Unexpected

It's amazing how you can try to prepare for major events in your life, but then find yourself overwhelmed by the reality of them.  Kant talks about the sublime, awe and terror at something grand, usually in nature.  In one of my classes we discussed the fact that the idea of sublimity is fading because of our exposure to so many things through media and facilitated travel.  I made the argument that perhaps the thing we have left is the sublimity of experience.  I'm going to write this just for the catharsis of it, and to have it recorded somewhere.

Our third baby was due June 11.  Was being the operative word.  Early in the morning of April 30th I woke up for my normal pregnancy-induced nighttime routine of a drink of water, a handful of jellybeans, a walk around the apartment, and a trip to the bathroom.  By a happy accident (or some providential divine protection, take your pick) I turned on the light (I usually don't do this so as to not wake the other two kids) and realized that I was bleeding heavily.  I kicked into motion before I was really awake, and the adrenaline made me incapable of choosing the correct phone menu option for the midwife on call without hanging up the call.  I took a deep breath, found my bra, told a very asleep Ben I was bleeding but thought I was okay to drive, and called the midwife while I was on the road.  Once she confirmed that she needed to see me, I called Ben and asked "What if the baby dies?" It was a horrible thought.

I didn't think I was in labor, since the contractions did not feel like contractions to me based on my other two experiences.  Apparently with a placental abruption this is typical - you have all sorts of pain that confuse the labor pains.  I had no idea of any of that at the time, just that I was bleeding and that the pain was regular and intense, but fortunately in about 8-minute intervals.  I prayed all the way to the hospital - 45 minutes away in Cincinnati, the only hospital within 50 miles with a practice of midwives.  Turns out it was fortuitous that I didn't want to use the local hospital....thing would not have turned out nearly as well there as they did since we were at Good Samaritan.

I parked in the ER lot and walked to the desk.  I sat and talked to the night guard while they went for a wheelchair....he asked me about my T-shirt, and I looked down and realized I had on one of Dad's old highway patrol shirts.  I had come to the hospital in my pjs, without thinking a thing of it.  They took me back to triage where the staff had the attitude that seems to be my lot when I show up to the hospital in labor.  Since I don't look as though I'm in obvious pain, no one feels urgency about me.  After about 10 minutes I said, "Look, I really think you need to get me to a room.  I know I look together, but I'm bleeding badly and am really scared." They looked at each other and told me that they'd go ahead and get a urine sample "to get started on." I accommodated, and when they saw the blood clots they started moving a little more quickly.

The midwife was waiting for me in the room, she started an exam and said "I know this was not your plan, but it looks like the baby will be coming and that you'll need the residents here to take your case over.  If I go forward with the exam it's going to speed up your labor, and we don't want that, so I'm going to hold off and let the resident take over.  I'll stay if you want me to." (Let me point out, this is yet another reason to love midwives - she would get no payment for attending the birth, but didn't want me to be alone with a 12-person team, none of whom I had ever met.) I called Ben and explained what was going on, and that the baby was coming.  He didn't seem to register, I guess because he was asleep, but I was too focused on what was going on to worry much about him being there.

The resident arrived. She was very young and very capable, but not practiced enough to make things look effortless or be very reassuring.  I think I was a good patient for her to have, because I can recognize the difference between competent novices and incompetent practitioners, and could see she was the former.  She continued the exam and said (almost hopefully) that maybe it was old blood shedding for some reason.  Just then, another contraction that I recognized as a contraction happened, and a cover-the-table gush of bright red blood along with it.  The resident said "No, you're abrupting." They brought an ultrasound machine in within minutes, and verified that the placenta hadn't completely come away, which it had not.  Baby's life support was still intact, thankfully.

They took me up to a delivery room and the midwife explained that they would probably want to do an epidural.  I was glad, because I was not managing the pain the way I had with my other two....I don't know if it was the fear or the fact that I wasn't prepared (thinking I had six weeks still), or additional pain associated with the complication.  Either way,when she said my two options would likely be an epidural or the risk of needing to be rapidly put under for an emergency c-section in the event the baby's heart dropped, I was grateful for a pain-blocking technology that allowed me to stay awake to see the outcome of the delivery.  The thought that I might go to sleep and then wake up not knowing what happened to the baby was intolerable to me.

A nurse joined me and the midwife, and the anesthesiologist followed her.  They told me that the resident did want to have an epidural line in place, and I set myself up for that pain.

Once we were in the room, a whole mess of people joined us.  There was a medical fellow in neonatology that had henna on her hands.  She was a capable, practiced novice who made things look easy.  I liked her a lot.  She explained the lines of defense that they would try to use for baby, and what would be positive or negative indicators that I could recognize at birth. She had an additional four people on her team.

