Examining Pansies

The other day, my son said his first word. Grrrrrrr.

Well, more like a sound, I suppose. When prompted with the question “What does a dinosaur say?” he will make a low growl in the back of his throat.  This could have been acquired from his dinosaur book with the buttons that say various dinosaur noises. More likely, it could be that every time he made the growling noise – often in response to a large vehicle driving by our house – I would practically trip over myself to say, “WHAT DOES THE DINOSAUR SAY??” hoping to create a stimulus-response connection. Similar actions have resulted in him accurately naming what a motorcycle “says” – remarkably similar to a dinosaur – and a kitty (mow-mow).  Despite, however, the kitty sound being one short vowel sound away from “Mama” we still haven’t mastered THAT stimulus-response connection.

These are the events of our lives now. Days that are both slow and busy, watching my son explore his world and make connections. To him, the world is ripe for discovery, rich with opportunity and novelty.   As he toddles around, newly upright and bipedal, he pauses often to crouch and explore a stick, a rock, a blade of grass. My own exploration is paused as I watch him and join him in his discoveries. Sometimes it feels joyous. Sometimes it feels mundane and repetitive. Sometimes it feels intriguing as I watch years of schooling in child development play out in my own backyard.

And – it is Good. It is Okay. It is Right. Not very long ago, I felt when things were profoundly not okay and not right and I couldn’t imagine them feeling any semblance of okay again. And while I wouldn’t wish severe postpartum depression/anxiety on anyone, descending into the darker alleys of human existence does provide the perspective that “normalcy” can feel like heaven when you’ve felt a little bit of hell. To calmly watch my son sit in the grass and examine the petals of a pansy without passive suicidal thoughts storming into my consciousness multiple times an hour, to be present in my own skin without feeling all-consuming anxiety so great it was almost physically painful – these are beautiful gifts, and I pray I won’t wander too far from my appreciation for the beauty of these simple, everyday moments.

In my line of work as an educator and social worker, we talk a fair amount about symptom reduction. We want to make the bad stuff decrease and the good stuff increase. And for me – this has absolutely happened. In the rating scales I fill out for my psychiatrist, the numbers look good. There is a significant decrease in my anxiety and depression and a marked increase in my life satisfaction. I function well in my professional and personal roles, and I have many hobbies from which I derive pleasure and satisfaction. In my job, I like these quantitative measures. I like graphing data points and admiring them when they go the right way. These numbers are simple and not messy and I can look at them and feel good about accomplishing something tangible.

And yet, I’m learning on a personal level that reduced symptomology does not always directly translate to increased well-being. It doesn’t necessarily equate to joy, or peace, or fulfillment. It is the absence of bad stuff but not necessarily the presence of good stuff.  I’m learning that the quantitative bricks that can form a solid, sound, stable sense of self are sometimes the easier things to get ahold of – healthy relationships, meaningful work, satisfying hobbies, a solid belief system - but the abstract gushy stuff that holds it all together – joy, fulfillment, spirituality, meaning, presence, purpose - can be much harder to define and attain.

The concept of a sense of self is a diffuse and abstract concept, and one that I realize now is something I have taken for granted much of my adult life. After I emerged from the tumult of adolescence, I had a pretty solid idea of who I was and my place in the world. I felt a sense of autonomy and purpose. While I faced challenges and hard times, I was able to rally my resources and address what laid in front of me.  Most of the time, I was confident and purposed, and felt relatively content in my own skin.

After childbirth, all this shifted. Or, perhaps the more poetic way to say it is – shit blew up. If my sense of self was a puzzle, the table upon which it sat was kicked from below, and all the pieces scattered. In the early days of postpartum, I remember sitting on my couch holding Everett, likely trying to breastfeed for the 687^th  time, and staring out into the living room, literally visualizing said puzzle pieces scattered on the floor, wondering when the edge pieces might start to take shape. I felt as if I was in a hall of mirrors – unable to find a center point and lost in emotional and spiritual vertigo. Prior to childbirth, my sense of self – or maybe sense of Being is a better term, because this included my sense of the world and God and everything - felt like an easy chair I could sink into when the world around me was too much. My understanding of God and the world and others and myself and the relationship between them all felt sorted and organized, and I could turn to the references in this existential library for answers when the outside was chaotic and confusing.

