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dangergirl16 · 7 years

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why yes, I *have* changed

“I don’t know Shells, I feel like you have changed and I don’t know how to take things.” – a close friend

This is hard for me to write. Nothing about the last 6 months has been easy. Though if I’m being completely honest, nothing about the last 19 months has been particularly easy – for reasons that are directly related to me now being a mom.

It was around 19 months ago that my husband and I realized that making a baby was not going to be as easy as we had been lead to believe. It was just the first realization of many that my life was changing in ways I couldn’t even begin to imagine or control (and being a mom showed me that I am, without a doubt, a control freak).

I’m not writing today because of the hardships and heartache I endured (often privately) because of my own (unexplained) infertility diagnosis, though it definitely compounds my particular feelings postpartum. Getting here was harder than I ever thought possible. I am writing to attempt to articulate how one of the best and most joyous experiences of my life has also been one of the most painfully isolating (both physically and emotionally) and heartbreaking experiences I have had in my short 30 years.

For better or worse, my son was born by way of an unexpectedly painful and unplanned emergency c-section after laboring for a full 24 hours. Because my epidural did not function properly, I had the unfortunate experience of feeling everything on my right side. I have lost track now how many times my pain meds were increased or which drugs were added to the cocktail to give me some kind of relief. However, instead of relief, I was still in pain but now completely disoriented. I think the actual words I uttered through my mask of laughing gas is “I feel drunk” – a strange sensation for someone who hadn’t touched a drop of alcohol in almost a year.

When you are pregnant, everyone and their mother want to give you advice to prepare you for labor. I’m telling you now that it’s all shit and even the best laid plans go awry. I didn’t have an intricate birth plan. In fact, one of the OBs at my practice laughed in my face when I questioned if I should even have one. My only goal was to ensure both baby and myself were healthy at the end of the day. Little did I really realize, I had envisioned the birth, and I had a plan, and Pitocin, and vomiting from intense never-ending contractions, and a painful c-section were not part of that plan. I vaguely knew these things were a possibility and could occur, of course, but they were interventions for “other women”. Not me.

Ha. Hahahaha.

I am very grateful for my choice to get an epidural because I can only imagine what it would have felt like sans pain management when my doctor stitched up a torn septum or when he pushed my son back up the birth canal after he failed to descend further, despite over a full hour of pushing. Even at the moment I was told son would be surgically removed from my body, I was okay. This was not going as planned (why did I even bother with a plan?), but now I knew it was only a matter of minutes until my son was in my arms.

Except…he wasn’t.

After the anesthesiologist had come in to explain how my epidural would be used during the c-section, he was called into an emergency surgery originally estimated to take no more than 20-30 minutes. Over an hour passed, and there I lay fighting the near constant urge to push, breathing through each contraction and again thankful I only felt pressure.

Finally I was taken into the operating room and prepped for surgery. My spirit had diminished greatly from the time I stopped pushing to the moment they wheeled me in. I was ready to be done. I was so exhausted (it was now very early Tuesday morning and I had been admitted late Sunday evening). All of this and everything that lead to this moment was taking the joy away from the birth of my first child, something I had been picturing for almost 2 full years. This was not the beautiful birth I had envisioned.

Instead, I had a back spasm on the operating table. Instead, I vomited (again), this time from the anesthesia. Instead, I felt all the cutting and tugging as my son was removed from my uterus. I tried to be in the moment, to stare at him in awe, but it was difficult when my body was still open, the pain still present, and I didn’t even know which baby to kiss when he was thrust in my face (ie: I was seeing double).

The next moments are a blur. The pain meds were increased or changed once my son was safely out. I vaguely remember making a joke about getting a tummy tuck while my doctor stapled me shut. But the pain was still there. Each bump the gurney rolled over filled me with dread. When would this nightmare (because that’s what it was now) end?

