Chasing A Child

Bad Mommy

I swear I'm working on the birth story and several related posts ... in my head ... between non-stop baby feedings at 3a.m. I'll post them as soon as I have the ability to use both hands and my brain at the same time.

In the meantime, I've managed to put myself in the running for this year's World's Worst Mommy Award, so I thought I'd share that with you while I have a moment.

Saturday morning. Squeaker (who shall henceforth be known as Brother, since he is very proud of his new status and no longer makes any sounds that could reasonably be interpreted as a squeak) was watching Curious George cartoons while bouncing on his little trampoline. I was sitting a few feet away at our dining table, breastfeeding Sister, who rested comfortably on the Boppy on my lap. The Mister was in the kitchen making his breakfast or doing the dishes or something like that. It wasn't what you'd call a quiet or peaceful scene, but it was pretty calm for our household.

After Sister was born, one of my friends sent me a big bouquet of pink flowers, complete with a helium-filled mylar balloon proclaiming "It's a Girl!", which Brother promptly confiscated as his very own. He'd been hauling that balloon around with him everywhere he went for the past several days. I had warned the Mister not to leave the balloon in Brother's room at night, as it had a long ribbon attached to it that could easily become a strangulation device. The Mister grumbled something to me that could be interpreted as "stop being so paranoid." Um, yeah. Cue the dark foreshadowing music.

So in the midst of this peacefully chaotic Saturday morning scene, I noticed from the corner of my eye that Brother had -- you guessed it -- managed to wrap the ribbon of the balloon around his neck. "Get that off of your neck!" I nagged. My chair was within arm's distance of him, so I turned quickly and tried to help him unwrap the ribbon. Brother is now Three Years Old, which means that he wants to Do Things Himself. Which, of course, meant that he pulled back away from me so I couldn't help with the ribbon. I then realized that he'd wrapped the balloon and the other end of the ribbon around on the handle of the trampoline. When he pulled back from me (and the trampoline), the ribbon tightened around his neck. I tried desperately to loosen the ribbon and to get my fingers between it and his neck, but it only got tighter. Holy fuck.

"It's wrapped around his neck!" I screamed at the Mister. "Scissors! Get the scissors!" By this point, Brother was beginning to panic too, crying and yelling "Ow! Owie!" while still pulling away from me and the trampoline handle, which of course was only tightening the damn garrote. Whereupon I saw the veins in my child's neck begin to bulge, the color of his skin begin to change, and I began completely freaking out. My kid was getting strangled right before my eyes. How the hell could I have let this happen?!

"Scissors! Scissors!" I screamed at the Mister. "I'm getting them! I'm coming!" he yelled back, in his "dammit woman, why don't you trust me with small tasks?!" fighting voice. OMFG, I thought, now is not the time to get all hurt-feelings-fighting-mood on me. Don't you realize your child is going to die?!

And then -- the unthinkable. As I lurched forward to try to save my oldest child, I completely forgot about the brand new baby on my lap. The next thing I knew, I was watching my 11-day-old infant daughter tumble to the floor. She hit head first, somersaulted, and ended up in a crumpled squalling heap.

Whereupon my screaming took on a new tone. "Oh my God! I dropped the baby! I dropped her on her head!" Never in the history of the universe has a mother felt such guilt ... or such fear. I was incapable of seeing anything but the (possibly dead yet somehow still howling) baby, although some part of my brain registered that the Mister was closing in on Brother (presumably with scissors). I scooped up the pile of baby and rushed to the couch with her, both of us howling uncontrollably. I felt her head and all of her limbs for obvious breaks or dents and could find none, but what do I know? I'm no doctor. God, would we have to go to the doctor and confess what had happened? Would the baby die before I could get her there? How in the world could I drop my baby? How could I forget about her like that? What kind of creature does that?

And then Brother was rushing across the room to me, freed from the evil ribbon, tears streaming down his face, wailing. I clasped the baby to my chest with one arm and hugged Brother tightly with the other. The Mister joined his traumatized sobbing family on the couch and we all huddled together until the weeping began to ease. When we had a chance to examine Brother, we found that he had a raised red welt around his neck that looked exactly as if someone had tried to strangle him with a piece of wire. I imagined the conversation with Child Protective Services -- "Yes, my daughter has brain damage from my dropping her on her head and no I didn't try to strangle my son. He did that to himself." I pictured the social worker shaking her head while calling the cops.

