I know I should be napping, but...

My little desk calendar still shows the page for April 14/15. It represents the last weekend before I knew when/that Audrey would join us. I've refrained from setting it to the right date up until now, because I wanted to jot down thoughts before about this whole experience before "moving on."

In no particular order:

My fantastic co-parent, husband, and all-around great guy:
Ken has taken to fatherhood like a duck to water. I love watching him with Audrey, and he's been of such strength and comfort to me. Over our years together, I've marveled that my love for him continues to swell -- and, this has been yet another experience that makes me fall in love with him all over again and even more.

Birth
You know how in movies and even in a lot of "birth stories" or birth videos the proud and emotional mother can't wait to hold and touch her baby upon birth? Yeah, that wasn't me so much.

I learned while in the hospital and going through a variety of as-yet-never-experienced bouts of pain, that I become Uncontrollable Shaky Woman big-time. I've had this response to pain, and to a lesser extent to stressful/exciting/enervating situations, for as far back as I can remember. A few years ago, I fell out of our ceiling in our Austin house - resulting in what turned out to be torn ligaments in my left ankle - and, it took a good 10-15 minutes to "come back into my body" while lying post-fall on the floor in "bombs-exploding-in-my-ankles" pain.

So, while in the OR for the C-section, the anesthetic applied to the bottom 2/3rd of my body rendered it numb and immobile. My top 1/3rd didn't get the memo. I shook so hard and relentlessly that they thankfully strapped my left arm down onto the table, where Ken held my shaky hand, and Tonya (our midwife) literally held my right arm down with her own two hands.

During the procedure, I remember saying to myself over and over again, 'Everything's good. I'm good. I'm good. Things are good. Good, good, good. I can do this, I can do this, I can do this.' Then I noticed the surgical draping that rose up over my head and obscured my view of what was being cut open on the other side. The angle of it reminded me of a being in a tent. So, I babbled on about being in camp. "I'm in camp, and everything's great. Good, good, good." Then the anesthesiologist, Dr. Dudley (no, I'm not kidding), chimed in about his two daughters and their camp experiences. He was very chatty.

I'm being unexpectedly cut open; my upper body threatens to lift itself off the operating gurney, and I'm talking camp experiences with a stranger I'd only met about 35 minutes ago. Surreal.

After Audrey was pulled out of me - which felt a little bit like a big, bloppy deflation even through the anesthetic, I heard the sounds of the OR staff cleaning her up, exclaiming how pretty she was, that she was "pinking up" great, etc. Yay! I also starting feeling the glimmer of "I don't feel so hot."

"Do you wanna hold the baby?"

God, no. I wouldn't trust myself holding a nerf football right now. Shaky Mother Tosses Newborn Like Hail-Mary Touchdown Pass. I kissed Audrey's face right next to mine and said, "I'm going to be sick." Then I threw up.

Touching, no?

I never thought it possible to projectile vomit from a completely prone position on my back, but there you have it, Georgia.

Breastfeeding
In the hospital, Audrey latched on right away. I felt relieved that she successfully made "the chomp" so naturally, and that I actually had something come out of my breasts to nourish her.

Given this auspicious beginning, I was ill-prepared for the upheaving emotional drama that followed. Combine post-delivery, major-surgery pain with post-natal hormonal fluxes; throw in a hefty dash of rug-burned, blistered nipples; fold in sage advice from myriad nurses on methods to improve "the latch," and so forth; blend vigorously with the unforeseen need to have at least one additional, if not two additional arms to deal with errant flailing infant arms, correct tongue position, correct "fish lip" puckering needed to suckle whole areola, not just tip of nipple - all this while attempting each latch, and you have a recipe for Questioning One's Sanity and Natural Affinity For Motherhood.

I swear, at every single attempt/feeding over the course of about 5 days, I careened from "Success! I can do this!" to "New complication - God, I hurt everywhere - I can't do this and recover from this surgery at the same time - will my milk ever come in? (it came in four days post-delivery instead of the average three days...) Maybe something is wrong. Maybe I can't do anything "natural." I wanted birth to be "natural," and look how that turned out. - Maybe this is a SIGN that we should just resort to formula? - WHICH END IS UP ANYMORE?

Time to cry inconsolably at bathroom vanity. On sofa in middle of night. At changing table while looking for signs of pee and poop in our little Sweetpea's diaper.

Thankfully, we seem to have survived the storm. Nipple shields saved my sanity (for the time being - Ha Ha) and the condition of my skin on my areolas.

I can't believe I'm writing about the condition of my girl-parts like this on a blog; but, there you have it.

Well, I could go on with a Faulkner-esque stream of more thoughts, but I really should grab that nap now.

Audrey's first week: The Wrapup

It's Tuesday, the end of Audrey's first week "on dry land." We seem to have turned a corner and everything is on the upswing - thanks in no small part to friends and family who came to visit and help. Babies should come with warning labels: Do Not Attempt Alone!

