Fear

I can honestly say that until I had a child I didn't know what the true meaning of fear was. Oh sure, I've been afraid before. Who hasn't? But I'm talking about bone chilling, soul curdling, deep down bone cracking fear. The kind that makes you stand up and take notice of what you're going through. Time really does slow to a crawl. The world caved in on me. My breath caught in my lungs and I felt that I couldn't breathe. My vision narrowed to a small mote of dust dancing in the air.

What scared me? It wasn't one thing, it was two. And I can tell you that they happened within four days of each other. Yep, that's right, the two scariest moments of my life in the same week. The first came right after I gave birth to our son. The placenta didn't detach as expected. Here I was just having had the greatest moment of my life, giving birth to my soul mate's and my son, and an hour later I still had not delivered the placenta. There were concerns that the placenta had grown through the uterine wall. There is a medical term for it but I didn't hear that. All I could think of was the fact that if I started bleeding I could die. And it wasn't death I feared . . . it was not ever seeing my son grow, boy, teen, man. I still cannot think about it without just breaking down into tears. At least I'm not shaking uncontrollably like I did before. So an hour after I gave birth I'm being wheeled into an operating room not knowing if I'm ever going to see my best friend, partner, soul mate and husband again . . . not to mention my newborn son . . . it was terrifying. They didn't give me any additional anesthesia since I'd had an epidural. I went out on my own. Yep, I shutdown completely. My reaction to gut wrenching fear? Hide . . . don't face it. So I was out when they went in to figure out what was wrong. I'm sure that the 23.5 hours of labor had little to do with it. Needless to say, I didn't die. I didn't need a hysterectomy. The placenta had one spot that did not come loose. A small amount of teasing and everything was fine . . . but they didn't know that until they got in there to check. It hit all that much harder because we'd fought the gestational diabetes to get to this point to have a healthy baby boy. I know they have to tell you the risks up front so you can make an informed decision. My reality came down to "save my life" so I could be with my husband and son.

The second scare came 4 days later. My son and I had been released from the hospital right on schedule. We took him to the Pediatrician for his 4 day check up. Nothing new or unusual there. The doctor thought he looked a little orange (the first time I've ever heard "a little" being equated to the color of a pumpkin) and asked to do another bilirubin test. Yep, you guessed it, he had jaundice. At the time, I had no idea that this was a common occurrence in newborns. I know that now . . . hindsight is 20/20. But when they tell you that you have to take your 4 day old son back into the hospital NICU all the really bad things go through your mind. After all you've had this small, fragile little person for all of 4 days. You have responded to his every little cry. Held him. Cuddled him. Cared for him in the dark of the night. And now you have to take him to the NICU because something is wrong. This is something that if you've never been around many newborns that you would not know. It took my husband, who is the oldest in a rather large family, to explain it to me. This of course happened after we got the little one to the hospital and into the baby tanning bed. Everyone else just assumed I was losing it I guess. And trust me, I wasn't losing it . . . I'd lost it. Gone. Bye-bye. He wasn't in the hospital for long. Just barely 24 hours. They left him in the tanning bed all night and into the morning. I don't know that the tanning bed did all that much good, really. My milk came in and he started actually getting more to eat. The nurses were saying that getting more milk through his digestive system would also help clear him up as well. So we fed him, and fed him, and pumped and fed him some more. We took him home the next day. Thankfully he's been the right color, gaining weight and growing as expected ever since.

Even though I can now write this without shaking, I can't really articulate how afraid I really was. It's taken me almost 2 months just to get to this point where I can write about it. They say that time heals. In this case it has to a point, but I will never forget how deeply afraid I was. I'm sure that there will be other times where the fear reaches up and grabs me by the throat. That's called being a parent, isn't it? I can only hope that those moments are few and very . . . very . . . very far apart.

On Birth

Four weeks ago yesterday my son was born. There are all the pervasive messages of "miracle" and "gift" in the popular culture. There is one thing that they really don't tell you however. Giving birth is traumatic . . . for both baby and mom. The sheer number of possible complications is staggering if you've ever bothered to look into it. So many different things have to come together and work just right for a "natural" child birth. No wonder so many women and children died in childbirth before the concerted efforts of modern medicine. This opens up the possibilities for discussions on are we weakening the gene pool by intervening medically so regularly, but that is a topic for another time. Let's just say that we had some complications that have since worked themselves out that gave us quite a scare at the time.

Baby has a huge role in getting into the real world. The hours of labor are very stressful to the little one. In the process, there are numerous turns and twists that the baby makes just navigating the birth canal. They don't tell you that until you take the childbirth class. I have a bachelor's degree in Biology and I had very little real knowledge about how the whole process works in humans. It's a wonder that we've managed to subsist as a species given all the various dynamics of giving birth, feeding, and caring for a helpless newborn much less thrive and take over the entire planet. This stuff is not intuitive. For someone who's spent her entire life having things be relatively easy for her to work out, get or catch on, this process has been less than straight forward. I believe only a small part of that can be attributed to the surge of hormones that everyone talks about. Logic has very little part to play.

All I wanted before he was born was to have a healthy baby. Now that he's been in the world for 4+ weeks, all I want is a healthy baby and all that entails. It means that he gets the right vaccinations minus any harmful chemicals like Mercury as a preservative, no BPA in any plastic that he encounters in his digestive adventures, no lead in his brightly colored toys, the right safety equipment just to navigate the world . . . the list goes on and on. There are many worries or fears that have taken the forefront of my attention these days that make what I used to worry about seem so . . . trivial. I hold the little one in my arms and I know that I'm looking at the best thing I've ever done or will do. Now it's a challenge to not screw up his life too badly with all my imperfections.