Sunday Blogaround -4.22.12

Hello!  And welcome to another edition of the blogaround!

There was a lot of great stuff out there this week... as every week.  I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!



"A Defining Moment" - The Mom Pledge Blog
Elizabeth of the Mom Pledge has started a two week series on giving birth.  It's amazing how awful moms can be to each other when it comes to something as simple as how your child came out of your body and into the world.  Each day the Mom Pledge Blog has (and will) feature another birth story.  I highly recommend checking it out!


"Willa Dawn's Birth Story" - Super Mom Blog
I love birth stories!  Summer is a mom blogger I've been reading for some time- and I've been anxious for this post since she announced she was pregnant... a few weeks before I was getting ready to announce I was pregnant.  So happy that she has welcomed her newest daughter into the world!


"National Public Gardens Day" - Toddling Around Chicagoland
This is a great event.  We did it last year, and had TONS of fun.  Find out what public gardens are near you and participating, and celebrate the spring outside.  In style.  :)

"Friday Fun, Photo Version: More Planking" - A(n) (Un)common Family
For some reason best known to herself, this mommy blogger's three year old has started planking.  No explanation.  Just... planking.  Yes, there are pictures.


"Rock, Paper, Scissors" - The Hossman Chronicles
There's a new sheriff in town at the Hossman house.  I love this post, first of all because of how well Daddy Hoss deals wish issues like marital strife and the bittersweet realities of children growing up, but also because I have Mommy Hoss-like rock, paper, scissors skills.  And I can imagine this someday happening to my family.  Sort of.

"The Potty and the Pussycat" - Misadventures in Motherhood
Jenn cracks me up on a regular basis.  This post has a trifecta of my favorite humor elements.  Terrifying public toilets, random friendly animals, and attempts by Americans to get by in a foreign country in the native language.


"Attention: Baby" - Happy Hippie Homemaker
Rachel is due about two weeks after me.  It's always nice to share in the vicarious misery, excitement, and fear of a new baby, and this incredibly brief post sums it up perfectly.

"Till Death Do Us Part" - Suburban Rebel Mom
M and I have conversations like this.  Except there are no dragons involved.


"Dog" - Life With Gemelos!
I am so jealous right now.  As you might already know, I really want a dog.  Unfortunately, it doesn't make a lot of sense to get a dog right now.  Period.  So many reasons.  While I don't want a German Shephard (believe it or not, those just aren't big enough for me), I would LOVE IT if we lived anywhere near a breeder.  Taking the girls out to play with puppies?  PLEASE???????




"Yom Hashoah- Never Forget" - The New Glasers
This week marked Yom Hashoah.  This is one woman's personal account of how her family has been shaped and changed by the events of the Holocaust.  She's writing from Israel, which adds a different kind of flavor to her perspective- in the United States the day passes almost unnoticed.  In Israel, it is a Big Deal.


"The Post That Never Should Have Existed" - Poop And Other Things Moms Talk About
And now for something completely different.  Moving past the awesomeness that is the title of this blog, this post is hilarious.  All about bad days as blog fodder, and when the line is crossed between, "This will be hilarious," and "Dear God get me out of here."

SI and DD's Birth Story

October 1, 2009

I am happy to say that I am taking part in The Mom Pledge's Birth Story event!  Rather than simply write the girls' birth story as it stands alone, I have divided the tale into two parts- conception and birth.  In the first part, I revisited the sense of judgement that I experienced having used IVF while my husband underwent chemotherapy.  In this part I get down to what we all want to know... how DD and SI came into the world.






My pregnancy was anything but ideal.


I walked into my OB/GYN's office, happily pregnant, and informed the nurse that I was having twins.  My regular GYN already had a full list of pregnant patients, so she couldn't see me.  I was referred to her junior partner.  The junior partner was very, very excited.  She had never delivered twins.  She wanted to schedule my c-section that day.


I left and never looked back.


I went out and researched a local practice that specialized in multiples- every single doctor in the practice had multiples as a specialty.  It's just what they do there.  As a result, the office was a zoo of women like me- pregnant with multiples and trying to see the experts.  I never built anything like a personal relationship with the doctors there.  I was just pregnant lady with twins number eight or twenty seven of the day.


An early subchorrionic hematoma put me on bedrest, and the moment I finally stood up, the symphasis pubis dysfunction (SPD) took over.  It was excruciating.  My OB was completely unconcerned.  I was obviously fine, the babies were obviously fine, if I could do something for the pain, great... but if not, whatever.  Every other time I went in, she asked when I wanted to schedule a c-section.  I always told her I didn't, and she always said, "Great," and that was that.

But I was determined to have a natural delivery.

I started looking for alternatives.

A friend of mine offered to doula for me, and I bothered her nearly daily.  She gave me an impossible to follow diet (vegetarian Brewer diet for twins) that  I tried and tried to accommodate.  I just could not eat that much food.

I went to physical therapy and used moxibustion to help the babies get into position.

I learned to absolutely love acupuncture.

Through the intense rituals of creating familiarity between me and my babies, position wise, I became certain of who was who.  What they were like.  We began to develop a rapport.

But as the months wore on, my doula and my OB and even my chiropractor began trying to make me face facts- I was probably going to need a c-section.

Five months in...

My babies might be healthy and entertaining and awfully cute on ultrasound, but they were stubbornly transverse.

For those of you unfamiliar with the lingo associated with pregnancy and birth, "transverse" means that, rather than being head down (ready to exit as we all hope they will) or breech (butt or feet first), they were laying sideways, on top of each other.

No baby comes out sideways.

I tried.  Oh how I tried.  But I began to make peace with it.  I would have as "natural" a c-section as possible.  I wouldn't schedule one- I would wait to go into labor (probably early) and I would get an epidural, and I would at the very least be conscious for the birth of my children.  I wasn't thrilled, but I was beginning to make peace with it.

And still I tried.  Still I hung out upside down, shone flashlights into my lady bits, burned herbs next to my toes, spent hours and hours on my yoga ball.

I was so determined.  But I had changed my focus a little.

I stopped worrying quite so much about the c-section, and started worrying about pregnancy milestones.  How many weeks before the twins were viable.  How many weeks before the twins would experience no lifelong health issues if they were born prematurely.  How many weeks before they would be likely to just come home with us.

Every other week was a milestone, and  held up the next one in front of me- "Just stay pregnant another two weeks.  In another two weeks, they'll be so much better off..."

