Jacob’s Birth Story

10/17/2001

· Born at St. Mark’s Hospital - October 17, 2001 7:47p.m. - 8lbs 12oz, 20? long ·

Pregnancy Prologue
I dreamed of pregnancy and motherhood during my baby sitting years. I found the images of women with swollen bellies and ripe breasts irresistibly romantic. While shopping with friends in college, I remember lifting a plastic molded form from the inside of a maternity shirt display at Target® and sliding it inside the front of my shirt. I walked around the store, caressing my plastic pregnant belly wondering what it would really be like and how it would feel.

Eric and I were married September 1, 2000. I was the ripe old maidish age of twenty - whopping - four which is abominably ancient in my culture. Eric was nearly dead at 26. Our relatives breathed a collective sigh of relief when we found ourselves pregnant in January,
2001. Eric was a little nervous and worried about all things financial, but I was over the moon. Finally my glorified dreams would come true, and I would spend my gorgeous baby growing days swathed in silk and massaging my blossoming body with cocoa butter.

The Green Bowl
I believe I was about 2 weeks along when I started vomiting. I had read the detestable Food Nazi Book, “What to Eat When You’re Expecting” during the first two weeks of my pregnancy and even had an obsessive little chart on the refrigerator where I could tick off my recommended daily nutritional requirements. When I started throwing up, I completely panicked. I knew I was going to completely damage my unborn child. He was going to have everything from brain defects to chronic allergies all because I could not keep a waffle down for longer than 3 minutes.

Every single piece of Parental Preparatory Reading Material told me the vomiting would stop after the first trimester. I had my 13th week circled in red on the calender. “Morning Sickness” my butt. “All Day Sickness” would be a more appropriate title. At least for me. That 13th week came and went with absolutely no relief. I was vomiting around 10 times a day. My doctor just smiled and acted like the fact that I was living on nothing but fat storage was not a problem. I lost 8 pounds during my first trimester. I had a green mixing bowl that went everywhere with me. I threw up in parking lots, in the car on the freeway, in my employer’s sink, in my sink, in the toilet, on my bedroom carpeting [pizza and grape juice everywhere], in the grocery store, on Eric, on myself, and rather unpleasantly, in a swimming pool.

My doctor didn’t seem to care and all of the regularly suggested barf-suppressors didn’t work. I’d tried them all:

If there are any not on this list and you somehow feel like you should email me with a suggestion, please don’t. I promise you, I read all 533,000 results on google and TRIED THEM ALL. I didn’t discover that I had hyperemesis until my second pregnancy.

I had a major meltdown somewhere in my 5th month. I had thrown up 13 times that day and called my mother to cry about it. She happened to talk to a friend that afternoon who suggested Red Raspberry Leaf, and phoned me back to tell me to try it. After work, I drove to the health
food store and bought some capsules and some loose to try the tea. It looked like weed in a plastic baggy. Every morning I would get up and swallow two red raspberry leaf capsules after my usual morning hurl into the green bowl [or the white one if I made it to the bathroom in time]. Sometimes they came up and I had to try again, but over the course of the following months my daily vomiting was slowly reduced to just twice a day. Which I could totally live with.

Back to Utah
I was 6 months along when Eric got laid off. We were thrilled. Fed up with the heat of Arizona, and happy at the prospect of returning to Utah where we’d be closer to friends and family, the unemployment news was greeted with open arms [though my employers weren’t happy to hear
it]. We moved home and into my mother and father’s basement while Eric looked for work. I found a midwife who I hoped would be a little more attentive than the physician I had been seeing in Mesa, and went back to work at the hospital I’d worked at before meeting Eric.

My midwife was all hugs and dim lights and soft voice about everything. She couldn’t deliver my baby at home, but I hoped for a fairly natural hospital birth though I wasn’t married to the idea of going without the epidural. I wanted to know what contractions felt like but didn’t want to suffer for hours on end either. My midwife didn’t seem overly concerned with the fact that I was still barfing up my intestines multiple times a day this far into the pregnancy. So I continued to suffer through.

