Considering that Jake was very much an unplanned pregnancy, things went relatively well. I’ll go ahead and admit it, I wasn’t ready to take on the yoke of motherhood. My husband and I had barely been married a year before we found out we were pregnant, and also I had some undiagnosed health problems at the time that really made a big impact on my pregnancy and the first year of Jake’s life. Things are more or less straightened out, and as I’m working to undo years of “bad living”, things are slowly getting better. But, I’m getting ahead of myself. We found out that I was expecting literally four days after I had accepted a new job. The company I was going to had the reputation of being overly family friendly, and when I told the HR representative I had been working with about it, she was more excited than I was. However, it was a very hard day on my first day to sit down face to face with my new manager and tell her that in approximately 6-7 months I would have to take a medical leave. On top of that, the company continues your benefits and paycheck….if you have been an employee for longer than a year. So I was staring a large chunk of time in the face where I would not have health insurance or income, not even any disability. However, I was grateful that I had a job, and more importantly that I would have one when I was ready to come back. So I didn’t complain too much, and the penny-pincher in me rejoiced at the opportunity to shine. I managed to stick back about $7k in approximately 5 months, and we were able to get all of us enrolled on my husband’s health insurance, which turned out to be a blessing.
On top of new job stresses, as well as my previously mentioned health problems (more on that later), when I was around 6 months pregnant, one of my urine tests at the OB office came back positive with protein content. That’s a red flag for pre-eclampsia (also known as toxemia), so I was sent home with a 24 hour test and told to bring it back in the next Monday. My test came back high, however it wasn’t high enough to put me in the actual “range” of the disease, so we went our merry way, but they did tell me they wanted me back in every two weeks from that point on. Two weeks later, I came in and my blood pressure was at 140/118. That’s VERY bad, if you don’t speak blood-pressurese. The bottom number should have been anywhere from 80-85 on me. It came down slightly by laying on my left side for about 10 minutes, however it wasn’t enough to make them happy, so I wound up being sent home to bed. So after crying my eyes out in the car, I stopped by my husband’s office to let him know and then went back to the office to tell my manager. It was another difficult conversation, and I’m sure it didn’t help my blood pressure any by having to have it.
So home I went, with instructions to lay down and only get up to use the bathroom and take a shower/brush my teeth. I will share this much with you about my time in bed. You only *think* you notice things that need doing around your house now. Just wait until you are in a position to where you absolutely *cannot* do anything at all, and then see what all you notice. We had just had the baby shower, and still had boxes and bags of baby stuff that all needed to be put together or washed and put away. And all I could do was stare at it from across the room on the couch. I went through nesting laying on my left side, fuming about all the things in my house that were absolutely filthy but I couldn’t do anything about. My mom came over some and cleaned for me, but I wanted to get on the kitchen floor with a toothbrush, and couldn’t. I am very surprised that I stayed sane during that time. I’ll also admit that I broke bed rest a great deal. DH fussed at me a lot because I would get up and go to the kitchen for a snack or a drink, but he was on the other end of the house and it was just a few steps to the kitchen from where I was. Plus, I’m a very independent person, and prefer to do things for myself. However, my little bouts of “shaking my fist” at the bed rest landed me only one thing. A three day weekend in the hospital hooked up to all kinds of fun equipment while they made sure that Jake was ok. When I got home, I was slightly more diligent about it, but I still broke it more than I should have.
So my days were spent watching every episode of “A Baby Story” that came on TLC. In addition to my daily hour of crying whenever the part came where the baby was born, I watched Emeril, What Not to Wear, Trading Spaces, and so on. I played on the computer some (thank you Blizzard for letting me in the WoW open beta), and chatted on AIM. All in all, I felt extremely worthless, and very bitter at this little jumping bean that had taken over every aspect of my life even before birth. And thus we were until the day after Thanksgiving. I had a scheduled appointment at the hospital for a non-stress test, and we went in, expecting to have that and then go home to leftover turkey and some R&R. We had a little surprise though, when we discovered through the test that I was having regular, albeit mild, contractions. I thought they were just Braxton Hicks, but they were too regular. They immediately checked me into labor and delivery and called my doctor. They tried administering some medication to stop the contractions, however interestingly enough it didn’t work. However, they did check for dilation, and I wasn’t dilated or effaced at all, so they decided to send me home with instructions to come back if the contractions got more intense. Fortunately they never did, Jake would have technically been a preemie at that time. He wasn’t due until January 1. At this point, I’m really foggy on when things happened. I know that it was right after the hospital stay that they told me they wanted to bring Jake early, but they wanted to wait until he was technically full term. They gave me a steroid shot at some point to help his lungs finish developing, and we scheduled the induction for December 8th.