The resident came in again with her team (two other residents and an attending, it seemed to me).  There were also two nurses.  They waited for the epidural to take effect, did a check, and were pleasantly surprised to see I could start pushing, which meant that we would probably avoid a C-section.

I pushed once, in the horrible and awkward lie-on-your-back-and-pull-yourself-up-by-grabbing-your-legs way that I guess is normal with an epidural?  I had never, ever pushed like that, and if I can come to accept the idea of another pregnancy, I never want to do it again.  I didn't feel any progress, or any semblance of what a push should have felt like.  I started to panic a little, it was so different from natural birth...I looked up at the midwife, and she read my face, I guess.  She said "It's okay.  It is VERY different, and you will not feel in control the way you did with your other babies.  It will still work, you and your body will still get the hang of it."

And we did.  4 pushes later, baby was born.  They laid the baby up on my belly and did his initial assessment - surprisingly, his APGAR was an 8, and then a 9 at the subsequent one.  He breathed on his own and cried quickly....they rushed him over to the warm table to keep working on him and make sure he would keep breathing.  I asked "WAIT, is it a boy or a girl!?" The team didn't know that I hadn't found out the sex at the ultrasound.  The neonatology fellow said "OH!  No!  I mean, it's a boy!"  Everyone laughed.  I think we all needed a relief from the tension.

They wheeled baby away to the NICU, and kept me in the delivery room to monitor me and make sure that there wasn't an underlying issue that had caused the abruption.  Ben came in, having dropped the kids with Mom (who was coincidentally in town for Gran's 75th birthday....she had had no intention of meeting her newest grandson that trip!) at T's.

We settled in.  What came next was a 12-day NICU stay of shuffling schedules to try not to ever leave him alone for more than a few hours at a time, learning about pumping milk, praying that he would eat (the only lasting complication of his six-week-early arrival), and talk, talk, talking to process with the two BEST nurses in the world.  Ed and Holly are my favorites.

Now, almost four months later, I am finally allowing myself to call it trauma.  I initially felt that since we had such good outcomes, I wasn't entitled to that phrase.  Now, I recognize that it will be very important to process this through to help avoid fear and overprotectiveness.  I still don't know if I will ever get to the point where another pregnancy feels anything other than terrifying for me.

Fortunately, that's not a choice I have to make today.  For now, I get to enjoy my sweet baby and be so glad that the unexpected ended so well.

Uncertainty

We're waiting. Waiting for a contract to come through to be sure that this job is actually as good as they have promised me. Waiting to find a house. Waiting for a baby to be born in the next 8 weeks. Waiting to move our whole little family to a new state. Waiting to see if Ben's company will let him work remotely or if he'll get to be a for-real stay-at-home dad. Waiting to see if I can adjust to his way of getting the laundry done. Waiting to see if he can adjust to being the home-body. Lots of waiting. It's all very suspenseful and normally would cause my control-freak tendencies to work me into a frenzy. So far we're holding up okay. It seems like this is going to be a wonderful adventure.

You can't fix stupid

You can kindly explain. You can provide resources. You can ask them to analyze what they have said. You can yell and get indignant. You can patiently ask questions. And still, stupid. Just. Doesn't. Die.

Adversarial

I have been declared adversarial. On two conservative LDS blogs. Simply for saying things like "Actually, marriages of girls at 14 was not terribly common in the 1840s" and "Census data in Utah during Brigham Young's lifetime does not support the idea that polygamy was necessary because of excess women. There were actually more men than women, which meant that some men went wifeless to allow for polygamy." The thing is, I firmly believe that you can know this information to be true and still have a testimony of the church.

Neighborly

Note to the substance-addicted, unreasonable neighbor downstairs who lied to the apartment manager so that we're on notice for eviction if we don't resolve the "noise problem" (yeah, we're totes awake at 3 am and spend TONS of time having friends over to drink):

It is not my fault that you are alone. It is not my fault that you spend most of your time hungover. It is not my fault that you wake up in the middle of the night. It is not my fault that you're working a crap job. It is not my fault that your car is dying. It is not my fault that you're a grown man living in a college apartment. It is not my fault that you can't put together a reasoned argument.

So stop blaming me and my children for your unhappiness, mmm'k? Sending the management after us won't make your life any better.

Secondary infertility

I didn't even know this was a thing.  Apparently it is, though.  For the last year or two, most of my energy has been devoted to considering why it is that Ben and I were able to conceive with relative ease when we had Bee and J, but have had such difficulty adding baby number three.

I've devoted a lot of my considerable research skills (if I may so flatter myself) to learning about the topic.  And I've come up with this incredibly useful conclusion:  there are about a million possible combinations of factors, and we don't have anything close to the amount of money it will take to figure out what it is.  We'll do some initial things, and maybe we'll get lucky.

