I got on the scale this afternoon and I saw a number that I hadn’t seen in a long, long time.
I thought about what that number represented, and how it had less to do with pounds and ounces and more with the gravity that is pulling me toward earth.
***
In May, I had a baby. Whenever I say that out loud, it sounds like such a clumsy little summary. Like, I woke up and had a donut. And then I had a baby. The verb “to have” doesn’t quite capture it…
I woke up and had…maybe cereal?
I left before my Baby Girl had awoken. I made my mother promise not to say good-bye. Good-byes make me nervous.
Loverpants and I brought Scrabble to the hospital. Like we were going to have all this time to finagle Triple Word Scores while transitioning from 7 to 10 cm.
It was sunny. I liked my birthing room. I wore pigtails. I arrived 4cm dilated, already contracting. They gave me pitocin.
They gave me too much pitocin.
***
My contractions and the pitocin were like the sound and the fury. The baby’s heart rate kept dropping. They put me on my side. His heart rate dropped even more. Suddenly, there was a whole team of nurses putting me in child’s pose on the bed. They shot me with something to make the contractions slow. I got an oxygen mask.
The midwife suggested I get an epidural so that I could relax which might make the baby’s heart rate relax.
The anesthesiologists arrived but as they started prepping, I started sweating so hard, they couldn’t keep the area clean. I started screaming. I couldn’t stay on the bed. The baby was coming.
THE BABY WAS COMING.
Needle in.
On my side.
Lift leg, push push push push push push push.
Baby’s heart keeps dropping, I’m sorry, the opening is small, we can’t use the vacuum, the baby’s heart rate keeps dropping…
***
I wasn’t scared this time, not like my first c-section. I had the same anesthesiologist, and she is amazing.
The surgeon said she is glad I didn’t try to go for a vaginal birth. Something about my bladder being in the way, something might have burst?
She leaned over the curtain and said, Don’t you EVER labor on this uterus again.
“John, can you see what it is?”
“Boy. Hahah, Kenny, you were right. Boy!”
I cannot believe I am 2 for 2. 2 healthy, perfect babies. Thank you. Thank you.
***
The hematocrit level expresses the proportion of red blood cells in the blood. Adult females hover around 38-46. After surgery, I was at 26.
I had lost some blood.
But then I dropped to 24. And then to 18. I was at the hospital alone now. I was pushing to feed my baby, but I couldn’t make a phone call. I was so weak. I saw myself in the mirror when I went to use the bathroom. I could barely see my freckles.
So I got a blood transfusion. Some plasma, too.
And then I dropped on down to 16. I just kept losing blood. Where was it going?
After an MRI, we saw that the blood had pooled into a hematoma around my liver.
More blood transfusion. The next day, my levels stabilized.
***
For the next 6 weeks, I was in the most pain I have ever, ever experienced in my life. Getting up was a struggle, sitting down was a struggle. You can’t take pain killers for irritants like blood. You can, but it won’t do any good. There’s no swollen tissue, no torn muscle. It’s just ounces and ounces of blood irritating your insides while your body does what it’s supposed to as it reabsorbs the blood you lost during surgery.
Meanwhile, Baby Girl was going through the violent throes of sibling adjustment. Meanwhile, I had a newborn. Meanwhile, my in-laws visited. Meanwhile, my husband was working himself into the tizzy that socked him with peumonia a month later.
***
This morning I ran with my strollercize class that I’ve been attending for the last 2 months. I ran and sprinted, and I didn’t die. I sweated and smiled, I did leg lifts with my exer-band while holding a pacifier in place for a robust 3 month-old baby. I handed snack bags through stroller portals to spunky toddlers.
I thought about the miracle of life that has unfolded a thousand times this past summer. I praised God for His amazing handiwork in all of creation, in this short, stumpy, strong body of mine that is privileged to care for this family, to enjoy the perfection that was this late August weather, to live this sweet sweet life.