My due date was October 20th so I fully expected to have this baby somewhere around Christmas time. I was surprised but skeptical when I started feeling semi regular contractions on the eve of October 16 . My midwife had performed the very uncomfortable membrane strippage on Monday [13th]. She then told me to go home and walk. Well, I walked. I walked, and walked, and walked, and walked, and walked. I waddled all over kingdom come that day, and then came home and made my poor sex-deprived husband climb aboard the good ship lolly-huge for some
good cervix softening fun.

Labor and Delivery

As per my birthing plan, my midwife helped me bring him up to lay him on my chest. Our eyes met and his cries began to subside. But it was only a moment before someone with rubber gloves swooped him up and into a plastic bassinet under a heating lamp.

The Honeymoon Stitch (The 'episiotomy'is yet another fallous operation that is quickly falling out of favour; but this one victomizes women.)
The video tape shows Jake screaming bloody murder in that stupid bassinet, arms flailing. What on earth was he in there for? Why wasn’t he on my chest looking into my eyes? I’ve never liked to be out of control [one of the reasons I’m not a drinker] and I was definitely out of control here. The midwife smiled at me and said I didn’t tear but told me she was going to give me a honeymoon stitch”. What in the world? I was tired, I managed to mumble, “Please don’t… sex has always been… uncomfortable. I don’t need to be tighter.. please.” She just chuckled and nudged the nurse and said, “Well by the looks of your well endowed new baby, I’d guess he takes after his papa.” My mind was swimming, was my midwife stitching up my numb vagina that didn’t have a tear? Did she just make some crack about my husband’s penis? What? [In case you are living in the happy bliss of not knowing what a honeymoon stitch is, I’ll enlighten you. It’s where some archaic doctor or ‘med’wife folds your perfectly healthy, un-torn vagina wall onto itself and makes a few small stitches to make your vaginal opening smaller. I can only imagine some idiot medicine man thought this up thousands of years ago to help the women with babies strapped to their backs keep their men from wandering to the hut next door where a youthful virgin might tempt his quivering manhood with an unexplored vagina the width and breadth of a toothpick.] Helpless and apparently voiceless, I ended up with a honeymoon stitch. And it was a year of painful ‘first times’ before the new mama got to actually enjoy a roll in the hay again. If anyone ever tries to give you a honeymoon stitch post-partum, kick them in the teeth. If your legs don’t work like mine didn’t, scream for your husband to come kick them in the teeth for you.

After what seemed like an eternity, I was handed a bundle of flannel blanket. The little flannel blanket was so completely exhausted that he had no interest in nursing. I didn’t even think to unwrap him and count his fingers and toes. I just held on, afraid someone would take him away again.

The Aftermath
Family started pouring into the room. Eric and I both have large extended families, and our large birthing room was bursting. Cameras were flashing and every time one went off, Jake bunched up his face and cried out in pain. I didn’t let anyone hold him, but a nurse came and took him from me, “It’s time for his bath”. I had previously dreamed that I would bathe him myself, but I couldn’t walk. I couldn’t feel my legs. I was still attached to tubing.

It was about three hours before I saw my son again. My husband taped everything, and it is more that I cannot watch. Jake cried in a bassinet under a heating lamp while family snapped pictures through the glass oohing and ahhing over his angry little red face. Jake was perfectly healthy, maybe they thought they were doing me a favor by letting me rest. We were too uninformed and stupid to speak up and do anything about it. After a few hours of sitting by myself in my recovery room. I started to yell, ” WHERE IS MY BABY?” Only then did I
get my flannel bundle back.

My completely traumatized child was too exhausted to even think about wrapping his mouth around my boob. I had read that it takes a while to get used to breastfeeding, so I didn’t stress it too much and we all slept fairly well. I admit to not knowing what to do with Jake, so he stayed in the plastic bassinet by my bed. When he’d squeak, I’d wake up Eric so he could hand him to me. My legs didn’t work for two entire days. I tried to breastfeed but he’d usually fall asleep the
moment I’d managed to unearth my breast.