What I wanted most was to be clear headed and pain free. I wanted to see one of everything. And for reasons I still, almost 6 months later, can’t understand is why I refused to see my son once I reached recovery. Was he not the reason I put myself through all of this? The months of testing and becoming increasingly more depressed and panicked. The near daily blood draws to check my hcg levels during early pregnancy and the anxiety I endured waiting each day for the phone call confirming that they were in fact increasing. The anxiety I felt about 15 minutes after that phone call knowing I had to go back in two days to do the whole thing again. The joy I felt when I first stared at the ultrasound, pretending I saw evidence that I was actually pregnant. The terror I felt during a non-stress test that required additional monitoring in labor and delivery and almost caused me to be induced the week before my water broke on its own. The hours spent laboring through Pitocin and trying to remain med-free. The painful c-section and unhelpful and disorienting drugs. It was the moment I had waited almost a lifetime for – that amazingly wonderful skin-to-skin moment. And I refused to see my minutes old baby.

He spent the next 5 hours in the nursery, alone, not knowing his mother’s touch.

And that moment, when the pain was finally manageable, when my vision was restored, I realized what I had done – it set the mood for the next several weeks…okay, months.

It didn’t take long for the baby blues to set in. I wasn’t prepared for the intense sadness, joy, terror, and panic I felt almost simultaneously throughout the day, every day. Those nights recovering in the hospital were some of the loneliest nights ever with just me and my son – trying to figure this whole thing out and having no clue what to do (though I’m only marginally less clueless now). It didn’t help that even just taking care of my basic needs were a lot harder than I anticipated. Getting up out of my bed was often a minutes long process; the urgency with which I wanted – needed – to get to my baby’s bassinet was unattainable. And even when I did get there, I would nearly collapse in tears struck by the awe of his perfection and the terror that he was solely my responsibility now.

The mom guilt set in quickly.

I don’t know that I can fully convey the embarrassment I felt when, upon my discharge from the hospital, my nurse had earnestly asked me if I wanted to see the psychiatrist before I left because I hadn’t realized that I had been quietly crying the entire time she reviewed my at-home care.

If I had a time machine, I would go back to that moment and say yes. Maybe if I had said yes, I could have forgiven myself for the feeling of abandoning my son in his first moments outside my body. If I had said yes, maybe I wouldn’t have to make the painful choice of spending any free time with my son outside of my full-time job and taking the time to sit in a doctor’s office to discuss those early moments and why months later they still haunt me. Though if I really had a time machine, I’d go back to the moment I refused my son, and I would hold him and soak in all that newborn goodness. I’d make sure he felt loved and wanted. I’d fill the gaping hole in my heart where that memory should be instead of filling it with regret.

It’s been a hard adjustment – not just to motherhood and all the guilt and regrets that were unknowingly a part of the package, but also in dealing with how my relationships would change with my closest friends who are not yet at this point in their lives.

I can try to chalk it up to a matter of miscommunication, but the fact remains that not long after my pregnancy became public knowledge, I was suddenly given a whole lot of extra space that I hadn’t asked for. This infinitely empty space became even bigger and darker once my son was born.

I don’t know now how to repair any damage that has been done by these changing relationships and my frequent inability to cope with those early regrets, which sadly and unfortunately tends to shape how I interact and socialize with people when I am lucky enough to be included. As time goes on, most days are good days, but days like today, or the last few days (the countless days following a particularly nasty fight with a friend), have been hard and brought me back to those early moments. Just when I think that I have finally sorted through the pain and the regrets and the anxiety, the wound is torn open again.

So when I am told that I have changed, that I seem different, and sometimes negative more often than not, I tend to agree. I have changed. My body is not my own. My sleep is at the mercy of a tiny little human. I am also trying hard to reconcile those early moments, to find the balance between work life and home life, mother life and friend life. I am human. I went through something. I am trying; I am getting help. And if you have gathered anything at all from these ramblings, I hope that you have gathered that I am not perfect and never claimed to be.

How could I possibly be anything other than different from who I was before?

#ppd #ppa #momlife

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