Cesar is Born (part three)

In the last part, I was finally stitched back together. Vincent managed to hold himself together through the birth, and was dutifully at our side. However, Cesar’s biliruben levels climbed and the doctor decided our son had to go under the lights on Friday night… meanwhile I was about to be discharged Saturday morning!

Will I be as strong as I had hoped to become? Will Cesar be alright? Will they ever let us go home? And will Vincent decide that he’s had enough, and run off to Mexico? In the thrilling conclusion to Cesar is Born, and thus my pregnancy, find out just what will become of our new tiny family!

 Above: Cesar sleeping with his monkey, George. Some nurse took him away later, saying he'd develop allergies, but the other nurses didn't seem to mind. And Cesar didn't develop allergies. (May 2011)

                Vincent stayed by our side almost the entire time in those first days. He was hardly getting any sleep, since he was having to get up every few hours and check on Cesar. I was usually drugged up, bedridden. But by Friday, Cesar being under the lights, me being very unhappy about the situation, I could tell Vincent was starting to wear.

                Eventually I sent him home to get some real rest. While I had the little hospital bed he had to make due with a lousy futon. The mattress was old, lumpy, and worn. However, I’ll let them have their awful mattresses in exchange for the kindness they showed us. I can’t stand to this day that Cesar spent so much time under those lights. However, it could have been much worse. They could have taken him to the nursery.

                Instead, they wheeled in a set of lights to my room, and we were allowed to be with him at all times. He cried every time we had to blindfold him and put him back under the lights. He even displayed his fantastic motor skills, as several times he tried to pull off the blindfold… only to have us put it right back on. The only thing he had was his chupi (pacifier), for comfort. In the beginning, he spit it out, until we gently placed his hands over it, guiding him on how to hold it. He learned very quickly, soon holding it in all on his own.

                Every three hours we were allowed to take him out for feeding. Then we would turn him over and put him back under. Belly. Then back. Belly. Back. The funny thing is, while the nurses often assured us that, “You shouldn’t put your baby on his stomach at home. Here we are monitoring him though,” they would just as quickly leave the room and not return again until three hours had expired. I found that somewhat ridiculously funny. Monitors… sure.

                Anyhow, I sent Vincent home to nap and bring supplies when he returned. He brought me my shampoo, soaps, and razor to shave. That’s right… I can’t stand the feeling of prickly legs even after birth.

               

                Saturday morning I was loaded up with prescriptions. Painkillers and iron pills. I never got the iron pills, because the pharmacy didn’t have them on hand and I just never went back for them. 

                I am very grateful also to say that, while the situation was rotten, we were made special arrangements. We were taken to a room on the floor where premature babies were kept and given a room they had free. That way I could stay with Cesar while he remained under the lights. The downside was there was only a couch, which I claimed since I wasn’t going home. Vincent went home to sleep Saturday night by himself.

                Both of us were dearly praying that by Sunday Cesar would be alright. I prayed to the gods for it, and Vincent (being the funny guy he is) kept saying it would be awesome if we could go home since there was a PayPerView Sunday evening.

                Cesar was tested early in the morning. His levels had only dropped by miniscule points, but the doctor explained that biliruben levels were factored in with how long a baby has been alive. In essence, if a baby has a 10.4 after a few hours of birth that’s extremely bad, but if he has 10.4 after a day or two it’s not nearly as bad, which is about what they had gotten Cesar down to. The next step, he explained, was to remove my son from the lights. They would retest in a few hours and as long as the levels were still dropping we would be allowed to go home.

                We had a great nurse as well. She was very pro-breastfeeding. The previous nurse had fed Cesar lots of formula, saying, “Look, I’m barely supporting the bottle. He really wants it.” I told our “good” nurse about this, that Cesar had eaten so much he had thrown up. She checked the formula, noted how much he had eaten and also that he had eaten the ounces I had managed to pump in my off time. Noting all this, she stepped in, very authoritative, and said, “I wouldn’t give him any more bottles. He’s overeating now. You’ve got plenty of milk and you don’t need formula.” She had also been essential in trying to help me get Cesar back to latching on. In fact, I remember her standing by me, watching as Cesar rejected me over and over and explaining that it was ok, he was just spoiled by the quickness of the bottle, but that we could get him back to the breast if we tried hard enough.

