Flashback Friday: Another Love Story

 (Johnny in the NICU, 1 day old)

 

***I am participating in Flashback Friday again this week.  If you would like to participate or visit the blog of the host of this weekly event, please visit Christopher & Tia.  They are really awesome, so take some time to look at some of their other blog posts as well!! :)  [Also, another warning: this is a longer post, though not as long as last week's Flashback Friday.  So be warned: this is a little lengthy too.  If you don't want to read it or don't have the time to, I won't be offended. :)  After this week, they will be back to the shorter posts again. I promise. :)]***

I'm sure I'm not the only mom out there that dreamed of a perfect pregnancy and had confident illusions that nothing would go wrong in labor.  Sure, I knew that a lot of things could go wrong during pregnancy or labor--and I was fearful of it--but I convinced myself that everything would go smoothly with my pregnancy and labor.  I mean, I had prepared for this...we had toured the hospital months in advance, we had taken the lamaze classes, I had spent hours upon hours researching the safety of baby items we wanted, I'd read What to Expect When You're Expecting cover to cover multiple times (and took notes), I'd gone to every check up, taken my prenatal vitamins, stayed away from caffeine, and read up about breastfeeding among many other things.  What could go wrong?  

After spending the first four months of my pregnancy with morning sickness that lasted throughout the day, every day, you would think that any illusions I had of a perfect pregnancy would have been shattered.  I was so elated about being pregnant, that I put up with the horrible morning sickness--even while still going to college full time--and I wasn't even upset about it.  Sure, I wished that I could have skipped the morning sickness all together...I would have even settled for only being sick in the mornings (at least I would have some relief for part of the day).  Once I had survived it all, I felt like this was a badge of pride and strength.  It was my battle scar, if you will.  I thought that would be the worst of it, and that I survived it so the rest of the pregnancy and labor would go smoothly.  I even found out that I was Rh- because of my blood type and I had to have shots to make sure it wouldn't affect future pregnancies (with miscarriages and such), and even then I still didn't waver in my absolute confidence that everything would go perfectly.  (Every person who has been pregnant is probably chuckling right now, because it is sort of like a wedding--you can plan all you want, but something always go differently than planned.  Trying to plan & control what happens with a pregnancy is like trying to harness the power of a hurricane.)

The rest of the pregnancy went fine for the most part (until the last few weeks); everything was great health-wise except for heartburn that "radiated my kneecaps" (as Juno so aptly described), but that only lasted until I was able to get on some heartburn medication.  I was able to finish my sophomore year of college, acing my classes, and still able to maneuver myself and the huge belly I was toting with me.  But then things began to unravel a little bit.  There was a pregnancy scare about six weeks before my due date (the day after my baby shower) which ended up being a horrible urinary tract infection that started to spread to my kidneys and the pain from the UTI caused the baby to start contractions.  It took the hospital two days to figure out what was wrong, which resulted in me being sent home prematurely in severe pain and puking from the contractions for an entire night until we had to go back to the hospital.  After that entire ordeal I believed that the worst was behind us and that I was prepared for anything that might happen when we went into labor.  Even after tests confirmed a couple of weeks before pregnancy that I was a carrier of Strep B (one in three women carry it and it can have serious consequences for the baby if not treated with antibiotics during labor), I still didn't think that anything could go any way except for what I had planned and envisioned since I found out I was pregnant.

We moved from an apartment into a house a month before our son was born and I had us completely unpacked within three days while my husband worked.  I had the baby's room put together and all of his clothes laundered and folded.  My hospital bag was packed.  I was already registered with the hospital.  We celebrated our first year wedding anniversary two weeks before our son was born and we got dressed up and went out for dinner even though I was hugely pregnant.  I survived the heat of July, waiting in anticipation of the baby.  I was prepared for the unexpected...or so I thought.  