But immediately postpartum, it felt like said easy chair didn’t exist. Instead, I paced around the room, both literally and figuratively, without a place to rest and recoup. I was a stranger in my own world, and I could find no place to center myself for all the work that needed to be done.  Then, after being properly medicated, the inner turmoil subsided quite a bit, and I gingerly sat in this space as if I was perched on the edge of a hard bench – I had a place to sit, but was alert and expectant that things could go awry at any moment. As I’ve done my own work and grown and learned, I’ve started to gingerly sink back, feeling for the back of that easy chair, looking forward to settling into a familiar comfort and centering place. But as I lean back, I realize –

This chair is different.

This chair is not the same.

I am not the same.

As I try to “find” myself again, I am faced with the knowledge that the person I was before Everett no longer exists. I am changed on a cellular level. I am navigating new responsibilities and new feelings and new realities and new fears and I am just overall an entirely different person. Many things remain the same. I love mountains and dogs and Jesus and goat cheese and hiking and people and writing and education and social work and Jesus.  The quantitative bricks – many are the same. But the goopy stuff that holds it all together – it is chemically different now. It has changed.

And so, I am getting to know this new Me.  I am learning to accept and appreciate her differences and nuances.  I am acknowledging that my understanding about God and people and the universe has shifted, as it often does with big events, and I am feeling more confident that this is growth, not regression. I am learning that it is okay to sometimes miss things about the old me and my old life, but I must not look through that photo album for too long, because I will miss the real time playing out right in front of me.

I will be honest and say that I am not fully back in my own skin. I am happy and thankful and enjoying all the quiet bliss of normalcy (or as close to normal as it can be given our current world affairs). I am beyond grateful for my son, and I’m not placating when I say that I fall more in love with him each day. Often, I will catch myself watching Everett play and think – he’s here. My baby is here. Thank You.

And also - a space remains between my skin and my soul. The puzzle still has many pieces missing.  The easy chair is there, but I am unable to sink back fully into it. Emotions are still a bit blunted, as if fully succumbing to them does not yet feel safe and there is something that pushes me forward as I try to sink back. It is difficult to put words to, and not something I have experienced before. It is not bad, but it is strange.

And so, I am learning to Let It Be. This is hard for me. I spin things in my head like a test tube in a centrifuge, hoping the answer will rise to the surface. When things are a little off, I quickly retreat to the control center of My Mind, tinkering around as if the right adjustment will make the whole machine function properly. I am learning to leave the control room and watch the simple daily happenings play out. I am learning what the petals of a pansy look like up close. I am learning what a dinosaur says. I am learning to pause and look at the sticks and the rocks and the blades of grass. I am learning to let it be.  And as I learn to let it be, I trust that subtly, inexplicably, that space between my skin and my soul will continue to narrow. I am hopeful I will feel the back of that easy chair soon.

And for now, I’ll keep examining pansies.

Treading Water: Fighting Postpartum Depression and Anxiety

“This is such an awful feeling… like you are in an alternate universe from the rest of the world. I feel like my body is always buzzing.”

“I feel like I’m in a constant state of crawling out of my skin. I’ve never wanted to escape my own body so desperately.”

“This is such a dark place… I can’t put words to it. The urgency… the hopelessness.”

The quotes above are texts I sent to friends at some of my lowest points postpartum. When those were sent, I was starting to recognize that what I was feeling was not “normal”.  This was beyond the typical “baby blues”.  Life felt out of control and I was not okay.

After we were released from the hospital, we tried to settle in to some semblance of a routine and figure out life with a newborn. While I can clearly recall the events surrounding Everett’s birth in chronological order, postpartum is a blur. Hours bled together and there was no difference between night and day. At one point, I realized that I hadn’t brushed my teeth in three days, because there was no time that felt like “night” or “morning”… and I was so preoccupied with anxiety and caring for Everett that I didn’t even clue in that my mouth tasted like a camel had crawled in and died.  I spontaneously burst into tears every few hours, unable to bat away the overwhelming and terrifying thoughts that would pop into my head multiple times a day. At one point I looked at my mom and sobbed, “I have to keep him safe for the next eighteen years?! How am I going to do that?” I felt emotionally naked and exposed to the elements; the slightest stressor would pierce me like hail.

The first month or so postpartum I felt like I went through our routine – feed, diaper, sleep, feed, diaper, sleep – as if I had a wet blanket draped over me. Every movement was hard.  I knew I was depressed. I felt miles away from the person I used to be, the person I thought I was. I tried desperately to swim upwards, to get my head above water and feel sun on my face. But no matter how hard I paddled, I never broke the surface. There was always more water. Always more water. Always more water.

