I had a conversation via chat today with someone who is 23 weeks pregnant with twins and is in the midst of the same scared shitless misery that I was in less than two years ago. It brought back a lot of the old feelings I had during my pg, and I thought I'd lay them down here. I want to get all this out, so forgive me--it will be long, as per my usual.
My pregnancy was a mixed bag of strength and euphoria as if I'd just won the lottery and an Olympic Gold medal on the same day and fear and vulnerability.
I already talked about how it was when I found out I was having twins here. There was a period of time where I almost wished for a vanishing twin syndrome type thing to happen. I had checked and double checked with all my medical people about my health risks and a pg. They all said I could go for it, but it would be a high risk pg anyway. When adding twins to the equation, the risks I was taking multiplied. I knew it could turn out very badly. I knew I could lose everything.
At some point, though, I started to yearn for both babies to make it and stay with me. At first, I think it was when my peri nurse made some comment about the triple screen and amniocentesis (which I elected not to have). There was a risk with amnio that I would lose one or both babies, and she said, "well, maybe losing one wouldn't be so bad for you guys." That comment pissed me off even though I had earlier thought the same thing myself.
Then, when I was about ten weeks pregnant, D and his father were at my house and D fell out of his wheelchair into my back alley and broke his leg. This was when I really had to start putting the kids ahead of D. I remember helping his dad lift him back into the wheelchair from the street and it was incredibly hard on my abdominals and I thought, I shouldn't be doing this. Then, the ER staff was just going to send him home with me with nothing but a pillow splint and no way for him to get in and out of his chair without me lifting him. I had an argument with the staff and flat out refused to take him home like that. I even cried, which I never do...hardly. He ended up staying in the hospital for about five days until we figured out a workable solution. I had a few more arguments with the social worker staff at the hospital, and we were able to get extra home-care hours for him. But it was during this time that I started rooting for both babies as well as myself. We became a threesome and it started to be all of us are in this together and we will get through this.
There is a weird vulnerability/macho paradox that I had when pregnant. On the one hand, I was walking around proclaiming, "Me Woman! Me Make Men!" I felt like such a powerhouse. Here I was, working, doing my thing, producing human beings at the same time. When I look upon my entire pg experience and that of all women, I can't believe that men are thought of as the stronger sex. They are all so wimpy when they get a little cold, there is no way they could handle what your body puts you through with pregnancy and childbirth. Your body tears you down and wears you down for nine months until you feel like you can't go on, and then you have to give birth and take care of a helpless infant (or two) 24 hours a day with no recovery period...ever.
On the other hand, since you are the life support for two human beings, you start being way protective of your body and you do feel like total crap week after week, at least I did. I felt vulnerable even going to the mailbox because I had these fears that a car might hit me or I would fall down on a curb or something and screw up something for the babies.
I worried about my stress levels as well. I was moving away from D while he was still in a leg cast. My guide dog was very ill the last few months of her life and I had to have her euthanized when I was about 4 months pregnant. My mother had died just months before and I was facing the reality of going through this major life experience without my mother. There was a family memorial service in Colorado to spread her ashes that summer (we couldn't do it right after she died because where she wanted it to be was covered in snow and roads were closed.) I chose not to go to the memorial, which was quite heartbreaking for me. I said that the doctors wouldn't let me fly, but I probably could have talked them into it. The truth was, my family is terrible about taking care of someone in a health situation and I was afraid that if something happened to me, I would not have access to medical care if I had to depend on my family for transportation, etc. It probably would have been fine, but I was feeling too vulnerable to take the risk. Then, there was the absolute selfish atrociousness that was D's mother's reaction to my pregnancy which was causing both D and I a lot of undue stress. With the death of my mother, it was unbelievable to me that I would be treated in such a way by anyone. Even a total stranger would have been more supportive. On the day before she died, my mother told D's family how much she appreciated them and asked them to look after me. Not that I really expected them to "look after me" in a care-taking role, but I also didn't expect them to treat me like dirt, either. I remember reading a Yahoo Health article about stress in the second trimester causing long-term mental health problems in infants while I was in the midst of all this and in the second trimester. I remember reading that to D and we were both just so pissed off at what his family was putting us through. Then we were like, you know, we are getting pissed off and stressed about being pissed off and stressed...so quit it!
Things were ticking along rather uncomfortably but well until my facial hemorrhage thing. I was at about 32 weeks and got up to get ready for church. I was in the shower (sitting on an exercise ball because I could no longer stand for a full shower) and everything in the right side of my face just started to bleed. My nose was gushing blood, my mouth and gums, my ear, and a pool of blood was forming in my eye. I remember looking down at the blood running down the exercise ball and then just seeing red, and realizing that I was no longer looking at the ball, I was looking at the blood in my eye.