I had an appointment on a Friday at the end of July (my due date) and my doctor told me that I was showing no signs of  going into labor and he suspected that I probably wouldn't go into labor for another week or so on my own.  So, instead of waiting for that happen, the doctor recommended that we schedule an induced labor on Tuesday since I was carrying a large baby and he was already concerned with the labor I was going to have (I was really slender).  So, we scheduled the inducement and went home.  The next day--Saturday--I find a little blood in my underwear and call the doctor to see if I should be worried; they want me to come in just in case.  I go to the hospital and they say that they don't think it could be the mucus plug, so I'm probably not in labor.  They send me home.  

Flash forward a few hours: we have two of my best friends (one was the maid of honor at our wedding and our son's godmother) over for dinner and board games.  In the middle of Scrabble, I start having contractions.  They aren't big ones and they are pretty far apart so I just continue playing the game as if nothing is going on.  That night, after our friends were gone, I start having horrible contractions about six minutes apart.  We call the hospital and they tell us to wait until they are closer together.  I spend the entire next day with contractions six minutes apart and so horrible that I would almost pass out every time it happened.  I ate a lot of watermelon that day because it was the only thing I could keep down and we had tons of it in the fridge.  That night I didn't get any sleep whatsoever and it got to the point that in the wee hours of Monday morning I was sobbing from the pain, so John called and told them we were coming in.  

We got to the hospital that Monday morning and I was finally able to get drugs after being in labor the entire weekend.  I was relieved.  I was already at four centimeters when I got there and by the afternoon I was at ten centimeters and ready to push. I ended up pushing for several hours.  I was exhausted from pushing and every time I pushed I would throw up.  Both my mom and John's mom were in the labor room and they were a big help because it was a team effort to rinse out the vomit dish and get me wet washcloths and hold my hand and coach me in pushing.  My son's head was really large and he had moved it in an odd angle before he started through the birth canal and I couldn't push him out on my own.  I was pushing so hard and I was so weak from throwing up that I was close to blacking out every time I pushed.  We were already an hour or so past the normal time frame for delivering vaginally.  My doctor was worried about the baby because every time I vomited and pushed, his heart rate would drop, and the longer he was in the birth canal, the longer he went with limited oxygen.  They had to put me on oxygen, which only made me even more sick.  A nurse who showed up near the end (the one that I didn't like in the least) kept pushing for a vacuum extraction, but that was one of the things I was adamantly opposed to.  My doctor ended up giving me an episiotomy as a last ditch effort to get the baby out, but he was seconds away from rushing me to emergency c-section.

I was determined to get this baby out, and I remember gathering strength from somewhere deep inside me, even though my body was wrecked physically and I just wanted to give up.  I just started pushing and pushing and didn't stop even when I started to see black.  And before I knew it my son had entered the world, screaming and bloody.  It was 8:10pm.  

Even after all that I had gone through, my thoughts immediately went to my son and I wanted to hold him.  It wasn't until some other nurses came over and took my son to the other side of the room and terms like the "NICU" and "problems" started being thrown around that I realized that they weren't going to let me hold my baby.  I wasn't going to get to hold him right away, place his naked little wrinkly body up against my bare chest and let him breastfeed right away, or have him room in with me at the hospital.  Something inside me just broke...I started sobbing uncontrollably and I was afraid and nobody was telling me what was wrong.  Everything that I had feared and told myself wouldn't happen was happening.  I knew that it was possible that breastfeeding might be difficult at first or that labor might be worse than I had expected, but never did I consider that my baby would have to go to the NICU.  

After they checked him out and put oxygen on him (I was finally able to stop taking the oxygen once I was done pushing) I was able to finally hold my baby for the first time.  He looked up at me with these adorable little eyes, and I cried.  John cried.  We all were finally together; our little family.  But it didn't last longer than a minute before they had to transport Johnny to the NICU for observation.  He had gone too long with limited oxygen supply and they suspected he might have gotten an infection (possibly from the Strep B) from being in the birth canal so long after they broke my water.  I was terrified for either John or me to be separated from Johnny in the hospital (too many horror stories about children being mixed up or stolen), so John went with Johnny to the NICU.  The only thing that kept me at ease was that John was able to carry him there, so I knew Johnny wasn't in any serious danger.  

