3 Weeks

Today Will is 3 weeks old. It is crazy how quickly the time is passing, and how much he grows and changes from week to week. In this picture you can clearly see the butterfly shaped birthmark on his forehead, which turns bright red when he cries.

John has been out of town for the last day and night, interviewing for a job. I have a small taste of what being a single mom would be like, with no one here but the baby and me. So far we've been fine, but I can easily understand what a horrible strain it would be to be alone all the time, trying to feed him and comfort him around the clock with no breaks. Lately it has seemed like, if he's awake, Will wants to be held all the time. Today I broke down and bought a baby carrier so that I can move around and get things done and STILL hold him, but so far he is not in love with the carrier. He wants to look around, and the carrier forces him to stare at my collarbone.

He has had a few naps laying on my chest while I read a book. It feels so nice, having him there all warm and cozy, listening to him breathe and smelling his delightful little baby smell. And it is also good to lie in the quiet and read. But part of me also worries that from now on he's going to refuse to sleep unless he's snug on my chest.

The relative peace has been interrupted by short bouts of intense crying, usually around when he is eating. He'll act like someone is poking him with a pin, and I will feed him, burp him exhaustively, change his diaper, and he will continue to cry and look pitifully sad. I feel so bad for him. I know that babies cry; it's just part of their job. But sometimes there is something so weary and sad in his expression, like life is turning out to be so hard and so painful for him, and it just tugs at my heartstrings. Poor baby. Life is hard. I so want him to be happy and to enjoy his existence, and it is so hard to see him that way, so dejected.

2 Weeks

Will was 2 weeks old yesterday, which was amazing to me. The time is already passing so quickly. We took Will in for his wellness check and he weighed 7 lbs, 5 oz, which is wonderful. At the hospital he had dropped (as babies usually do) from his birthweight of 6 lbs, 11.5 oz to 6 lbs, 4 oz. The goal in the first 2 weeks is to get them back up to their birthweight, so Will has done really well. This was a relief to me, because I have had a little bit of trouble breastfeeding. I have too much milk, and it comes out so fast that it chokes him as he starts to drink. Before I figured out what was wrong there was a lot of tension every time he ate, with him flailing and pulling away from me for several minutes before he would settle down and eat. So it was truly a relief that he was getting enough nourishment.

We have days that go well and days that are hard. Yesterday, with the Dr. appointment and several good breastfeeding sessions, went well. Last night he didn't really want to go back to sleep after he ate, didn't want to eat for a long time so much as snack, and didn't want to be put down in his bassinet or his Boppy. It was a long night, and I woke up this morning feeling a bit exhausted and frustrated. And the morning didn't go much better.

This motherhood stuff is hard. I love Will so much, and I want more than anything to provide a stable, healthy environment for him. I try to be positive. I look at him and my heart just melts. It doesn't really take much to get my equilibrium back. This afternoon we got in one good feed, where Will ate for more than 20 minutes, and then I gave him a bath, and he was so alert after that and we spent some quality time together where I held him and sang to him until he got sleepy, and then put him in his Boppy where he has been sleeping peacefully ever since. And then I got the house straightened up and dinner on the stove, and I could take deep breaths again.

Soon he will wake up, and we will start it all over again, the eating, cuddling, diaper change, sleeping and so on. And in this way the days will continue to fly by and we will learn together how to make it work. I am reading this book (see below) about how our cultures shape the way that we parent. It is an excellent book, comparing many different cultures and the outcomes of the differing parenting styles on infants. It is making me see a lot of things in different ways, and consider a lot of methods I hadn't before. For instance, the book looks in depth at the idea of sleeping with your baby. I guess more than 80% of the world's population sleeps with their babies, and the book claims that it is very good for the baby because they learn to breathe by mirroring your breathing. I am still nervous to sleep with Will, though, because I am afraid of rolling over onto him or him suffocating in the blankets.

