Great Suck, Terrible Swallow

So, you might be asking yourself, “why was Lily still in the NICU if her breathing was taken care of and she was healthy”?  Well, Lily had two issues that needed time to be resolved. The first issue was the central apnea that I mentioned previously-basically, her body would just forget to take a breath.  Even full term babies do this, and then they take a few catch up breaths.  It’s actually pretty normal, but for preemies, you need to stimulate them to take the catch up breaths.  The apnea gets worse when the baby is too taxed.  And for Lily, drinking from a bottle was the most taxing part of being in the NICU.  You wouldn’t know it now, considering she just drank an entire bottle and ate an entire package of string beans in 30 minutes, but eating was Lily’s biggest hurdle.  She really couldn’t coordinate the breathe, suck, swallow motion-again, this is something that full term babies can also have a problem with, but Lily was never going to graduate from the NICU if she couldn’t drink a bottle without it throwing her into an apnea fit.  My daughter would hold her breath, suck in too much fluid, and then be too overwhelmed by how much formula was in her mouth, so she’d choke.  She had "a great suck, but a terrible swallow” (and no, the hilarity of that diagnosis was not lost on us, even in our misery-it reminded me of this one time that my dentist, who is older than my parents and who I’ve been seeing since middle school, tried to help me with my sensitive gums, and said “you know, just put something in there and move it around, suck on it a little”-he realized how awful it sounded, but I was too busy laughing hysterically to hear his multitude of apologies).

Lily had to stay on her feeding tube far longer than expected because of her bottle problems, and she had to stay on oxygen longer than expected because of the feeding problems-they couldn’t wean her off of anything until she stopped choking.

Coupled with the choking was another serious problem that also triggered the central apnea: acid reflux.  You might be thinking, “silly baby, I have acid reflux and I just take xantac.”  Acid reflux is different with babies.  And yes, yet another thing that happens with full term babies, but with preemies, they feel the acid come up, it burns, and they stop breathing! Woo hoo for more apnea.  The solution is medication, first xantac and then prevacid (which did work, eventually).  The solution is sleep position, notably, sleeping on your front because then the acid doesn’t creep up.  The sleeping on your front issue became an even bigger dilemma once we were released because the current trend in pediatrics is “back to sleep”-all babies MUST sleep on their backs because it seriously reduces the risk of SIDS. Well, I had a kid with terrible reflux who was sleep trained on her belly, so she stayed on her belly!  So once the reflux was under control, Lily could come home.

But, the eating wasn’t under control. The choking is what kept Lily from coming home.  Even with thickened feeds, being over 6 pounds (they let you out of the NICU at 4 and a half pounds for good behavior), the lowest possible setting for oxygen, and being super duper cute, Lily had to get the choking under control-great suck, terrible swallow.  I can't wait to joke with her future husband about this one!

11 Weeks, Part 2

One of the first things you learn in Journalism (other than the fact that you shouldn’t have an original, funny email address while you’re in college-your professor doesn’t appreciate that-your email should be your name-I was doomed from day 1) is that no one wants to read about the process; they only want to hear about the result.  It’s true.  No one wants to hear about the endless debates, stonewalling, points, counterpoints about a bill on the house floor-we only care about whether or not the bill passed, and most of the time we don’t care about the why or the how. (Frankly, most of the time we don’t know about the bill, either, but that’s a whole other issue.)

At this point in our NICU stay, we were in the process-month 2.  Every day was the same; every week was the same-we established a schedule.  I was there most days, all day long, two nights a week the hubby came to the NICU directly from the city…there were a lot of variables, and I’ll spare you the details of our thoroughly mapped out schedule, but most of the time I was just there all day long.

To answer your question, yes…it was VERY boring.  Lily was asleep most of the time, and there’s only so much you can stare at a 4 pound lump of gorgeousness.  I brought magazines and books.  The doctors and nurses often commented on what I was reading or asked me questions about the material.  Then my mom got me an iPad, which quickly turned into my own, personal solitaire playing device.  There was no cell or wifi access in the NICU, so I was pretty much cut off from humanity, which was actually a really liberating experience.