                I remember, at one point thinking, “I can do this. I don’t want to. I hate being here. But I can if I have to.” I prepared myself for the worst. I mean, the worst wasn’t really all that bad, if I thought hard enough about it. Cesar was breastfeeding with just a little resistance. Only a couple days ago I had been weeping, giving up and giving him the formula, resigning myself to his cries and thinking how much we were going to have to spend on formula, how dearly I had wanted to bond and breastfeed only. But now, I had control again. I had a good support system, and I was slowly getting my strength back. Cesar couldn’t be in here forever. And being in the premature floor made me really appreciate everything. Cesar could have been born months early. He could have been born with a really terrible complication. Sooner or later, we would be going home and I could deal with everything knowing that.

                After being retested, Cesar was a 9.something. He hadn’t dropped much, but it was enough to get us home!

                I was so happy. I couldn’t get my things together fast enough.  I remember being so anxious. We grabbed everything we could, bags and bags of things that had been brought to me over the course of our stay. I was thrilled to get out and be on our way!

               

                I remember going home. I remember Vincent rushing back out to buy a few things before his show started. We’d made it home. Finally we had our first night together. Vincent’s vacation time ended that Sunday, and he wanted to go straight back to work to avoid losing any money. This was another reason I had so desperately wanted to be home. I had wanted to feel like a family, in our little home before his vacation ended. We had made it just in time.

                 A wave of relief spread through me. I felt at ease. I wasn’t afraid, I wasn’t nervous, and it was amazing realizing that no one was going to come breezing through our door ordering lab tests or asking questions. I didn’t have anyone looking over my shoulder as I changed his diaper or dressed him. No call buttons, no records to keep of changing times and feeding.  

                In the end.. I was satisfied with the birth. I had no painkillers and no pesky computer monitors. I had done it successfully on my own, and fast too! Vincent had done what we thought best as well, making the decision to call an ambulance rather than wait around. We had gotten very lucky with some of the staff, and not so lucky with others. But all that’s ok.

                I was so very happy, and still am. :) 

(to keep up with Cesar, visit his new blog at All Hail Cesar)

Cesar is Born (Part two)

                Welcome back. So where did I leave off? That’s right… the good doctor had just finished informing me that my stitches had been done incorrectly, that he would have to undo them and redo them. Cesar had been born in just an hour from when I noticed the contractions at 8 pounds 2 ounces with horrid facial bruising, and the state of my lower regions has left the audience (and myself at this point) hanging in suspense!

                So.. what will become of my son? Meanwhile, what on earth has Vincent been up to? And lastly, will I be stuck with two halves instead of a whole vagina?

Below: Here you can really see the facial bruising in contrast to his body. A side effect of the speedy labor. :( (May 2011)

                Well… I told the doctor I quit. I wanted to be put to sleep. I was just in shock that for all the trouble that dreadful nurse practitioner had put me through, and all the snotty remarks, that she had managed to do such a “bang up” job stitching me up (if I only knew her name…).

                Kindly, the doctor undid the stitches, and backed off. He told me he wasn’t going to touch me anymore, and they would prep me for surgery.

                Now.. time for visitors. Great… just great. I was in no position to put on my makeup, and people just started coming in. The Demerol was kicking in, as was the realization that not only was my labor over, but the hospital was just beginning its work. I wasn’t going to get to relax for a while. Vincent I suspect was in mild shock. He would tell me later that he started shaking as he beheld our son emerge. I hadn’t even realized he’d watched the baby come out, because during all of our disarray, he had been getting phone calls from all of our family members.  It was actually kind of funny. The nurses hadn’t even bothered to tell him to turn off the cell phones, just shouted at him as he stepped away to answer a call, “Grab her leg!”

                My father showed up, as did Vince’s mother, and even his best friend. Everyone kept saying how amazed they were, that when they heard I was going into labor they planned on coming by to see us in a day or two... not in just an hour! Then, my father did the worst thing ever… he snapped a picture with his phone!

                “Just leave,” I remember telling him. Of everything that was happening, I felt it like a crushing blow. Sure, everyone was having a grand time. Yeah, the quickness of the birth might be something to brag about, but I wanted to go home.. right then! And  a picture? Well, you know how I feel about those.

                At least my father had the decency to apologize and then offer to delete it. I don’t think he actually did, which still keeps me somewhat at odds on the inside about it.

                Anyhow, thankfully I was wheeled away to surgery. I don’t recall much, except that they had me curl forward. The doctor stuck a needle into my spine, and I felt a horrible pain course through my left leg. He said he had to take the needle higher, and then he removed it. I laid back, and I remember him asking me if I felt him.

                “Hey what are you doing?” I felt him pinch my leg.

                “You feel that?”

                “A little.”

                “The way I’m pinching you now, you’d want to slap me.” Then.. thanks to all the Demerol and drugs, I managed to get some sleep in. I was told later that I was in surgery for two hours, and it was probably a good thing.