Birth Story

It's a week later, and I am finally getting a moment to write about the birth of little William Carver. It begins last Tuesday at 5am when I was lying in bed and my water broke. It was such a shock, just the moment of realization: this is it-- we are going to have this baby soon! John and I joked that the baby would be out by dinnertime. My doctor had instructed me to call in if my water broke, so I called the doctor on call. She told me that my labor would probably start shortly, within the next four hours, but if it didn't then I would need to come into the hospital and be induced.

Me the morning of labor

Now, I hated the idea of being induced. A few weeks ago, my dietitian informed me that it was hospital policy not to let women with gestational diabetes go over their due date, even by one day. I never brought it up with my doctor, but I really didn't want to be induced. I am a big believer in letting things come at their natural pace. I also wanted to have this baby without pain medications or unnecessary medical intervention, and from what I had heard and read, the use of Pitocin (the drug they use to induce labor, a synthetic form of oxytocin, which the body produces to induce contractions) makes the contractions much more intense and frequent than they would normally be. Which, in turn, makes it much less likely to have the baby without pain relief of some form.

I had not yet felt anything but the Braxton Hicks type of contraction, a hardening sensation but no real pain. So John and I made sure our bags were fully packed, I ate a piece of toast and some yogurt, we cleaned up the house and packed up the car, and still there were no real contractions. One hour passed, then two. We took a walk around the apartment complex. At 9 am, I called my doctor. He told me that I needed to go into the hospital, since it had been 5 hours since my water had broken. So, after as much dragging of my feet as I could, off John and I went to the hospital. On the way John remarked that the drive was nothing like he had expected it would be. He thought it would be a frantic sort of drive, with me in pain after several hours of serious labor. Yet here we were calmly driving to the hospital before I was even in real labor.

At the hospital, they hooked me up to the monitors and we discovered that I was having contractions fairly regulary, every five minutes or so, but they were so mild that I wasn't feeling them. Then they started me on Pitocin. I hate IVs, and I have already mentioned that I hated the idea of Pitocin, but at that point I was just ready to go. I wanted to do what they were telling me I needed to do. So we started on Pitocin. They begin with a small amount (I started at 4) and then increase the dosage every half an hour.

Me just after starting the Pitocin

I started the Pitocin at 11:30 am. I was soon having contractions, but not so bad that I was unable to relax and do my breathing the way we had learned in our Bradley course. John was wonderful, massaging me and holding my hand through contractions, constantly telling me how great I was doing. When we had first arrived we could hear the woman in the room next to us screaming as she delivered her baby. It was pretty loud, and John and I laughed it off nervously. At around 2:30 (the Pitocin now at 16 and the contractions getting more serious) my doctor arrived. He did a pelvic exam and reported that I was 90% effaced and a mere 1 cm dilated, but the baby's head was low and engaged. It could be a while, he said. I was disappointed that I was only 1 cm, but there wasn't anything else to do but what I was doing. I asked the doctor if we would just keep upping the dose of Pitocin, and he said that he thought my contractions were stable so we would just leave it at the same dose.

He wasn't gone five minutes when the nurse came in and upped the dose to 20. I asked her about what the doctor had said and she told me I had misunderstood him. So we were at 20 and later she would turn it up to 24 sometime when I wasn't looking, and the contractions were starting to be pretty darn intense. Up to that point I had lain on my back where the baby monitor and the monitor for my contractions seemed to work the best. Now I wanted to try being on my side. Whenever I laid that way, though, the monitor that checked my contractions stopped working. I also was starting to feel like I had to pee a lot. I would get up, unhook the monitor from the wall (I had a telemetry monitor, so I could get up and walk and so on) and shuffle to the bathroom, sit there for a few contractions, and then shuffle back. Every time I went to the bathroom the baby's monitor stopped working and my nurse would come in to check that everything was still okay. By 3:30 or 4pm I was wanting to be in the bathroom more and more, which I am sure was aggravating to the nurse. I was having a harder time relaxing. I kept feeling like I needed to just catch my breath, get relaxed and in a good rhythm with my breathing, but I couldn't seem to relax fully before the next contraction hit.

