2.
Months before Oli was born, I just knew there was something wrong with her. At the time, I was working as a nurse in a neonatal intensive care unit. I would express my concerns to my friends at work, but they would dismiss my worries, attributing them to “medical student’s disease,” a phenomenon where individuals studying medicine or nursing start to experience the symptoms of the diseases they are learning about. I remember being in a MedSurg class during my second year in nursing school, reading about different disease processes, and mentally ticking off my symptoms.
“Are my eyes tinged yellow? I have been having some abdominal pain and I have been looking rather bloated lately. How many weekends in a row have I been out drinking with my friends? OMG I have LIVER DISEASE!” The reality was that my eyes were clear, I was suffering from normal gas pains, I had my period, and I had hardly been out drinking at all. I was working a full-time job and was in nursing school. Who had time to go out? But sitting in that classroom at that moment reading about cirrhosis of the liver and I was sure that I had it. It would be a reasonable assumption that I was just being paranoid and that my fear of having a sick child was due to my work environment. After all, 100% of the babies that I saw being born were unhealthy or premature. To me, that was normal.
My anxiety about something being wrong intensified when, at 32 weeks pregnant, I began experiencing premature contractions. After visiting the OB/GYN, it was confirmed that they were indeed real, and I was instructed to stay in bed for a few weeks. I must admit that I am not the most compliant patient. My family can attest to that. So, after about 2 weeks, I convinced myself that I was miraculously healed and returned to work. Predictably, the contractions immediately resumed. I was still having regular contractions the day before she was born, and I called my friend Michelle, a former labor and delivery nurse, for advice. “Michelle, I think something is wrong with her. That’s why I keep going into labor early. Something is wrong.” She tried to reassure me that everything was fine. My mind desperately wanted to believe her words, “She’s fine. You’re fine. You’re just working too much and on your feet.” It’s true. I had been working extra shifts in preparation for my maternity leave, not all of which would be paid.
“You’re probably right.” I conceded. “I’ll lay down and I bet they’ll be gone in the morning.”
But the contractions continued throughout the night and into the morning. I called my OB/GYN right away at 08:00 the next morning and said, “I’m still having contractions, and I think they’re getting worse! I’ve been timing them, and they are steadily every five minutes.”
I knew that Braxton Hicks contractions, or practice contractions, were common at this later stage of pregnancy, but they weren’t regular like the ones I was experiencing. I could hear my own fear layered deep within my voice. I was scared.
A few hours later I was sitting in my doctor’s office being told that I was going to have my baby that day. I was dilated to 5cm and there was no going back. The fear instantly melted away as excitement became my primary emotion.
I was going to meet my baby girl that day.
As my husband drove us the 30 minutes from the OB/GYN office to the hospital, I forgot my fears and smiled the entire way.
What was she going to look like? Would she have any hair?
My then-17-month-old son, Kekoa, had the unfortunate luck of inheriting my bald baby gene. I, too, had been born a cue ball. He didn’t have one single hair on his head or anywhere, until he was a year old. On the day he was born, the nursery nurse marveled, proclaiming, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a completely bald baby! He doesn’t even have any eyelashes!”
I hoped that this baby would at least have a little peach fuzz on her head.
Hair- That was the worry I remember going through my mind on that bright spring day.
Looking back, it seems ridiculous, but I had no idea what would come. Part of me is extremely thankful that hair was what my mind chose to dwell on.
A few weeks earlier, when my contractions began, I had been consumed with flashes of neonatal nursing books reflecting pages depicting different genetic conditions and examples of how a women’s body could expel their unhealthy inhabitants. It was as if their body was deciding unconsciously that the tiny form contained within her womb may not be deemed well enough to survive and be better off experiencing an early demise.
Of course, with technology and where we were in medicine in 2007, we had ways of keeping those tiny fetus’s alive even if nature had deemed them unsuited. We now had the means to intercept evolution; with tubes and machines, we could prolong and even thwart those babies’ destinies. Was that always the right thing to do? I struggled between the grey area of being a nurse and wanting to save lives and feelings of cruelty when performing chest compressions on a tiny premature body that weighed less than two pounds.
The medical team would perform painful procedures and tests and give medications and do surgeries, all trying to save the life of a tiny human who, in the end, usually ended up with severe complications as a result of our attempt to “save” them. I imagined these babies spending the rest of their lives hooked up to feeding tubes and breathing machines, never able to walk or talk. Run or play. Smile or laugh. At least, that’s what I thought would happen to them. It would be years before I understood that disabilities don’t equal unhappiness or the inability to give and experience love and life. It doesn’t take away from their personhood. Back then I didn’t know this so I would lie awake at night wondering if I was actually helping or dooming these babies to a life of misery and pain. The truth was, after a few months, I would completely forget many of them. As their parents pushed extra-large strollers out of the NICU lugging oxygen tanks behind them, I would go on with my life. Some of their tiny faces would cross my mind from time to time, the ones that I spent months caring for, but many wouldn’t grace my conscious thoughts again.
I am grateful that I wasn’t thinking about those tiny faces and that I had been able to contain her safety within my womb for a few more weeks. My baby was going to be born a little early at 35 weeks, but she should be able to breathe on her own and drink from a bottle or nurse from my breast. However, just to be safe, I called the NICU to see if a neonatologist was available for her delivery. In the months and years that followed, I often thought back to the drive to the hospital. I would try to remember my excitement as I waited to meet my new baby girl. I would close my eyes and think about the person I was before May 10, 2007. I was so naïve, happy, and content. Looking at old pictures of myself, I would cry and tell the girl in the picture, “Enjoy that smile. It’s never going to look the same again.”