                As it turns out, Cesar and I would pay dearly for our fast labor over the next few days. I suffered a hematoma forming inside of my uterus (a huge blood blister, they said), that they had to drain. They had inserted a long piece of what looked like plastic with holes into the blister to allow all the blood to flow out over the next two days. I also had third degree lacerations.

                Despite everything, I still asked, “So, I guess I won’t be going home tomorrow?”

                “No, no… you’re too injured,” the doctor had told me, “and you’re a new mom…” Okay, that last part kind of got on my nerves.

                In any case, with a ton of packing and fluids all dripping in (antibiotics) and out (blood, urine) of me, I was wheeled to a room I wouldn’t leave for three nights.

                Cesar was wheeled in to be with us, and I finally got to enjoy him. I laid him down beside me so he could try to eat his first meal from me. He did splendidly considering he had been given formula all the while I was out. I was finally ready to give bonding a shot.

                I won’t go into detail over every little hour, since it will mainly be bits and pieces of my recollection. I will tell you that with the nurses, it was hit and miss. I had some good ones, we had some sour ones. In fact, I had one nurse that told me all sorts of things about how I would feel and more, and then we came to find out that she didn’t even have children! Look, it’s cool if you are a nurse who wants to work with babies and moms.. but don’t try to tell me you know how I feel when you don’t!

                Anyways, the bad news, the doctor warned, was that any future doctor would be very resilient to let me have a natural labor if I ever had another baby due to the damage Cesar and I suffered from this one. In fact, he said they would most likely push for a c-section, or at the very least an induction (bleh). 

 Above: If you look closely, you can see that his eyes are bloodied red. Yeah, even his eyes suffered from the impact as well. The blood red wouldn't disappear for a few weeks. (May 2011)

                Cesar’s facial bruising had begun to raise eyebrows by Thursday night. Then again, apparently EVERYTHING raises eyebrows. A nurse whisked him away at one point because he cooed to himself while he slept. We thought it was cute, something he was doing to soothe himself. She said, “If he can’t maintain oxygen levels then we have a problem.”  She came back a while later, to let us know that he was fine… he was just (ahem, as we suspected!) soothing himself.

                Now granted, some have told me that I should be thankful that all these tests were done. That way if something was wrong we would know. I guess there is that… but sometimes I think, “Well just  how much can you test for? I mean really?”

The pediatrician in charge had done tests on Cesar’s biliruben levels, and they were climbing alarmingly fast. A nurse warned me that because he had such severe bruises, and yellow skin to begin with, there was a good chance that the body was unable to keep up with the disposal of the red blood cells. In essence, he had severe jaundice.

                By Friday he was under the biliruben lights. I won’t forget that, because I was going to be discharged come Saturday. I remember the pediatrician telling me they were going to put him under the lights, and a wave of depression came over me.

                “Cesar wasn’t well,” I thought. “I want to go home,” I remember thinking. “And I don’t want to come back.”

                It was my mother who inspired me to be a little stronger. I remember my father telling me that I wasn’t being fair. I told him, “What’s the point? If they send me home, what will I do? Do you really think that I should hobble back and forth from the house to the hospital to try and feed him every few hours, only to be told I have to give him formula anyway? No.. I’d rather just wait until they think he’s up to their standards of what’s ‘normal’ and then I’ll finally get to have him home.”

                Just the idea, coming back and forth, icepacks and pads all up my butt, in the heat, wobbling there was awful. They were good enough to encourage me to breastfeed him at the start, but there wasn’t enough milk to clean out his system, they said, and followed up with loads of formula. Cesar was already starting to reject breastfeeding, having taken to the quick flow of an easy bottle.

However, it was my mother who said, quite angelically, “Now Amanda, he needs you there. You’ll feel bad if you’re not there. Someone needs to hold his little hand while he goes through this.”

From that perspective, I realized I had no choice in the matter. I was a mom now. A tiger mom! I would have to call on the strength of the gods and do my best, because there was no time to be depressed about it. I needed to hold him no matter how much I hated the situation because he needed me to.

               

Cesar Is Born (Part One)

I’m going to do this in parts since I have a feeling it will take a while. It’s been three months since Cesar was born, and I kick myself for not having gotten this done with sooner, while the memories were fresh. However, so much has happened that I have been preoccupied loving my new life.
This, is the end of the story of my pregnancy. I had a hard time deciding whether or not I should end this blog with Cesar’s birth story, or begin my newest blog, All Hail Cesar, with it. For this ending chapter was a beginning to a new one. Yet, in my logic, I came to the conclusion that it would be a rather abrupt and unsatisfying ending to just leave off this blog with hardly a conclusion. And so, after three months, it’s time to share the story of Cesar’s birth.