About 5 minutes later, my in-laws showed up. They're here for a 2-week visit. When I told them what happened, my MIL laughed at me for being so upset. "It happens to everyone. I dropped the Mister when he was 9 months old and he's fine." I'd heard that story before, so I knew she'd be going there. But, with all due respect, there's a difference between dropping a 9-month-old baby who has lunged out of your arms and dropping an 11-day-old infant because you forgot she existed. Particularly so when you've spent the last 5 years of your life walking through Infertility Hell to get said infant. And, when she dropped the Mister, she wasn't simultaneously trying to untangle a tightening knot from around her other child's throat, while wondering how she'd ever explain to his birth mom that he died from a balloon given to celebrate the birth of her new daughter, and maybe if I'd been paying more attention to him instead of focusing on the baby, he wouldn't have had the chance to strangle himself in the first place. Bottom line, knowing that both of your kids could have died in the same 5-minute period is enough to put any parent into a full-blown panic. So, yeah, I appreciate that MIL was trying to make me feel better, but it wasn't the same situation at all, and a bit of compassion would have been helpful.

Anyway, when the World's Worst Mommy Awards are announced this year, look for my name at the top of the list. (And if you have any suggestions about how to keep sibling rivalry from escalating to repeated attempts at murder-suicide, please let me know.)

At last!

She's here, and perfect in every way. Birth was vaginal, drug-free, and relatively quick once things finallly got rolling. Details later. For now, I'll just say that leaving that L&D room last night and arriving in the post-partum unit as a healthy mama with a healthy baby was one of the Best Moments Ever.

 

Guest post from The Mister

Hi. The Mister here, writing from Room 10 of the labor & delivery ward, where R and I have been camped out for the past 42 hours. The plan, as readers would have noted from recent posts, was to be admitted to L&D at midnight on Friday, do some drugs, bounce on a birthing ball for a while, and deliver our baby girl before the close of the year.

Quick! Easy! Fun! Didn't happen. Upon admittance, we did an ultrasound and learned that the baby had once again gotten herself wedged in transverse position, with her head somewhere around R's lower right ribs and her hands and feet pointing toward Virginia. That scotched the idea of starting the induction immediately, and re-introduced the idea of doing an external version to flip baby vertex -- but we'd have to wait for that until 6am since R had downed a cup of rocky road earlier in the night, and versions must be versioned on an empty stomach.

So there we were -- and still are. Short story, in list form:

• Version: Went great. Was weird -- like watching a chef knead dough, but the dough was my wife. Baby got flipped, and R was wrapped in a Velcro girdle to keep her in place. (Which, to jump ahead a bit, she still is. Yay!)
• Pitocin drip: We went from 0 to 60, producing a regular pattern of contractions that lasted for hours and hours, but . . .
• A cervical exam: Showed that R's cervix was not dilated or effaced anywhere near enough for anything to progress in any kind of halfway natural way. So we turned the . . .
• Pitocin off: Which made the contractions stop immediately. Soon after, we tried . . .
• Misoprostol: Which produced some stunning contractions, putting R into a serious tizzy -- but did nothing to thin out the cervix as it was supposed to. So we decided to try . . .
• A Foley bulb: Which was easy enough to get in, but VERY, VERY PAINFUL thereafter. Cue the puking and shaking.

At some point, we called in our wonder doula for support, then at some point later, I fell asleep. At some other point right around there, R and doula went for a walk in the hallways. Then there was some lunch, then we watched "Portlandia" for a while, then we sat around wondering what to do, then the Foley bulb fell out, which means dilation must be 3cm-ish.

So now we're back to the Pitocin, which was just plugged back into the IV port moments ago. R is now perched on her bed, downing a cheese quesadilla, a small salad, a little plastic container of chocolate pudding, and a tiny can of tomato juice. Weird combination, about which she says, "Yeah. It's got protein . . . I figured the salad was good for me . . . I'm actually not too sure about the tomato juice anymore . . . and I'm having a contraction."

OK, little girl. Stay head down. Look for the exit sign. Not trying to rush you, but, y'know, soonish would be nice.

Oh, PS from R: "The pudding's for later."

Hold that thought ...

We were ready to leave for the hospital last night, car loaded, last-minute instructions shared with my mom (she's watching Squeaker), mentally prepared for the long hours ahead, when the phone rang. 11pm- WTH?