This was complicated by the fact that I started feeling that something was wrong.  Something seemed not quite right with DD, and I couldn't exactly put my finger on it.  I insisted on the OB checking it out, and as a result every few days we went in for an non-stress test (NST).  While these are only *supposed* to take an hour, they could never keep both babies on the monitor.  It was our twice-a-week-or-so seven hour long routine.  It was awful.  And every time the end result was that the babies were both fine, that there was nothing to worry about, and that I could continue being pregnant.

But I hated being pregnant.  Oh, how I hated it.  I was in so much pain, my gall bladder was shutting down, I had heartburn peeling enamel off my teeth, I couldn't sleep... I was ready to be done.

I started making really awful jokes about it.  I started shouting at my belly to GET OUT OF THERE!!!!!

And then, after one long evening of making incredibly tasteless jokes and complaining that my children could evacuate my womb any time thankyouverymuch, I went home and went to bed.  That was 11pm.

At 2am, I woke up feeling a gush of warm fluid between my legs.  I was about 99% certain that I hadn't just wet the bed, and I shook M awake.  "I think my water just broke!" I managed to get out.  He practically jumped out of bed in his haste to turn on the light.  I closed my eyes against the glare of it, and heard him say, "The bed is covered in blood..."

It was.  There was so. much. blood.

Blood was dripping off the bed onto the rug on my side.  It was pooling between my legs.

I jumped up and called my OB's emergency after-hours number.  I got a call back two minutes later.  In those two minutes, I had run to the bathroom, and discovered something sticking out- something sort of fleshy but... wrong.  I couldn't feel any fetal movement.  I was desperately trying not to panic.

M was sopping up blood as I took the call, the OB told us to head straight to the hospital, to bypass triage, and that we were going to be admitted directly because they were now waiting for us.  The moment I hung up, the thing came out.  It was bloody and red and fleshy and about the size of my fist.  But it wasn't a baby, and it wasn't a baby part, and so I managed to calm myself enough to rinse the blood off my legs and throw on some clothes for the trip to the hospital.

What was normally a half hour drive took us closer to fifteen.  In that time, I had called my doula, who said would come as soon as she could.  I had called my parents, which was a disaster.  My mom was on ambien and had no idea what I was talking about and couldn't register the urgency in my voice- after all, I wasn't due for weeks.  I called my sister and left utterly panicked messages on her voicemail.  And I sat in the car, trying not to panic.

We got to the hospital and bypassed triage, just as we were supposed to.  But we still needed to wait for our room.  And because we had bypassed triage, they sat us down in the labor and delivery waiting room.

Where at 2:40 in the morning, there was a crowd of ecstatic grandparents, aunts, uncles, nieces and nephews to-be.  It was full of balloons, and flowers, and... happiness.

And we sat there for a few minutes.  Me, bleeding into a maxi pad, M holding me, trying to separate whatever was happening to us from the joy in that room.  Because we just didn't know what was happening, or what the outcome would be.

After about ten minutes, I couldn't take anymore.  I left the waiting room and demanded that we be allowed to wait somewhere else.  The lady at the L&D waiting room desk was less than helpful.  She eventually agreed we could just stand in front of her desk while we waited.  She wouldn't even offer me a chair.

Finally, we went into our room.  I was quickly hooked up to all sorts of monitors and an IV, and for the first time ever the nurses had no difficulty at all in locating both babies, and seeing that both of them were just fine.  Normal heart rates.  No signs of distress.

The OB (the one on call, not my regular OB) explained that they had no idea where the blood was coming from, but that as long as I wasn't having contractions (I wasn't) and the babies were fine, I would just be staying there.

...that it might be as long as a few weeks.

Me?  I had just had the most self controlled full blown panic attack of my life.  It had been six hours since I'd eaten.  My blood sugar was crashing.  In my relief and the expectation that I was now moving into the hospital, I asked if I could have something to eat.

They told me... no.

No, because I might have to have a c-section at any minute.

But, I thought, I might be here for weeks.  Am I not supposed to eat anything the entire time?

Eventually, once they knew what was going on, they said, I could eat.

Until then, no food.  No drinks.  Nothing.

So the waiting began.  Hours passed.  I was starving.  "Can I eat now?  Can I just have some orange juice?  Anything?"  I asked them over and over and over again.  Nothing.

As my blood sugar continued to plummet, I started having contractions.  Excruciating contractions.  Nothing like what I had anticipated, but that didn't matter.  When I'm having a blood sugar crash, everything is the worst that it has ever been.

I was desperate.  I knew that if I could just eat something I would be fine.  But they wouldn't let me.

I finally asked for something for the pain.  It was what they had been waiting for.

"If you're in that much pain, we need to get those babies out.  Now."

I wasn't ready.  They weren't ready.  I tried not to cry.  I was exactly 35 weeks pregnant.  I had one more week to go until I thought everything would be fine.

And then the OB dropped a bomb on me.  She explained because they didn't know why I was bleeding, they couldn't do an epidural.  I would have to be unconscious.

I freaked out.  I told her that there was nobody else in the hospital right then- almost true- and that they could RUSH the blood work.  That they could do something.  I don't know why, but it seemed to finally get through to her.  Maybe it was because this was a different doctor- she'd just changed emergency shifts with the OB who met me when I was admitted- and she actually understood how much terror I must be experiencing.  Maybe because she didn't know what was going on with the previous OB.  I have no idea.  But she said, "We'll try," and directed the nurses to get me ready for surgery.

M was moved to wait for me in the recovery room.  I was wheeled into surgery alone.

Anesthesia is bad for babies, so they don't give it to you until the last possible moment.  That meant that I was fully unsedated for all the pre-op nastiness.  The catheter, which HURT, the mail line insertion... all of it.  Finally, I was laying down, surrounded by doctors and nurses who informed me that as soon as my OB entered the room, we would begin.

Still numb, but holding my babies for the first time

She walked in and the first word out of her mouth was, "Wait."

She leaned over me and said, "I just got your blood work back- we can do the epidural.  They'll go get your husband scrubbed in right now- and then we'll begin."

The next two minutes were a blur.  The epidural was inserted, and I went completely numb from the chest down.  M came in, looking both terrified and relieved.  He stayed next to me with his hands on my shoulder while the procedure began, and then...

...they invited him to look over the curtain for the birth of our babies.


