Now the story of Skimbleshanks’s birth is quite a bit different than my own. Ed and I had to travel a long, bumpy road before I became pregnant. In fact, the fertility expert we’d seen first had spent a lot of time and a lot of our money only to announce that he didn’t know what the problem was, maybe my eggs were “bad,” and that the next step was IVF.
“No, it isn’t,” I said. “You’ve spent all our money, so our next step will be adoption.” You could say that I was angry and bitter at that particular point in my life.
After I’d attended a presentation on adoption, during which the presenter said in an offhand way that adopters could expect to spend about $20,000 before they were done, I was devastated. I asked the presenter how people went about getting that kind of money. She said that many ask friends and relatives, that they got the money “somehow.” Yeah, right. After going through the expense and heartache of infertility treatments, I wasn’t about to leap into the deeper waters of debt. Nothing like welcoming a new child into your life and worrying about the enormity of the debt you’d incurred to make it happen.
At the time I worked at the state’s medical society, where, among other things, I was the managing editor of it’s monthly journal. The editor, Wayne Martz, was a retired family doctor. Kind and thoughtful, he said that he would be willing to be a reference for Ed and me if we pursued adoption. However, he said, a new fertility doc was coming to Delaware, and he urged me to see him first.
With a heavy heart, I made an appointment to see this new guy. With his move to Delaware, it meant that Delaware now had a grand total of two fertility docs.
Without going into a lot of grisly detail, after only five cycles, I was pregnant. I remember hanging up the phone, not really believing that the test was accurate, not really believing the “yes” answer I’d heard not once, but twice.
Ed was home from work that day with an upset stomach. I called him from the office once I had it to myself (these were the days before everyone had cell phones).
“Soon both of us will be puking,” was pretty much how I broke the news to him that we were finally going to be parents. Classy, right?
The pregnancy was pretty uneventful. However, since I would be 35 by the time I gave birth, I was considered to be of “advanced maternal age” and so needed to be watched. I had ultrasounds out the wazoo, it felt like. The first, to detect the fetal heartbeat, was very cool. The next, to check the position of the embryo, was not so cool. This ultrasound had to be done while I had a full bladder. By itself, that’s not such a big deal. What made it a big deal was that the technician had to press on my abdomen in several places to get accurate readings. After begging to be allowed to pee, the tech said that I could, but just a little. Really? Is that even possible? I nearly had tears of pain in my eyes by the time she was done and had stumbled across the hall to the bathroom.
The end result was a black-and-white ultrasound picture of what looked like a lima bean or a peanut. I was still in denial that I was pregnant, despite the peanut picture and despite feeling a bit more tired than usual and having tender breasts.
After another month or two, I was coming home from work, taking a nap, eating dinner, then going to bed. Saying I was tired was an understatement. It still beat the pants off puking morning, noon, and night like some women do when they’re pregnant.
At Christmastime that year (1994) I remember wallpapering what was to be the baby’s room. I went up and down the stepladder and hung the pastel-striped paper while accompanied by the lovely Christmas music sung by the Cambridge choir on NPR.
Late in my pregnancy I developed edema. As a child, I remember seeing elderly women with legs like sausages, their puffy feet stuffed into sensible shoes. This is what I looked like. When I walked without shoes, the flesh on the top of my feet actually vibrated with each step. I bought a pair of sneakers and wore them with the laces as loose as I could make them. At work I tried to keep my feet elevated, which translated to
At my next doctor’s appointment, I was told that, from that point until I delivered, I was on bed rest. Boom. Just like that.
Now on bed rest (meaning: stay supine except for trips to the bathroom), I thought about all the things I could finally get done. Unfortunately, most of those things required being perpendicular.
At my next prenatal visit, I mentioned to the doctor that the baby didn’t seem to be moving much. About the only thing I can remember that resulted from that was my having to pee in a large plastic container for 24 hours, then bring it in to the hospital. Now peeing while squatting is kind of a challenge. Try doing it while you can’t see what you’re peeing into because of a huge belly. Try balancing while an ungodly amount of weight has thrown off your center of gravity. Go on. I’ll wait.
So my mother took me to the hospital, bucket o’ pee in tow. After taking me back, I had yet another ultrasound. Once I’d
essed, I was ushered into a doctor’s office. He told me that he was concerned because the amount of amniotic fluid was pretty low. He said that they’d need to induce me.
“What? Now?”
“Yes. We’ll admit you now and begin the induction.”
“So I can just go home and get my bag and come back, right?”
[crickets chirping]
“You’re not going to let me go, are you.”
“No.”
“Well, can I at least call my husband?”
