Tag Archives: pregnancy

Open your eyes.

23 Sep

4.

Oliana entered this world at 11:49 pm on May 10, 2007, with her pale, almost translucent eyelids closed.

Gazing into the dark depths of my newborn’s eyes was something that I had imagined as my belly grew heavier with pregnancy. I visualized forming a deeper connection with my tiny new daughter as the nurse wrapped her in a warm blanket, placed her in my arms and I peered into her eyes for the first time.

The pictures that I had seen in my mind’s eye of this moment were unceremoniously ripped from me by a destiny that I couldn’t yet understand.

The delivery was so quick (and painful) and the moment that she came into the world, pink, wet and screaming, I was unaware that my world was about to shatter to pieces.

The neonatologist, who had assisted with her delivery at my request, carefully examined her on the warmer. At 35 weeks, there’s always a slight concern about the baby’s lung development. Thankfully, Oli’s lungs appeared to be in perfect condition as she lay there, pink and crying. After a thorough check-up, the doctor reassured me, “She looks perfect. Good job, Shannon. Let me know if you need anything else,” he was eager to leave the delivery room.

Although he was certainly willing to come to the delivery, my labor was not necessarily something that we wanted to share as coworkers. II completely understood his urgency to make a quick exit and, unable to stop myself from blushing, softly uttered my gratitude as my legs remained splayed apart, now inconveniently numb and confined to the stirrups.

That morning, I had debated even asking him to come to her birth, not wanting to experience this exact situation. Ultimately, the health and welfare of my infant outweighed my vanity and dignity. Even if that meant never looking this doctor in the eye again. If she needed help, I wanted a well-respected neonatal physician in the room, ready to act. Now that everything turned out okay and she was fine, I was second guessing my decision. There certainly were aspects of my body I had never intended to share with a colleague.

Once he departed, the nurse placed Oli on my chest, and at first, everything seemed normal. However, after a few minutes, I couldn’t help but notice that she wasn’t opening her eyes. This struck me as odd, as my son had opened his eyes immediately after birth. Oli seemed to be keeping hers tightly shut. I tried to dismiss the growing unease in my chest, but the feeling persisted, a gnawing tightness whispering again…something is wrong.

The nursery nurse eventually came in to whisk her away from the warmth of my chest. She took her back to the nursery to gently clean her up, administer her vaccines, and apply medication to her eyes, which are standard procedures for all newborns at the hospital.

“Go with her” I instructed my husband, not wanting to leave her alone for a second within the sterile white walls of the hospital. This protectiveness would persist for decades, and Oli would never spend a minute alone without one of us while hospitalized.

Seth accompanied the nurse to watch over our new daughter. When he returned, he shared with me that she was slightly cold, so they placed her under a warmer to raise her temperature. Then he delivered news that heightened my sense of unease.

“The nurse couldn’t open her eyes to administer the eye drops. She expressed concern that her eyes may still be fused shut,” he told me, his eyes betraying a significant amount of fear.

“What? That doesn’t make sense. Babies’ eyes typically stop being fused shut after about 23-24 weeks. She’s 35! No, they’re not fused. They’re just swollen. I’m sure they’ll be fine in the morning,” I responded, trying to reassure both of us.

“Well, maybe” he responds nervously. “But the nurse intends to call her pediatrician first thing in the morning to come and examine her. I’m sure you’re right. They’re probably just swollen,” he appears slightly more at ease, relying on my medical knowledge of newborns.

Despite my efforts to dismiss my concerns, deep down, I knew something was not right with her eyes. She should have been able to open them, or at the very least, the nurse should have been able to.

However, at that moment in time, I forced myself to believe that she was fine. I was exhausted and didn’t have the compacity to explore what that could possibly mean. Even if I had, the result was something I couldn’t have possibly imagined.

The nurse brought Oli back to the room and I tried to sleep. By then it was nearly 4:00 am.