It was one of the L&D nurses I know from the day we didn't get the external version, calling to say that so many women were birthing their babies that they'd run out of nurses. I'm being rescheduled, and is that okay? What response could I possibly give besides "Sure" ... The Mister was furious and of course I was disappointed, but my main thought was "well, at least I can get some sleep."

So we'll try it again tonight. I'm now fighting off a cold, ugh. Really tired and trying to rest.

38w4d

Just saw Doc and had my last NST. Baby is ... head down! Yippee!

I was pretty sure she was getting in position Christmas Eve, as she kept me up half the night with the somersaulting and shoving. Christmas Day definitely felt different, and yesterday was ridiculous ... it felt like her head was spiraling in my lower pelvis like a power drill. Lots and lots of contractions -- uncomfortable, but not painful. Doc says I'm about 1.5 cm dilated and 25% effaced, so labor isn't imminent, but at least we're making progress. And baby's head is far enough down in my pelvis that Doc doesn't think she'll go transverse again. Let's hear it for vertex!

For a variety of reasons, we decided to go with the induction. So I'm scheduled to go to the hospital late Thursday night, which means I have, er, two more days to go. Egad.

Of course, I know that induction doesn't always work or work quickly, and I also know that Things Can Go Badly when birth is induced. None of the medical methods are pretty or risk-free, and most of the non-drug methods aren't very effective. The control freak part of me does feel comforted having a plan of sorts, but now that I'm reading up on the various induction drugs, my skin is starting to crawl a bit. Sigh.

I hate the idea of kicking baby out before she's ready to get things going on her own, but I also recognize that there's a real (albeit small) possibility of Bad Things Happening if we wait too long. Placentas in women my age do degrade faster than placentas in younger women. I seem to be perfectly healthy so far, and baby seems to be doing well, but I can't stop thinking about a woman we met through our adoption agency who had lost a baby at 38 weeks. I'm too tired at this point to even contemplate surviving that kind of loss, so I'm throwing my trust to the medical establishment (which, as those who know me well will attest, is not something I say lightly). Actually, I'm mostly trusting in Doc, because I know that she wouldn't intentionally do anything that would put this baby in harm's way. And there's something to be said for that.

In the meantime, here is a rather hilarious quote from something our doula gave me, which recommends trying all of the "natural" induction methods for a day or so before going in for a medical induction:

For example, you can make an apointment to have an acupuncture treatment and on that same day you can eat lots of fruits for breakfast, go for a walk, have sex with your partner and engage in nipple stimulation, drink lots of raspberry tea, take homeopathic and herbal remedies, eat a spicy dinner, talk to your baby, and meditate on your labor starting.

Um, yeah, that should do it!

Please feel free to share whatever ideas, experiences, prayers, thoughts or advice you think might be useful ...

Ho ho ho!

Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas!

(Is it just me, or is Santa wearing waaaay too much rouge?)

No baby today

So we're ready for baby to come, but baby is going to stay put for a little while.

After many exams and much discussion this morning, the L&D doc decided that Sister is an "unstable lie", which basically means she's too damn squirmy to stay in one place very long. Meaning that, if we tried to turn her today, she'd likely flip back around tomorrow. She's still sideways, but since Tuesday, she'd flipped around from having her head on my right side to having her head on my left side. How did she do that?? And the risks of the external version outweigh the benefits of turning her at this point, "particularly with an anterior placenta" and the way she was laying. The little bugger was on her back, with one of her hands and both feet all jammed down in the exit door, which would have made it extremely hard for the doc to get a grip on her. She's small enough and I have enough amniotic fluid that they think there's a good chance they could turn her at the last minute if I go into labor in the next week -- the consensus was that there was no burning need to turn her today. Which means I went without food & water until 1pm for no reason at all, sigh! By the time they were ready for me to make a decision, I was too spaced out to think clearly, so I asked the Mister to decide for us. (He said he knew then that I was really really hungry, since I'm usually the Queen of Control Freaks.)

The current plan is to try to turn her next Friday. If that's successful, the doc recommended binding my belly so she can't flip back, and then inducing immediately. I'm okay with that plan for now. I'm opposed to induction for convenience and have been opposed to the idea that we need to induce just because I'm old and she'll be at 39 weeks, but now that we've added in the flip-flop problem, I'm thinking it's probably our best bet to avoid a c-section (although I know of course that induction can cause its own series of problems). I'm also much more confident that the hospital will let us move as slowly as we need to, unless there's a real emergency. I can't say enough nice things about the L&D staff I've dealt with so far. They say they're a baby-centered hospital, and I really see that in my experiences. No one is rushing me or pushing for medical interventions, and the focus keeps coming back to making sure baby will be as well-baked as she can be, weighing in all the various risk factors.

