging my phone into a charger, I heard a weird snap.  With everything going on with your body at that point, you don't really think anything is weird.  Until I stepped into the shower and had a bit of a gush and realized my water probably broke.  After a quick and messy confirmation at the doctor's appointment, we were off to labor and delivery! My labor progressed quickly, I got the epidural and then it was time to push.  And then I pushed and pushed and pushed and could feel no progression.  I've run a marathon before, and I can tell you that pushing for 3 hours with no progression is 10 times worse.  The worst part is that I had a doctor and 3 nurses (as well as Ryan and my mom) in there with me the whole time and nobody said anything to me.  They just kept encouraging me to go.  Finally at hour 3 (and I had a big clock right in my line of sight so I was very aware of the time) I finally asked, "what is going on?"  The doctor said that I was pushing really well, but that for some reason, the baby just wasn't crowning.  They could see the head, but after each push it was like I was sucking him right back in.  Then, she said they would let me push for another hour, and if I could just get him a bit further, they might be able to use a vacuum.  After another hour, they would insist I have a c section.  I could not fathom pushing for another hour.  There was no way that after all my exhaustion, I would be able to get somewhere I couldn't when I had more energy.  I knew that it wasn't going to happen.  Through huge tears of disappointment, guilt, shame and exhaustion, I asked them to just do the c-section.

Right before the pushing.

A c-section was not my plan.  Even though I knew that anything can happen during labor & delivery, I had not mentally or emotionally prepared for a c-section.  Luckily, I was so exhausted by that point, that I didn't have any room for fear.  The worst parts of a c-section are hearing your baby cry for the first time and not getting to see him.  Then, continuing to hear him cry and being in the middle of being sewn back-up, Frankenstein-style, which, by the way, you can totally feel.  I didn't feel pain, but I felt a lot of very strong tugging which is extremely disturbing.  The kind anesthesiologist took my phone, took a picture of Javi and brought it back for us to see.  The first glimpse of my son was a picture on my iPhone.  Definitely not Lifetime movie material.

 This is it! This is the first glimpse I got of Javi.

At this point, I'm going to take a detour back to November 2016.  Ryan and I were geared up to run the NYC marathon, first time for him, second time for me.  The day before I had terrible allergies and had taken a bunch of antihistamines to try to quell the symptoms so I could get some rest.  The morning of the marathon, I didn't feel great, but powered through.  I powered through all the way to mile 14 when I finally made the decision that something was wrong and that I needed to stop.  It was devastating.  I was taken away in an ambulance while uncontrollably vomiting and needed to be on an IV drip for several hours.  I was sick for nearly a week.  The doctor said that due to all of the antihistamines I had taken the day before, my body wasn't regulating temperature properly and I had heat exhaustion.  He said if I had kept going, I might have had heat stroke which can be very dangerous.  Even with the knowledge that I had made the right decision (although I probably shouldn't have run in the first place), I was so devastated that I was unable to accomplish a  goal that I worked so hard for over so many months.  At that point, I had never been so disappointed in my life.

Ryan and I right before the race

It occurs to me now the similarity between the marathon disappointment and the c-section disappointment. Once Javi was out and was a whopping 8 pounds 7 ounces (for reference, I am 5'2), my doctor reassured me that he was too big and I was too small and he would not have come out vaginally.  Even with this medical reassurance, I felt like a total failure.  While I agree that c-sections shouldn't be the first option, there is such a stigma with having one that even if it was medically necessary, it still made me feel terrible.  Nearly a year later and I still feel terrible about it.  What if I had just pushed for another hour?  I remember doing skin-to-skin with Javi and being simultaneously elated to finally see his face, but also so devastated that I had to have a  c-section.  Things certainly didn't start off on the right foot.

Believe it or not, this is the best picture of me right after the c-section.  I hate how I look, but I'm sharing so you can see what 3 hours of pushing followed by a c-section looks like.  It looks (and felt) like HELL! 

Then, my recovery started.  They had me on a rotation of meds which included oxycodone.  My father, a physician, came to the hospital to see us and mentioned slight concern with my medication.  I didn't think twice about it, since I was just blindly trusting the doctor.  Also, I didn't feel like the oxycodone was making me feel any different.  My mom kept saying that I seemed so chill, but I honestly thought I was just a chill new mom!  We were in the hospital for 4 days and then sent home with instructions to take the same medication rotation for about 5 more days.  I blindly followed this advice.  Going home was hard, but I was somewhat prepared for that part.  The constant feeding, days blending into nights, utter fear that you were going to accidentally do something wrong that would cause your baby to die.  They beat SIDS fear into everyone these days with a hammer, so I was constantly afraid that Javi was going to die of SIDS.  I would judge every swaddle Ryan did, afraid it was too high, or too tight, or too something.  Then, 3 days after we got home, we rushed to the pediatric emergency room because Javi had dangerously high levels of jaundice.  For anyone that has been through the jaundice gauntlet, Javi had bilirubin of 29.  29!!!!!  He ended up in the NICU for 48 hours and the doctors prepared us that he might need a blood transfusion.  Luckily, he responded to light therapy and did not have to go through a blood transfusion.  In a way, I'm sort of grateful that I was still on the oxycodone, because I kept it together a lot better than I would have expected.  It was awful.  Those entire 48 hours, he was in an incubator where they fed him and changed his diaper, etc.  He wasn't allowed out.  Emotionally, I couldn't stand to see him in there.  I would go in periodically to drop off pumped milk and to listen to the doctor's rounds, but I couldn't stomach seeing him in that incubator all alone.  It was horrible.  When he was discharged, I had a hard time connecting with him again because his fragility was magnified by the NICU stay.  I was terrified.