This is also when we realized that 6 weeks was a shot in the dark-the hubby and I never really thought that Lily would come home after 6 weeks, but we both held out a secret hope that it might happen.  We both felt like deflated balloons as week 6 came and went and Lily was still being held captive in her plastic cage.

The one thing that made the monotonous hell slightly bearable was Cathy.  Who was Cathy?  To explain that, I need to backtrack (slightly).  There are many nurses in the NICU and most, almost all, of the nurses are truly top notch-I’m not exaggerating. Irish Brogue who Lily dealt a left hook was our nurse at the beginning, and she was amazing.  As Lily grew bigger and stronger, and as schedules permitted, we were passed from one pair of excellent hands to another pair of excellent hands-the nurses cared for me just as they cared for my daughter.  But Cathy was different.  I am not a crier-at least, I am not a crier in public.  It is extremely difficult for me to let down my guard enough to cry in front of my best friends, let alone complete strangers-I know that seems antithetical to what I’m doing here, writing out all my thoughts and emotions.  It’s not that I don’t express myself and it’s certainly not that I don’t have feelings, I just don’t like it when people see me cry.  On Cathy’s first day, I walked up to the isolette, and I just started crying.  I barely said 2 words beside “hi” and “I’m mom” and then I started bawling.  Clearly, I knew that Cathy’s energy was unlike any other NICU nurse-I was comfortable around her; I could let go; I could start to deal with the reality of everything.

Cathy understood that as Lily got older, she needed more love, and not just adjusted medications.  She had me bring in books and clothes and toys and Lily’s infant seat-normal baby things that I’d been stock-piling at my house, staring at and wondering if Lily would ever use-Cathy found a way to create a mini-nursery in Lily’s corner.  This is also when I got to breast feed Lily, and cried in front of Cathy again-tears of joy, though.

I told you…the process was boring.

Dreams

Last night I had a terrible dream.  In the dream I woke up to find my daughter re-hooked up to oxygen, monitors and a feeding tube.  She was tiny-all skin and bones, like her 2-month-old self, but the wires were tangled around her crib and I was completely stunned.  How did this happen? What went wrong? This isn’t how I put her to sleep last night, in her warm sleep stretchy and adorable chubbiness.  She was amazing yesterday-her first real trip to the supermarket sitting in the front of the cart (she was in heaven looking around at all the groceries, smiling at everyone who walked by, laughing at my mother), she played with her bath toys for the first time last night, and she didn’t even want to get out of her bath she was having so much fun playing.  I asked dream hubby and he said that At Home Medical (the medical supply company that provided us with all the oxygen and monitors when we came home from the hospital-more about them, later) came over at 4am and hooked her up-dream husband let them in the door.  Somehow, because it’s a dream and that’s how things work, we were in a hospital and I was screaming at a doctor who happened to be Penn (from Penn and Teller) that there was no way that Lily needed all of these devices, that she hadn’t desaturated in months, that she’d been off oxygen since November 12.  I even got my neonatologist on the phone-she called Dr. Penn an idiot.  They were running tests on Lily, taking her blood and I screamed at them that she didn’t need the unnecessary pain.  Leave her alone!  It wasn’t full out Shirley MacLaine, but it was impressive.

I don’t remember more than that because I woke up, startled.  The thing is, dreams like this aren’t uncommon.  While Lily was still in the NICU I had dreams about her dying or about the doctors taking her away from me, forever.  Once she came home, the dreams were about her choking or not breathing or being taken away from me.  The bigger and stronger she gets the less often I have them, but the being taken away from me part stays pretty consistent, and that’s because, well…that’s how it felt.  It felt like the doctors had taken her away from me (she was, after all, literally ripped out of my body-a couple of times I quoted Macbeth “from his mother’s womb untimely ripped,” but my hubby thought it was weird so I stopped), and for a long, long time, I didn’t know when I was going to get her back-I knew that, eventually, she would be mine and I would get to be her mother, but I did not know when.  No one seemed to know when.  I would lie in bed, hysterically crying on my husband’s chest, moaning that “they took her” and “I want her back,” and there was nothing he could do but hold me and rock me and try to tell me that it was going to be okay.