 

 

The next several hours were the longest hours of my life.  I had prayers of joy and prayers of desperation and fear streaming through my mind and heart.  My mother-in-law left with John to the NICU and my mom went to the waiting room to let all of my many family members the good news.  I was left with the doctor while he removed the placenta and stitched me up.  I couldn't help but feel devastated--I had given birth to my baby and my arms were empty.  My arms were empty  when they should have been holding my 8 lb 1 oz baby boy in my arms, breastfeeding him and telling him how much I loved him.  After I was stitched up they transported me to the room I would be staying in...we passed my family on the way and I was shaking uncontrollably from the medications I was under.  They put me in a room for the moms that don't have their baby stay with them--it didn't do much to make me feel better.  The nurses wouldn't let me go up to the NICU to see my son until the epidural wore off (as if they couldn't have wheeled me up in a wheelchair).  So I had to wait a few hours in my room while my husband was up in the NICU with my son.  I was emotional--a combination of the exhaustion, medications, and not having my son with me.  The nurses wouldn't give me updates on my son, so I had no idea what was going on until my husband was finally able to call me.  Once I knew that Johnny was going to be fine--he just had to stay in the NICU for a little bit on antibiotics and to be monitored--I started to feel better.  My mom stayed with me and my two friends that had been there playing board games with us when I went into labor came to visit me.  They brought me a card and a giant sized box of Junior Mints (my favorite candy), which was incredibly thoughtful...and seriously the only thing I had to eat since the previous evening (which was watermelon...that I had been living on for a couple of days) and the nurses didn't end up getting me anything to eat until the next morning since the kitchen was already closed.  I was famished and exhausted, but on a sort of high from meeting my son finally and wanting to hold him again, so it didn't really phase me.  

It wasn't until a little after midnight that night--four hours after my son was born--that I was able to finally go and visit my son in the NICU.  My mom and two friends wheeled me up to the NICU, and I went in by myself to begin with.  The NICU had rules that only two people could come in at a time to visit Johnny and one had to be a parent.  I went in and spent some time getting to know my son and memorizing his face.  I tried to breastfeed him, but wasn't entirely successful because he wasn't hungry since he was hooked up to IVs that were giving him nutrients and food.  It was pitiful to see him hooked up to all the wires and monitors and know that I had failed him and that was why he had ended up in the NICU.  I should have been able to get him out sooner so he wouldn't have ended up there, and wouldn't have a horrible squishy bruise on the top of his head where his head was being pushed against my pelvic bone for hours.  

 

(I am trying to get him to drink breast milk from a bottle since he wasn't latching on)

 

 

 (Protecting our son while I was waiting for my epidural to wear off)

 

After a little while of just the three of us, John left so my mom could come in.  She was able to hold her grandson for the first time.  After her, both my friends came in and held Johnny.  It was great to let them hold him and meet little Johnny.  After they left we tried to spend as much time as we could with them, but finally the nurses told me I needed to go back to my room and get rest.  It took a lot of effort, but I was able to put him down and go back to my room.  I woke up really early and went up to the NICU as soon as the nurses would allow me (I ended up having an awesome day nurse who let me go visit Johnny all day and a horrible night nurse who was very unpleasant).  I spent the next couple of days visiting my son every chance I could and working as hard as I could to breastfeed, but not getting much of anywhere since he wasn't hungry.  Many many family and friends came to visit and we spent a lot of time taking them back one at a time to meet little Johnny.  