Before I did, I whispered a heartfelt prayer to heaven, the first of many for my sweet girl, which went unanswered.

 “Please open your eyes, baby girl. Please open them and look at me.”

5.

I awoke a few hours later to a nurse gently shaking my shoulder. “Mama, it’s time to feed your baby.”  

Already? It felt like I had just closed my eyes. I looked over into the clear, plastic bassinet that held my sleeping daughter and then at the clock; 5:30am.  

“Will you hand her to me please?” I ask as she lifts the scratchy hospital blanket to palpate my deflating and squishy abdomen. We were transferred to the postpartum floor a few hours after delivery. Unlike the hive of activity on the labor and delivery floor with the sounds of monitors beeping incessantly and the hushed and urgent voices of the doctors and nurses, this unit was quiet and calm. Except for the periodic kitten-like mews emitting from babies still unhappily protesting being ripped from the safety of their muffled, dark and warm environments, this floor is silent. The babies, still unaccustomed to the cacophony of unfamiliar sounds and the cold chill that assaults their once tightly curled limbs, cry out as they flail in the open air.

My infant, cradled in her soft blanket, sleeps peacefully and I watch as the nurse leans into the bassinet.

She hands me my tiny baby burrito swaddled in a light pink and blue striped blanket.  Oli has a fine covering of light blonde peach fuzz on her head. I smile, remembering how focused my attention was on her hair, prior to her delivery. She is bigger than I had expected her to be but still so tiny, weighing only 6lb 0oz and 18 inches long.  Her little fists clenched tight; she pulls her knees to her chest to object the sudden temperature change as I unzip her onesie.

I unfasten the sticky tabs on each side of the reusable diaper to change her and run my hands along her soft new skin. She’s perfect in every way. She has a perfectly round head, ten tiny fingers, ten tiny toes and sleeps so peacefully, all curled up not realizing she now has the entire universe to stretch out in.

I peer into her serene face and will her to look at me. Taking my finger, I run it along her face and tickled under her almost nonexistent chin, trying to wake her. She stirs and slowly turns her head from side to side, attempting to shake this annoying intruder trying to rip her from her slumber. She doesn’t open her eyes. “Oli. Oli. Open your eyes Oli. Please? Please open them for me.” I beg her as she continues to keep them tightly closed.

I glanced over at the snoring lump draped across the couch along the far wall and considered waking my husband, not wanting to obsess and worry alone.

It was probably nothing. A swollen face… nothing more. Nothing to be concerned about. Despite my self-assurances it was becoming increasingly challenging to maintain the illusion that everything was okay.

I couldn’t imagine what would keep a baby from opening their eyes. This was new territory and something I had never encountered while working.

Stuffing the uncomfortable feelings being stirred within my mama heart back down, I put my delicate little flower to my breast and began to nurse.  I would continue to stuff all of my disquieted feelings, until eventually, like a beach ball being held beneath the water, the constant effort led to overwhelming exhaustion, and they exploded to the surface.

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There were not enough drugs.

21 Sep

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.

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Something That I Don’t Talk About

28 Mar

Aggghhh….Okay. This is the post that I didn’t really want to write. I didn’t want to write it because it makes me really sad. Which actually says a lot.

People have asked me to talk about what I felt like once I became pregnant again. What happened to make me decide to have another baby once I knew all that I knew about Oli.

I’ll start by telling you that it wasn’t an easy decision. Especially after we learned that Oli had a genetic deletion. It was something that could affect subsequent babies, although the likelihood was only 5%. 5% feels pretty huge once you already have an affected child. Any percentage above 0 feels like an enormously stupid roll of the genetic dice.

You want to know how I felt when I looked down at that little white stick and saw 2 pink lines appear?

I felt terrified. I felt scared and selfish and happy and overwhelmed.

I felt like I had probably just sentenced this tiny little miracle to a life of blindness. A life of doctors, therapies, and disabilities.