    In retrospect, I think my blog may have come off a little haughty and perhaps even negative. I needed a place to vent, and I did that here. But before you go saying, “Oh, you learned your lesson..” no, I did not. I’m just as snooty as ever but, I think I am much calmer now that this is over. The worrying, the stress, has moved on. I’m no longer having to be consumed by what’s going to happen to me because I no longer have to fight the pregnant woman‘s battle. Now I can fight a mother‘s battle, the battle of a tiger! And I had a decent (good, not great) birth experience.
    On May 18th, 2011 I woke up feeling a little odd. It was four days past my EDD, and I was beginning to get a little anxious. So much so, that the night before I had walked two miles with Vincent, come home, and jumped up and down, up and down, at about two in the morning as we made a video about how much we wanted Cesar to be born.
    I had my doctor’s appointment at 11 am, and to be honest I seriously considered whether or not I actually wanted to go. I was tired of the annoying check up, “Well you’re still 2 centimeters dilated… any day now.” Naturally I went, only to be told that since I was four days past, it was time to start scheduling induction. I politely told the doctor I’d like to wait until the following week. He scoffed at me, and asked why. I tried explaining to him that I felt the EDD might be off, and he started to argue that it was not off by any means because the calculations were just right. I finally gave up and scheduled the induction for that Sunday. To his credit, the doctor did tell me that if I still felt strongly about waiting that I did have the option to call and cancel, which is more than I would expect of my previous doctor.
    And so, I left the office with a scheduled birth date for my son, and some disappointment. We went out to eat, where I realized that I had what seemed to be a pain in my kidneys. I sipped iced tea like crazy. I’ve had kidney pain before, and good hydration clears it up quickly. But this would come and go, come and go.
    By the time we got home I was ready for a shower. I took a nice shower, hoping it would ease some of my pains that didn’t seem to be subsiding. Once I got out, however, I threw myself on the bed and gasped. Vincent was worried, and I was too. I suspected by that time that the pain I was experiencing was contractions. For while the pain started in the kidneys it circled around to the front of my abdomen, and then subsided. I had been ready for labor, I had prepared myself for it… but I began to fear something was wrong. Labor, I had read and reread, takes a long time. Sometimes days in it’s natural course. What was happening, was something wrong? Or was I just a wimp after all?
    Vincent, also confused and concerned went straight away to the internet. He said we should time the contractions to see just how bad off I was.
    “Okay,” he told me, and I‘ll never forget this part, “If they are five minutes apart your next one should be at four twelve.”
    “Ahh!” I relayed, as another one started.
    “Well …that was a minute.” 
    In our confusion we decided the best option was to call 911. I felt totally unprepared, like a failure, and I did NOT want to spend days on end in a hospital only to be induced. The fear sprang upon me, but I did my best to fight it. I got up, started collecting what I could to take with me. I remember grabbing makeup and tossing it on the bed. And then, the ambulance showed up. They had me lay on my side, and warned me cheerfully that if I delivered in the ambulance I’d have to name my son after one of them. They also timed the contractions and confirmed that yes, they were exactly a minute apart and I might very well deliver with them. Despite the fact that the hospital was a block away, I would have delivered in the street had I tried to make it there on foot.
    Luckily, we did make it in. And here is where the not so fun part began.
    Labor itself is phenomenal. I don’t mean phenomenal in a “it’s like having your cake and eating it too,” kind of way. For me it was work. It was pain and pleasure, all wrapped in one consuming experience. Perhaps it’s because it happened so fast. Some would argue that I’m lucky. Some would even say that I still don’t get to have an opinion on labor since it was so fast. I say, screw you.
    The horror began in the room. Imagine a big, white, sterile room. You’re busy trying to experience the most intense thing ever, and if you have been reading my blog you know that I am very opinionated… I’m also very private when it comes to intense, womanly experiences. By private, I mean I didn’t need the whole world tuned into my vagina. So I felt like I am a tiny spectacle in a large, white room, where people come and go as they please. Inside my bubble of labor, I was a whirlwind of emotions. I felt pain, excitement… I can only imagine it’s like a thousand doses of drugs (no I haven’t experienced that). I felt like a delightfully crazy woman.
    Outside of my bubble, everyone was very mechanical. Now, while I understand that to doctors and nurses who see it every day, an emergency birth may seem very routine. But honestly, at the very least they might have mustered up some sort of empathy. Instead they talked as if they were operating a computer. Only one nurse was kind enough to speak to me. She suggested I breath deep. Of course, I might also add (to my complaints) that everyone was not on the same page as far as breathing. I didn’t take Lamaze, and I was just fine with breathing how I wanted (gasping and whining). However, every time someone came by they had a new suggestion for how I should breath, which became not only confusing but very annoying.
    Another nurse checked my dilation, shouting that I had gone to six centimeters. She then told me she couldn’t feel a water bag, and accused it of having broken in the shower very casually. A few moments later, I felt a bubble squeeze out of me and burst! I shouted, “My water broke!” and she actually replied, “Are you sure? I didn’t feel anything?”
    Really?.. Really? Am I sure? Might I also take pause to remind everyone that I had no time for any pain medications. I had absolutely no drugs in my system. In fact, the ambulance had failed to get any kind of blood pressure readings, pulse, ect. Adding onto that, the birth came about so quickly that one of the nurses actually said, “Too bad, I would have liked to at least get a fetal heart rate.”
    That’s right.. Nothing. Au natural.
    The nurse practitioner called for Vincent to be brought in. He had no gown, just his, “I BRING IT” T-shirt on we were all in such a hurry. My real contractions had started. My gut was pushing on it’s own. It was actually pretty awesome. I must have looked like a fat, flailing fish on a table.
    I remember at one point crying out, “I’m going to pass out!” I threw my arms up, and the one thing they did manage to stick me with came out. I only know this because I heard a nurse say, “She’s ripped her IV out.”
    Vincent came around to hold my left side, and the kinder nurse was on my left, while the nurse practitioner stood waiting. Since I was doing my own thing, when the moment to push came, my body was doing it on it’s own. I screamed out. It felt fantastic to shout! It was like letting lose upon the world.
    “You’re not helping yourself by screaming. You need to push,” the nurse practitioner told me. What a bitch. Yes, a bitch. I said it. And if you don’t agree with me now you will shortly, since her plethora of bitchiness does not end there.
    I did push. I felt his head slide down and then up again. I pushed a second time and I felt his head crown. It wasn’t that bad. Everything else was so intense that this just seemed to be the cherry on top. Then his head came out, and as the rest followed, it just felt like a weird bungled mess was coming out.
    Another nurse got right to work, she pushed down on my abdomen, trying desperately to get the placenta out. What a rush they were all in. I had finished my work. At 5:05 p.m. on May 18th, 2011, Cesar had been birthed. I was ready to relax and enjoy my son.