But I'm facing up against the possibility that we may not have any more children, regardless of what I want.  It's a sad thought.  I'm working through it, not to mention fighting the muddled feelings that surge up when I interact with a number of babies and small children in my life who either lack parents entirely or have incapable, negligent, or selfish ones who don't meet the needs of the children in question.

There's no easy answer, and for a woman who grew up in a church that wraps so much of a woman's worth into her child-bearing potential, this is something of a crisis.  But like everything else, Ben and I are slogging through it.  We'll see where we land.

Can it be?

Some days, life is just too very good to seem true.

Fibers and old books

Reasons why I feel like a nerdy old lady today:

A colleague/mentor today loaned me a book that's out of print and not at my library, saving me the inter-library loan wait.  It's full of photos of theater renovations in Spain of old corrales, original beams and everything.  I reacted the way many (most?) women would to jewelery or a romantic trip someplace....giggly and excited about the prospect of using/enjoying it when I got home.

I found a place that does natural alpaca fiber, spins it and dyes it themselves and everything.  AND THEY'RE LOCAL.  AND OWNED BY A WOMAN!!



So pretty soon I'm gonna scan me some photos and crochet me some super-soft, hippy fingerless gloves, or maybe a baby hat.

As a somewhat somber side note,  I need a baby of my own to crochet for, but apparently God's not feeling generous with babies lately, at least ones for me.  Which makes me more than a little sad.  Oh well, at least I have work to keep me busy.

Remembering Mamaw

I'm thinking about Mamaw* tonight.

She always gifted me books.  We have a photo of a six-year-old me hugging a leather bound copy of the complete works of Lewis Carroll that was the preferred present that year.  She also gave me Little Women, The Secret Garden, and introduced me to the Laura Ingalls Wlder books.  In some ways I think I can blame her for both my lasting interest in women writers and my love of feminist criticism.  The fact that I'm now near completion of my PhD in literature would have thrilled her.  

I can see her sitting in the swing on the back porch at the Lake, the slightly-yellow light on and the warm summer air cooling while we rocked back and forth.  She used to start almost everything she  said to me with "Emily honey...".   She was so very wise and helped me to be patient with both myself and others.  She also helped me to enjoy white hyacinths for the soul.

So tonight in celebration of submitting revisions, I'm pretending I don't have grading to do and eating an evening snack that's a collection of my favorite things.  Thanks, T, for saving Mamaw's china for me so that I can feel a little closer to her at times like this.

* it is important to know that my family comes from Tennessee and her name is "Maw-maw." Not "Meah-maw."

Taking the easy way out

I've been revising most of the day.  Finished a chapter, started on another.

I'm tired and frustrated and worn down by the whole process and by the fact that it seems like I still have SO MUCH to do before it's done. 

I still have to basically re-write the worst chapter (saving the worst for last), plus write a conclusion, plus finish the works cited page, plus do all the formatting the graduate school and the online submission folks require...

I need to do this all before Monday night.  My students take another round of exams on Tuesday, which will mean me buried in grading again next week with no time to work.  My adviser needs time to look at the draft so that she can approve it or I can make some last changes before the committee gets it, but they need it before March 1st so I'm under a crunch.

It makes me feel overwhelmed.

So, just for now, I'm going to take a break and do easy things.  Run the sweeper, unload the dishwasher, and shuffle the laundry. 

Too bad I can whip my house into perfect shape in something like 35 minutes.  If only I could write as easily.

Outside observers

Yesterday while Mom and I were chatting (on a writing break), we got to talking about the way Ben and I manage things.  House, kids, money, work, driving, camping....just everything.

She said that as she's watched us, she noticed that we're either both working or both resting.

Which is true.  Unless I'm napping or Ben is out with the dog, we're either both doing a job (paid, out of the home or maintenance in the home) or both resting.

It made me think that maybe I should teach my kids to look to marry a person that they love enough that they're willing to work so that they can rest with them.

For example, I hate doing dishes and folding laundry.  If we work together to get them done, or he does one while I do the other, then when we finish we do something together.  We'd both rather be playing with kids than working at out-of-the-home jobs, but since we both work  we get to do great things (like backpacking trips or visits to faraway family) all together with the kids.  (As opposed to Ben working insane hours so we could scrape by).

I like it!  It works!  And it makes me happy!  It makes the challenges we come up against seem much more manageable....I guess because we handle most things together!

And I thought...most of my leisure time is spent with Ben.  And how great is that? 

I'm glad for her observation and my analysis of it.

Support

This week I'm grateful for people who love me and love my children.

Ben has outdone himself with fixing things around the house, taking kids to do fun things, and keeping things like laundry and dishes and homework together while I wrote like a madwoman last week.

This week mom is here, and I've made such dramatic progress that I can't even stand it!  I mean, I haven't written 9 pages in one day since before Bee made her appearance!

I'm sure I could finish the dissertation without help with those things.  But my life would be a sad, sad, sleep-deprived shadow of the good thing that it is with their help.