I'll never forget the sound of his voice.  It was high and cracked, he sounded like he might faint.  "Oh my god, I see her.  I can see head now..." and then I heard her cry.

SI

I don't know what the doctor said.  I just wanted M to tell me everything- what did she look like?  Was she okay?

A few moments later, the next baby was out.

They took the girls away from M and me to clean them up, get their Apgar scores, weigh them... while they did that, they stitched me up.  M got to hold them first.  I couldn't quite register what I was seeing.

8:34am, SI- 4lbs 6oz.  8:36am, DD- 4lbs 14oz.

Once they had finished cleaning me up, I was propped up a bit and handed my children.

DD

It was bliss.  It was overwhelming.  I looked at them both and thought, "How can I love you so much?  Who the hell are you?"

Surprise surprise, their blood sugar was low.

I agreed to giving them bottles of basically sugar water to see if that would help.  SI got hers first.  As a result, when they checked her blood sugar again, it was perfect.  DD's wasn't, so they insisted on sending her to the NICU.  By the time she made the trip via elevator and had her blood sugar checked again, it was perfect.  They started telling me that any time now I would have her back.

It would be almost nine hours before I finally did.

In that time, my doula, and then my parents arrived.

As soon as DD was back with me, life was perfect.

I had my daughters, they were healthy.  They were tiny, but they were healthy.

Reunited

I don't know if it was the rush of oxytocin, or the morphine, but I was the happiest I had ever been in my life.  We spent five days in the hospital, during which friends and family came to visit, I snapped picture after picture after picture of them, and I ate all the oatmeal and hard boiled eggs I could possibly want- brought to me in bed.  I would stay up in bed while M desperately tried to sleep on the cot/bench/thing in the room, watching the girls sleep and singing them lullabyes.  I knew how crazy it was- soon enough I would be desperate for a few hours sleep and they wouldn't let me have it... but I was too enamored of them.  I just wanted to take in every single detail for as long as I could.

I still look back on those days as one of the best vacations of my life.

Recovery from the c-section was not what I had expected.  I wasn't in as much pain as I thought I would be, but the muscles in my abdomen never fully recovered.

"I missed you."

And I still feel like I was right about my body- that if they had let me just get my blood sugar up, I could have stayed pregnant a while longer.  Long enough to already have my doula and my parents with me, long enough to be calmer and more prepared.  At least a little.

It turned out that I had a partial placental abruption, caused most likely by the blood clot that was responsible for my subchorrionic hematoma during my first trimester.  That's what had passed in the wee hours of October 1, 2009.  It was DD's placenta.

I learned that my instincts are good.  I was probably right about my blood sugar, but I was definitely right about DD.  There was something wrong.  Not wrong enough for it to cause her any damage, but enough that I knew.

I have felt judged by other moms for having a c-section.  Judged enough that I always say emergency c-section, to make it clear that it wasn't my choice- that it wasn't my idea.

DD and SI

But the judgement over my c-section has never bothered me as much as that over IVF.  Possibly because I can't imagine anyone reacting very differently when they wake up in the middle of the night soaked in blood.  Possibly because I don't have the baggage of M's cancer and treatment attached to the process.  Partially because I feel so justified in my own knowledge of my body, regardless of having a c-section.  Mostly because I simply can't complain about the outcome.

My daughters?  They're as perfect as children come.

When Baby X is ready to arrive, I will have the confidence to assert myself, to say, "I know me better than you, I know this baby better than you, and these are the facts.  Now give me some damn orange juice."

This time, I'm going to try again for that natural delivery, but not for me so much as for DD and SI.  I don't want to spend five days having an awesome hospital vacation.  I want to have my family together.  I don't want to spend nearly a week separated from my twins, I don't want to spend over a month unable to hold them because of the sutures in my stomach.

First night at home with the girls

I want that natural delivery because I believe it's what will make us a whole, happy family fastest.  And maybe best.

But if I have to have another c-section?  If it turns out that my uterus is only comfortable to transverse babies, or that there is some sort of fetal distress...

I'll have that c-section without more than a moment's hesitation.  Because what matters is that all of us get through this okay.  Not that I do it with my hippie ideals perfectly intact.

And I promise, In another month and a half... I'll tell you all about it.

Origin of the Grublings

My uterus- well past maximum recommended occupancy

I am happy to say that I am taking part in The Mom Pledge's Birth Story event!  Rather than simply write the girls' birth story as it stands alone, I have divided the tale into two parts- conception and birth, which are very much linked not only in my mind and in the way I reacted to them emotionally, but also in the way I was made to feel regarding how they came to pass.  I have linked liberally to other posts where I explain some of the details from this story, which is as complicated as it is personal (so personal that it's probably best to link up with Shell's Pour Your Heart Out as well).  This is part one- Origin of the Grublings.

It was inevitable that I would be a woman with essentially naturalistic tendencies.

My parents (at least my father) desperately wanted to be hippies, but they were just a bit too young.  My father was determined to go to jail for refusing to enlist for the draft.  They ended the draft just a few months shy of his eighteenth birthday, much to his adolescent dismay.

They were vegetarians before they met at fifteen.

I was raised with their values- peace, love, acceptance, respect for nature...

I have fond memories of a community event for Earth Day where we picked up garbage, and I discovered that there were companies that made shoes and backpacks out of recycled tires.  Yes, fond memories.

My parents, the hippies

My school lunch box was always filled with things like fruit leather and "Vruit" juices.  My mom was into organic foods before it was hip.  The other kids (and moms) thought that she was crazy.

Of course I grew up to be kind of a hippie myself.

When as a young woman I started thinking about pregnancy and birth, I always envisioned things being as natural as possible.  As organic, as un-medicated, and as fundamentally intervention-free as any other animal.  But my life has almost never gone according to plan.

The day after we got engaged, my husband was diagnosed with brain cancer.  This started a whirlwind of medical procedures... one of which was the storage of his "genetic materials."  After all, who knew what the long term effects of his treatments might be?  He banked sperm, and we started the long and frightening process of fighting an inoperable, stage four tumor that had lodged itself deep in his brain.

As the year progressed, we began to be truly optimistic.  We were winning.   We were beating the thing.  Our lives could go back to... well, normal.