I remembered reading that sometimes during postpartum you become very close to your partner and other immediate caregivers. It was true that I almost always wanted someone nearby. Yet it wasn’t that I felt close and bonded to them; the relationship felt one-sided, clingy, panicky. I clung to them as if they were my life raft, and I was certain that without them I would drown. I knew I was stressing people out, but honestly, I didn’t care. It’s not that I didn’t WANT to care, or that I wanted to suck the lifeblood out of the people I love most. It’s that I didn’t have the capacity to think beyond myself, because I was absolutely in survival mode. It’s like they were giving me emotional and psychological CPR; I couldn’t even think about their arms being tired, because I was certain I could not survive without them.

If you were to look back at my search history on my phone during that time, you’d see a common theme: difference between baby blues and postpartum depression, stories about postpartum depression, does postpartum depression get better, when will I feel bonded to my baby, effect of traumatic delivery on bonding. I am an information gatherer by nature, and this is no exception when I’m stressed. I kept frantically Googling with the intensity of an addict, searching for the one bit of information that would make things “click”.  I remember my mom taking away my phone on several occasions, saying “Look at that incredible baby you created.” But while I cognitively knew he was our miracle so long hoped and prayed for, I struggled to look at him in this light. This little being we had waited so long for was here… and I felt more miserable than I ever had in my life.  As hard as I tried, I could not conjure up the overwhelming feelings of love I had dreamed of, or anything close to it; I still felt as if I was babysitting a stranger’s baby, and I wondered when they would come home.  The guilt and disappointment was crushing.  So, often, I would retreat to my world of “research”, living as much in my head as possible, as acknowledging emotions was like wrapping myself in a cold wet towel… uncomfortable and chilling to the bone.

Despite every task feeling nearly impossible, somehow just before Everett was five weeks old, Seth and I packed him up and got on a plane to Michigan for my brother’s wedding. At the time, this trip was a source of major anxiety, as I was absolutely certain he would for sure contract measles and every other scary condition on the plane. Looking back, however, this trip was a massive blessing. For one, I was able to be present for the most important days of my brother’s life. I learned that even when I feel terrible, I Can Do Hard Things. And finally, I was able to spend the most difficult postpartum days with family nearby nearly 24/7.

In the first few weeks after Everett was born, I mainly struggled with depression. I constantly felt like I was walking around with that wet blanket on top of me and I couldn’t shake it off. I felt anxious, but the anxiety would come and go based on circumstances. Yet at about 5 weeks postpartum, it hit – severe, nonstop anxiety. It ruled every waking (and what few sleeping moments) I had. Little tasks felt not only herculean but entirely impossible. At one point, my cousins suggested we meet at a restaurant about 15 minutes away from me. The thought of it felt so impossible it was nauseating. I could not comprehend the thought of putting myself in the driver’s seat and navigating to a new restaurant. Not only was it overwhelming, but also almost physically painful. I felt like the little button that turned on the vibrating feature of Everett’s bouncy chair was on me, and someone turned it on. No matter what the circumstances, I was constantly on edge. Not the feeling of being a little keyed up - the feeling of constantly being frantic, eyes darting around, pacing, trying to escape my racing mind and the constant buzzing that ran through my whole body. I couldn’t find an escape. It is the most terrible feeling I have ever experienced.

My mom said later that she knew it had gotten bad when I stopped sleeping. At some point, that happened. I couldn’t sleep. Even when family would take over Everett duty and I had 4 hours to sleep between pumping sessions, I’d be lucky to get an hour. My mind never stopped, and I really started to feel like I was going crazy. Thoughts that didn’t feel like me began to invade my psyche. With my mental health background, I knew what they were – intrusive thoughts. I knew I wasn’t actually heading towards psychosis, because I KNEW the thoughts weren’t from me. That’s the thing about intrusive thoughts – they are exactly that. Intruders. They invade where they are not welcome. They throw open the doors and tromp inside, putting their feet on the furniture and never using a coaster. Yet even though I rationally knew what they were, they were still awful. I had repeated nightmares that I died, or that I wasn’t able to take care of Everett. Those intruders continued banging on the doors throughout the day, and I didn’t know what to do. It was the most helpless I have felt in my life.