I had a similar reaction after the C-section: nightmares and misdirected anger.  I later explained the hurt to the hubby as the following: “I think of you as my knight, as my great protector from all the hurt and pain in the world.  And I know you relish the role because you truly believe that it is your job to protect me (he nodded in agreement). But there I was, completely helpless, literally going through my own personal version of hell, and there you were right next to me, and you couldn't make it stop, you couldn't make them stop, and you couldn't protect me.”  He finally understood.

He understood the whole time about feeling like Lily had been taken from me, had been “untimely ripped.”  He still understands about the dreams, even though he always seems to be an idiot in them (he’s really not an idiot in real life, I swear).  Dream hubby is just an ignorant, misguided man who thinks he’s doing the right thing, whereas real life hubby is an amazing, loving father who wishes he had more time with his daughter-he only gets to see her for about an hour on weekdays, and most of that time she’s in the screaming phase because it’s time to go to bed and she doesn’t want to (even at 6 months she’s capable of have a 2-year-old’s tantrum).

I’m sure that the dreams will go away or become so infrequent that they feel like they’re gone, but I don’t think that the feelings they represent will ever go away.  I’m never going to be able to forget that my child was taken away from me, but as she grows and experiences new things, I get to add to the feelings-new, happy experiences help to dull the pain of the past.

This is Lily sitting in a shopping cart for the first time-cart cover courtesy of the Factors (love you guys).  My mother said we should shove things all around her to keep her upright, so that's Lily's blanket on the left and my mother's purse on the right.  Lily's laser-like focus narrowed in on every product we passed by-here, she is staring at soda bottles (good sale on Pepsi products right now at A&P).  Despite the lack of smile at this moment, Lily had a blast.  My husband said it looks like I went shopping and picked up a Lily. I took this photo.

Baby Clothes

I’m taking a break from the doom and gloom to discuss one of my favorite aspects of motherhood-dressing my daughter like a little doll!

Lily has grown from no clothes, to preemie, to newborn, to 1-3 months and now she’s wearing 3-6.  Most babies go straight into 1-3, saving their parents shopping time and money, but the constant growing makes us very happy and I’ve become a little bit of an expert on baby clothing as well as which brands fit Lily the best.  Plus, people are constantly buying us clothes.  Here’s what I’ve learned.

Carters: the most consistently sized brand on the market.  The fit is actually true to size, the clothes are generally okay looking, the night stretchies are the thickest and the warmest that I’ve found, and the clothes can go through the washer and dryer without too much shrinkage.  The prices are also really good, especially when you can find them on sale.  Carters is always a safe bet, but not the cutest, aesthetically speaking.

First Impressions: this is Macy’s store brand.  The clothes are adorable-really really cute matching outfits and fun night stretchies.  Some of the best gifts we’ve gotten have been First Impressions outfits.  Overall, it’s pretty inexpensive, especially when Macy’s has those great sales and then you can use a Star Rewards card on top of it (those red 20% off cards)-you can buy A LOT for a little.  Here’s the downside: it runs really small and forget about the dryer-shrinks up to almost nothing.  But it’s worth it, even if your kid only gets to wear the outfit 2 or 3 times.

Little Me: I’ve found it everywhere, from Buy Buy Baby to Nordstrom to Lord & Taylor.  The brand can be a little too cutesy for my taste and the fabrics aren’t consistent-sometimes very rough and sometimes super soft.  But, if you find the right outfit, it’s beautiful.  Little Me runs big…and I mean a full size big (their 1-3 still fits at 3-6), so while it’s annoying at first because you’re like, “what the hell, did my kid shrink?” the outfit fits for a really long time and you get a lot of use out of it.

Sara Kety: you probably don’t know this one, but I guarantee that you’ve seen her onesies.  She makes all the topical, fun onesies like Save The Date for My Bat Mitzvah, the little boy tuxedo onesies, Dr. McSweety…the list goes on and on.  These are amazing gifts because they are super fun and adorable and they are true to size.