On May 11, 2007, my excitement was replaced with sadness, which consumed my heart so completely that I thought I would never feel carefree or happy again.
3.
When we arrived at the hospital, I was experiencing regular contractions, five minutes apart. Strangely, I didn’t feel any pain with these contractions. The pain only started when it was time to push and the baby was ready to be born. It felt like my body, the universe, or some higher power knew that I would experience pain for years to come, so it delayed my suffering for a few more hours. I was so comfortable at that moment that I even delayed getting an epidural. That would turn out to be a mistake.
“Are you sure you’re not in any pain?” The labor and delivery nurse Julia asked, as she clicked away at the computer at the side of my bed. She looks to be a little older than me, slim, with long blonde hair pulled back and bangs that remind me of 80’s hair band bangs.
I shook my head no and glanced at a nonstop stream of paper pouring from a small printer on a shelf beside my bed. The paper was covered with the mountains and valleys of my contractions. I watched intently as the mountains grew taller and closer together, finding it odd that I couldn’t feel anything beyond a distinct tightening in my belly.
“Don’t you think it’s weird that I’m not hurting?” I looked over at my husband, who was slumped in a chair in the corner of the small L&D room.
“Are you complaining?” he replied, barely opening one previously closed eyelid. It had been a long 24 hours, and we were both exhausted. I, however, had the energy and inertia of labor hormones rushing through my veins and didn’t feel tired at all.
As the hours crept by, my labor progress slowed. I was still feeling nothing and wanted to close my eyes for a few minutes when the doctor came in and decided it was time to break my water.
Dr. Lin entered the room with an air of eagerness and exclaimed, “Let’s get this show on the road!” He turned to the nurse, “Julia, grab me an amnihook, please.”
The nurse smiled sympathetically at me, her long blonde ponytail flipping over her shoulder as she quickly left the room to grab the piece of equipment used to break the amniotic sac and rupture the membranes.
I’d been to many deliveries as a NICU nurse, being called to scheduled deliveries when we anticipated the baby needing support, and emergencies when there was a problem. I knew what this long, crochet hook looking piece of equipment was and what it did, but the thought of that coming anywhere near me, my vagina, or my unborn baby made me feel queasy.
“Um… is that necessary? Do we have to do that?” I hesitated to question the doctor or object, but since I wasn’t in any pain and the baby was tolerating the labor well, I didn’t see the need for intervention.
Looking at the clock, which was slowing creeping towards 11:00pm he responded, “I think this is what is going to be best for both you and baby.”
“But I haven’t received my epidural yet.” The last thing that I had planned was a drug free delivery.
“No worries. You’re only dilated to 6. There’s still plenty of time,” he assured me as he gloved up and took the hook from the sterile package the nurse had opened for him.
“Okay, try to relax, this is going to feel strange,” he said. As he finished speaking, I felt a pop in my abdomen, like a rubber band snapping, and water gushed onto the towels and pads the nurse had placed beneath me.
It was show time.
My water breaking seemed to unleash all the pain from the previous 8 hours of contractions, hitting me like a tidal wave. The pain crashed into my body, and the edges of my vision blurred as I called out, “I’m going to be sick!”
Anticipating what was coming, Julia was already right beside me, handing me a small pink tub as the contents of my stomach erupted out like a volcano.
“Now we’re in business,” Dr. Lin said, smiling as he slipped off his now-wet gloves and strode out the door.
In between waves of nausea and body-racking convulsions of sickness, I was suddenly acutely aware of the sound of the fetal monitoring system.
The “tick.tick.tick.tick.tick.” of the baby’s heartbeat had suddenly slowed to a “tick..tick..tick..tick…tick…..tick….tick……tick……..tick….”
“Roll onto your left side!” The nurse rushed over to me from the other side of the room where she was setting up a delivery table and shoved me onto my side. Instantly, the heartbeat returned to its quick metronome.
“Let’s keep you lying on your left side,” she said. “Just to be safe.”
I agreed compliantly. With the baby happy again, I begged the nurse to call anesthesia for the epidural as I continued dry heaving into the little bucket.
They came in quickly after the nurse rechecked me and discovered that I was now dilated to 8 centimeters. Sitting me up at the side of the bed, the anesthesiologist didn’t have any trouble inserting the long needle into my back and finding the small epidural space in between my vertebrae.
“All done!” he proclaimed, taping a tiny line to the right shoulder of my hospital gown.
I laid back on the pillows to wait for the relief I knew would be coming. I’d had an epidural with my son and it worked perfectly. As the next contraction washed over me, I gripped the sheets of my bed with all my strength. Something wasn’t right. I could still feel everything!
“Let me recheck you.” Julia was already lifting the bottom of my sheet to see if I had progressed. “You’re complete!” she exclaimed, shocked. “I can feel the baby’s head! She’s right there; it’s time to push.”
“What? But my epidural hasn’t taken effect yet! I can still feel everything! I’m not ready!” This was not going the way that I had expected. I DID NOT want to feel everything, and I was starting to panic. “Your baby’s ready. You’re ready. It’s going to be okay.” She softly looked me in the eye and gently touched my shoulder.
Man, she was good at her job. “Okay. I can do this.” I was not entirely convinced, but I mean, what was I going to do? This baby was coming out of me whether I had an acceptable amount of drugs in my system or not.
I'm fine, but my mommy has issues! 