Comments (5)

By Sandy, May 10, 2012

As someone who is/was a believer in natural childbirth, it’s challenging for me to write up my “birth” stories, when in some ways, I didn’t really “give birth.” I lay on an operating table numb from the waist down while doctors sliced me open and extracted my babies.

Don’t get me wrong, both of my c-sections were joyous occasions in their own special way. I am deeply and profoundly grateful for the amazing doctors and nurses who helped us bring our children into the world, and for Darin, who was able to take a more active role in his children’s first hours in a way that he wouldn’t have if I had home births.

Oscar and Aria’s birth stories are worth telling. They are just not the stories I expected to tell when we first set about building a family.

I discovered the idea of home birth when one of my best friends, Colleen, told me that she had two of her children at home, with the help of local midwives here in Flagstaff. Her stories of her births were so amazing, I was immediately hooked, and promised myself I would have a home birth with a midwife whenever I got pregnant. In the years after Colleen shared her story, I had other good friends who had home births. My friend Maya had her daughter at home, and when we had dinner one night at our friends’ Mark and Julie’s house, we got to hear the story of their two home births. I was mesmerized by Mark’s description of catching their daughter, and how she opened her eyes and looked at him before she was completely delivered. I was seduced by the idea of Darin being the first one to see and touch our babies, rather than a doctor, and having them be born in our home, instead of in a bright, cheerless, cold, impersonal hospital.

When I was pregnant with Oscar we did all of our prenatal care with Woman Care Midwifery here in Flagstaff. It was a wonderful experience, very intimate, and nothing at all like seeing a doctor. Their office was cozy and decorated like a house, and they spent a great deal of time with us, discussing all kinds of things like pregnancy, birth, nutrition, breastfeeding, etc. Despite the outcome of Oscar’s birth, I am grateful that we had that experience.

Oscar ended up being breech, which we discovered at my 38 week appointment. After two harrowing days of trying to turn him (yoga postures, acupuncture, moxabustion, homeopathic remedies, and an external cephalic version at the hospital) I went into labor and ended up with a c-section. I was thrilled to meet my son Oscar, but devastated at losing my home birth, and spent much of my recovery crying and dealing with that disappointment.

Seeing Oscar for the first time:

When I got pregnant with Aria I knew that I faced three equally unappealing choices for birth. A scheduled c-section at FMC, a VBAC in Phoenix, or a UC (unattended childbirth is something I would never have considered attempting). After some research I made the decision to have a scheduled repeat c-section. Not something I feel like I “elected” to do, although it says that in my medical records.

Yet Aria’s birth day was lovely. As we drove to the hospital at 5:00 in the morning the sun was just starting to come up, and Flagstaff was quiet and still, bathed in blue light. I felt a sense of peace about the upcoming birth. Not only because I knew what to expect this time around, but also because I felt like I had finally reached a place where I could let go of the idea of natural childbirth. Somehow, as I thought of my son and daughter and what they meant to me, I realized it didn’t matter anymore. My desire for a home birth suddenly felt like a distant memory, the way we feel about a friendship we had as a child. There might be some nostalgia, some bittersweet memories, but mostly there is the sense of distance, that we have grown up and moved on and we are not the same person we were back then. In the years since Oscar’s birth I’ve met women who will never get to experience pregnancy, who have lost their babies, and who have babies struggling to survive in the NICU. I realized that birth is no longer a defining moment for me. I just wanted Aria in my arms.

Seeing Aria for the first time:

The c-section went well. The staff were warm and friendly and funny this time around, whereas with Oscar’s birth things had been a little more rushed and grim. We had medical students and student nurses present this time, which was surprisingly rewarding, and I thought about how much I love being a teacher. Now I was getting to use my body and my birth as a teaching experience. Most of the students had never seen a c-section, and in a strange way I felt like I was giving them a gift.

These are the things that are burned into my memory: joking with the nurses about “C-Section, the Musical,” the kindness of the surgical team, seeing Aria’s face for the first time, watching Darin hold Aria in the OR while they sewed me up, and nursing her in the recovery room, skin-to-skin and covered with warm blankets, the lights dimmed, and my sweet daughter in my arms.