At 4:00 I told the nurse that I had the faint need to push while I was in the bathroom. I felt sort of ridiculous telling her this--after all, at 2:30 I had only been 1cm. She decided to check me. I was at 4cm, completely effaced. She said that was great progress, but it still would probably be a while before I was really ready to push. If I pushed before I was fully dilated I would only make my cervix swell up, which would make the whole process go longer. So I went back to the bed, where I started what my friend Lindsey calls "the crazy pain." I told John I was glad he was there, but I didn't want to be touched anymore. He sat in a chair by my bed and told me he loved me and held my hand when I reached for it.

By 5:30 pm I really felt the urge to push. The nurse checked me again--7cm! She went to call my doctor. My body wanted to push so badly. Then began what was the hardest time for me. The nurse had me lay on my side. I held John's hand, and when the contractions hit, I was supposed to blow out quick little breaths, like blowing out birthday candles. Don't push, don't push, just blow, blow, blow, blow. So I looked into John's face and tried to blow, but my body would clamp down into a push with all its might. I was so distraught--I thought I was screwing it all up, pushing before I was fully dilated. I kept apologizing. Whenever I would feel the next contraction coming, I would moan, "NO. . ." and then we would start blowing again. John blew with me--we must have been quite a sight blowing in each other's faces, me occasionally pausing to cry out as my body pushed. It is amazing, the force of the body. Another nurse materialized to set up the delivery supplies. The other nurse was almost sitting on my legs to hold them closed during the contractions. They told me the doctor was driving in from the clinic as fast as he could, that I had to wait for him to get there, but as soon as he arrived then I could start pushing.

It felt like a long time before the doctor came, but suddenly he was there. I said, "Thank you, God." From that point on it would be 13 minutes until I pushed the baby out. It felt so much better to be able to push. The doctor told me that he wanted to do an episiotomy, which I didn't want, either, but we had talked about it before and come to an understanding that if there was a choice between an episiotomy and a bad tear, then he could do the cut. So I had the episiotomy. The doctor told me I would have to listen to him carefully as the baby's head was coming and just push it out a little bit at a time. "Make sure I listen to him," I said to John. And then, in a blur after several small pushes, out came the baby's head! It was purple, I remember, and covered with blond hair. He was crying before the rest of him was out.

Will just after birth

And so, our little William Carver was born, on February 6, 2007 at 6:18 pm. He weighed 6 lbs, 11.5 oz and was 19.75 inches long. He tested 9 on both the 1 and 5 minute Apgar. He is just beautiful, the most beautiful baby I have ever seen. I breastfed him and snuggled him for a while, and then he and John went off to the nursery for his bath and shots. And I went to the maternity ward to recover. My legs were shaking like crazy, which the nurse told me was hormones, but to me it felt like shock. I still had Pitocin going in the IV, to minimize the bleeding. I was so ready to have that IV out of my hand! I practically begged the nurse to take it out, and after a while when I wasn't bleeding too badly, she did.

It took me a long time to return to reality. For days, my body didn't feel like my own. It felt a strange aching hollowness, not just in my stomach, but in my legs, my arms, my face when I touched it. When I washed my hair in the shower the first time it didn't feel like the hair was attached to my head. It was the most bizarre feeling.

But the baby! My baby! Of course he was become the center of the universe. I love the way he smells, the noises he makes, the way he looks around, his tiny curling fingers and toes. One night at the hospital I was walking him around, having a very serious conversation with him, and I told him, "I am going to love you for the rest of my life," and I was blown away by the truth of that. It is a once in a lifetime sort of thing, meeting a new person who you will love fiercely as long as you have life in your body.

Mommy and Will

Anyway, I will write more about Will later. And motherhood.