Here's a lengthy "megapost" covering the time since we left the hospital.


Saturday:
Our first full day at home with Audrey. Lorie's mom drove in from Phoenix today bearing a large tub of delicious brownies and an arsenal of her own cookware, and proceeded to bring some order to our chaos. She did grocery shopping, prepared hearty meals, cleaned, generally helped out, and babysat while we caught up a little on lost sleep. Just in case you've never done this before, newborn parents don't get more than about 1 hour of uninterrupted sleep at this stage - so we have pretty much been walking dead since we checked into the hospital Monday evening!




Sunday:
The lactation consultant made a house call (oh, and god bless lactation consultants who make house calls on Sundays!) and she worked with Lorie and Audrey for about 1.5 hours while Sue and I hovered and observed. The consultant and I agreed it's a lamentable "sign-o-the-times" that too many new mothers today don't have the close network of experienced women around them like they used to, so they must resort to hiring a stranger to show them how to breastfeed, or they just give up and go to formula. Lorie learned a lot and afterwards she was optimistic, but chagrined that this purist consultant was disparaging of our beloved nipple shields - "they're a tool to be used sparingly, not a final solution." Later that day there was more frustration as Lorie & Audrey could not reproduce the success they had had with the consultant. sigh.

On the positive side, our Austin friends (and Lorie's partners on the Jumping Off Bridges film) Kat and Stacy stopped by this evening for a wonderful long visit. It was just what we needed to vent our frustrations to kind listeners and chat about things in general - reconnect a little with "normal."





Monday:
About 7am this morning it occurred to us to check Lorie's blood pressure again with our home monitor we bought a few weeks ago. Yikes! It was sky high, so we called Dr. Wu who told Lorie to take a valium and come to his office at the hospital right away. Damn. More stress and lost sleep. Thankfully Sue was here to babysit while we sped off to Glendale. With perfect timing, Lorie's longtime b.f.f. Ora called from Denver. She talked to Lorie during the entire drive which was a great stress reducer for both of us. It was funny to listen as Lorie's voice got more sing-songy, sleepy, and goofy from the valium. Long story short: Dr Wu checked her out, was not overly concerned, and prescribed very mild blood pressure medication. The whole time Lorie was like a blissed out rag doll.

From Dr. Wu's office we drove to midwife Tanya's office in Sherman Oaks where she consoled us both and put all the breastfeeding issues into perspective with a plan that synthesized the past instructions of all the other advisers with her recommendations. . She also gave us a bottle of hormone supplement to help stabilize Lorie's moods. Did I mention a newborn mom's hormones are going nuts and this puts her emotions in a blender on frappe? My mom called around this time with kind words and the unexpected good news that I would be inheriting a generous sum of money from Aunt Wilma (who passed away this year) and Uncle Bob (who passed away years ago.) Their kindness really blew me away and I choked back the tears. During the drive home I started to tell Lorie the good news but was interrupted by sudden uncontrollable sobbing that wracked my entire body for about 15 seconds - an obvious release of days of pent up stress. It was startling, and I definitely don't recommend breaking down while driving 60mph, but I was glad to be able to release all that toxic stress. This outburst reminded me of another in 1993: that first call home after weeks of stress, sleep deprivation, and brainwashing in Navy boot camp.

Tuesday:
Audrey's 1 week birthday! Today's big event was taking Audrey to the pediatrician in Santa Monica - the same that Kelly and Olaf Garcia use. She told us that Audrey is well on her way to regaining her birth weight. Got a prescription for some eye drops to clear up a blocked tear duct, but otherwise Audrey's perfect! We celebrated by walking across the street and treating Sue to lunch.

God Bless Target Stores and Nipple Shields!

After much frustration, anger, doubt, tears, scabs, and painpainpain, attempting to breastfeed with diminishing results, Lorie & I just moments ago discovered the miracle of nipple shields and Audrey is drunk on wholesome motherly goodness!!!

I searched far and wide for those simple little discs of clear flexible silicone with the perforated cone in the center. So many clerks in drug stores and baby boutique stores were clueless (and so was I!) No, a nipple shield is not a nursing pad. No, a nipple shield is not a 2" diameter dollup of rubber. And absolutely not, a nipple shield is not a flesh colored daisy-shaped felt pasty fer chrissakes! My next stop was going to be a nearby hospital pharmacy but I had to go to Target to get a bunch of other stuff. And it turns out Target has nipple shields just 3 blocks from our apartment! A nice clerk there knew exactly what I was talking about and took me right to the product on the shelf. I swear if there is anything that Target doesn't carry I have yet to find out.

Anyway we are relieved beyond words to see Audrey regain 100% interest in breastfeeding using these shields. However, we're still going to have a lactation consultant come over tomorrow so we can avoid any other pitfalls. It's so frustrating that something so fundamental and natural can be so difficult and painful. For millions of years of human evolution, if baby didn't suck, baby died, so you'd think nature would have totally perfected this activity by now.