Johnny ended up staying in the NICU for four days.  All the nurses there fell in love with him, partly because he was cute and I think a little bit because I think it was not all that common to have a baby that wasn't really really tiny and fighting for their lives in the NICU.  Every time I visited the NICU, I became more and more grateful for the healthy baby that I did have when there was so much heartache in the rest of the NICU.  Johnny shared a room with a baby that was born at twenty weeks or something like that...she had been in there for six months and was the size of a cell phone.  They were dressing her in barbie clothes.  The baby's mom and big sister were there every day for several hours visiting her and the prognosis was looking good, but it was clear that the family had already been through a lot and their struggle wasn't anywhere near over.  It wasn't hard to feel a little selfish at times like that, because I had overreacted.  At the end of the day, my son was healthy and full-term and would be coming home with me in four days.  Not everybody there was that lucky.  I thank God every day for the gift he gave me.  

The night before Johnny got to go home, we were moved from my room to a room-in room for parents that are about to take home their child.  It is a little room with two beds and a sink inside the NICU where you take care of your baby without any of the wires or monitors and the nurse comes in a couple of times during the night to monitor the baby and make sure they are responding well and will be able to go home.  It wasn't ideal for our first night with our son, but we were thrilled to finally be able to take care of him and hold him without having to be within a foot of his monitors because he had needles in his arms.  The next day we were finally able to bring our little boy home.  He was happy and healthy.  He pretty much started sleeping through the night the second night we were home with him.  I had some problems healing, and ended up bleeding and not being able to sit comfortably for several weeks after he was born.  

Breastfeeding, like my labor, didn't go as planned either.  I struggled and struggled with it.  I had a lot of setbacks since we lost out on four days of learning to breastfeed naturally.  We visited a lactation consultant several times, to no true avail.  Johnny routinely went from having latching problems to falling asleep after a minute of breastfeeding.  I produced enough milk for three or four babies and it would gush all over him when he breastfeed.  He would be drenched it, the towels and boppy pillow would be drenched, I leaked through layers of pads and through my shirt while in public.  My breasts never stopped leaking milk.  Our house smelled of breast milk.  Our freezer was filled to the brim with breast milk and it was getting more and more frustrating with some intermittent days where things would go fine and I would get my hopes up that it would finally sink in for Johnny.  It never got to the point where I could breastfeed him exclusively and not pump.  I breastfed and pumped milk for six weeks (a lot of those weeks were spent in a hospital when my dad and other family members went in for heart-related surgeries).  I ended up getting mastitis in both breasts at week six and never really recovered from the impact it had on breastfeeding.  In the end, I was just thankful that I got the first six weeks of breast milk for my son (plus what was in the freezer) so he could have the antibodies they get in the first six weeks.  Ideally I would have breastfed until he was ready to be weaned, but like everything else in my pregnancy, labor, and afterward, the unexpected seemed to happen.  I feel like one of my greatest failures was that I had to eventually feed him formula.  

 

 (Johnny in the room-in family room the night before we took him home)

 

I have been through some tough times and stressful times since my son was born two and a half years ago.  I went back to school when my son was one month old for my junior year of college, which added a lot of stress.  Luckily I was able to not have to put him in daycare until he was one, but it was still hard to be away from him a few hours every day.  In the end the sacrifices were worth it because I ended up graduating summa cum laude from college with my B.A. on time, with no setbacks from having a baby.  We had other rough times too.  I missed the first time he rolled over--during the only time I have ever slept away from him.  He has terrified me on several occasions when he has fallen on his head.  But we have had a lot of great times too.  :)  When he says "mama" and gives me kisses, my entire world lights up.  He is my everything and I am forever thankful to God for giving me such an amazing gift. Even on days when my son turns into the Terrible Two and throws tantrums and I am at my wits end, he is still the little boy that I have loved and protected since he was inside me.  He is both the greatest and most stressful thing that has ever happened to me, but I wouldn't change it for the world.  I wouldn't change any of it.  It happened how it happened for a reason; I think everything I went through in order to meet him helped to make me stronger, more confident, and more capable to be the kind of mommy he needed and still needs.   Sometimes we can prepare and prepare and the outcome is still beyond our control; and sometimes the unexpected can be the best gift of all.  My son is a constant reminder of that.  He has given me more faith than I was ever able to achieve on my own.  He completes me in ways that make me question how I ever could have thought my life was whole without him in it.  

I love you, Johnny.