I didn’t have a whole lot of time to process learning that Oli’s condition was genetic. I found out about her OTX2 deletion and then found out I was pregnant just a few weeks later.

Many scenarios ran through my head once I knew that I was going to have another baby. One thought, which I really really HATE to talk about, was maybe I shouldn’t have her. Maybe I shouldn’t go through with this pregnancy.

I don’t like to talk about that thought because the idea of my Ginger not being a part of my life literally brings me to my knees with pain. It sends a stabbing knife of sorrow straight through my heart and makes it hard to breathe.

My baby girl. My little Ginger. I had seriously thought about not having her.

See no one really talks about this.

I was raised Catholic and abortion is something that you are never allowed to even mention let alone talk about. I never thought it would be something that I would ever consider. Because I never thought that I could do it. I always thought that if I got pregnant then I got pregnant and it was my responsibility to take care of that baby. Abortion was never an option.

Well…right at that moment…it became an option.

My views on abortion have always been more pro choice. Mostly because I don’t believe that I ever have a right to tell YOU how to live your life. That goes for my beliefs on everything. Religion, marriage, abortion… You name it. I don’t feel like I have a right to tell you what’s right for you. I’ve never lived your life, had your experiences, dealt with what you have. I never would feel comfortable telling you what to do. I don’t believe that anyone really should. Just because something may or may not be right for me does not mean that it may or may not be right for you.

So anyway…I struggled with what the right thing to do for me, my family, and my unborn baby might be. I did a lot of crying and a lot of praying and pleading that nothing was wrong with this baby. Eventually one night I was lying on the couch late at night. I remember lying there thinking, I have to make a decision before it’s too late. I tried to picture myself going into a doctor’s office and having the procedure. I tried to feel what it would be like to not know that anything was wrong, but choose to play it safe and not have the baby. How did it make me feel? Could I live with myself terminating a baby if I didn’t know that she was blind? What if she was blind? Was it really that bad? Even if she had other disabilities or something else happened, was it really better to never have been?

The answer I came up with that night was…no. No. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t end a life based on the fact that it might be hard for her. I couldn’t not have her because it might be hard on me. It was going to be scary, but I just couldn’t terminate the pregnancy. I decided that it would be way worse to NOT give this child a chance at life, then to just have the baby born blind. I chose blindness as a possibility for this child over death.

I’ve never made a more significant decision in my life.

I went to the doctor and then called the Albert Einstein Medical Center to see if they could do genetic testing on the baby before she was born to find out if she was missing her OTX2 gene.

It was scary. I was scared the entire 9 months that I was pregnant. Even after the amniocentesis came back and said that she was fine…I was scared. Because what if something else was wrong? What if they missed something? They missed noticing that Oli’s eyes were small before she was born, what if they missed noticing something with this baby?

It was scary because I continued to wonder if I had made the right decision.

Another baby was going to take time away from Oli. She needed so much more time because of therapy and doctor appointments and she just needed more help with everything. It was going to take time away from Kekoa. He had already had so much of his time stolen away by Oli’s disability. Another baby was going to take more. And the baby. What about the baby? Would I have enough time and energy or even enough emotion left for this baby? Would this baby get enough of what she needed?

Was this the right thing to do?

Could I do it?

I had all of those questions throughout my pregnancy.

And then Ginger was born.

I laid my eyes on the most beautiful baby girl. This little baby looked at me with eyes that said “Just love me. I don’t need anything else. It doesn’t have to be perfect. Just love me.”

And I knew that I had made the right decision.

It was the right decision for me. I look back and think about what if things had been different? What if something had been wrong? Now I know that it wouldn’t have mattered.

It would have been a different road, but it wouldn’t have mattered. She would have been perfect anyway.

Because Oli is too.