But not quite.  Because under "normal" circumstances, we would have waited to have kids.  We would have taken a few years to establish ourselves, we would have enjoyed a prolonged honeymoon of coupled bliss.  But things had changed.  Now, with this looming over us, we wondered how much time we had.  We wondered how long M might have.  And how would it be if we waited, and then the cancer came back?  If after all of that, we lost him just when we wanted to start a family?  Or when our children were too young to know him?

M's boss gave him a teddy bear with a t-shirt that said,
"My bald head is cuter than your bad haircut" when he
lost his hair to radiation.  That was the same day I got this
awful haircut.  I cried.

Sooner, we decided, was better.  The sooner we had children, the longer we knew we would have with them.  The longer M would have with them.

And so we decided to get pregnant.

We reached this decision in the months leading to the end of M's treatment.  He had already been through radiation, and an experimental protocol involving arsenic that may well be the thing that saved his life, and he was finishing up a full twelve months of post-arsenic chemotherapy.

Now, chemotherapy does one job particularly well.  It attacks rapidly dividing cells, like cancers.

"Genetic material" is also rapidly dividing cells.

It is incredibly dangerous to get pregnant when one party is on chemotherapy.  And the damage caused by the chemo can be permanent.  The doctors told us that we would have to wait between 6-24 months to see whether the "genetic material" would return to normal.  We didn't want to wait that long.  So, we decided to use the stored specimens to make a baby.

Unfortunately, everything happened so quickly after M's diagnosis that we didn't have a chance to store very much.  There wasn't enough to go the IUI route (otherwise known as the "turkey baster method"), so IVF it would have to be.

I can't say I was crazy about the idea.  It was so unnatural.  It was so... clinical.  But I wanted to have children with my husband, and I wanted to do it right then, so I swallowed my dissatisfaction and I got ready.

Our first picture of the girls- the moment of implantation

I've got to say- IVF sucks.  The daily injections, the side effects of those drugs, the constant blood draws, the never ceasing saline ultrasounds... it was awful.  I hated IVF.  It was the opposite of everything I'd ever wanted making a baby to be.  There was no love in that clinic.  There was no romance.  There was nothing but fear, shame, and judgement.  And nearly all of that came from me.

Finally, the day of implantation arrived.  Like everything before, it was unpleasant, clinical, and unnatural.  The doctor explained that since I had at least been pregnant for that moment that the embryos (they insisted on two, as each had a 30% chance of "taking" and didn't want to have to try again if one failed) were implanted, I would probably test positive on an at home pregnancy test whether or not it had succeeded.  So I decided to avoid the stress and just wait for the weeks to pass until I went in for an ultrasound to see what was going on in my uterus.

And there they were.  Two functioning yolk sacs.  I was pregnant with twins.

There was so much joy, so much excitement... 

And then, the judgement began anew.

Nearly every time I told somebody I was expecting twins, they asked if I used IVF.

Two zygotes in with their yolks

I always felt that the question, "Did you use IVF?" was utterly dishonest.  What they were actually asking was, "What's wrong with you?  Why couldn't you get pregnant naturally?"

This was reinforced by the occasional person- always a woman- who would actually ask that.

I felt judged for having used IVF.  I felt that other women thought of me as somehow less than for using fertility assistance.  I was reminded constantly of the fear and the anxiety and the pain that had gone into the decision, that had let me and M into that fertility clinic for the first time.

It hurt.  It hurt to remember those long talks about how old was old enough for a child to remember their father if he died.  How old was old enough for there to be meaningful memories.  How long I would need to prepare myself to be a single parent, how long we might have as a family.

These aren't the usual conversations couples have when they decide to have a baby.

I never knew what to say to women who did have fertility issues that led them to IVF.  I wanted to say that I was sorry, and that I wasn't judging them.  But I also felt trapped by their acceptance of me, like we were a support group for a condition that I didn't actually have.

25 weeks with my twins

I didn't feel superior to them, I felt separate from them.  And I wanted to be separate, to find the other women who must be in the clinic because of chemo or cancer or some other issue that had nothing to do with them.  I wanted for everyone to know that I didn't know whether or not I could get pregnant naturally, that I didn't know what my body did or didn't do all by itself.  All I knew was that my husband had brain cancer, and he was beating it, but that it had nothing to do with my uterus.  Or my womanhood.  Or my ability to be a mother.

I felt bad for the women who had tried and tried to have a baby, and had ended up in the fertility clinic for help.  I felt bad because I knew what it was like to want to have something huge and meaningful in your life, and not to know whether it would be possible.

And I felt bad for them because I knew how it felt to be judged by "normal" women who could get pregnant whenever they wanted.

I experienced other women actually bullying me and other IVF successes for using fertility assistance (ALWAYS online with the aid of internet anonymity).  Because it is unnatural.  Because if God wanted you to have a baby, you would have simply gotten pregnant.  Because medical interventions have no place in the realm of the Goddess.  Because if your body wanted you to be pregnant, you would have gotten pregnant.  Because if you just listened to your body and did what it needed you would have gotten pregnant without any help.  Because you didn't pray enough.  Because you didn't try everything.  Because you just wanted the attention of having multiples like the Octo-mom.  Because some people obviously aren't meant to have babies.

I wanted to punch those ladies in the face.  But it's hard to tell somebody that they're a grade-A asshole when they accuse you of all the things you already feel.  When they tell you you are less than them because you failed at getting pregnant naturally.  When, in some shameful corner of your mind, you agree.

SI - 22 gestational weeks

I didn't fail at getting pregnant naturally.  I did everything I could not to get pregnant naturally.  I succeeded in getting pregnant with two squirmy creatures who would eventually become my practically perfect daughters.

But I felt that I had failed, a little.  Because it was so unnatural.  And it was so clinical.  Because, "when a mommy and daddy love each other very much, they make love and that creates a baby."  And that isn't what happened.

With every complication I had, and there were many, somebody would helpfully explain that this probably happened because of the IVF.  Or it happened because I was carrying twins (because of the IVF).  So everything that went wrong, from my SPD to my subchorrionic hematoma to my gall bladder disease, was happening to me and my babies because I had failed.

I did a good job of silencing that voice- the one that judged me so harshly for how I got pregnant.

DD - 22 weeks gestational age

But every time another woman- who had succeeded- asked me "Oh twins!  Did you use IVF?" what I heard was, "You are a failure at getting pregnant, aren't you?"

So through the whole pregnancy I harbored my dedication to a beacon of hope- a natural delivery.

My babies might have come into my womb in a cold, clinical way, but they were going to come out the way I wanted them to.  In that, I was determined to succeed.