Gymboree: my hands down favorite!  Everything they make is adorable, and, more importantly, the quality you get for the price you pay is pretty amazing.  Buy things when they’re on sale and use your Gymboree Bucks.  The size is pretty consistent and the fit is true to size.  This might sound strange, but I think Lily likes their clothes the best, too.  I watch her look at the clothes and she really thinks while she’s looking at them. They also wash and dry really well.

Baby Gap:  the clothes run long and thin, which is perfect for Lily because she is long and thin.  But if your child is a different body type, you’re not going to be as successful.  I only shop the sale rack because the clothes are too expensive and they don’t have a big selection until you’re a toddler.  However, their leggings fit Lily better than anyone else’s (again, this is because of the long and thin thing). It also really depends on what their aesthetic is for that season-my daughter does not look good in oatmeal, so she basically didn’t get anything from Baby Gap for a while because they didn’t make any other colors.

Crazy 8’s: maybe the least expensive store I’ve come across, but you can feel the difference in their fabrics.  The sleep stretchies weren’t thick enough, but I did buy a bunch of leggings and shirts.  The shirts will all need to be layered because they’re not thick enough, but they are really cute.  You get what you pay for.  I think they’re a subsidiary of Gymboree which would explain the adorable design aesthetic, but Gymboree is better, even though it costs more.  Don’t put Crazy 8’s clothes in the dryer!

OshKosh B’Gosh: we haven’t bought any OskKosh yet, but I was a diehard OshKosh kid and I can’t wait for the spring and summer so Lily can run around (she will! she will!) in those shorteralls (short-overalls combo).  They merged with Carter’s so you can get it anywhere, and everything I’ve seen has been super cute.

Ralph Lauren: we have a lot of Ralph Lauren stuff because I’m pretty preppy and because it makes great gifts.  It fits Lily pretty well because, like Baby Gap, it’s long and thin, just like Lily.  But, RL is cut REALLY narrow-we can’t button shirts up fully because they don’t close around her neck.  I’ve heard this complaint from other parents, too.  Never buy this full price! Use whatever store discount card you have, go to the outlet, or find it at Century 21.

Century 21: amazing, amazing finds! My mom comes home with bags of adorableness-Calvin Klein tracksuits, DKNY tracksuits, Little Me outfits, onesies, Ralph Lauren outfits…everything high end at low prices.  You have to be smart about it because you really could go hog wild, and there’s also a lot of crap to muck through.

Nordstrom: my mom and I went to the Nordstrom Anniversary Sale last summer as we do every summer, but this was the first time that we could buy baby clothes!  We got great deals on Benetton (which fits Lily perfectly, cut long and thin with the best proportions), Juicy (the hubby isn’t happy about this one-baby’s first Juicy tracksuit-squeal), a North Face fleece body suit (which Lily wears outside every time we leave the house), and a bunch of other things.  Nordstrom really runs the gamut between affordable and luxury (I’m never buying that $300 infant Burberry dress), but when you can get it on sale, it’s worth it because they only stock quality clothes that wash and dry well, that wear well, and that are true to size.

Children’s Place: I love their design aesthetic.  Everything is fashion at Children’s Place-seriously, hip clothes for kids. The quality is hit or miss-some fabrics are good, others are questionable, but they are always true to size.  Basically, be careful about what you throw in the dryer because it won’t always come out the same.  A lot of their clothes also have appliques, and I really like the three-dimensionality of everything.

Janie and Jack: BAH! Too expensive.  Only good for something she’s going to wear once, like a fancy party that we have to go to where the people are snooty, judge-y types.  Or a special birthday dress.

JCrew: BAH! I’m sorry, but my daughter doesn’t need a $100 cashmere sweater to constantly throw up on, thank you very much.

We have a lot of local children’s boutiques around here too, but I haven’t ventured to most of the them yet, mostly because they’re expensive, but also because it’s been very cold and I don’t want Lily to get sick.  I think I take out a lot of my monotonous boredom on planning Lily’s outfits and dressing her up as adorably as possible, as if, by sheer power of cuteness, she will make my day go by faster.

Any stores you love? Feel free to comment!

