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FLASHBACK: Birth Day

April 8, 2011

Every once in a while I look through my past writing and dust off something from the vault. I originally wrote this in April, 2009, about a week after I delivered Henry and Miranda. I’m flashing back now in honor of their birthday… today… they are two years old!

When I gave birth to Ethan, I had been in labor for almost twenty-four hours, and when it came down to it I pushed for only about twenty minutes. It was a great experience – well, great once I had the epidural (I had been experiencing pretty significant back labor at the beginning with no break on the back pain between contractions). I remember telling Jack that I actually enjoyed pushing (again, especially because I couldn’t feel the pain and it didn’t last long!).

This delivery experience was quite different. I cannot for the life of me see why some women prefer… in fact, REQUEST to have c-sections. More convenient as far as scheduling? Heck yes! Less traumatic or tiring or stressful? Not for me. Apparently my c-section did not go quite as ‘routinely’ as was hoped.

My pre-op experience was lovely. Diane, the night Labor&Delivery nurse who took all my vitals and monitored the babies was a wonderfully calming presence. She answered Jack’s and my questions and found a spot for my mom to rest (it was 5:15 in the morning when we all arrived). Then Gloria took over, and let me tell you, she’s a woman who knows what’s what. At first she made me very nervous because she seemed quite… frenetic. Once I realized she really had her act together and was doing all her organizing out loud, I became a lot more comfortable.

From the pre-op room they had me walk into the operating room, which surprised Jack. It made sense, though. I was still ambulatory, so why not? The minute I got in there I started shaking. I don’t know if I was cold, or if I was nervous. I think it must have been a combination of both. The shaking continued as I sat up on the side of the table and prepared to have my spinal. I remembered this from Ethan’s delivery — having to sit on the edge and lean over as far as I could, which, in this case, didn’t seem like very far. They kept asking me to curl further and I couldn’t. I started crying — definitely because I was nervous and this was actually HAPPENING.

Spinal was administered and I was laid down on the table. WHOA. Talk about uncomfortable. The blood rushed to my head and though it wasn’t in pain it felt like it was going to explode. It took a few minutes before it felt better. Jack was on my left side — to which I had been tilted (so my big ol’ belly wouldn’t press down on a major artery and cause me to pass out). He held my hand and talked calmly to me while I was prepped for surgery.

Then — I think — is when I got super nauseated. I say I think because there were several major things that happened in the course of the surgery and the order of them is a little fuzzy. Jack has tried to help me piece them together from his standpoint, but of course he was also focused on the things I could not see.

The nausea was so overwhelming — I assume a reaction to the anesthesia. Thank goodness I had not eaten since my bowl of ice cream at 9pm the night before or things would have been ugly. I think I moaned a lot. And then it was gone.

“I smell something burning,” I said to Jack at one point. “It’s fine,” he replied, in that tone of his that meant there was much more going on.

“Oh my god did they start already?” I asked incredulously. I thought they were still prepping. Of course I started crying again — my babies were about to be born!

And then we heard a loud, ticked off cry of the first baby, halfway out of the womb according to Jack, fill the room. “That’s our baby girl, Abi!” Jack squeezed my hand.

They held her up for Jack to see and then took her to the team assigned to her (a respiratory specialist and a pediatric nurse, I believe). Then they started on Baby B.

“That feels really weird,” I said. They were fishing around for Baby B. Oh so weird a feeling. No pain, but pressure and movement just under my ribcage… made me somewhat seasick. He had moved and was pulled out side and feet first. I didn’t hear him cry right away, but when he finally did, after he was at his station for a half a minute or so, it was nice and loud.

My babies were born!

Then.. pain. LOTS of pain. At first I didn’t really know what hurt. Jack says I moaned a lot and couldn’t give an explanation as to where I hurt. The pain localized into a searing just next to my right armpit in my upper chest. I thought I was having a heart attack. I remember my OB saying to the anesthesiologist, “Are you going to give her something for this pain because I can’t operate like this!” I guess I was writhing around a bit. Then, I was calm. My eyes were closed. Jack went to the babies at their respective stations. I could hear voices. Occasionally I would open my eyes but I couldn’t see much due to the big blue curtain in front of me.

I found out later that the pain I had experienced (without going into too much of the gory details) was due to blood pooling in my upper chest in an area that the epidural didn’t cover. Nothing could be done about it until the babies were clear and they could get under my uterus. Needless to say, I lost quite a bit of blood. (Jack saw it all when they tipped me over to pour me out, so to speak. Did you know that operating tables have big deep pockets on the sides?) According to my OB, I was pretty close to needing a transfusion. I’m glad that was avoided.