...knowing that my life almost never goes according to plan.  Almost never.

Tune in tomorrow for the second half of the story- the Birth of the Grublings.

Sunday Blogaround 4.8.12

Welcome to another edition of the Sunday Blogaround!

This has been a wonderful week for other bloggers- if not for me.  I've been so busy with Passover and whatnot that I've hardly had time to enjoy the fruits of other writers' labors.

But here they are- the best of the week as determined by yours truly.  Enjoy!






"Baseball Immortality" - Daddy Knows Less
This week marked the start of Baseball Season.  Baseball Season... that which provides us hope in the darkest depths of a midwestern winter.  That which reminds us that better times are coming.  And of course, opening day (a disaster this year of pointless changes) is the best day of the year- when your baseball team is undefeated for a few glorious seconds.... at least, if your team is the Pirates and they have the rotten no-good luck to play the hated Phillies for the first game of the year.  At any rate, here's a lovely post filled with baseball and fatherly love.  Which in my experience, pretty much always go together.

"Why Is This Night Different From All Other Nights?" - Try Defying Gravity
My favorite post from the first night of Passover (not that I got to enjoy it that day), and also as short as everybody wishes their seder could possibly be.

"Simplicity Parenting: Keep it Simply" - on Diapers and Daisies
I agree so strongly on this one.  So many parents insist on stimulating their children to the point of no thought at all... I'm not sure that I'm with the author when it comes to the finer details, but when it comes to just leaving your kid alone and letting them be for a few minutes/hours?  Yeah, that's how I try to parent.



"The Bully Project" - The Family Pants
In case you haven't heard of it, recently a film came out about bullying in schools.  It's a heartbreaking documentary, and it's the sort of tool that can be used for genuine good when it comes to the lives of our children.  I've written many times about bullying, and about the examples that we as adults need to set.  I'm very happy to have the Family Pants share their voice and story in support of this kind of education and awareness.

"Keeping Up with the Joneses" - Rediscovering Our Family
Another post on the "keep it simple" theme.  Only this time, for your family as a whole- not just for your children.  I love it.

"Returning Thanks" - Weak and Loved
I go through this process whenever M and I find ourselves waiting around in the Oncology center at our hospital.

"If I Had $1000000" - Dude of the House
The Dude of the House agrees with me when it comes to "kids music."  He regularly posts songs that he likes to share with his children, and I have yet to disagree.  This is a particular favorite.




"Nightstand Face Lift" - The Crafting Hobbit
Super cool DIY!  If I had the time... I would so do this.  In fact, once I find a dresser for Baby X's room, I just might do it for her.  :)

"Meeting Emma" - Dad of the Decade
Okay, now this is something completely different.  Dad of the Decade has been writing about the experience of the first months/years of his daughter's life.  She was diagnosed with an incredibly rare cancer in the womb, and Dad of the Decade has been retelling this story both beautifully and painfully.  This is a vignette- it stands alone.  But be prepared with tissues and somebody to give you a hug.

"The Neediness of Twins" - The Kopp Girls
Need some cheering up now that you've read "Meeting Emma?"  Here you go.  Nothing warms my heart more than twin sisters being best friends.

"Second Guessing is Lame" - Michelle Mossey
We all do it.  She just puts it really well.  (On a side note, this reminds me very much of a few nights ago when, utterly exhausted, I was trying to put the children to bed.  As I left the room, SI said, "Mommy- you want to kiss me!"  I had forgotten to kiss my daughters goodnight!  "Me too!" added DD!  "You're right," I said.  "I do want to kiss you."  I gave them kisses, and they went almost straight to sleep.  That night, no second guessing for me.)

"Late Night Baby Party"- Short Fat Dictator
A reminder of what I'm looking forward to this fall and winter.  Babies and toddlers, each with their own sleeping issues.  Complete with the passing desire to kill your spouse.  At least she makes it funny!

"Silent Week" - Suburban Rebel Mom
As any of us with kids know, sometimes all you think you want is a break.  A week, without your kids.  Where they leave you alone, where they're somebody else's problem.  Well, she got just that.  And it wasn't all it was cracked up to be.  Suburban Rebel Mom actually wrote a lot of stuff this week that I wanted to share with you, but this is the best.  So once you've read it, you should check out the other stuff she's been writing, like this post about star gazing, or this one about dress shopping.  Trust me, you'll enjoy it.

"I Think It's Going Around" - 649.133
First of all- in case I've never mentioned it before, I think this is the cleverest parenting blog title I have ever heard.  Library nerds, rejoice.  Moving on- Janel writes about Baby Fever.  Particularly, the Baby Fever of one who already has babies and therefore knows what a dumb idea it is to have another one.  I need to remind myself to revisit this post when Baby X is about four months old.

End of the Month Controversy- Vaccinations

Influenze outbreak
From Brittanica online

Vaccinations have been on my mind quite a bit lately.

First of all, there's the fact that I'm getting DD and SI enrolled in pre-school for the fall, and that means... vaccination records.  And the fact that next week they have their two and a half year well check up, at which they're scheduled for Hep B shots.

And then there's the ongoing birth control debate going on around the country.  And frankly, I think these two issues are related.

Allow me to explain.

There are a lot of things that are going unspoken by the (mostly) men who are arguing against birth control.  And they're the same sort of (mostly) unspoken things that, reading or listening between the lines, you hear from people who don't believe in vaccinating their children.

"Nobody dies from pregnancy or childbirth."

From the CDC

You hear these politicians talking about how rare it is that a pregnancy *really* jeopardizes the health of the mother.  And yet...

Over the last decade, the maternal mortality rate in the United states has doubled.  DOUBLED.

There are probably a lot of reasons for this, from inadequate prenatal care to the rising rate of c-sections.  But that doesn't change the fact that, yeah, women die as a result of pregnancy and childbirth.  And twice as many American women are doing it as they did ten years ago.

Which brings me back to vaccinations.  I personally know several mothers who don't vaccinate their kids because, "Nobody dies of the measles."

Educated women.  Empowered women.  Women of my age, with many of the same life experiences that I have.

The children of my generation were pretty much all vaccinated.  I never had the experience of losing a classmate or a sibling to a preventable disease.  I never knew a child who was effected by polio.  I never even heard stories about, "a friend of a friend of my cousin's neighbor" who had a baby brother or sister that died of whooping cough.