When we feel like we’ve lost our mind, the only things we’re able to do are the things that we do without really thinking.  For me, thankfully, one of these things was making a treatment plan. Once I got to the point where I knew definitively that I needed help, I went into action. I knew what I needed: I needed meds and I needed intensive therapy. From my mom and stepdad’s house in Michigan, I began first calling every psychiatrist on the list of providers covered by my insurance. I wouldn’t be back in Utah for a couple weeks, so I hoped I’d be able to find someone who specialized in postpartum mood disorders and could see me shortly after my arrival. I made call after call, repeating the same mantra: “I’m looking for a psychiatrist who specializes in postpartum mood disorders and who can see me within the next few weeks.”

“Our first available appointment for new patients is June 9.”

“I’m sorry, none of our physcians are accepting new patients at this time.”

“Please give me your email, and I will send you our new patient paperwork. Once you fill that out and fax it back to us, we will put you on our waiting list.”

Eventually, I decided to drop any sort of request for experience with postpartum issues. I essentially asked for anyone licensed to practice psychiatry who could see me in the next month.

Dead end, dead end, dead end.

In tears, I battled increased feelings of hopelessness. I knew it would be nearly impossible for me to go back to work after maternity leave unless I got feeling better. I could function barely enough to care for my baby – with help. That was it. The thought of getting dressed and going to work and stringing a coherent academic sentence together seemed impossible.  I began to worry about losing my job.

And even in that state, the social justice advocate part of me was furious. “What about people who are truly in crisis and don’t have a support system?” I said to my mom, in tears. I was one step ahead of a crisis and only stayed there because I had people taking care of me. I was functional – barely.

I then found myself back in front of my phone, frantically researching some more. I posted on a local Utah Facebook group, Pregnancy and Parenting after Infertility, asking for any recommendations for psychiatrists in the area. At this point, I didn’t care if the doctor was covered by insurance or not. I’d pay out of pocket if I needed to. I was not okay, and I needed help.

Quickly, a couple fellow moms responded: “Dr. Dan”. He was brand new in the area, paneled with my insurance, and still building his practice.  I found his number, called, and expected a voice mail or secretary. Instead, I got Dr. Dan himself. I explained my situation, and he listened empathetically. He talked about a few possible options and I made an appointment for the day after we returned to Utah.  And for the first time, I felt a little hope.

The night before the appointment, I sat with my mom and Seth and wrote out a list of things to share and what I wanted to ask him. I had every detail that might be pertinent laid out and had practically written my own treatment plan. I expected that when I went there, I would need to convince him that I was really struggling. I firmly planted myself in my academic mind, put on my Social Worker Warrior breastplate, and marched in with my proverbial fists up, ready for battle.  The door to his office opened and a friendly, unassuming face appeared. He listened without judgment as I read my editorial entitled Why I Need Help Immediately. And then – he agreed with me. He saw that I was not okay, and he was going to help me.

I sank back into his couch with far too many throw pillows, and cried.

I listened as he told me that my sleep patterns were severely disturbed. He looked me in the eyes and said, “We need to get you sleeping. Sleep is medicine. If I have to hospitalize you in order to give you the meds you need to sleep, I’ll do that. We are going to get you sleeping.”

As he said that, I felt one of the most profound feelings of relief in my life.

I left the office with a starting dose of Ativan, an anti-anxiety med that is safe for breastfeeding. That night, my mom and Seth took the night shift and sent me to our extra guest room. My only job was to sleep for as long as I could.

I slept for five hours in a row, and felt like an entirely new person.

After I started sleeping again, it was like every thing changed. The buzzing stopped. The intrusive thoughts came much less often, and I could manage them when they did.  I began to enjoy my son. I found myself wanting to be around friends and engage with people. I began to laugh again and even make some of my own jokes. I began going to therapy twice a week with a therapist I really liked. I made plans with other mom friends during the day and actually began to enjoy the last couple weeks of my maternity leave. At one point, I even had the idea to invite a bunch of friends over for a barbeque. I felt like I was beginning to stand on my own two feet again, and even begin to take some steps. They were shaky steps, to be sure, but I actually began to feel like I was moving forward.

And then.

One day, I noticed strange bruising on my wrists, and little dots that appeared on weird places over my skin. I brushed them off – the bruises were from carrying the carseat, the dots a result of where my glasses rested on my face. All easy enough to write off.

What was more difficult to write off was waking up the next morning with the taste of blood in my mouth, seeing red when I spit into the sink, and looking in my mouth to see it full of blood blisters.