One by one, I saw the babies. Then both at the same time. I was overwhelmed. I was drugged out, frankly. But I was happy. They looked healthy. They sounded healthy. After that, I don’t really remember much. Jack went off with the babies to the nursery and I stayed and was stitched up. I woke up in post op and at some point my dad showed up. Then my mom and my sister. They had seen the babies are were telling me how beautiful and perfect and SMALL they were.

Recovering from the blood loss took some time. Recovering from having brought two babies home at the same time?

Ask me later.

Comments Off on FLASHBACK: Birth Day / Flashback, Perils of Parenthood

Becoming a parent

April 6, 2011

Both my pregnancies were not necessarily pieces of cake to achieve.  I remember thinking, after six cycles of trying the first time around, that it didn’t seem fair that some women (especially those who weren’t even trying) could get pregnant so easily. I had been convinced my entire life that I was made for motherhood. I certainly had the hips for it. So why didn’t it just HAPPEN?

The rule of thumb is that you should try for at least a year before looking into the whys and hows and what nows of getting pregnant. When you are desperate to become a parent, however, a year is unbearable. Six months is an eternity. At six months, my doctor convinced me to stop stressing and take a month off… to give myself a break. The next month I became pregnant with Ethan.

When Jack and I decided to try for Baby #2, we figured it might take several months. I carefully charted my cycles. I faithfully tracked my basal temperatures. I peed on numerous sticks to determine my ovulation windows of opportunity. Every month that went by that didn’t result in a positive result on the stick broke my heart a little further. After six cycles I started to get depressed. When people would say to me, “At least you have one child,” I wanted to kick them in the face. Seven, eight, nine cycles went by and I began to think that perhaps I wasn’t supposed to have more than one child. Ten cycles and I went in to see my OB, who ran tests. I was fine. Jack was fine. So why weren’t we fine? Eleven cycles… I started to give up.  We took Ethan to Disneyland where I burst into tears during dinner at Goofy’s Kitchen for no apparent reason. I spent the trip alternating between snapping at Jack and Ethan, and wanting to hold them close, never to let them go. When we came home, Jack looked me square in the eyes and said, “I think you are pregnant.”

“Why would you say that to me!!??” I yelled at him. I had all but given up, ready to accept my inability to get pregnant again, and he was planting a seed of hope. That seriously ticked me off.

“Honey,” he replied calmly. “I just really think you are pregnant.” What he wanted to say, but didn’t, was that I was acting like a raving, irrational, emotional banshee, and pregnancy was the only thing in his mind that could explain the lunacy.

The next day I peed on a stick. I couldn’t believe what I saw. I drank about fifty gallons of water and willed my bladder to fill up again. I had no more sticks to pee on, but plenty of the strips that you dip into a cup. I dipped two different brands. I dug through the bathroom drawer and found another stick and peed on that.

I made Jack a card. On the front it said, “You were right.” On the inside I taped three positive tests. He came home from work that day and I handed him the envelope. “Just a little something to say sorry about being a raving lunatic this weekend.”

Needless to say, he was thrilled about being right (no surprise there).

I don’t think I could have hacked going through the stress of fertility treatments. I know women who have, and the strength and resolve they have is quite herculean. What we go through to become parents! For some, it happens ridiculously easily. For others… for others it is a painful, difficult journey that can last years and years (and years). Our seven and twelve-cycle waits were mere blips of impatience compared to what some couples go through.

My friend, Julie, has been on the path toward parenthood for many years now. She’s been through the battles of fertility treatments, and now she and her husband are hoping to become parents through adoption. They write an honest, heartfelt, and sometimes heartbreaking blog about the adoption process. I had been rather behind on it and just recently caught up. By the time I got to the current entry, I had tears streaming down my face and wanted to scream out in frustration to the world about the challenges that threaten to drown so many hopeful parents-to-be. Julie is meant to be a Mommy. She and her husband will most definitely be fantastic parents, so why-oh-why does this road have to be so emotionally arduous for them?

Read her blog. Do it now. Learn something. Thank me later.

Comments Off on Becoming a parent / General Chaos, Musings, Perils of Parenthood

Check Mate

March 3, 2011

Warning: this blog post is one big kvell-fest. Don’t know what that means? Ask a Jewish mother.

Ethan recently joined the Chess Club at his school. He had asked me to sign him up because he knew a couple of his friends were in it. Considering his amazing brain and his penchant for strategy games, I figured it would be a safe bet signing him up. My father happened to have visited the weekend before Ethan’s first Chess Club meeting, and taught him the basics. It was Ethan’s first exposure to chess, and they played for at least an hour. Ethan was hooked.