With a finish line firmly in sight, you’d think I would have been happy. Instead, I was just flat out miserable. Things were pretty much ready at the house, my mom had helped me do Jake’s laundry and get it folded and put away. The room was ready, and we had all sorts of toys and things around. It was just a matter of waiting. We checked in the hospital around 6PM on December 7th, and things started going awry fairly early. It seems as though a clerical error was made and my paperwork did not get sent down to labor and delivery. Of course, it would be a crazy night and they were completely packed to the rafters. So I got to go sit in an uncomfortable waiting room chair for 3 hours while they got a room cleared out and ready. Also, I didn’t realize that my previous hospital visit had used up my preadmission, so I also had to sit in an uncomfortable office chair while they did the paperwork.
Finally at around 9, they came and took me back to a room. We did the usual routine, sexy hospital gown, IV, uncomfortable chair bed for DH, and so on. Around 10PM they came and applied the medication to ripen the cervix, and gave me a sleeping pill so I could sleep some. I don’t know why they did that, a nurse came in every couple of hours to check on me, so I didn’t get any sleep. The next morning, they started the induction and off we went on a jolly 12 hour ride. We made it fairly quickly to 3cm, and hit a brick wall. 3cm and absolutely zero effaced. For like 10 hours. Around 6, they came in to discuss options. Jake’s heart rate had started dropping some, and I wasn’t doing so hot either, so the decision was made to have a C-section done. I had already had the epidural earlier in the afternoon, so I was feeling pretty good at this point. They started pumping in all of the other drugs that a C-section requires, and off we were wheeled to the operating room. I won’t go into the gory details, it was quick, painless, and I remember everything and nothing all at the same time. I did cry, and Jake’s lungs were very well developed, compliments of the steroid shot. I was strangely ambivalent about the experience, which should have clued me in to something being wrong. But I chalked it up to the exhausting day and the fact I hadn’t slept any, and kept my mouth shut. Jake got all of his checkups done, and I got to hold him for a little while before they took him off to the nursery for the night. I requested that so I could get some sleep. Of course, because I had just gone through surgery, I didn’t get any sleep anyway because the nurses came in every hour on the hour to wake me up and check my vitals. So I probably should have just let him room in. You live, you learn.
By the next morning, I was feeling the lack of sleep and extremely cranky and tired. They brought Jake back the next morning, and we had the pre-requisite flood of family and friends. It was a good time, and Jake got passed around like a football. I also managed to get out of bed and go to the bathroom, which was a good thing. The next night, I sent Jake back to the nursery, and tried to get some sleep again. Didn’t happen, and the nurses started commenting on my lack of usage of the morphine drip. To be honest, I wasn’t impressed with it. I think I only clicked it about 8-9 times total. The pain pills they gave me did much better than the morphine, so I just stuck with those. I was still in my ambivalent state, and didn’t really care what all was going on around me. I just wanted it all over with so I could go home and recoup. That day I was able to get up and sit in the extremely uncomfortable rocking chair they had provided. But it was better than staying in the extremely uncomfortable bed, so I didn’t complain.
The women in my family have some kind of genetic thing that prevents us from breastfeeding, so I had already decided I would go with formula. It was a good thing I had already made up my mind, because when my milk did come in, it was so light I didn’t even have to use nursing pads. No engorgement, very little discomfort and only a slight amount of leakage. However, getting Jake to eat was a feat in itself. I didn’t have the first clue as to how to feed a baby, and neither did my husband. So we muddled through it as best we could, and finally a nurse showed me that I wasn’t putting the nipple in his mouth far enough, so he couldn’t get anything out. I felt so dumb.