“Yes. You can use my phone.” (I think he said this because he was afraid I was going to bolt.”
“Ed? We’re going to have a baby.”
“Uh, yeah. I’m aware of that.”
“No. I mean we’re going to have a baby today or tomorrow. They’re keeping me here. They’re going to induce me.”
[crickets chirping]
“Ed?”
“Yeah … Do I need to come?”
“No, I think we have some time.”
I was admitted at around noon on January 20, 1995. My baby’s due date was February 19. Was I scared? You bet your ass I was. But I had my mother there, and she was on the case. She stayed for a bit, then left once Ed arrived, McDonald’s bag in hand. Since I was now a patient, I wasn’t permitted to eat anything. At that point, I would have eaten the McDonald’s bag, I was so hungry.
I was hooked up to a fetal monitor, which was a big elastic strap that went all the way around my belly, and an automatic blood pressure cuff. I was exhausted and slept pretty well, considering that I was in a hospital.
The next morning one of the nurses was looking at the paper readout from the overnight monitoring.
“Wow!” I said with amazement. “Look at those contractions! I slept right through them.” I was pretty excited at the thought that contractions that looked like an outline of the Rocky Mountains could be slept through. Labor and delivery were going to be a breeze.
The nurse looked at me and laughed.
“Those aren’t contractions,” she said. “You were snoring. Boy, you were really sawing lumber!” She was grinning. I was not.
Saturday was a long and hungry day. Sometime that day I was hooked up to a pitocin drip to get labor underway. My doctor stopped by to check on me and decided to rupture the amniotic sac, such as it was, and insert some sort of catheter. Fortunately for him, he was sitting on my slippered foot. He did something that really hurt, and in an almost literal knee-jerk reaction, I tried to kick him.
I spent a few hours walking up and down an unlit corridor that had boxes and extra equipment pushed up alongside the walls. Ed was there to lend moral support, and we must have made an interesting sight: me with my gown, hospital slippers, and IV pole, him in his wheelchair.
At dinnertime, a wonderful nurse with a Scots accent gave me a “clear tray” (broth, tea, and jello), which I inhaled. A little while later she came in with another tray. She said in a hesitant voice that another mother on the floor had been given the tray but didn’t want it. Would I like to have it?
Would I?! I inhaled that tray, too, bless her heart.
After they’d cranked up the Pitocin to 11, things started to happen. Labor pain, which had been described to me as being like cramps, started in earnest. Let’s see if I can make an accurate comparison. Labor pain is to cramps like the hulk is to a preschooler dressed up like the hulk. It wasn’t a lot of fun, and it went on and on and on.
Finally I’d had enough and asked for an epidural. Now this was the one thing about labor/delivery that had me scared shitless. The idea of someone inserting a needle anywhere near my spine was enough to make me pissless, too.
The doctor who was to give me the epidural finally showed up late … and cranky, too. I was not comforted as she wheeled in a Sears tool cart.
“Are you going to pull out a monkey wrench and whack me over the head with it?” I asked in a futile bid to get some sort of human reaction from her.
I finally cried. I was curled up in the fetal position on my side with a humorless doctor about to stab my spine with a needle. I was tired. I was hungry. I was done. Ed did his best to comfort me.
It wasn’t too bad, all things considered. She ran medical tape over the tiny epidural tube from my lower back all the way up to the back of my neck.
My doctor came back and removed the catheter, and then things really began to happen. He positioned himself at the foot of the bed, just inches in front of the wall. Interestingly, the wall had a chair rail, and the rail was gouged and scarred. Ed joked that that must have been where the babies who delivered quickly landed. Har har.
Once the doctor said I could push, I pushed once, twice, three times, and the baby came out. I am not making this up.
“Do you want to cut the cord?” the doctor asked Ed.
“No. That’s what we’re paying you for.”
The baby boy was wrapped up and put in my arms. I’d never before held such a tiny infant. Skimbleshanks was 5 pounds and some ounces — tiny, but perfect. He began to fuss a bit. I wasn’t at all sure what to do.
“Don’t cry, baby,” I said. And his little face turned up toward mine and he calmed down, just like that.
They had to take him out of the room to take his stats, and I told Ed not to take his eyes off our baby. When they came back, Ed told me that Skimbleshanks had just missed the physician who was weighing him when he let loose an impressive stream of pee.
“That’s my boy!” Ed said.
The doctor who had taken care of all the testing, weighing, and measuring came back in the room with a Polaroid photograph of my newborn and gave it to me. I was going to be taking it, not my baby, to my room with me. Skimbleshanks was headed to the NICU for monitoring.