Breastfeeding Woes and the Nursing Nazi
By the second day, I was worried. I had a little hand pump but couldn’t get any milk out. I was certain my boobs were broken. I called for the nursing consultant. A robust woman entered the room to teach me how to breastfeed. My hospital gown is conveniently unsnapped at the shoulder so I can see what I’m doing. The first thing the Nursing Nazi does is snap my gown back up, murmuring about modesty. She then unties one of the ties in the back of my gown and sweeps the folds of fabric from behind me around to the front and up over my other shoulder. I’m now peering down over cascades of hospital gown, my breast and baby hidden somewhere beneath.

She then stacks pillows around me. Pillows everywhere. Oh the pillows. We didn’t have enough pillows, she had to go into another room to get more. She put three behind me, and three more under the arm I’m holding my child in. Two more under the baby, and then another behind
my head. She reclines the bed and I start to wonder how I’m going to orchestrate the complex pillowage at home without three maids and a butler. She starts massaging my breast and doing something with my baby’s head. I don’t know, I can’t see the breast and baby molesting that’s going on because I can’t see over the gown modestly protecting me from all of those boob and nipple fetishests one finds so many of in maternity wards. Every time I crane my neck to see what’s going on, she digs her fingernails into my shoulder and barks at me to relax. She says that the baby can feel how tense I am and won’t nurse if I’m tense. She says I need to relax. Relax and not be tense. My being tense is the evident problem since Jake is sound asleep. The kind of sound asleep that dead people enjoy. Ice cubes couldn’t wake him enough to be nursed.

The Nursing Nazi squeezes and pulls on my boob so hard I start to cry. She gets milk out though, which is encouraging. Either that or it’s my rib cage she’s liquefying with all that squeezing. Then she starts squeezing Jake’s cheeks and underneath his chin - or at least that’s what she tells me since I can’t see. She forces a few milk drops into my sleeping baby’s mouth. She tells me, “Once they have tasted breastmilk, we can always get them to take the breast. Even if we have to supplement with formula so they don’t starve.” With that, she leaves me. Pats my arm and leaves me. Leaves me with my sleeping baby who has now eaten a total of three drops of milk in the 24 short hours of his life. I feel the kind of frustration that only a woman who has gone through 25+ hours of labor can feel. Pillows fly everywhere. I yank the gown off of my neck and shamelessly expose my breast to the millions of people occupying my recovery room [Eric and Jake]. I proceed to strip sleeping flannel bundle boy of all blankets, clothing, diaper… I tickle him and hold him in the air. He wakes, squeaks and falls asleep the moment his lips touch my skin.

Heel Pricking and Brain Damage
With all the successful milk making and baby feeding going on in my room, the nurses kept coming in to prick Jake’s little heel to test his blood sugar. A nurse I hadn’t seen before came in to prick him for the three hundred billionth time and I told her I wanted to the constant heel pricking to stop. It wasn’t helping, I said. It made him cry and the go right back into the deep, exhausted sleep without eating, I said. The new nurse blinked at me as if I had just suggested I wanted to dangle my infant child out the window by the toe to see if he could fly. She said, “But Mrs. Idiot Mother, I have to test his blood sugar. You’re not exhibiting successful breastfeeding and your baby could suffer permanent brain damage as a result.” Isn’t that a wonderful thing to say to a brand new mom? Isn’t it precious? They ought to cross-stitch the entire thing onto keepsake pillows and send them home with new moms in the bag of free paper diaper coupons and formula samples.

I hit the proverbial ceiling and cried for several hours. Somewhere in all of the crying, a nurse came and took my baby away. I’m sure he got a bottle in the nursery because when he burped hours later when I got him back he smelled like Similac.

Bizarre Modern Practices Involving Penis Cutting
To make matters undoubtedly worse, we allowed a pediatrician to take Jake away so he could cut off part of his penis. It felt horribly, horribly wrong at the time, but I had no idea that I had a choice in the matter. Everyone circumcises their little baby boys. It never crossed my powder donut filled mind to question it until after it was over. I cried and Eric patted my arm, wondering why he’d ever consented to marrying and procreating with this clearly unstable woman with broken boobs. Jake came back to me with a completely different personality. I know, how could the sleeping wonder boy have a different personality post traumatic surgery? Trust me, he was different… angry. Wouldn’t you be too if someone strapped you to a board and cut off 80% or more of your penile skin covering? We battled with infections at the circumcision site for the first year of his life. If you’re pregnant with a boy, be in the know and read this before you decide to circumcise.