Plus, my Doc is back next week and will have plenty of time to overrule or tweak the current game plan, and the hospital staff has made it clear that if Doc wants a change, the hospital won't get in her way. It's kind of fun to see the look on their faces when I mention her name. She definitely gets a lot of respect : )

And, there's always the chance I'll go into labor before then. I'm still having mild contractions, and the L&D doc said this morning that I'm 1cm dilated, which made me burst out laughing. My body may be 46, but it somehow knows that it's going to have a baby! How amazing is that?!

****

Finally, because this blog can't possibly be all baby all the time, I've got to give a shout-out to Squeaker, who has slept through the night for the past FIVE nights in a row. He's really turned a big noticeable corner in the past few weeks. His behavior during the daytime is markedly improved. He's cheerful and engaging in lots of imaginative play that we didn't see before. He's eating better and appears to be ravenous. I think the sleep-deprivation has been messing with both his developmental and physical growth. He's still borderline hyperactive, but it's much less destructive, and the tantrums are subsiding enough that he's tolerable to be around more often than not. Such a relief for all of us! And just in time ...

37w5d and not much to report

Pretty sure I'm (finally) having some Braxton Hicks contractions. Very uncomfortable, as the baby is in some whacky position that hurts, even without the contractions. I really didn't think I'd be ready to have the baby before she was due, but I've reached the point where I'm pretty much done with the drama. Bring on the finale ...

We're going to try for another ECV tomorrow. With my luck, we'll find out baby has turned head down again. Truth be told, the Mister and I are both ready to have this child now, and not just in the philosophical sense. We're literally bags packed, logistics planned, ready to go. (Heck, the Mister even sent my mom detailed directions -- with photos -- on how to work our streaming NetFlix so Squeaker can get his Curious George fix.) So if the external version stimulates labor, everything will be okay.

Many thanks to my dear friend Almamay for sending me lots of reassuring material about c-sections. I'm getting comfortable with the concept, although I'm still hell bent on avoiding one if at all possible : )

My desk at work is as clean as it's going to get. I walked out of there today planning not to come back, even though my last day is supposed to be Friday.

Working on finalizing the birth plan tonight. I know what I want, my doula knows what I want, my doc basically knows what I want (or will take the time to ask me), but I do want to have a document that we can point to for nurses and strange doctors, should that be necessary.

I'm adding some Christmas tunes to my iPod, just in case we need a little mood music. There was a huge stack of free CDs in the break room at work today, yay.

And ... that's about it. I need to wrap a few Christmas gifts, but that and pretty much everything else can wait if it has to. Did I mention I'm ready to have this baby? I've loved loved loved being pregnant, I know I will miss it in a lot of ways, and I consider myself incredibly lucky to have had the chance. But if I have to go much more than 5 or 6 days, y'all are gonna start hearing some serious whining.

L&D - test run #2

I've been worried about the baby the past few days. She hasn't been moving like she usually does. Last night I was up half the night (despite the JOYOUS fact that Squeaker slept through the night for the third night in a row ... first time in his entire LIFE he's done that!) because I wasn't feeling any baby motion. Woke up this morning in tears, told the Mister I was thinking of heading directly to L&D. Luckily, baby started moving as I was making breakfast, so we decided it was safe to wait until this afternoon's NST to get things checked out.

Busy day at the office. Made great headway on cleaning my desk, drowning my poor assistant in stuff to file, things to follow up on, etc. Finally headed off to the 4pm NST, where I found out that the baby is now ... SIDEWAYS again. #$%%&%@!!  Then the monitoring test strip came out "nonreactive", so they ran a biophysical profile (basically a long ultrasound), which baby passed, but both the nurse and I were uncomfortable with how lethargic baby seemed to be. The nurse buzzed her three times and ... nada. That kid would not wake up. That, combined with my worries of the past few days (plus the notes Doc put in my file that apparently read something like "Do NOT take any chances with this patient or heads will roll when I get back from vacation!") led the doc who's filling in for my Doc to order me straight to L&D for extended testing. The NST nurse (a self-confessed infertile who loves that I'm preggers at 46) was really worried and mentioned things like "emergency c-section," which of course was not what I wanted to hear. Keep in mind that it's now 6pm and I haven't eaten since noon. I have low blood sugar issues and I was tired from worrying all night. At that point, I was very suggestible and already convinced that something horrible was happening -- how could it not? An ideal pregnancy for an infertile is just too much to ask for. The universe was getting ready to smack me upside the head, I was sure of it.