Then, new decisions had to be made. The initial threat to my health was stabilized quickly, but I had a retinal detachment in my better eye. I had to weigh the risk of total blindness against the risk of losing my children, or more likely giving birth to them very early and all the consequences that that can lead to. It was not so much my life vs. the babies any more. It was much murkier than that. So we tried to make wise and cautious decisions. I tried to give all three of our needs equal weight. So, eye surgery but no anesthesia or medication (except a local). A very low dose of glaucoma medication for me (which was contraindicated for pregnancy) and bedrest for as long as possible to give the babies some extra time, but then get the babies out as soon as possible. We hoped that ending the pregnancy would take care of the pressure in my eye and face as well, and then I could go off medication and breastfeed, but that didn't turn out to work.
I went about three more weeks on bedrest at D's house. I couldn't see anything and could not believe I was going to give birth and not be able to see my babies. (By the birth, I was able to see a small bit out of the corners of my left eye. I had not used that eye since I was fourteen and had to retrain it to see in a way that would make sense to my brain.) I took one very small walk a day during this time. Outside in the rain, I would walk around D's building with my cane so I could get used to getting around with my new vision. D set me up with his laptop and voice output and I would listen to Democracy Now! and other news. I remember one of the first things I listened to was a post by Shannon on her old blog, "Waiting for Nat." It was about gay hate crimes and she had listed the names of hate crime victims. The list just went on and on. I was feeling so sick that I couldn't get up and end the page scroll. So I just sat there and listened to every single name. It was depressing, but it did put my life in perspective. At least no one was trying to kill me.
So I went on feeling like crap. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't sleep. I couldn't eat. I COULD go to the bathroom. Again and again and again. I went to 35 weeks and started having contractions. I had two breach babies, and with my health problems, labor was out of the question. So, just like that, my C-section was scheduled.
Having a Cesarean may save you from the labor itself, but it is a bit of a letdown. The part where they take your babies out happens within the first five minutes. One minute you have these unknown little fetuses living inside of you, and the next, they are screaming little human babies somewhere else in the room. D has some movies of the babies first hour or so, and the thing you notice most of all is that I am no where to be found. I got to see them for five seconds or so after they were born. Me, pinned down to an OR table with 2/3rds of my body paralyzed from the epidural. A little burrito of a baby is shoved by my head and then another one and then they are gone. D goes off with them and I am stuck on the OR for another 45 minutes while they put my uterus back together. In recovery, I am a vomiting, sedated mess and remember very little about the next several hours until that night. Other people are doing things to your kids and you just let them.
I remember WIC giving me these cards that say "NO NIPPLES! I'm breastfed!" I was supposed to give those to the nurse to put on the babies bassinets so they wouldn't be bottle fed. HA! My kids got glucose in a bottle within 5 minutes of their birth. Naim especially had very low blood sugar and he was on formula from the minute he was born before I was even out of surgery. I mean, I'm glad, of course. But it is just funny these idyllic images that Le Leche Leagers make it out to be. A lot of what went on the first few days seemed completely out of my control.
So, let me tell you about what happened in the hospital with us. The last few weeks of my pg, I had developed this REALLY itchy rash all over my body. It is a common pg thing, I guess. It drove me insane and they said it could take weeks to subside after giving birth. They asked me if I wanted something for it, and I said yes, thinking that they would give me some kind of topical cortisone or something. Instead, unbeknownst to me, they gave me some sort of IV medication in recovery. (I can't remember the name now.) Now, I am a person who gets drowsy on a Tylenol. Well, this itch medication made me have a really terrible reaction. I couldn't stay awake, I was vomiting, I was hallucinating. Seriously, I saw my mother and I thought she was actually there. I saw D's father when I was trying to breastfeed and screamed at D to get his father out of the room when he wasn't there. (Remember that I can't see, and I am telling these people that I see people across the room). D's SIL came to visit me, and I didn't talk to her for a few minutes because I thought she really wasn't there. I was spooked all the time. It took a couple of days for everyone to realize that they needed to STOP giving me this itch medication. But by then, half the staff thought I was crazy.
Meanwhile, my kids are jaundiced, losing weight, and not eating. I am breastfeeding one, then the other, then formula feeding one, then the other, then pumping. By the time that's done, I got maybe an hour to rest and then had to start all over again. My kids wouldn't eat. They couldn't stay awake long enough. And they had no suck reflex. We were taking the bottle nipple and squeezing little drops into their mouths like they were little birds, then hand closing their mouths and massaging their throats to get them to swallow. Naim, especially, had blood glucose problems and was getting his heal tapped for blood every three hours. Here is the thing: Every one since then that I've ever talked to whose had a preemie in this situation has told me that they put an NG tube in and had the kid in NICU. Not that I'd be thrilled about the idea that my kids have to suffer through an NG tube, but it would have taken the pressure down a notch. Naim got under 4 pounds from 5 lbs. 7 oz.