At some ungodly hour I was wheeled into an unoccupied room, clutching my photograph, and helped into bed. Shortly after that, a middle-aged nurse wheeled in what looked like a sump pump.
“You’re breast feeding?”
“Uh, yeah. I plan to.”
She pointed to buttons, knobs, and tubes, gave vague instructions, then left. What followed was a short, painful, embarrassing exercise in futility. My baby was a month early. I was exhausted. I was clueless.
The next day I visited Skimbleshanks after scrubbing in in the NICU. I later learned that my mother and father had each been in for a visit, too, after they’d been to see me.
The concern the doctors had was that Skimbleshanks's lungs hadn’t fully developed and he was straining just a bit to breathe. He was released from the NICU the next day, so it was all good.
I’d been told that the pediatrician would be arriving that day to circumcise Skimbleshanks, but I was still surprised that she was there so early. I put on my robe and, at the nurse’s suggestion, went for a stroll.
I came back early to hear my baby crying and caught a glimpse of his little body strapped down onto the hard plastic snipping tray-like thing they use. In tears, I went into my room and sat down to have breakfast. When I lifted the lid from my plate, I saw a couple of anemic pancakes and two tiny wrinkled sausages. Naturally, that reminded me of what was going on in the next room, and I slammed the lid down. Then I took it off, because I was starving. I snuffled and cried as I ate everything on the plate.
That evening my sister-in-law, a postpartum nurse, arrived. She asked if I’d tried nursing Skimbleshanks yet, and I told her I had no clue what I was doing. She said she’d help me, then hesitated and said it meant she had to touch me. It wasn’t possible at that point for me to care any less about who touched me where, as long as it meant that my baby was going to live. (Note: Foreshadowing for my future postpartum depression.)
So she helped me, Skimbleshanks nursed, and then Jan held him to burp him. He yapped up some of the colostrum and, again with the drama, I was devastated. Jan reassured me that he was fine and would be fine. Then she said to rest.
I must have dozed off, because when I woke, I heard my baby crying in the next room. To me, it sounded like someone was hurting him. Adrenaline pumping, fists clenched, I stomped through the door and saw a nurse holding my child.
“What are you doing?” I said in a menacing voice. I was ready to cold-cock the woman with severe prejudice.
Jan turned around, smiled at me, and said that she was giving him a bath.
I took a breath. Then another one. Man, so that was what people meant when they talked about the mothering instinct kicking in. There I was, ready to punch someone in the face just because I thought she was hurting my newborn.
The same thing happened when Ed, Skimbleshanks, and I came home. My mother was waiting at the door and barely let me come in before she had her new grandson out of his car seat and into her arms.
Mom told Ed and me to just go to bed and rest and that she’d take care of everything. So we fell into bed, but I couldn’t fall asleep, even though I fully expected to pass out the moment I was horizontal.
Skimbleshanks cried. Then he cried some more.
I was out of bed like a shot.
“What are you doing to him?!” I said to my mother, nearly in a panic.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she said. “I’m just changing him. Go back to bed.”
I did, wondering why I was acting like a lunatic. My mother was the only person in the world, other than myself (and even Ed) who I’d trust with my baby, and there I was, ready to throw down with her. Yet another clue that my hormones were totally off the rails.
If it hadn’t been for my mother’s help, I’m pretty sure that I would have spent some time in the hospital for regrooving. Not only was I not eating, I seemed incapable of even the simplest of tasks, like brushing my teeth and unloading the dishwasher.
Buddha bless my mother. She’d made arrangements to have a place to call home here on the East Coast when I let her know that I was expecting. Those first few weeks she’d arrive at my home by about 9, and I could collapse, knowing that she’d take care of both the baby and my tender sanity. She brought order and warmth to an environment that felt alien to me and eased me into my new role as the mother of a newborn. I’d never had any experience with infants, so every peep and burble was cause for alarm, as far as I was concerned. Add to that the uncertainty of caring for a premature infant, and I was toast.
I’d decided early in my pregnancy that I would breast feed. After delivering prematurely and after a horrendous two-day induction, I was convinced that if my baby wasn’t nursed, he would die. (Again, a clue that my mental well-being was off kilter.) Because Skimbleshanks was a preemie, he had real trouble learning how to nurse, just as I was having trouble nursing him. So I rented a breast pump and doggedly pumped several times a day for about six weeks.
Pumping was awful. First, I wasn’t eating or drinking nearly enough to make pumping easy. Second, I felt a sense of despair every time I sat down to pump. If all were well, I reasoned, I’d be able to nurse my baby, rather than having my mother feed him my breastmilk from a bottle. Woe woe!