I realized that I was starting to fall apart, so I grabbed a few snacks from a vending machine, then called the Mister (who promptly went into full-scale panic mode) and drove myself across the medical complex to L&D. The L&D nurse was great -- very no-nonsense and kind -- got me hooked up to the monitors, asked me a million questions, then brought me a box lunch and a big sippy cup of ice water. There was no cell phone service, but I figured out how to work the hospital wi-fi, so I was able to eat a crappy sandwich and email the Mister while I was getting monitored.

In the end, it all turned out to be much ado about nothing. The nurse and midwife both declared this test strip "gorgeous" and said the baby is doing great. Naturally, the on-call doc was the one I fired 3 years ago, but apparently we're best friends now, because she made a point to stick her head in and see how I was doing. I got stuck between nurses at shift change, so it took some time to get out of there, but eventually they discharged me to my own care, and off I went. I was home by a little after 8pm, just in time to dive into the chaos that is Squeaker's bedtime routine.

The good news is that now the Mister has his and Squeaker's bags packed, which means that we'll be able to get out of the house quickly if I do need to rush to the hospital. I learned a few things about what I should do if I go into labor while baby is still transverse (mainly, lay the F down to decrease the chance of cord prolapse while someone else gathers up my stuff, or, if I can actually feel the cord coming out, lay the F down and call 911). I figured out how the hospital's wi-fi works. I confirmed that it's a 20-minute trip when there's no traffic (and up to an hour when there is). But most of all I learned this -- for future NSTs -- eat first, as both the baby and I will do much much better.

Roller coasters make me nauseous

Carnival rides and I don't get along. My equilibrium is very easy to mess up, and I'm terrified of speed. Speed plus spinning is guaranteed to induce sickness. I even get dizzy on the carousel. I most definitely avoid roller coasters. But my life these days? Oy! The ups! The downs! The ups!  I feel like I did in college (well, high school) when I'd had too much to drink and I had to put one foot on the floor to keep my bed from spinning in circles.

Doc wrote today to say that the ultrasound showed normal growth and that the baby is in the 22nd percentile. But wait! Wasn't she in the 60th percentile last time? How is this normal growth? I'm so confused ... And of course by the time I wrote back to say "huh?" Doc was already gone on vacation. But she definitely said "this is good", so I'm going with that for now.

Then, at my NST, I had the nastiest mean nurse ever. Granted, it was a 4pm appointment on a Friday before a holiday week and I was 10 minutes late because the traffic was so bad, but I think she would have been equally rude in good circumstances. She grumped at me because I didn't bring her a urine sample (the nurse at the last NST told me I didn't have to!) then she kept me hooked up for 45 minutes (the last nurse only kept me for 20 minutes) and she left the freakin' blood pressure cuff on my arm the whole time (WTF!). And the gel for the ultrasound was not just warm, it was hot and I have a little burn mark on my belly because of it. Awesome.

But during the quick ultrasound to check my fluid levels, damned if Nurse Nasty didn't start off by saying "As you can see, she's head down ..."

WHAT?!

Yup. It's true. Sister turned around all by herself. She's clearly going to be one of those just-in-time kids who puts off doing her term papers until the night before they're due. Every single thing I can find on the internetz says 37 weeks is the time when baby must be in exit position, lest one's doctor freak out. Today is 37 weeks. She's probably in there saying "What, mom, what? I got it done on time. Why are you so stressed out?"

I was actually relieved to hear she was alive. We had a night terror incident last night that required two adults physically restraining a thrashing child who did not want to have his soaking-wet pajamas changed, and when I left his room, I was in a great deal of pain in my upper belly. I came this close to driving myself to L&D (because the Mister was still in Squeaker's room soothing him back to sleep), and if it weren't a half-hour away, I probably would have gone. I really thought he had killed his sister, and although she did move a little after that, I barely felt her move all day today. I was sure something was dreadfully wrong. Instead, it turns out she was probably just tired from flipping into the exit position, and the pain in my belly was from suddenly having a little butt jammed into a space where there used to be not much of anything. She was certainly active enough during the NST, so it doesn't appear that anything is wrong except in my head.

They canceled my ECV, yippee! Which of course makes me believe she'll probably take the opportunity to flip around again ...