My children were not born naturally or at home, but their birth stories belong to them, and just like Oscar and Aria, they are perfect and unique. I may not having “given birth” to my children, but I gave them life.

Comments (7)

By Sandy, December 7, 2011

It’s not because I’m losing. There are no winners: someone out there will always do it better than you, women who breastfeed longer, whose children walk and talk earlier, women who serve more organic vegetables, and women who have a more amazing birth story than yours.

Frankly, I don’t really like much of the competition. I find that the harshest critics of mothers are…other mothers.

Before Oscar was born, and for the first six months of his life or so, I started reading parenting forums, which are largely populated by upper middle-class, white, stay-at-home moms. Yes, there are exceptions to this rule, but that was the majority of who I was interacting with on these forums. These holier-than-thou sanctimonious women have nothing better to do than troll the internet looking for hapless moms asking honest questions about breastfeeding difficulties, formula, babyfood, diapers, cribs and carseats. God forbid a woman asks about the best formula for supplementing breastmilk, the safest crib, vaccines, or whether or not she should have an epidural. These women might as well be asking for permission to smoke crack during pregnancy. Because, you know, formula = crack, cribs are prisons, and pureed baby food will turn us all into a bunch of obese mutants plugged into the Matrix. Don’t even think about vaccines; you might as well hand your child a box of rat poison.

When I was a student in public school there was always a roving band of queen bees on campus who took enormous pleasure in smacking down the lesser girls. The ugly girls, the plain girls, the overweight girls, the girls who couldn’t afford Guess t-shirts and Nike shoes, the girls who didn’t wear their bangs just right. I got cornered by the queen bees a few times, and luckily escaped with few scars. But when I graduated from high school I breathed a sigh of relief that I would never have to deal with the queen bees again. And that was true…until I became pregnant. Then I found out that the queen bees are alive and well, on parenting forums and mommy blogs.

I got smacked around recently on a parenting forum I frequent, because I mentioned that I turned my son from rear-facing to forward-facing in his car seat at fifteen months, when he reached the weight requirement for his rear-facing seat. The current AAP recommendation is to keep babies rear-facing until age two, and most new car seats accommodate this recommendation. I do plan to follow this the second time around. However, there are many women who angrily insist that every child should be kept rear-facing until at least age four, and quite of few who go beyond even that. I made the mistake of saying that while I respect that personal choice, all children, parents, and family situations are different. I was told, repeatedly, that this is not a parenting issue. It’s about safety. OK, maybe, but you could make the same argument about buying a $500 Britax car seat, an expensive new car with top-of-the-line safety features, keeping your kids inside at all times, or not letting your child lick the shopping cart. If there is one important thing I’ve learned as a parent, it’s that you cannot, under any circumstances, keep your child safe from harm all the time. To do so is to prevent life from happening, and it doesn’t work anyway, no matter how hard you try. You can be safe, you can use common sense of course, but you can’t cheat death.

Rather than simply saying, “I think you’re wrong,” or “I disagree,” multiple women told me I was an idiot, an asshat, dangerous, and ridiculous. That’s right, these words from fellow mothers, women who don’t know me, don’t know my son, don’t know my family, and don’t know anything about how I live my life. From women who don’t know that I’m struggling with a complicated pregnancy, that I work full-time at a stressful job, that I have problems and fears and struggles. I will never, ever begin to fathom why people treat each other the way they do.

This was, of course, not the first time I’ve been smacked around on parenting forums. I’ve also made the mistake of mentioning that I’ve used a Snugli, that I pumped milk and bottle-fed my son at three weeks, that I selectively vaccinate, that I chose to get a flu shot while pregnant, that I will be having a repeat c-section.

So now I’m done. I was starting to get bored with parenting advice anyway. You begin to realize, after being a parent for awhile, that there is a tremendous amount of conflicting advice out there, and sometimes you just have to go with your gut and do what works best for your child and your family. They won’t miss me and I won’t miss them. While I know that some women enjoy parenting forums and take pleasure in visiting them, I think we would all be better off without the judgment, the snark, the one-upmanship, and the self-congratulatory “advice.” I much prefer spending my time online reading blogs about writers and writing, whose authors and community are the most supportive and interesting people I’ve encountered on the web. I also enjoy a small community of infertility bloggers, women who are so desperate to have children, and so grateful to be pregnant, that they would never dream of questioning anyone’s parenting decisions.