That night, I decided to go ahead and let Jake room in so I’d have some kind of idea about what to expect when we got home. Probably a bad move on my part, as Jake had become accustomed to the craziness in the nursery (there was a real screamer in there that cried constantly, day and night), and he didn’t sleep at all. So when the nurses came at midnight to take him for a checkup, I was very grateful. They brought him back and we started all over again. Around 6AM they came to get him to give him a bath and let the pediatrician check him out so we could all be released. Again, I was very grateful, but by that point it was getting towards daylight, and we had to get packed and ready to go home. We managed to muddle through that day, and that night was the night from Hell. And when I say Hell, I mean seventh level, full on Hell. Jake didn’t sleep at all, and because DH had to go to work in the morning, I was on baby duty all night long. Needless to say, I was in tears by the time morning came, and all I could get out when DH came in the baby’s room was “MAKEHIMSLEEP*SOB*”. DH called in late to work to try to get me calmed down, and I knew my mom was coming over to help me out, so I did eventually get myself straightened out. Mom came over and handled Jake while I took a nice 3 hour nap that really didn’t make me feel any better.
And thus was our first month. The only place Jake seemed happy was in his swing, so he stayed there way more than he should. Besides that, he didn’t sleep, and threw up *constantly*. And when I say constantly, I mean that I’d feed him a bottle and he’d still be throwing it up 2-3 hours later. We tried every formula we could think of. My mom kept telling me to feed him some of the rice starch cereal, but I was too blinded by the “What to expect…” Nazi following that states a baby shouldn’t eat solids before 4 months of age, preferably 6. When he was a month old, I finally diagnosed him with Reflux, and called the pediatrician. They suggested the rice starch in the formula bit, and it made a load of difference. Jake had some issues with constipation due to the solids, but he threw up significantly less, and was generally a happier baby. Even better, he started sleeping better, and we were finally able to get him on a 3 hour feeding schedule. So Baby solid food Nazis, I thumb my nose at you all. By the time he was 2-3 months old, he had moved to a four hour feeding schedule and was only waking up 1-2 times per night.
I should have been very happy with this arrangement, however I was so dang tired, and just flat out depressed. I didn’t mention this at my 6 week postpartum visit, and when I hit rock bottom when Jake was around 3 months of age, DH made me promise I would schedule a visit with my doctor. I went in and just sat in his office and sobbed. They put me on an antidepressant, which helped a good deal, but it didn’t help my fatigue. I also developed insomnia, so when Jake finally slept through the night starting at around 4 months of age, I found I couldn’t do the same. I would go to bed around 9-10, and be up again from 1 until 4. Jake would get up around 6 for his breakfast, and I just couldn’t function. I was already back at work by this time, and my performance was horrid, I was falling asleep at my desk, and I couldn’t even complete the simplest of tasks. When Jake was around 6-7 months old, I went to our health office at work complaining of feeling ooky and looking to get my blood sugar checked. My blood sugar was ok, however my blood pressure was not, sitting at 140/115. So, off I went to the doctor again. This time, I went to see my mom’s doctor, who sat me down and we discussed a lot of things, from my depression, to my eating habits, to how well I was sleeping. She referred me to a sleep therapist, who sent me off to a sleep study. Through the sleep study, we discovered that I have sleep apnea, which causes a slew of problems, all of which I was having. Depression, lack of energy, poor work performance, high blood pressure, weight gain, and so on. I was able to get a C-PaP when Jake was about 9-10 months old, and since then life has taken on a whole new meaning.
I still have issues to work out, from overeating to my sugar addiction, but I am slowly working through things and I will get better. And I’m like any other mom, I have my bad days. But now, they’re just bad days in a sea of good days, and not “every day is a bad day” like they were. I sing to Jake in the car now, whereas before I wanted to drive off the road. I received an outstanding review this past January, as well as a promotion and a nice bonus at work. With DH in school and in a dead-end job, I can’t be a stay at home mom, so I’m trying to make the best of things as they are. Jake is in a wonderful daycare and is happy to be there every morning when I drop him off. Also, we are expecting again, due at the end of May. It’s going to be another boy, and I’m excited about it. People have even told me that I’m glowing with this pregnancy, which I was never told while I was pregnant with Jake. I really regret missing the first 9 months of Jake’s life due to my health problems, and I’m determined to make things right for both him and his little brother. I still have a long way to go, but I learn with each pothole and landmine I run across. I’m a mom, what else can I do? I know one thing. Make sure I have my C-PaP when we go in to have baby #2.