And so I'm glad for support - not just the verbal "Go get 'em, tiger!" kind of support, but money-and-time-where-your-mouth-is support.

Light

I finally see light at the end of the tunnel.  I've started the outlines for the last two chapters, I've got one outline done and one nearly there.

So next week while Mom's here to help with kids, I'm hoping to get them both drafted, even if they're rough.

And even though writing looks like this:

I feel a lot like this:

Time to watch a movie with Ben and then eat some ice cream.

My favorite internet misogynist is at it again....

....this time over the "Pants at Church" kerfuffle.

Here's the post, and you can read my comment there:
http://goodstrongmen.blogspot.com/2012/12/pants-at-church.html

The thing that I find funniest is "Wow, you pants-wearing, short-haired girls....I'm not attracted to you, and you better be careful or no one else will be either!" seems to be his biggest threat.  I think I can speak for a majority of Mormon feminists when I say "I think I can handle that a man like you won't be interested in me."  And wave him on his way while I marry Ben instead. 

My Bishop made interesting remarks in sacrament meeting today in conjunction with the age change for sister missionaries.  He pointed out that women who serve missions will have a higher bar of expectations for their future husbands.  He said "They'll look for men who will be better, more attentive, more engaged husbands and fathers."  I leaned to Ben and said "Yeah, I didn't just LOOK for that, I GOT it."

Cause I did.  And I'm grateful for it every single day.

Timing

End-of-semester madness is bad enough....wrapping up grades, tracking down missing assignments, dealing with last-minute medical leaves/incompletes, the sudden flood of interest (completely lacking up to this point) in office hours....it's just yucky.

Puking for two days in the middle of that - yeah.  Let me tell you about how my life's timing is just seriously awesome.

Fun!

Just because I need my brain rot just as much as the average person....

I've been making things like this in the last few weeks!

They make me happy.  One is for J, the other one is for his little friend.  Bet you can't guess which is which.  The happy yarn just made me think of him, I could hardly stand it....and the flower is the most complex thing I've crocheted.  Ever.

So now that I've busied my hands with some fluff, I guess it's time to get writing again.

Progress, and lack thereof

So, next time someone points out to me that 3 years seems like WAY too long for me to have been in the list/exam/proposal/writing phase, I'll be sorely tempted to point out things like the following:

During that stretch I birthed and nursed an infant.

I left my PhD institution and have been teaching a 4-4 load at another for the past two years.

In addition to work, I have ballet lessons, art classes, and camping trips to think of.

Unlike my male counterparts with children, no one does the shopping, cooks my food, does my laundry, cleans my house, or watches my children while I write.  I do those things.  And write.

I did seven loads of laundry in 24 hours Thursday/Friday in a (so far successful) attempt to limit the stomach flu flying around out extended family, to just J.

And I'm going to graduate along with my entering PhD cohort (well, barring catastrophe I will).


It's funny, the folks in my ward don't say anything to the male students with young families about being in school for ages.  They just assume that the men are on track.  Then they hear me say something that allows them to mentally calculate "Whoa, she's been working on the dissertation for three years?" and assume that I'm behind schedule.

For what it's worth, I'm not.

/end rant.

I didn't post a "thankful" post....

I guess that oversight speaks to the chaos of my existence at the moment.

I spent Thanksgiving helping Ben clean up J's puke - though I have to admit that Ben really outdid himself in terms of stepping up so that I could still get work done. 

So today (and in the spirit of Thanksgiving), I'm grateful that I wrote my requisite pages, got to eat all my favorite comfort foods (soooooo many carbohydrates, I was in heaven!!), and now get to go choose and decorate a Christmas tree.

As chaotic, stressed, rushed, and full as my life generally seems to be, all of my problems are very first-world: finding ways to fit all the fresh produce into the fridge, getting the puked-on clothes immediately into the washing machine's sanitize cycle to attempt to contain the germs, worrying about whether or not the tree will stay strapped atop the Chevy or not....

I sometimes feel guilty that my life is so blessed when there is such poverty and suffering around the world. 

Today I'm trying to eliminate the guilt and just be thankful.

Talk about intimidating

Finished two chapters to circulate to committee.  This pace means May defense and graduation.

Turning in job letters tomorrow.

Terrified at the prospect of failure on both counts.

To all the people who ask me...

....when I'm having another baby:

I'm doing everything I can.  In fact, until I changed it this morning out of sheer frustration, my passphrase for my IU account had been like salt in a wound because it required me to, nearly every day (and more than once sometimes) for over two years type in "Em wants three kids".  Even though I don't have them.

People see fit to judge me based on my fertility and their assumptions that I'm somehow putting off having more children because of my academic ambitions.

To those people: go take it up with God.  He's the one who isn't sending me any babies.  And until you get an answer from Him, leave me the hell alone.