Mommy Brain

My little girl turns nine today. I’ve been meaning for the past few years to get down on paper what giving birth to Natalie was like, so I’m going to do it here. For those of you who hate to listen to other women’s birthing stories, you can skip this post and not hurt my feelings at all, I promise.

Natalie is our oldest. We conceived her right around our first anniversary – most likely on a weekend getaway to Long Beach, Washington. Kevin and I were living in Vancouver, Washington at the time. We were both working full time. On a Monday morning a couple weeks after our anniversary celebration, I woke up with what I thought was a bout of the stomach flu. I stayed home from work, and when Kevin came home that night, he asked me, “Aren’t you late?” Realization dawned, and he ran to the drug store for a home pregnancy test. Yes, he’s a wonderful guy.

When the two little pink lines appeared, we were ecstatic. We even have a picture in Nan’s baby book of Kevin holding up the positive test. Well, I can’t keep a secret worth beans, and certainly not news of this magnitude, so I picked up the phone to call my Mom and Dad. My two youngest sisters were still living at home at the time. Their line was busy. Oh, well, I thought, I’ll call my oldest younger sister. She was living in Boise with her new husband. Another busy signal. Realization dawned – they were talking to each other! And continued to do so for another hour, while I fumed with no one to share our news with. I even tried our best friends in Vancouver, but they weren’t home.

Finally I got through, and I had each member of the family get on the phone individually to tell them. Kevin still teases me over this. Getting to share good news is part of the joy, right? And I had to hear each of their reactions. My parents were pretty happy – this would be their first grandchild.

My pregnancy was pretty by-the-book. I had lots of morning sickness the first three months; it eased up some after that. I craved Taco Bell bean burritos, so I was lucky to have one fairly close that was open late – and a husband who would do late night fast-food runs for me.

About halfway through, we found out we were having a girl. I was very surprised. For some reason I had thought this baby was a boy, so it took a while to sink in. I knew I’d be okay – I had three sisters after all. I knew girls.

When I was seven-and-a-half months along, I was diagnosed with pre-eclampsia. Kevin and I had been out shopping and I decided to check my blood pressure because my hands had gotten puffy. Sure enough, my pressure was up. A trip to my OB/GYN the next day and a month and a half of bed rest followed. Lots of time to read and cross-stitch and watch movies, between phone calls from my replacement at work wondering how to do this or that.

My due date was December 23rd, but my doctor decided to induce on December 12th. She told me to eat a big breakfast, since that might be my last chance for a good meal for a while. My mom and youngest sister came into town the day before. Marni, my sister, would be staying with us to watch Natalie when I went back to work half-days for a few months so that we could afford to move. The morning of the 12th we all headed to Shari’s for breakfast and then it was off to the hospital. They hooked me up to the pitocin, and we waited. And waited. And waited some more. I have a cute picture of my sis sitting at a table in my hospital room, chin in her hand, looking bored out of her mind.

Things weren’t quite so boring by four-thirty p.m. The nurse had turned the pitocin up several times with no effect and so had cranked it up even more. Labor started, hard and fast. Contractions every two minutes, lasting a minute long. (I thought this was normal until I had my son without pitocin and found out what labor is supposed to be like.)

Let me back up and say that I had the labor nurse from hell. I’m not kidding. She came into the room when she started her shift and said, “I don’t feel good. I should’ve stayed home.” That should have been my signal to demand another nurse, but I was young and naive and so didn’t speak up.

After a couple of hours of hard labor, I asked for drugs. Anything. Please. I’m not super-mom, I know. I loved my epidural. The nurse informed me I could have an epidural when I had reached 4 centimeters dilated. I asked her to check me. She said, “No, these contractions aren’t hard enough to be doing anything.” I think there were two reasons she thought this. I was hooked up to a uterine monitor to track my contractions, but I was also laying on my side and the monitor wasn’t accurately recording the strength. Second, I wasn’t screaming my head off. I was breathing and praying through my contractions, with occasional moans.

Around 11 p.m. I was told that if I hadn’t progressed in the next half hour they would turn off the pitocin, let me sleep, and try again in the morning. How did they know I hadn’t progressed when they refused to check my cervix? A very good question. I started praying for 11:30 so that the pain would stop.