And so for mothers of my generation in particular, vaccination can seem... unnecessary.  Why give my children shots- shots that will hurt them- so that they won't ever get a thing that just isn't a big deal anymore anyway?

And then there's the belief that vaccinations are linked to Autism.  Beliefs caused by a scam artist who has since recanted his so-called research, but who's claims traveled far and wide.

And then there's the fear of side effects.

Scary.

And then there's the issue of what the hell is in this shot anyway?

Vaccinating is a hard decision to make.  It's impossible to be 100% informed with a simple layman's pharmacological vocabulary.  It's hard not to be scared at the idea that you're intentionally putting something that you know to be harmful into your child's body.  It's hard not to feel guilty about causing your child pain by stabbing them with a needle.  It's hard not to feel vicarious terror at the idea of being stabbed by a needle yourself.  Needles are scary.

I still firmly believe that it's the right thing to do.

I believe that because there is a reason that nobody I know died from polio, or measles.

There's a reason that I look at adults with shingles and cringe at the idea of that ever being me or my child.

I have been so fortunate to grow up in a society that has come so close to eradicating these diseases.  But they're not gone.  And there are important lessons about disease that we can learn from history.

Like that a society that has never been exposed to a disease is more likely to be utterly decimated by that disease if they ever cross paths.  (Think Native Americans and smallpox.  Or European colonizers in South America and Yellow Fever.)

That it is easier to keep children alive when "common childhood illnesses" don't include measles, scarlet fever, or mumps.  Or smallpox.

These are all diseases that we don't have to have.  That we don't have to worry about dying from.  And that's because of vaccination.

Name that disease
Photo from Brittanica

When the girls' pediatrician first approached me about the chicken pox vaccine, I laughed and said, "I'll think about it."  After all, I had the chicken pox as a kid.  My sisters had it.  Everyone I knew had it.  And we were all fine.  I called my mother and I told her, "This vaccination thing is getting totally out of hand. Do you know they're vaccinating against chicken pox?!"

And she told me about how when she was a child her baby brother had nearly died of chicken pox.  How many children actually did.  And then she told me why so many parents back in my childhood would try so hard to get their kids infected by other kids.  It's because if you get chicken pox as an adult, it's 20 times more likely to kill you- and it never goes away.  You have shingles for the rest of your life.

I did a little research, and I learned that chicken pox related deaths have gone down 88% since the introduction of the vaccine.  And that is a staggering figure for less than two decades of work.

So yes, my children got that shot, too.

I'm going to be perfectly frank.  I hate getting my kids their shots.  I hate holding them down while a nurse stabs them with a series of large needles.  I hate listening to them scream and cry.  I hate that I am responsible for that.  I hate having to lie and tell them that it's not scary, when I know it's scary.  I hate pretending that I'm not scared.  I hate being complicit in their pain, when they simply cannot understand why on earth anyone would want to intentionally hurt them.

I would so much rather that I am occasionally responsible for that trauma than that they die.  For any reason.

If I could get them vaccinated against being hit by a truck, I would do it.  No matter how many injections it took.

When they're pre-teens, I'll be sure to get them vaccinated against HPV.  Because that's a whole category of cervical cancers that they won't get and need to be cured of.  Or die from.

Name that disease
Photo from NIH

If I could get them vaccinated against AIDS, you could bet your ass I'd do it in a heartbeat.  And thankfully, that day may be nearer than I previously believed.

It doesn't matter to me how unlikely it is that they'll be exposed to the measles, or to any other disease for that matter.

What it comes down to is that a case of the measles today is more dangerous that it was fifty years ago.  Not because the disease was more virulent.  Not because the medicine for treating it was better- it's better now.  What it comes down to is that fifty years ago, everybody knew what it looked like.

There's a fever.  There's a runny nose and a cough.  There's red, watery eyes.  That's before the rash shows up.  A rash I definitely couldn't identify on sight- to me the pictures of it look a lot like roseola.  With proper medical care, the mortality rate due to these former "common childhood ailments" is very, very low.  But there are other effects- measles can leave your child blind.  If you're pregnant, rubella can cause horrific defects in your baby.  Diphtheria can make your child fall into a coma.

And we've come so close to actually wiping out these diseases that I just simply wouldn't recognize them.  And neither, most likely, would their doctor.  She's probably never had a kid in her office with diphtheria.

I understand why many parents choose not to vaccinate.  Fear.

Fear of the side effects.

Fear of the pain.

Fear of the responsibility.

I share that fear.

Name that disease
Photo from Brittanica

My fear of my children dying from something preventable is simply greater than my fear of those other things.  Despite the fact that the vaccination is a certain source of pain, and the disease itself so much less certain.

What is certain is that I want to let my children play with other children, without worrying if those children have been to events like the Superbowl, where apparently you can pick up the measles.  Or if they've visited a country with less successful vaccination campaigns.

I want to let Grandmommy and Poppa play with their grandkids when they fly in from South Africa, or China, or any other corner of the globe, without wondering who they might have been exposed to at an airport or train station.

I want to take my children to visit other children, without fear that my children might be the ones spreading disease.

And yes, I'm afraid of making my children sick by giving them shots filled with toxic chemicals.

I am so much more frightened of rubella.  I am so much more frightened of my toddlers spreading pertussis to their new baby sister when she's here.

I'm not ignorant of the risks.  I know there are risks.  I know that every year, many children do die as a result of complications from vaccines.

I also know that the number of children who die from measles, mumps, rubella, polio, meningitis, and the flu is exponentially greater.

Name that disease
Google images

Do I hate myself for vaccinating my children?  While it's happening, yeah, I do.

But from the moment of their first watery post-shot smile onward, I am grateful.  There is so much to worry about as a parent.  There are so many dangers.  I absolutely cannot protect my children against all of them.

But I can protect my children against a growing list of diseases that could harm them- that could cause them permanent disability or death, or even just a few really awful weeks or months of illness.

I am afraid.  We are all afraid.  Parenting is terrifying.  But we all do the best that we can.  And I believe that the best that I can do includes vaccinating my children.

Note: I will not publish or respond to any comments attempting to link autism to vaccinations.  All of the studies that do so have been debunked, and I will not dignify those arguments by engaging on that topic.  All other respectful comments are welcome.

My Melanoma Madness

Sometimes, life feels a lot like this.

Like Old Mr. Johnson's fabled cat, it was bound to come back.