“Fear less, hope more; Eat less, chew more; Whine less, breathe more; Talk less, say more; Love more, and all good things will be yours.”   ~A Swedish Proverb

Comments (6)

By Sandy, November 29, 2011

Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.  ~Benjamin Franklin

I’ve always hated that quote.

It sounds so bossy and goody goody to me. I’ve never been a morning person. Night, when everyone has gone to bed, has always been my time, a time to read, reflect, and rest. I always get my second wind around 10:00 or 11:00 P.M. One of the reasons I went into academia was the possibility of setting my own hours, not being chained to the routine of 8:00-5:00. Because if there is anything I hate more than getting up early, it’s having to get dressed and drive somewhere early.

Recently, I’ve decided to revisit the possibility of getting up earlier. For me, it’s a process of trial and error. I’m finding that I absolutely love getting up at around 7:00, and I’m going to experiment with 6:30. For those of you who have to get up earlier than this for work, I sympathize and apologize if my quaint resolution fills you rage. I offer you this consolation: as a teacher my work is never done. There is always a pile of papers to grade or another class to prep. My inbox is always packed with student emails and advising questions. These things press on me even after I get home from teaching. I often fantasize about having a job that has no homework. A flexible schedule is nice, but it also comes with a price.

6:00 or 6:30 is my ultimate goal, because this will give me about two hours of solid writing time before Oscar gets up. This morning I got up at 6:55 and wrote nonstop for an hour. It was an astonishingly productive time.

Steve Pavlina recommends 5:00 A.M., as do many other self-help gurus, but I find that getting up too early ruins me for the rest of the day. I’m completely exhausted from about 10:00 A.M. on and can barely keep my eyes open after supper. So far, 6:30 is great. I haven’t pushed myself to get up at 6:00 yet, but I will. That, however, will be as early as I go.

I changed my mind for a variety of reasons. Most of the successful writers I know get up before their children. Sylvia Plath called it “the blue hour.” She wrote her best poems between 4:00 and 8:00 A.M. I can see why. I have found that this is really the only time when I can write without interruption, and constant interruption is death to good writing.

There’s another quote from Benjamin Franklin about the early morning. This one I like:

The early morning has gold in its mouth.

Comments (2)

By Sandy, November 16, 2011

Sixteen weeks! Every week feels like a huge celebration to me, especially because after a stressful first trimester (spotting, bleeding, cramping, and three ultrasounds to confirm viability) I never thought we’d make it this far. Our journey to create a family over the last five years has not been easy, and someday I might write about all of those ups and downs, but today I am simply happy.

Happy. Exhausted. Elated. Nervous. Queasy.

The best development over the past week has been movement. Just little pings and squiggles. I remember these first little movements from my pregnancy with Oscar, and how strange and miraculous it was to feel something alive and moving in my belly. Before that, pregnancy seemed so abstract. With Oscar I didn’t feel any of this until around week twenty, but this is my second pregnancy and I’ve heard you feel movement sooner the second time. Also, Oscar had an anterior placenta, which masks some of the early movements until the baby is bigger.

Early movement is not the only difference between this pregnancy and the last one. I am also experiencing horrible morning sickness. The first trimester was brutal. With Oscar I spent the first trimester on the couch watching the summer Olympics. This time around I’ve been working, teaching, traveling to see student teachers, trying to write a book, and raising a toddler. I was hoping to be past the worst of it after the first trimester was over, but afternoons and evenings can still be torture.

Many people have asked me if I have a preference for a boy or girl, and I can honestly say I don’t. I felt this way with Oscar too. It’s hard to have a preference when you’ve been faced with the possibility of not having a child at all.

One of the best things about this pregnancy is imaging Oscar as a big brother. He loves kids so much and I know he’s going to be a wonderful brother, in the same way that he is a wonderful son. Funny, interested, and loving. He’s already somewhat aware of the baby, but how much he understands is beyond me. Sometimes he spontaneously greets the baby or hugs it or kisses it. I’m sure when I start showing a little more, and he can feel the baby moving, it will be more real to him.