Below: Cesar Adolph Alejos is born! He's alien looking just like all other newborns, but give it some time and he will become a gorgeous ladies' man! 

   Well, was I in for it. No relaxing for me. Ms. Bitch decided to stitch me up. She kept sticking me without warning, and then saying idiotic things like, “You need to stop twitching.” At one point I yelled back at her, “Well if you gave me a little warning first I would know it’s coming.” I just wanted to relax, and I kept vocalizing it but no one cared. I was so tingly, I felt like I’d just had a deadly orgasm of some kind and I was incredibly sensitive.
    At one point the woman in charge of my newborn son offered him to me. At least she was joyful. She said, “This will take your mind off the stitches.” The placed him gently on my chest, and I looked at him. His face was bulbous and bruised. He had come out so fast that his face had literally slammed into my pelvis, and he did not have a “cone head” at all. I looked at him, and I am afraid I cannot tell you much. In my mind, I think his eyes were closed. I think besides the puffy face, there wasn’t much else to see. I didn’t feel anything. I didn’t cry, I didn’t experience a wave of hormones. I felt another needle stab into me, and I told the nurse, “I’m sorry, you’re going to have to take him back.” I guess I should have expected as much. I’m not the kind of person who can make a perfect moment happen in such disarray. I feel very guilty about that actually…. I let them take Cesar away and I wouldn’t see him again for hours.
    A nurse informed me that she was adding a drug to the IV. It would make me feel loopy, she said. I asked her why.
    “Because,” Ms. Bitch cut in, “If you don’t have the Demerol we will put you to sleep since you won’t stop twitching.”
    Well guess what? I didn’t stop twitching because I could still feel the pricks of her needles, I was that sensitive. The doctor finally arrived, apologizing. He had been stuck in traffic, he said as he took over for the nurse practitioner. He went to work right away and after just a few moments, he said, “Oh I’m sorry. I have to undo these stitches and redo them.”
    I told you she was a bitch.
    “That’s it. Put me to sleep,” I said. “I’ve had enough. I can’t do this any more.”