At 11:25 or so, my water broke. The nurse finally checked my cervix, and I was dilated to an 8. She also put an internal monitor in my uterus, and my contractions were off the charts. She didn’t believe me when I told her that they hadn’t changed a bit since they began – they started off that strong.

My doctor came in at this point, and saw that my blood pressure was up to 180 over 113. She yelled at my nurse to get me some pain relief now. The anesthesiologist – my new best friend – came in and administered the epidural, and I felt blissful. I wanted to sleep. Just as I dozed off, they checked my cervix, which was at a 10, and informed me it was time to push.

I pushed for 45 minutes, probably due to the fact that the epidural kept me from feeling much and that I had no idea which muscles I was supposed to be pushing with. Once my doctor explained, out popped our little girl. The doctor explained that she looked like a little peanut, which became her nickname for a while. Natalie Shannon was born around 1 a.m., which put her birthday on Friday the 13th. She weighed in at 4 pounds 12 ounces and was 18 inches long. She was perfectly formed, but extremely tiny due to a small placenta. Her first name means “Christmas child” and her middle name is my maiden name.

I was pretty much in shock and unable to feel anything until the doctor turned to Kevin and said, “Would you like to hold your daughter?” I started crying. She was so beautiful. They cleaned her up and stitched me up and brought me a limp turkey sandwich which tasted like heaven. Kevin stayed for a while and then headed home for some sleep.

Then I was alone with her. The delivery room had a rocking chair, and the lights were dim, and I held my daughter and talked to her and sang to her for the first time. And fell in love with her.

She was supposed to room with me, but after a few hours they saw that she was too small to keep herself warm. They put her in the neo-natal ICU. The next five days were rough. She was too small to nurse, and had very little sucking reflex. They put an IV in to keep her hydrated and fed, and the only vein big enough was in her scalp. She looked so tiny and helpless in the isolette. Her smallness was even more evident due to the fact that the baby in the isolette next to her was 13 pounds! Born on the same day, and yet she looked like a 4 or 5 month old, at least.

I was discharged from the hospital two days after Natalie was born, as soon as my doctor was sure my blood pressure was returning to normal. The hospital had free rooms available for parents whose children were patients, so I just moved a few halls over. Because Natalie was not able to suck hard enough to nurse, I went through an elaborate ritual every two hours. This required walking to the NICU, which was on a different floor. I then changed her, weighed her, nursed for 10 minutes on each side, and weighed her again. If she had not taken in at least 2 ounces – which she rarely did – I then had to finger-feed her with the milk I had pumped after the previous feeding. Finger-feeding involved a tube taped to my finger and a syringe filled with breast milk. I placed my finger in her mouth, and each time I felt her suck, I depressed the syringe to give her some milk. This way she would learn that she had to suck to get the milk, unlike a bottle. After I gave her enough milk to make a total of 2 ounces, I then pumped my milk for the next feeding.

In between, I tried to sleep or walked to the cafeteria for a meal. Kevin came every night after work, and my mom and sister visited every day. After the third day of all this walking around, my blood pressure went up again and my ankles looked like they belonged to an elephant. I talked to one of the OB nurses, who said I should stay off my feet as much as possible. Yeah, right. My baby was on a different floor, and I needed to go to her every two hours.

After five days, Natalie was taking in two ounces with each feeding – still using the finger syringe – and we were able to take her home. We rented a hospital-grade breast pump and baby scale that showed ounces and I continued the same routine every two hours. After a week, I was so exhausted that I switched to bottle-feeding her my breast milk. I was then able to get at least a little sleep. And at three-and-a-half weeks, when she had gained some weight and strength, I tried nursing again and she took like a champ.

When Natalie and I arrived home from the hospital, Kevin had decorated with a little table-top tree and some garland. We have a picture of Natalie in her infant seat beneath our tree. Our Christmas gift.

Nine years later, Natalie still brings us so much joy. She has turned into quite the young lady. I’m so glad God gave us our girl first. Three boys followed, and I love them fiercely, but it’s so nice to have a girl to share my beloved books with, and to cry during movies with.

Happy Birthday, Natalie! Mommy and Daddy love you very much and we’re so proud of you.