Oli has taught me that life doesn’t always lead me down the nice, friendly, easy path. It’s not always sunny and clear. And that in my life I have received gifts that I never would have looked at as gifts. But that’s exactly what they are. If my last child had been born with a disability then she would have had a disability. She would have been different. And that’s okay. Different is just different. No more, no less.

I would have gotten through it.

Just like we all do when life hands us something that we are not expecting. We hate it, are angry with it and scream at it. We deny it and argue with it. And then we get through it.

And we move on.

Because really?

What else can you do?

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I Suck At Being Pregnant

10 Mar

My baby, Ginger turned 3 years old yesterday. 3!! I can’t believe she’s not like 20 by now! It’s almost hard to believe there was a time in my life that I didn’t want one more baby.

The day after we found out that Oli was blind, I turned to my husband and said “Well that’s all folks! We have hit our limit! Time to turn in our baby making equipment.”

It’s hard to remember a time when Ginger wasn’t just hanging around the house, laughing, singing, and trying to be the center of attention.

When your baby turns 3 I hear that a lot of people get asked “Are you having any more?” I only hear these things because I have NEVER been asked that question. Rather, my family pleads, “Please. For the love of God. Pleeeeaaaase don’t have any more!”

You think it’s because I have Oli right?

Nope.

It’s because I suck at being pregnant.

I mean I TOTALLY suck at it!!

I’m uncomfortable and sick and my back hurts and I’m grouchy and then I’m happy and I cry a lot and I’m tired and I’m paranoid and then it starts to feel like things are going to just fall right out of my girl parts and then I just start bitching at everyone.

Every once in a while (like maybe once every pregnancy) I love it. When the baby kicks I think “Wow! This is the coolest thing ever!” But, then I get kicked in the ribs or down in the no-no region and it feels like a foot is going to poke through down there and then I’m back to “Nope. This is horrible.”

I know that there are going to be some moms that read this and think “Well, I just don’t understand what she is talking about. I love being pregnant.When I’m pregnant I feel like I’m floating on air and riding on a unicorn surrounded by butterflies. I don’t even mind being sick and when I throw up I think that it’s amazing because it’s like I’m throwing up a little bit of heaven wrapped in nature’s love.”

Blahhhh….

Those moms might want to stop reading this post at this time because I’m about to bitch about it a whole lot more.

And then…then… you’re expected to give birth to them. Like being pregnant wasn’t torture enough, then you have to get them out of your body.

Oh. My. God.

It’s like something from a gruesome horror, alien, science fiction movie.

I had my 3 babies naturally. And by “natural” I do not in any way, shape, or form, mean that I had them drug-free. Oh HELL NO!! That’s just crazy talk. However, there did not seem to be enough drugs in the world for me not to feel completely mortified each and every time.

I mean that my doctor forced me to have them come out of my…you know where. (I hear that a C-section sucks even more so I’m glad that I didn’t have to do that.)

Before I had my first baby I was hoping that there was a way that I could get my doctor to just knock me out completely, do whatever he had to do to get the baby out without my knowing how he did it, and then just wake me up with a beautiful little baby in my arms.

Apparently they no longer birth babies this way and my doctor was in no mood for accepting my sobbing pleas or my attempts at bribery.

Soooo….I found myself at 38 weeks pregnant with my first child, lying on a hard table with wings attached to it, my legs propped up in the wings, exposing my nether regions to the entire audience, with a big Ziploc baggie thing under my bum, staring terrified at my doctor who was wearing a pair of safety goggles, SAFETY GOGGLES!, and a big hazmat looking plastic mask.

OH MY GOD!

Just WHAT is about to happen?

I vowed right then that I was NEVER going to do this again.

But, I became a mom moments later so my forgettery kicked in. 17 months later I found myself in the exact same position thinking the exact same thing.

I’m never doing this again. How did I forget this part? This is awful!

It’s a good thing that childbirth comes with a quick forgetter when it comes to that part.

Otherwise my son would be an only child and I would be missing the other 2 absolute best, most wonderful parts of my life.

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