Breastfeeding
Finally, after two days in pre-1989 East Germany hell, we got to go home. My milk was still not in, and the hand pump they gave me at the hospital produced three small drops after a half an hour of pumping. When Jake was three days old, he had an entire day of dry diapers. Jake cried a new cry I hadn’t heard before. It was a haunting hungry cry in the middle of the night. He was finally awake, but I couldn’t get him latched on. I cried with him and soon my mother knocked softly on our door. Eric was terrified I was starving our baby, but bless him - he didn’t say a word. Mom came in and dug out a bottle of sugar water the hospital sent home with us. Jake latched onto the evil artificial plastic nipple like an old pro and gulped it all down in a matter of milliseconds. She then mixed up a bottle of formula and I watched him practically swallow the bottle whole. He fell asleep and I stared at him with a mixture of relief and feelings of utter failure, wondering why my breasts were dysfunctional and how we were ever going to afford
formula with Eric selling cars for my uncle.

In the morning, I tried again to nurse him but he would have nothing of it. I sent Eric out to rent a hospital grade breast pump and mother ran to a Baby Super Mart to purchase breast shields. Not the big kind I had been wearing to help my flat nipples perk up like Jennifer Aniston’s, but the soft flexible kind that fit right over your nipple. Jake latched right on to the plastic breast shields. It hurt to be sucked through the plastic, but he was sucking, sucking on ME, and milk was coming out. Real milk! Beautiful, sticky, yellowish white breast milk, and that made me cry and cry with joy.

For two weeks, I continue to offer my naked nipple but he prefers the plastic coated variety. Finally he takes just me. Breastfeeding hurt so bad for three months. This is a little piece of information that NOBODY TELLS YOU. I cried to my midwife at my 6 week checkup, [Yes, the same helpful woman that sentenced my vagina to spend a year in honeymoon hell.] and not surprisingly, she wasn’t very helpful. She looked in Jacob’s mouth, examined my nipples, muttered something about invisible Thrush and sent me home with a prescription for Nystatin. I did everything she said, but still the pain continued. My latch was perfect. Jake was growing in leaps and bounds. But every time his sweet mouth started rooting for some of the good stuff, I started crying. The AIR hurt after he was done. Clothing brushing my nipples felt like pins and needles. I never did find out what was wrong, but around the time he decided to stop screaming so much, the pain went away.

Colic is Another Word for ANGRY
Jacob cried for 3 months straight. I blame the hospital, the drugs, the circumcision, the flashing cameras, the bottle of evil formula he had at the hospital and at the hand of his evil grandmother. It could just be his personality, but in seriousness - I do think the less than peaceful environment he was welcomed into had a hand in it all. I wore him in the sling for 3 solid months. He didn’t ever really stop screaming. I showered with him in a water sling. As long as he was on me, the screaming was a few decibels lower than when he wasn’t. Finally, around the time he could sit propped up, he started getting happier. The smiles, oh the smiles! The very angry boy can smile! It made it all worth it. Every last bit. But I’m still sorry about his mangled penis. Hopefully he’ll marry a nice, sheltered Mormon girl who will have never seen another one and she won’t know he’s mangled.

Mama was Angry too
I was angry about Jake’s birth for a long time. Eric never liked to read Jake’s birth story because it was written by me and I was bitter about the whole ‘out-of-control-at-the-hospital’ thing. Having our first child was a wonderful, joyous moment… I cried, the man with robotic insides who has only ever accidentally cried during Armageddon cried, it was amazing. But it was hard for me to take that amazing moment and cherish it without feeling angry towards the nurse who yanked Jake off my chest in the middle of our moment of amazingness. After having Nathan, I feel a lot less anger about Jake’s birth. Jake is an incredible child, I love him so much that it hurts. I credit the whole Baby Wearing thing to a lot of the healing both Jake and I went through post birth. I think it kept me sane during the months of screaming that ensued and helped foster the trust that I believe was injured during those early hours of his life.