I am a very very proud new mother. Originally I had thought that my son's arrival in to this world would go one of a couple of ways, a thought that seems laughable to me now. I thought, "Well, I'd like to try and have him naturally, but I won't be a hero if the pain gets to be too much. I'd like to avoid a c-section, but ultimately my Doc is the boss (and that probably won't happen anyways)." I never really focused on possibility that my son or I would be in any real danger or that we wouldn't have the same experience as thousands of other mothers have had before us. I was scared of it, like all mothers are, but I wasn't paralyzed with fear or anything.
12 hours of labor, not too bad right? I was almost halfway there when we checked into the hospital so I thought this was going to be easy peasy! Yeah, it hurt, but I knew it was going to suck, so I wasn't under the delusion that I was going to skip through the experience laughing and spreading flower petals all over the place. After about three hours of trying to climb backwards out of my skin I gave in. I was practically calling the anesthesiologist my best friend by the time he arrived. He administered the epidural and I felt a cold run of happiness go all the way down my spine and finally started to relax.
Until...
About an hour later the pain started to come back. The nurse was like "Are you sure that it's pain and not pressure?" If I could have pulled a Carol Burnette and yanked her bottom lip over her head I would have. Needless to say, I convinced her that I was in genuine pain and the anesthesiologist came back to help remove the feeling of a sixteen wheeler driving through my abdomen. That happened three more times. I would feel okay for about an hour, then the pain would come back. I was almost there though, almost ready to pop this kid out and be done with the pain!! How wrong I was... the doc came in and I had been at a "8-9" for five hours (if you don't know what that means I'm not going to explain it to you :) sorry). So we decided to do an emergency c-section. HOORAY!
I won't go into the gory details, but I will say this, there were some complications on my side (through no fault of my doctor) that turned a c-section into a 3-4 hour ordeal complete with specialists that had to be called in, boy, don't I feel special! The worst part of it was, when my son was born, I expected to hear that robust cry that you see in all the movies. I didn't hear it. What I heard was a whimper every so often and the NICU being paged to the OR. So I proceeded to flip out on a massive scale. All I had seen of him was his little foot as my Doc hoisted him over the screen, and then he was gone.
My son had a congenital diaphragmatic hernia. Which in layman's terms means that his diaphragm had a hole in it. His intestines had gone up through the hole and were taking up space that is usually reserved for his lungs and heart. The only resolution for this is surgery to pull the intestines back down where they should be and close up the hole in his diaphragm.
But we didn't know all that quite yet... After my surgery was over I was wheeled into recovery and then into the NICU where they were watching my son and trying to get him to not work so hard to breathe (at this time they didn't know what was wrong with him either). I was told not to talk to him, sing to him, and only touch him by placing my hand on him and keeping it very still. I had imagined that moment so differently, the first time I would see my boy. I thought I would get to hold him, kiss him, and eat him up. Part of me felt cheated, a very small part, as I was too busy being scared out of my ever-loving mind.
As I hadn't been released from the hospital yet the transport team wheeled him into my room where I held his hand briefly, told him I loved him, and then I watched him, my husband, and my Dad go out the door. That was a Thursday morning. The following Saturday I was released from the hospital. I won't lie, it was heartbreaking and infuriating to hear other babies cry, see other Mom's walking around the hall and knowing they were walking back to where their newborns were. All the while there was no crib in my room, no baby's cry. When I was released we went straight to the hospital where he was. He was put into an isolette and we were still advised not to stimulate him too much as it would overtax his lungs and heart. When he was five days old he was scheduled for surgery as long as he could maintain his vitals in the meantime. The days came and went, and luckily we were able to stay with him in the NICU 24 hours a day. My family surrounded me with love and support, and I just tried to maintain.
The day of surgery came and for the first time I was allowed to kiss him, and I DID, about 30 times, before he was taken into surgery. All I will say about the surgery is this: I could not have made it through that experience without my family, and you should never listen to the estimated procedural times they give you. What was supposed to take 3 hours actually took 5, and to date I have never had two hours that were more difficult than those. The surgeon (who is an angel on earth) came out to tell us he was fine, the surgery was a resounding success, and our son was going to be okay.
When my husband and I were going back to the NICU all I could say was "I'm a Momma" because up until that point I was to afraid to think of myself that way. I wasn't sure if God was going to let us keep him. Finally, it started to look like everything might just be all right.
The road to recovery was long, and difficult at times. He had been on narcotics for so long he was put on methodone for withdrawals, and we had several fun little scares about kidney problems, cystic fibrosis, and g-buttons all of which turned into nothing. We started calling him a "tank" because of how well he had made it through all of his ordeals. I only went home once every three days because leaving him at the NICU was so heartbreaking. Luckily the Nurses would take calls from parents who wanted to check on their kids at any hour of the night, and believe me, I called at all hours of the night.
We spent one month in the NICU, and it was the most gratifying and frustrating experience of my life. Day by day I watched him get stronger, cords and tubes came off one by one, and eventually I was holding him, dressing him, feeding him, and bathing him. 95% of the nurses were amazing. They were on top of every beep, every alert, every feeding, they would answer my questions and give me support if I had a bit of a lapse in composure. The other 5%, lets just say gave me a hell of a lesson in patience and practicing putting my foot down in a polite manner. Its so difficult to watch other people do things for your kid that you can't do (and really want to) but I was grateful to them for helping him get one step closer to home. I sang "Edelweiss" to him every day, because it seemed fitting as I wished the same things for him as the song.
Finally the day came for us to bring him home, he was exactly one month old, and looked as though nothing had ever happened aside from a few tiny scars on his torso and the side of his head being shaved (they had put a PICC line in his scalp - if you don't know what a PICC line is and you're not easily grossed out you should look it up).
Since we've been home things have fallen into a routine, my husband and I are still trying to figure things out (but I don't imagine that will ever change), I've gone back to work - which is hard, but gratifying to know that I can pull all of it off - and things have calmed down so much. He makes me laugh every day, every day. He's just a normal happy baby, he has meltdowns, farts in the bathtub, drinks his bottles like he's starving to death, smiles, and kicks his legs. We have a bedtime routine and I read him a book or sing to him before putting him to bed, and it is everything I ever imagined it would be, heaven on earth.
I used to be so afraid of losing people I love, it was something that would bring me to tears at the mere thought of it. A panicky feeling would come over me and I would keep thinking that I just need more time, I have more to say, more to do with them. This experience has taught me so many things, but I think one of the most profound things that I have learned is that I could have a million years with the people I love and it still wouldn't be enough, it will always bring sadness when someone leaves us, but if given 1, 10, 100 more days would it make that pain any less? No, it would not. For some reason the fact that the pain will be there no matter when or where it happens comforted me. The fact that it just IS, so therefore I can let it BE. So I have learned to not spend the time I have with my loved ones worrying that they may leave me, but to relish the fact that they are here and I will eat them up for as long as I can until we all meet again on the other side.
I am so proud of my family and the way that we all came together through this experience, and so much good came out of it that I am grateful for being entirely, completely, and absolutely wrong about how I thought it would all go. Would I wish for him to have no problems whatsoever and for us to have gone home together? Of course! However, at the end of it all, we are strengthened, humbled, and focused on what really matters to us in this life.