My Boobs Don't Work

My plan was to breastfeed and pump for at least 9 months-I was really looking forward to the bonding time with my child and I had seen many friends breastfeed so I knew firsthand the benefits and the realities.  The day after the C-section a lactation consultant came by my room with a hospital grade pump, lots of plastic pieces, and a whole shpiel about the benefits of breast milk-I didn’t need the shpiel, but I did need a lot of help getting the machine to work.  I should probably also mention that because Lily was 2 months early, she timed herself perfectly to arrive 9 months after that freak snow storm last October, so the hospital was packed with babies conceived when there was nothing else to do.  Lactation was overbooked and undercovered, nurses were pretty frantic and every maternity room was taken.  They even had a woman recovering in the room usually set aside for NICU parents to spend overnight visits.

You’ve probably seen a breast pump.  But, if you haven’t, there are basically these two conical, Madonna-bra looking pieces that you hold on your boobs.  They’re connected to a pump via plastic tubing and the pump stimulates the baby’s sucking motions.  I pumped and pumped and pumped, every three hours during the day and only once overnight (the social worker said that I had been through enough and needed to get some sleep-social workers are really great people).  I pumped with my sister-in-law in the room, I pumped while my father waited behind a curtain-you get the picture; I was dedicated.  By the third day, I managed 1 milliliter (prior to that, I only produced moisture).  The NICU nurse put a cotton swab into the vile and rubbed the 1 ml on Lily’s lips-tears of joy!

I also pumped in the pumping room, a room specifically for NICU moms to use.  There’s nothing like attaching a mechanical, sucking baby to your breasts in a nipple chilling, sterile room with posters all around you telling you how important your breast milk is-especially when you can’t seem to create any breast milk.  But it did help to bond with other NICU moms who were there for the same reason (shout out to “A.R.”).

We rented the hospital grade machine and took it home where I kept up my routine.  But I never seemed to produce more that 10ml per sitting, combined.  Was this normal?  This couldn’t be normal?  I spoke with lactation, but they weren’t terribly helpful.  One of the NICU nurses was also a lactation consultant, and she mentioned that fibroids (bastards) combined with a preemie could be causing low output.  After about a month of continued frustration, I thought about quitting.  Lily was growing and she was getting breast milk, exclusively, but she was only going to get bigger and pretty soon I wouldn’t be able to make enough for her.  The hubby and I thought that Lily would be home in another month (we had been in the NICU for a month already), so I decided to push through that second month with the machine.  I had to make it work!

There’s this great chapter in Tina Fey’s Bossypants where she discusses the external pressure that women get, from other women, about breastfeeding-she’s not making it up-women do really hate other women and feel it’s their job to push their agenda on other women.  Somehow, I really lucked out because my friends and family aren’t like that.  There’s no one in my inner circle secretly judging me or criticizing me because I wore the wrong jeans or I’m not a vegetarian or I don’t exercise as regularly as I should-I also almost never wear makeup or do my hair for work, and trust me, I really should at this point, but my friends don’t harass me about it.  So this feeling that I had to make it work, that I had to produce, that I had to breast feed my child…it was all coming from me.  It was just more of my own guilt, the feeling that I couldn’t do anything for my daughter, I couldn’t be a mother in any way, I had to at least be able to do this for her.  Because, if I gave it up, could I even call myself a mom?

5 weeks became 6 weeks became 7 weeks and I wanted to give up, again.  Lily clearly wasn’t coming home ‘any day now,’ and she was getting more formula than she was breast milk.  Even though she was tiny, one of the NICU nurses suggesting letting Lily breast feed.  She only did it twice, but both times were amazing.  There was this little thing completely dependent on me, staring up at me and loving me.  If everything had gone as planned and I could produce and my baby was born at term, I would be a breast feeding mama! I would never give it up, not until my child turned it away, and even then I’d probably still try to get her to take it.  And that’s when I realized that I was the one who was being selfish.  This was something I wanted for me, not something that could nourish my daughter-at least, not in the long run.  It would be better for her if I just admitted that my boobs didn’t work, at least not in a lactation capacity (they’re pretty fun in their other capacities).  So Lily got breast milk for two months, and my boobs dried up within 4 days.  And, you know what, I’m okay with it.