***
…But those who hope in the LORD
will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
they will run and not grow weary,
they will walk and not be faint. – Isaiah 40: 31
Peace, man
I think I am the only girl in the history of high school that took seriously the summer reading. And by that I mean that I not only was STRESSIN’ that I hadn’t completed a novel (probably some pastoral romance like Julie because you know those nuns would have been finding The Thornbirds wayyy tooooo racy) by the 4th of July, but I was taking copious notes, chewing my pen as I considered whether Mr. Darcy was really a protagonist or villain, and slapping those post-it notes between chapter pages –
Again. Reason 32934802582 why I got my first kiss at the painfully late of 17. And I kid!
I was 18!
When late August came and we pleated skirt-rocking bun-haired lasses found ourselves stuffing books into a different locker in some hall that totally felt promoted from the dank corner of the unlit hall we were formerly occupying in locker land, there was much buzz about how little of the summer reading everyone had done.
Girls are good at this, aren’t they? “Ohmygawsh, I am going to fail this! I didn’t study at all!” This means, “I will probably nail this.”
Why do women do this? Fake like everything is very hard, fake like we are very fat, fake like we are broke, when none of those things we know to be true.
Anyway. Summer reading. I remember it, and I remember what a chore it was. What was the best assigned book you read once upon a summer? I think Dead Man Walking by Sr Helen Prejean was one of my favorites. Definitely gave me a new set of lenses for the death penalty.
***
My girl lovin’ her some story hour at the BPL with her mate….
Our good pals Maddy, Claire and their mama school our Madi in Berensteins….
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Linda over at All and Sundry wrote recently that having a two year-old is basically like experiencing the most awesome and the most wretched extremes of a person, with very little of the happy medium.
I have to agree.
I’m super sensitive to the way my own two year-old treats me at times, and how I treat her in return. And it’s not all reactive. Sometimes it’s preemptive. Just trying not to trigger a tantrum, just trying to think one step ahead.
But I didn’t think she’d actually be tempted to use the spray sunscreen and squirt it in her mouth today. Ya know, just to see. Otherwise, I would have put the stuff on a high shelf.
I find myself playing a lot of Bubble Breaker these days. Correlation?
I also find myself pondering these two little chubbacheeks. Yes I did pluck them from the Cabbage Patch.
TJL @ 2 mos
MJL @ 2 mos
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There were moments when I could see it, feel it on her face. Moments of recognition that, This is Love. Love is here. I am known, loved, counted among the special.
I saw my daughter fall in love with her family, her extendeds, people whom she has only known through quarterly visits and digital images. I could see her melting into their hugs and finding the arc in their laughter where trust and vulnerability live.
7 days in Ohio, in the home where I got busted multiple times for getting nail polish on cherry oak furniture, where I played endless games of Uno, where I learned how to read and read my mother’s angry face and fell asleep under lit Christmas trees in a California Raisins sleeping bag.
Now my daughter sleeps on that floor, in the same California Raisins sleeping bag, and wakes up to a different hum in the morning than I remember, but one no less sweet.
Oh how it pained me to leave, but double the torment of pulling my baby girl away from this fanclub of fandamily. Little Man will come to know the club soon and well enough in time. But this last visit was monumental for Baby Girl. She has inside jokes with her Uncle Mikie. She has special songs with her grandparents and there are toys retained in their basements only for her.
I have believed for the last couple of years that this wide geographic divide between our families was overrated. And after this last visit home, I am convinced that it is downright cruel. But I’m trying to be content in the present and hopeful for the future and keeping a look-out for opportunities….lots of opportunities…..
The land of Cleve, on the shores of Erie
Go Buckeyes
Do the grandmothers in your family enjoy giving children baths as much as mine seem to?
Auntie TP
Baby Girl was so stoked to have cousins. She had prior to this told me about imaginary cousins that had given her presents…
Chillin’ with Uncle Mikie
My wonderful in-laws came to have lunch on sabbath at my mama’s. I made quinoa. It wasn’t terrible.
My mama. My baby.
Swimming at my old man’s
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So yo. You checkin’ out my swag up in heeyah? You like my collahh popped all up like this?
Can’t help it if I’m wicked cute, n’ah mean?
You want some sugahh in yah coffee regulahhh?
You take two lumps aw one?
Said you wanted a splash of milk with that, too?
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