Also, almost everyone I've talked to has told me wonderful stories about how their lactation specialist helped them with special techniques or a special stool or a special position that helped with latching on or at least some encouragement. I got none of this. I got, "Are you really sure you want to breastfeed?" and "Don't you think it is time to give it up?"
And here is where things got interesting in the hospital. D and I created a war of sorts among the staff. Nurses split into different factions. Those that were for us, and those that weren't.
It started with Rosie. Rosie was a woman I talked to very briefly before I went into the hospital. She was in a group called M.O.M. Moms of Multiples and had invited me to become a member. She said she worked at the hospital and would lend me a twin nursing pillow (like a boppy only bigger for two babies). One morning in the hospital at about 6 am, someone tapped me on the shoulder. I couldn't see her, but I could tell she was in scrubs. She said she was Rosie and she was leaving the nursing pillow in the room. I thanked her and she left. About two days later (I was in the hospital for 6 days), in the midst of my bad drug reaction and the kids not eating, D and I had a showdown with a nurse who said we had to feed the kids every two hours. I knew that we were going to drop dead if we did that, and besides, another nurse told us that the kids needed to sleep as much as possible and feeding them more than every three hours would be futile because they would be overstimmed, to tired, and wouldn't eat anyway. So I told this nurse I wasn't going to wake them up every two hours. I told her I'd compromise to every 2.5 hours. She stormed out of the room and sent the NICU feeding specialist in to scare us into the kids ending up in the NICU. I had a very rational conversation at 4 in the morning with this nurse and she agreed with me about not feeding them every 2 hours. At about 6 am that morning, Rosie comes storming into my room. Now I did not know if Rosie was a doctor or a nurse or a janitor at this point. Rosie got all kinds of upset with us for not being able to feed the kids. She had asked D a question about feeding schedules and he misunderstood her and she yelled at him for not feeding the kids for over four hours. (We had, of course, she just misunderstood what he said.) I remember thinking that if she were my nurse for that day, I was going to shoot myself. She also said something about us being 'welfare cases'. Then, a pediatrician on call came in to check on the babies. Rosie told him right in front of us and the pediatrician that all the nurses are saying that we are too disabled to have kids and if left to our own devices, these kids wouldn't eat. Rosie was acting very self important, but the pediatrician seemed to ignore her.
Well, I find out that she thankfully was not my nurse, she was a CNA! Now, as a CNA myself, I respect the skills these folks have. But, shit, lady. Bring us our clean towels and shut up!
Actually, I am a bit thankful to Rosie for spouting off her rude ass mouth. What she said snapped me into my own bitch mode. I started taking control and not depending on the nurses to be helpful and you know, help me. I started doing everything myself from then on. I didn't let the nurses feed the kids. I didn't let them go to the nursery for breaks. I didn't even let anyone except D hand me a diaper. I got my sorry ass with its 25 staples from the C-section, lochia bleeding, itching, vomiting self out of bed every single time the kids needed something and didn't take crap from anyone after that. And it was FUCKING painful and exhausting.
And then, nurses started coming in and saying helpful things and supporting us. Nurses that weren't our nurses and we had never met before. They started saying that everyone is talking about us and that some other nurses are being really bitchy and saying that social services should be called. They said that the nurses had a big fight about us the night before and the head nurse had to call an emergency staff meeting to calm everyone down and tell them to shut up. This seemed to be the night nurses, but the day nurses got wind of it and I guess they were taking sides as well. The nurses that came in were rooting for us. Luckily, our nurse that day was on our side. She also arranged for us to get a night nurse that was also on our side.
The night nurse offered to help feed the kids and I told her, No thanks and she asked why. I told her I didn't want anyone to think we couldn't take care of our kids. I remember she said, "Fuck 'em. You are recovering from major surgery and it is our job to help you and I'm helping you." She hugged me and made me cry. She took the picture of all four of us in the hospital on the day we left.
Another little D family side story you'll enjoy. The hospital told us on the second to the last day we were there that we couldn't take the kids home in the car seats we bought because the shoulder straps were over 6 inches from the seat bottom and our kids were too little for them. So D asked his brother to take him to run out and get new car seats. It was a pain in the ass and I was especially unhappy because this was the "We don't raise other people's children" brother. D's brother came to pick him up and was acting very weird. When D came back with the car seats a couple of hours later, he just burst into tears. (It was an exhausting week.) I said, "what did he say to you?" And D said, "Absolutely nothing. He drove like a maniac, pumped up the radio to full blast, left me hanging at the stores so I had to go find a clerk to help get the car seats down, didn't mention the babies or anything, barely talked to me."