Or not, we'll see.  But at any rate, I had another charming trip to visit my idiot of a dermatologist yesterday.

Why?  Once again, I had a mole that was starting to get funny.  And after calling my PCP (not my OB, not my melanoma specialist), she insisted that I make the first possible appointment to see the old, easier to schedule with, jerk of a dermatologist.

I wasn't looking forward to it, and here's why:

1. The mole in question?  Tiny.  Just like the last two.  The two he scoffed at, told me were too small to be worth worrying about at all, and then was flabbergasted when they turned out to be... well... cancerous.
2. The mole in question?  One I'd had my eye on for some time anyway, so it might have been in the notes as "we looked at it and it was fine," which might mean I'd have a harder time getting somebody to listen to me.
3. The mole in question?  ON MY STOMACH.  That's right- the rapidly expanding thing that's causing all of my skin to stretch.  That's the thing I was insisting that they cut into and put stitches in.

As you may recall, my dermatologist has no bedside manner.  None.  He never remembers me.  This is always irritating.  I've seen him about eight times now, and every time but the first he's finally remembered me when he's seen my back tattoo.

When he walked into the room yesterday to look at my probably-hysterical-pregnant-lady mole, the first thing that he said was, "Hey- you're pregnant."

No kidding, you knew I was pregnant the last two times you saw me... you know, three months ago.

"I saw you last time you were pregnant, didn't I?"

Yes, but you also saw me THIS time I was pregnant.  THREE MONTHS AGO.

He then proceeded to look at my mole, insist in a superior sort of tone that it was tiny and totally benign and there was no reason to even bother shaving it off, when I finally said, "And that's what you said last time.  And that was a melanoma, wasn't it?"

He gave me the sort of looks that can etch brick walls, and then left the room.

I spent a very uncomfortable twenty minutes listening as he, the resident, and the nurse conversed in hushed voices outside the door of the exam room.  I just... waited.

Finally, when they came back, they had my brand new melanoma specialist with them.  I had never met her before, but I am scheduled with her for my first *real* melanoma evaluation in about a month.

She looked at the mole, described it, and then explained that it was tiny, that it was normal, and that I shouldn't be worried.

...to which I responded, "I know.  I just wanted to be sure, because this is exactly what the last one looked like.  And see?  Here's my big ol' scar from where this guy re-excised it because it was melanoma."

Slightly surprised, she asked my dermatologist... "What did the last one look like?"

He couldn't tell her.

I picked up my comic book, and trying not to steam at the ears, answered her questions to my dermatologist, as they stood poring over surgery notes on the computer.

Nobody had photographed my previous moles.

Nobody had written an adequate description of them.

And of course, my dermatologist couldn't remember.

Finally, when she said, "Do you have any idea what it looked like?" I shouted over them,

"IT WAS TINY- IT WAS (holding my finger and thumb a millimeter apart) THIS BIG!"

The old dermatologist turns to me and said, with his eyes huge and round, "Oh yeah!  NOW I remember!  That thing was tiny!  It was, like, less than two millimeters!  It looked like NOTHING!"

It was the melanoma specialist's turn to give a withering look, but not to me this time around.

As she gritted her teeth, she turned to me and said, "Now that I know your medical history, I understand.  And while this is so early in its development that it's unlikely we'd learn anything from it, I think that we should take it off."  She then turned to the resident who would be performing the excision and said, "Four millimeters."

And abruptly left the room.

All of that took about an hour.  The removal of the mole?

Two minutes.  Two stitches.  Done.

I don't know yet if it was cancerous.  It probably wasn't, as the melanoma expert said, "too early in its development."  But it was still definitely changing.  And it was still definitely changing quickly in a way that, in my own medical history, leads to cancer.

The moral of the story?  You have to be your own advocate.  You can't always trust your doctors to do the right thing, all the time.  You have to trust them that they know more than you, but not about you.  Not about your own medical history, not about your own understanding of what is and isn't normal for your body.

You also have to be vigilant.  You have to keep your eyes open for things that change, things that are not supposed to change when it comes to your body.  You know your body, and you know when it's doing something funny, and funny is not usually a good sign when it comes to your body misbehaving.  You have to take care of yourself.  And sometimes, that means dealing with unpleasant or embarrassing situations.

Yesterday, I basically had to bully a gigantic jerk with a scalpel into cutting into my pregnant belly.  Something that I am 100% not thrilled about.

But it was the safe thing to do.  It was the thing that I needed to do to ensure that my children, all three of them, would have me around past the end of this pregnancy.

Still...

I totally want to punch that jerk in the face.

Silly Names

No, this isn't about Baby X.  Sorry.

This is not M's nurse.

My husband and I have spent a remarkable amount of time in hospitals, considering that neither of us is anything close to a medical professional.

Shortly before we moved in together, I began having problems relating to my dysautonomia, and spend several days in and out of a hospital.  Then M had his seizure and subsequent weeks of hospitalization (or near-hospitalization).  Then there were the endless treatments and MRIs, and then there was IVF and a complicated twin pregnancy.

And since then, there has been a really nasty gall bladder attack, and then a second complicated pregnancy.

This is not M's doctor.

I have more doctors' names and numbers in my phone than most doctors do.

...but the names.  Oh, the names!  Our doctors have the most absurd names you could possibly imagine.

When M was first diagnosed and admitted to his medical trial, his team of doctors were...

Dr. Raizor
Nurse Burns
...and Dr. Grimm.

We joked and joked about how dark it was, and about what on earth his radiologist might be named.

This is also not M's doctor.

Her name was Maryanne Marrimont.  She was as far from "Grim" as you could get.

I think about those doctors a whole lot.  We've seen so many come and go, so many specialists we never need to see again (we hope), so many nurses who have switched specialties or moved on to become stay-at-home parents...  We've been remarkably lucky to have such considerate and available and WONDERFUL doctors.

So yesterday... when my OB was out of the office and I was having gall bladder issues, when I found out the name of the doctor I had been referred to...  It seemed almost like a little twist of fate.

My new OB for the day?  Dr. Bacchus.

You just can't make some of these things up.

Having only communicated with Dr. Bacchus on the phone, for all I know this might in fact be right.

Marijuana as Medicine and Illegal Parenting

I'm linking up again with Secret Sunday- this time for my End of the Month Controversy!

What feels like an extremely long time ago, I wrote a post about women's health issues and marijuana.