Since then, Ethan has been to two Chess Club meetings. Today, I received an email from the head of the program, Coach Jay:

I just wanted to let you know that Ethan is a shining star in my chess class! He is a quick and eager learner and I think that he could play in the State Kinder-1st Grade Championship in Irvine on Sunday, March 20th and hold his own just fine.

He said that Ethan was welcome to join the open chess meeting this evening. You basically drop off your child to play chess (for free!) for two hours. There is also an open chess meeting at a local pizza place on Mondays (not for dropping off).

Holy wow. I read the email and called Jack. Okay, I actually called my father first. After all, he introduced Ethan to chess. As soon as Jack got home Ethan and I hightailed it out of the house. On the way, I asked him to tell me a little about chess. He talked about how each piece can move, and then he said:

“Mommy, did you know that when you say ‘Check Mate,’ it pretty much means, ‘I win and you lose?'”
“I did know that, Ethan.”
“Hmmm… I wonder… if you say ‘Mate Check,’ does that mean, ‘You win and I lose?'”

Ha ha ha! I love this kid to pieces!

So we get to the open chess place, and Ethan, not giving me a backwards glance, goes and sits down with a first-grader and starts playing. I met Coach Jay and thanked him for his email. He asked me how much Ethan played before joining the club. When I answered him, he shook his head in disbelief. “He has the ability to see the whole board when considering strategy, and that isn’t an easy concept to grasp.”

I tried to say goodbye to Ethan, but I doubt he heard me. He was already engrossed. I came home and immediately registered him for the Championship, emailing Coach Jay to let him know.

When Jack left to go pick him up, I got a reply from Coach Jay:

I took off early tonight to let Coach Paul finish up, but not before I got a chance to see Ethan in action! He worked on tonight’s worksheet and did really well on it. I hope he can play a ton of games over the next couple of weeks – it will really help.

Thanks,
Coach Jay

P.S. The email I sent to you was the only unsolicited one that I sent out to any parents this semester regarding the skills of the child. I teach 700 kids.

Whoa. Whoa. That floored me. Coach Jay teaches K through 6th grade.

Whoa.

Comments (1) / Education, General Chaos, The Mouths of Babes

Ethan is six today

March 2, 2011

Ethan is six today.

Six seems so much older than five. Six is heading into bona-fide big kid territory. A five-year-old is what Ethan became in pre-school. Six has no connections with pre-school sensibilities.

Ethan is six today.

Will six still give me hugs and tell his teacher, “I love you?” Will six still hold my hand in the parking lot?

While Ethan struggles with his desire to be treated as a big kid versus his desire to be comforted as a little kid, I will go through my own struggles and decisions as a parent of a six-year-old boy. And not just any six-year-old boy.

MY six-year old boy.

My six-year-old who fearlessly holds his own while playing soccer with fifth and sixth-graders, also crumples with heightened distress at semi-benign movie scenes most kids his age wouldn’t necessarily find scary. My boy who reads at a third-grade (if not higher) level and actively asks for math problems to crack, cannot comprehend that bedtime means BEDTIME. I often will have to beg him to eat, but he will readily chew his fingernails down to nothing. His compassion allows him to weep at a tender story of friendship, yet he is very quick to blame others for his mistakes. He is a jumble. He is raw.

He is a six-year-old boy.

Ethan has been six years of challenges in parenting for me and Jack. Some of those challenges have been welcome, like how to foster his amazing brain, but some have been more… difficult. He has the energy of a tornado whirling inside a hurricane wrapped up in a fireball. Learning how to guide and steer (and contain) the chaos is constant.

Six years ago, right about now, I was becoming a mother. I was terrified and excited. I was confident and queasy. I was doubtful and elated.

Ethan is six today, and I am still all those things.

Comments (4) / General Chaos, Perils of Parenthood

The mutual sibling adoration club

February 24, 2011

We’ve been having issues with Ethan at bedtime lately. Okay, we’ve ALWAYS had issues, but it seems, lately, that the getting out of bed routine has become more frequent.

It’s the age-old story of I-can’t-sleep, or, I-heard-a-scary-noise, or, I-just-have-to-tell-you-just-one-thing. He comes out of his room and sits, looking down through the rails on the stairs at us. Please, he begs us, tell me a trick to help me get to sleep.

I try to tell him that crawling to the foot of his bed to read a book by the light of his nightlight will NOT help him get to sleep, but he doesn’t hear me. He’s fixated on getting us to sympathize with him. Falling asleep is just so hard! Why do I even have to do it?