11 Weeks, Part 1

At first they tell you that the baby will be in the NICU for 6 weeks-it’s just a ballpark based on the average stay of a baby born between 30 and 31 weeks gestation.  So for 6 weeks you are glued to that isolette.  I wasn’t permitted to drive for a while, so chauffeur mommy drove me everywhere, especially after the hubby went back to work.

After two days Lily went from intubated to something resembling a nasal cannula, which meant we got to hold her.  I wasn’t prepared for that.  The hubby snapped a photo right as the nurse handed me the baby, and in it I look like one of those real sex dolls-mouth agape, eyes frozen in surprise, boobs jutting out all over the place, body completely stiff in terror.  The hubby calls it a look of “sheer joy.”  I call it a joy and dread hybrid.  She was so tiny-how could I be allowed to hold something that was so breakable?  And the way the nurse handed her to me-just lifted her featherweight, wrapped body out of the isolette and plopped her in my arms without warning-eventually I would learn to pick up Lily the same way, without fear and with total authority, but at that moment I was awash in trepidation.  And then there she was, asleep, resting her nothingness in my beefy arms, and it finally felt right, it finally felt like I was a mother, albeit a pretty screwed up one.  This was my baby.  It is important to note that I still didn’t feel like I “had” a baby, like I gave birth to the vomit inducing terror that kicked me awake at night.  Quite the opposite-to this day I still don’t feel like I gave birth.  I just knew that this beautiful little girl belonged to me.

In the beginning, I was there every day.  Some days I was there all day long, only leaving the NICU to get lunch when they closed for shift changes and sterilization procedures.  Or to pump in the adjoining pumping room (more on that to follow).  Or to calm myself down in the discharge lounge and eat the single serving sized Jack & Jill ice cream cups that the hospital kept stocked in all its fridges.  I tried to kangaroo every day-kangaroo is when you lay the baby on your chest, skin to skin, and cover yourself in warm blankets to keep the baby warm.  I wasn’t very good at it-it’s hard enough for me to sit still under normal circumstances, but every couple of minutes I would doze off and then shake myself awake.  I was petrified that I would drop the baby.  And then there were all the wires and the IV lines snaking out from Lily’s tiny body-I knew if I moved just one inch in the wrong direction I could accidentally pull something and hurt her.  Did I mention the crippling anxiety about Lily’s situation that caused me to weep uncontrollably if I was near her for too long?  You’re supposed to kangaroo for an hour, and I could barely make it 20 minutes without staring into the void and willing a nurse (with my mind) to check on me because I couldn’t handle it, I just couldn’t handle being there at that moment holding her nothingness and knowing that there was nothing that I could do to make her better or bigger or stronger, that only time could do that and I was useless.  I was meaningless as a mother because that’s what mothers are supposed to do-they’re supposed to care for their children-and I couldn’t do that.  I had failed.  It was my placenta that failed and this was all my fault.  Did I mention the guilt?  Even though the doctors kept trying to assuage it, kept reminding me that nothing was actually wrong with Lily (she wasn’t sick and she wasn’t in any danger), that she just needed to get bigger, and that as she got bigger, everything would resolve itself (lung growth and development, etc…), I couldn’t help but be overcome with the sense that I had done something wrong.

See, the reason this all happened, the reason Lily was born early, the reason for the IUGR (intra uterine growth restriction) was because ¼ of my placenta had died.  The OBGYN showed it to the hubby when he removed it during the C-section.  It was coated in this white, filmy stuff that I’m guessing looked like tripe but since I didn’t see it, and since my hubby isn’t so great at describing things, who knows if that image is correct.  It was my fault-my body had failed my child-and there wasn’t an answer as to why.  I need to have some tests done to find out if it will happen again, but it could also have been a random virus.  “Woo-hoo” I shout, sarcastically.

What we learned early on-babies born at Lily’s gestation:

·         Are often treated for chronic lung disease-it doesn’t mean that they have lung disease, but their lungs aren’t fully developed, and it turns out that the treatment is the same.  By the time she was discharged, it was gone.

·         Do not like to be rubbed or touched-their skin is very sensitive. Instead, they like to be contained-so you should cup your hand and provide a little pressure to her body instead of instinctually rubbing or patting her.