I didn't write that post because I'm some sort of enormous pot head.  I didn't write it because I had been looking for an excuse to be stoned my whole pregnancy with the girls.  I wrote it because the information I found about cannabis as medicine was utterly fascinating.  And learning all about something that could have REALLY helped me get through a very difficult pregnancy made me very, very angry.
 
Every time a major study has been done to look for all the bad things that marijuana is supposed to do to people, it finds the opposite results.  Yet it is still illegal in most of the United States, and in states where it IS legal the judicial branch of the government is doing everything in their power to keep people from having access to it.

I think about hyperemesis gravidarum, which can kill the women suffering through it, and knowing that something as simple as a gram of marijuana a week can practically cure their symptoms makes me so angry.

I think about women at risk for pre-term labor, and the fact that maternal use of marijuana helps a fetus develop its lungs- the last organs to completely form before birth- seems incredibly important and helpful.  How many preemies might get out of the NICU sooner, or avoid it all together, is they had properly developed lungs?

And then I think about myself, and all the pregnant women I know.

Women who are unable to keep food down, or who can't maintain their appetites.
Women in constant pain, who are unwilling to take narcotics that have been proven time and time again to be dangerous to a fetus.
Women who are trying to deal with depression and fear, and who can't use traditional anti-depressants or anxiety medications.

And I would like very much for all of us to be able to smoke a bowl and feel better.

Sadly, that isn't going to happen.

Despite the fact that pregnancy lasts for nearly a year, it's just not considered a "chronic condition" like cancer, or MS.  So even in states where medical marijuana is legal (and more importantly- SAFE), no doctors will prescribe it to a pregnant woman.

Despite the fact that studies done of childbirth in pro-cannabis cultures show that infants have a higher survival rate when the nursing mother uses cannabis (which stimulates the infant's suck reflex and as a result causes them to nurse more effectively), doctors in medical marijuana states will not prescribe nursing mothers cannabis either.

Still, doctors prescribe drugs to pregnant women that are NOT safe.  Antibiotics that can build up immunities in the fetus, pain killers that can cause addiction, and even Tylenol has been proven less that harmless.  (For those of you unaware, several years ago research concluded that showed Tylenol use in pregnancy can cause infertility in male fetuses.  While that might not be directly dangerous, I would certainly say that being infertile as an adult may have a serious impact on happiness and quality of life- so no thank you, I'd rather not risk it.)

I'm pregnant, and the fact of the matter is that I am just plain dreadful at pregnancy.  Between the constant pain of my symphasis pubis dysfunction, the appetite and nausea problems caused by my pregnancy-induced gall bladder disease, and the incredible stress of simply being pregnant while taking care of two toddlers and going to school- not to mention the continual melanoma related anxiety- is enough to make anybody truly miserable.

And having read those studies, all those carefully monitored and vetted and peer reviewed articles, after spending years seeing the news of new things they've learned that THC can do to heal human bodies...

It makes me angry that there is SAFE* medicine that I can't access.

That even if I lived in a state where medical marijuana was available, nobody would give it to me.  Although it's probably the safest and healthiest medicine I could possibly use during a pregnancy.

...

I have always believed that people are generally best at governing themselves.  That there are some good laws, but that the majority of them are simply in place because groups of people- not people on an individual level- are idiots.  Speed limits are set because people feel the need to compete on some absurd level on the highway.  Most people by themselves are responsible drivers who know when a car is going as fast as it safely can or should go.  In fact, almost every public safety law pretty much conforms to that idea.

But drug use is sort of different.  There ARE drugs that people can't self-regulate.  And, sadly, some of those are the legal ones.  Alcohol is deadly in large doses, tobacco is deadly in much smaller doses, and caffeine has hosts of health problems it can cause or exacerbate.  Prescription drugs, so easy to legally obtain, can be even worse.  And frequently are.

Among the illegal drugs in this country, there are some that are indisputably bad.  There is no single person on this planet that can responsibly use crack cocaine.  And the likelihood that somebody can actually self regulate the use of powder cocaine or heroin is borderline laughable.

But marijuana?  Marijuana can kill people, yes, if you bludgeon them over the head with a bong or choke them on a plastic baggie.  But the plant itself literally cannot.  The human body only has THC receptors in places that do not effect critical function- you can only react to THC with parts of your brain that have no relation to your autonomic nervous system, and your uterus.

Seriously, if you haven't you should read my review of Women and Cannabis.

So we continue to lock people away for years and years for using a substance that is, in fact, harmless.

Not just less harmful than alcohol, HARMLESS.

Yes, I would very much like to be stoned through much of my pregnancy.  I would like that.  I would like to be using a medicine that allowed me to function pain free and relieved my anxiety and restored my appetite.

But if I deliver a baby, and I or the baby test positive for marijuana?

Then I go to jail, not just for having used it, but for child endangerment.  And that, as absurd as it is, is something I am simply not going to risk.

I have always said, the things that you do to make yourself a good parent are GOOD PARENTING.  But what if those things are illegal?  What if in order to get through my day, to take care of my children while M is at work and then at school, I must break the law?

Is it better for me to be a good parent, or to make sure that I am with them rather than in jail?

And what kind of example am I setting, obeying a wrong and arbitrary rule when all fact and evidence and necessity prove that the rule is wrong?

I don't know.  I don't know if it's better to be hungry and in pain and angry when my potty training children are peeing on the floor, or to smoke two hits of pot and get down on the floor to clean up those puddles without crying or swearing when the consequences are that severe.

But the laws against marijuana as medicine are bad laws.  And the ideas we have about using marijuana as treatment for chronic conditions need to include conditions, like SPD, that last 8-10 months.  Or like hyperemesis gravidarum, that lasts the entire duration of a pregnancy.

When studies show that day old mice with their THC receptors blocked die 100% of the time, it's time to consider that maybe we have those THC receptors for a reason.

And when studies show that THC can not only alleviate the symptoms associated with cancer, but can actually CURE cancer, we have to start thinking differently about marijuana as a "drug" versus marijuana as a "medicine."

I would like to treat my medical condition, pregnancy, and the very unpleasant conditions associated with it with this kind of medicine.  But I can't.

And that is simply ridiculous.




*The only negative effects found in children of women who smoke during pregnancy were that with VERY heavy users- approximately 30 grams (an ounce) each day- the children of those pregnancies were approx. 30% more likely to develop ADHD.