Wait until you’re my age, kid. You’ll be begging to sleep at every chance.

So we come up with ideas to get him to lie still in bed — to allow his body to relax. Counting sheep is not worthy of a try. Counting to one hundred forward and backward? Boooooring! He needs something to distract him from all the distracting things in his room. I could lie down with him and turn on my noise app on my phone — lulling him to sleep with the sounds of the ocean, but we are trying to wean him off of one of us lying in bed with him. He goes to bed at eight, and if I lie down with him I usually fall asleep, and before I know it, it’s time for me to go to my own bed, and those precious few evening hours without children or work requiring all my attention have flown by. I keep thinking I should buy a noise machine for his room, just like Henry and Miranda have, but I can’t bring myself to spend the money on something that only MIGHT work.

Last night Ethan came out of his room and gave us the same I-can’t-fall-asleep story, and I had a brilliant idea. So brilliant, in fact, that I cursed my own stupidity for not thinking of it earlier. I grabbed the baby monitor from my bedroom, slapped some new batteries in it, and brought it into his room.

“Ethan, how about you get to fall asleep to the same ocean noises that your brother and sister have?”

“Yes! That is a great idea!” So far so good.

“The only thing is, bud, that since this is the baby monitor, you will also be able to hear Henry and Miranda if they wake up and cry, or even just make little noises in their sleep, so when I come up to bed, after you are already asleep, I will take this out of the room so you aren’t bothered.”

“Mommy. It’s okay. I don’t mind hearing them. I love them, and if they are crying then I want to help them.”

He just needed to bat his eyelashes to make the mood complete.

Kidding aside, this boy’s affection for his younger siblings is quite beautiful. I spent much of my pregnancy, between the heartburn and the insomnia, worrying about how upside-down Ethan’s world would get once his brother and sister barged into it. We had hoped for mild indifference, maybe a few kisses here and there, but what we got was a loving, protective, sweet older brother. Affection that exceeded all expectations. And not one bit of resentment. I hear stories of kids who ask their parents to take their newly born sibling back to the hospital, or kids who react in other ways — reverting to more babylike behavior to get attention. Ethan never did that. He seemed to understand from the moment they were born, that even though they required much of my attention, it didn’t mean I loved him any less.

The affection is quite mutual. Miranda and Henry adore their big brother. Worship him (heaven help me). Ethan was sitting on the chair in their room last night, crying for some reason, and Miranda plopped herself down next to him and started rubbing his head and kissing his cheek. Henry looked at me with his big brown eyes (I was changing his diaper) and said, “Ee-tan, cryin’! Oh no!” They don’t like to see Ethan sad.

We’ll be all downstairs and I’ll ask Ethan if he wants to go upstairs to his room and play with his little Legos, and more often than not, he chooses to stay downstairs. “I’d rather play with them,” he says. “I want to make them laugh.”

And, oh, does he make them laugh! Lately, the favored post-dinner activity is for Ethan to dart around the kitchen and playroom, asking for Henry and Miranda to catch him. He will run from the bathroom door to the kitchen, he’ll dive under the play table, he’ll scoot past furniture, and they follow, screeching and laughing all the way down to their bellies.

“Runnin’!” Miranda screams. “FUNNY!”

We remind Ethan that the things he does, how he reacts to people, are watched very carefully by his siblings. “You are their main role model,” I tell him. “They will learn about things from me and Daddy, of course, but they will learn a LOT from watching you.”  He’s noticing more and more just how true that is, especially now that they are older and talking in ways we can actually understand. Sometimes he takes it very seriously, and we do over-the-top “scenes” of displaying good manners. PLEASE and THANK YOU and YOU’RE WELCOME cannot be drilled into kids’ heads enough, as far as I’m concerned, so I’m happy for the big brother back-up.

As nuts as it gets in this house at times, I know that all the running and screeching and hugging and laughing that contributes to the crazy is all just cementing their life-long sibling bond. There will come a time when Ethan will ignore them for more “big-kid” endeavors. They won’t all want to hang out with one another as much someday, but I know the underlying love and adoration will still be there. I’ll take what I can get in whatever way it manifests, loud and crazy and all.

And I’ll gladly take the willingness from Ethan to listen to the sleeping noises of his brother and sister in order to also listen to their noise machine. He was asleep within ten minutes. Was it just the noise that helped, or the thought that he was sharing it with his siblings?

We’ll try it again tonight.

Comments (1) / General Chaos, Perils of Parenthood, The Mouths of Babes