So then, the next day we get ready to leave, and who should show up to "help" us, but D's brother who came with his father. (Later, D and I would have a huge fight over this. I specifically asked D to not have his family come to the hospital that day. If anything, just his dad could meet us at my house and help us unload. But D didn't inform anyone of this.) He came in, slumped in a corner. Didn't say a word to me, didn't mention anything about the babies or why we were even there. I had to do my discharge and he just stared at me while the nurse is asking me such lovely questions like, "have you had a BM yet?" and "Nothing in your vagina for the next six weeks." It was lovely. The resentment and the tension was palpable.
You dream about these events in your life. You dream about taking your baby home from the hospital. About putting on his little going home clothes, carrying him out in your arms in the wheelchair, taking him into the outdoors for the first time, taking him into his new home for the first time. I did all this with D's brother acting like a total asshole. I don't care who knows it. It was horrible. I cried on the way down the hall as we left. I put Naim in his little outfit and held him up and said, "look at my little 5 pound baby!" and he ignored me and just stared at me. You don't want your new baby to be surrounded by such meanness. And I failed to keep my family from it. Since I had two babies who had to be buckled in car seats before we left the room (hospital rule) D's brother ended up carrying Aaron while Naim was screaming his head off. I watched him carry Aaron in his car seat as if he were carrying nothing more than a gym bag filled with sweaty socks. I was crushed. I couldn't stand it. We had to wait by the front door for D to get the car, and he put Aaron on the ground and said nothing to me. Naim was screaming and I was trying to comfort him and he just looked nothing but annoyed. I remember thinking, "well, go ahead and scream, Niam. You are doing what I'm not allowed to do." I know some people just aren't baby people, but this was more than that. My precious babies were nothing more to him than some annoying little piss-ants that ruined his weekend. When we got home, he came into my house and I kicked them out. Nicely.
That bugged me for a long time. That he had to put his resentful assholiness into our special day. And then one day, I was thinking about this as I picked up one of my babies and I just said to him, "it doesn't matter, all that D's family bullshit. They have their resentment and selfishness, and I have you. You and your brother make up for everything. Everyday is a special day with you and Naim and D and my family. It doesn't matter."
So, the epilogue. It took Aaron and Naim a good month to really start to get that sucking reflex. We had specialists and dietitians and nurses working with us and no one could get them to suck until they were good and ready, which ended up being around their due date. The first "preemie" month, they just had to sleep and be stimulated as little as possible. We fed them every three hours around the clock. The challenge was keeping them awake long enough. We would undress them and make them cold to keep them awake. We continued to squeeze little drops of milk into their mouth. We physically took their mouths and jaws in our hands and pushed them through the sucking motion. Five or seven milliliters at a time was a victory. Slowly, it increased to ten and then twenty. Slowly, they gained weight. One day, I realized that I was counting in ounces rather than milliliters. One day I realized that I wasn't counting anymore. I regret not having success with breastfeeding. By the time my milk came in and they had enough of a suck reflex, I had to go back on medication for my eye and I couldn't breastfeed anyway. I was loath to mess up our precarious success with bottles anyway.
I never spoke to Rosie again nor any of the M.O.M's. I still have her pillow. I'm probably going to give it to this new mom with twins. I know that isn't fair to judge all the M.O.M.'s based on her. I'm sure there are many nice members who I'd love. I just never wanted to pursue it after my Rosie experience.
I gained 65 pound during my pg. Much of that was from the edema that screwed up my eye. I was up to 210 the day I gave birth. Two days later I weighed 175, and went down to 150 after about six weeks of the lochia period and the rest of the edema subsided. (Still working on the 150 and then some!) Three months after giving birth, I had a second eye surgery and got some travel vision back in my right eye. I also got glasses which helps with my glare and double vision from the retinal detachment. My kidneys and my PCOS and blood sugar are working as good as they've ever worked if not better. I have a reasonable diet and sleep schedule now, and work out several days a week. I still have to put up with a lot of edema in my face, which sucks.
I sent the nursing staff at the hospital a picture of my two healthy one year olds and a Christmas card. I said something on it like, "Just wanted you to know, the blind mom and the quadriplegic dad got the twins to eat. They are over 20 pounds now and doing great. Happy Holidays."
It has taken me a LONG time, and several crying spells and vents in D's ear, but I think I am really, really getting past the whole D's family thing. It affected me way more than I cared to admit. I'm a lot different from them and handle things differently, and I know that is part of our problems. But I've come to realize that so much of this has nothing to do with me. And that it is not my job, and probably not even possible for me to make them feel good and right about accepting me and my kids and D and our family unit. Here I've learned a lot and taken a page from 'the gays' and have learned how to open myself to those who will accept me and just let go of the rest.
And, despite all of the hard road to get these kids, I still want to shout on the mountain tops that "IT IS SO COMPLETELY AND TOTALLY AND UNQUESTIONABLY WORTH IT!!!!"