This picture still gives me chills

Then, we were back home and the oxycodone part of the medication rotation ended.  The day after I went off the meds, the shit hit the fan.  I had NO IDEA how much the oxycodone was regulating my emotions.  All new moms will tell you that the emotional rollercoast postpartum is intense.  For me, it was as if the oxycodone had been serving as a dam, and the emotional floodwaters were building up, and building up and building up behind it.  I was overwhelmed by a tidal wave of built up emotions as well as the downer of coming off the meds.  I cried for two entire days straight and could not see any light at the end of the tunnel.  I couldn't even see a tunnel.  All I saw was this disaster that I had wished upon myself, something I clearly wasn't cut out for and how the hell was I going to survive with Ryan going back to work the next week leaving me alone for 12 hours straight each day.  It was the darkest place I've ever gone in my life.  My sister came to visit me a few days later (during Ryan's first day back).  If you don't know my sister, she is a badass.  She never seems scared of anything, she faced motherhood like an Olympic champion.   She gave birth to two kids unmedicated, one of which was nearly 10 pounds.  10 pounds!!!  I digress.  She came to see me and I couldn't stop crying and I could tell that I was scaring her.  That was when I knew something was really wrong.  I called my mom, asked her to come stay with me and pulled out the therapist recommendations provided by my doctor's practice to all of their patients.  I setup an appointment.

Here is my sister that night, showing me how to baby wear

I went to therapy weekly for about a month and it helped tremendously.  Even though I was convinced I had postpartum depression, they assured me it was really just baby blues.  I work at a high school for underprivileged teens.  The whole time I was in this dark state, I couldn't stop thinking of the single moms of our students who have multiple kids on their own.  I felt guilty for needing a babysitter every week day for 3 hours and for getting night nurses twice a week for a month.  Guilt, shame, guilt, shame, a constant spiral. I feel incredibly relieved and lucky that I didn't have any addiction issues with the oxycodone, because that certainly could have been a possibility!  But, we got through those 4 months of maternity leave and of course, right when I was heading back to work, I finally felt like I had gotten a hang of the whole stay at home thing.  Going back to work was both hard and liberating.  It was incredible to engage with adults again and to do something for which I am passionate.  But it was also hard to feel like I was missing out on a lot of things with Javi.  At this point, 11 months in, I feel like I've found a way to live between to the two worlds that works.  I will never say that I've found balance, because balance is a total pipe dream.  But, I think I've found a way to not hate myself too much on either end at the end of each day.

Javi is around 1 month here

Javi is around 3 months here

                        
I hate for this all to sound so negative, because another part of those maternity months were exquisite moments of bliss with this beautiful soul with whom I'm utterly obsessed.  As he was growing physically, I was also growing in unexpected ways.  I built up a lot of resilience, I learned to run a household, I learned to trust my mom instincts, I learned that I love working and that even though I love my son immensely, my work is outside of the home.  I also learned the hard truth that as much as you hope for equality, so much of the parenting/household burdens disproportionately fall on the mom, even if you are a working mom.  Ryan is an amazing father and incredibly helpful, but the lack of decent paternity leave in this country means men do not have the opportunity to connect to their children in the way that is needed to be a lead (or co-lead) parent.  That was probably the bitterest pill to swallow, one that I'm continuing to work on getting past on a daily basis.  All I can say is that I am incredibly grateful for our nanny Rosanna who not only takes excellent care of Javi when I'm at work, but really feels like a partner when it comes to the apartment.  And MAJOR kudos to all of you stay-at-home moms out there.  Now that I know what it takes, I am in awe of you.  I also would hire a working mother in a heartbeat because now I know how efficient you are at your job and how great you are at multitasking.  I also trust that you wouldn't force me to sit through a meeting that could have been an email. 

My delicious Javi at 10 months

So, most of this long story is really a personal preparation.  We are pregnant with our second child, and they will only be 18 months apart.  I am completely aware that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting different results.  So, I want to make sure that in this hormonal delirium of the first trimester, I'm remembering all of the hard parts of the first time.  But, I am hopeful, because I'm so much better informed this time around.  I will be having a scheduled c-section, and my new doctor is opposed to using opioids for c-section recovery.  I know now that it is a waste of energy to worry about SIDS 24/7.  I know that they will eventually sleep through the night.  I know that all of the hard parts are temporary, and just turn into different hard parts.  I know that all of the hard parts are punctuated by extreme moments of delirious joy.  I now fully grasp the reality of being a working mom.  Most importantly, I know that I am utterly capable of surviving the madness.  Bring on round 2!