·         Develop acid reflux-it’s pretty much the plague of the NICU.  She would only sleep on her belly (prone) because it was the only way that she was comfortable.  This is true to this day-I can not get her to sleep on her back, despite all the ‘back to sleep’ warnings.

·         Have apnea, and not just sleep apnea.  They literally forget to breathe at any point in the day.  You have to remind them, gently shake or bounce them, to get them to breathe again.  The gentle reminder always works, but it’s scary as fuck when it happens and the alarms all go off and then she turns blue and you don’t know what to do.

·         Are a lot bigger than she was-Lily had a long road ahead of her.

Lily didn’t go home after 6 weeks-it took 11 weeks and then a second stay of 2 days before she was really home for good.

And Then There Were Fibroids (I Told You They'd Be Back)

My fibroids had been assholes throughout my pregnancy.  Don’t know what uterine fibroids are?  Well, they’re non-cancerous tumors that, believe it or not, the majority of women over 30 have, but most will never know about them.  Mine were the special annoying kind.  One was located on top of my bladder, making me think I had a U.T.I. for a few weeks, and then another one developed.  By the end there were 3 of them.

As your uterus grows and swells from increased blood flow, so do fibroids.  They grow and grow and grow until they get so big that they outgrow their blood supply and die (degenerate).  And they don’t always die in one shot-nope, it could take a couple of tries.  I’ve heard horror stories of women, late in their pregnancies, in the hospital on narcotics trying to cope with the pain of degenerating fibroids.

One of my fibroids was so large that I could feel it on the outside of my body.  No joke.  I could feel the roundness of it, poking at my bladder, growing up my side as my tummy got larger, sometimes even vibrating (and not that good kind of vibrating)-and then it started to degenerate.  By the end of my 2^nd trimester through my 3^rd trimester, every 3 or 4 weeks, I would feel this horrible pain on my side, sometimes sharp and sometimes dull, but always present.  I didn’t get out of bed-I would just stay in my room for the weekend or the 2-day period until the pain subsided.  I thought it was done degenerating-sadly, I was wrong.

The hubby took paternity leave Lily’s first week in the NICU, and by the end of that week (Lily’s 1^st week birthday), I was in the E.R. with suspected appendicitis.  I woke up that morning with some extra pain in my belly.  I thought it was because the drugs had finally all worn off, but as the pain increased and I couldn’t physically stand, we became worried (especially after the NICU nurse told me that this wasn’t normal).  I called my OBGYN and he had me come right over.  First he checked my uterus (stupid plastic dildo) then palpitated my stomach-the pain had moved from side to center, and my doctor was very worried.  He called ahead to the E.R. and told them to accept me immediately-he was worried I had appendicitis.

A week post-partum and a newborn in the NICU and there I was, sprawled out awkwardly on a gurney in an E.R. hallway because there were no more rooms available, while nurses took blood and asked what was wrong-I was in so much pain that my position kept alternating between standing, sitting, lying down, hunched over, etc...  Hormonal and miserable about the possibility of being further kept from my child, I just cried and begged to be able to see my daughter.  I mean, she was just upstairs, in the same hospital-couldn’t I be evaluated upstairs?  At one point even I knew that I was being hysterical, but I couldn’t stop myself.  My mother sat on the gurney while the hubby called his family from outside the E.R.

The next step-drink barium so they can do an MRI.  Here’s the deal.  I’ve never done a shot-never, never in my entire life.  I downed a beer once and it was the worst experience because it tasted like swill, old, carbonated piss. I’m not good at taking medicine if I don’t like the taste.  So what makes you think that I’ll be able to drink 2 bottles of this chalky, white, milky, disgusting, throat coating, vomit inducing crap?

Turns out the pain was from the fibroid finally degenerating.  The E.R. doctor seemed surprised that I was able to handle the pain without narcotics, and he was more than happy to prescribe anything I wanted.  He also seemed surprised that my OBGYN didn’t pick up on this one, especially since I had a history-strike 3 (or 3 million) against my OBGYN.  I should also mention…the E.R. doc was pretty damn cute.  Never hurts have something pretty to look at.

I climbed into a wheelchair and the hubby elevatored me up to see the baby.