The rest of the morning happened quickly, as I ran to show Seth, he called into work, I drove myself to the ER, and Seth joined me later when our neighbor was taking care of Everett. I was quickly transferred from the “oh, you just have an ear infection” ER to the “oh crap, there might be something more going on here” ER.  I shook as I waited. A nurse came and took my vitals, and I waited. A doctor came and talk to me, and I waited. The nurse came back and drew my blood, and I waited again. And then the doctor and nurse were both in my room sharing the results of my blood test. Normal platelet levels are least 150,000. Mine were 6,000.  I was quickly given a diagnosis of Immune Thrombocytopenic Purpura (ITP), an autoimmune condition where my immune system attacked my platelets.

Five days of dexamethasone, a high dose steroid, was prescribed as a first step to “quiet” my immune system. The doctor also took a look at my list of current medications, which included the anti-anxiety meds that were my lifeline to feeling remotely functional. He lowered his voice to the uber-calm, semi-patronizing tone that says “I’m going to tell you something that is going to make you completely lose your crap. Buckle up.” He proceeded to tell me that Ativan is very rarely, but sometimes, contraindicated with bleeding disorders, and that I shouldn’t take it.

Had I been in a better emotional place, perhaps I could’ve strung some halfway intelligent words together and pulled out my Social Worker Warrior breastplate again to be a self-advocate.  But as I struggled to understand what was happening to my body, not knowing if I was physically safe and terrified of falling back into my previous mental state, I lost all grip on logic and “went limbic”, my emotional brain running the show. Instead, I sobbed hysterically to Seth and my mom on speakerphone, “Please don’t take away my meds! Please don’t take away my meds! I can’t go back to that dark place!”

Just a little advice – I don’t recommend shouting this in a busy ER when you are trying to convince the medical team you aren’t a drug seeker.

As I was admitted to the hospital for monitoring until my platelets got to a safe level, the ER doc talked to Dr. Dan, and they settled on a combination of meds that would not affect my platelets and would at least partially address my anxiety. Yet the cocktail approved by the ER doc didn’t really decrease my anxiety, only temporarily sedated me. I would wake up in the middle of the night after sleeping 2-3 hours and stare at the clock, counting the hours until I could take another dose and sleep again. I was profoundly depressed. It was the lowest I have ever felt in my life.

As I reflect on this time, one thing that stands out to me was a sentence that lived on the tip of my tongue, waiting for an opportunity to leap off. Every time a doctor appeared at my bedside, I found myself wanting to ask, “Am I going to die?”

Honestly, I truly believed I was.

I know now that was unlikely. I know now that ITP, though not a fun disease, is manageable. But I didn’t know any of this then. I needed a doctor to sit down, look me in the eye, and speak to me on my level. I needed a doctor to tell me that remission is possible. I needed a doctor to tell me that I could still manage my job and being a mom while also managing this new diagnosis. I needed someone to tell me I really was going to be okay, that my worst fears of bleeding out were likely unfounded. I needed these things, but no one knew it, so no one told me. And thus I spent three nights living from sedative dose to sedative dose, hoping the steroids would work and my morning blood draw would show a rising platelet count.

The third morning, they did, and I was sent home. I continued to struggle with the side effects of a high steroid dose – nausea, dizziness, extreme anxiety. (Because I needed a med to make me MORE anxious. Oh, the irony.) The dose was so high the pharmacist at Target wouldn’t let me leave until he had confirmed that the prescription was accurate. Once the five days of meds were up, though, the effects began to wear off and I started feeling human again. Dr. Dan found a new set of meds that worked better. Due to the steroids, I chose to stop breastfeeding; while this was hard to swallow at first, it was actually a blessing in disguise and, combined with new meds, began to improve my mental health.  My blood counts rose, then fell; again, I woke up with unexplained bruising and a mouth full of blood blisters. My doctor then switched me from dexamethasone to prednisone – a lower dose but over 6-8 weeks.

On prednisone, my counts again rose, this time with fewer side effects. Over the course of a few weeks, they continued to rise and finally stabilized around 260,000, which was my “normal” before. I began to very tentatively wonder if life would stabilize along with my platelet count.

Slowly, with the help of intensive therapy, I began to find peace and healing. I began to truly bond with Everett. I often meditated on the Scripture verse “Today has enough worries of its own” and began to learn the power of being fully present.  As the “What ifs” continued to bombard me, I developed a mantra: “We’ll figure it out.” What if my counts drop again? “We’ll figure it out.” What if my counts drop again and insurance won’t cover the med that costs $40,000? “We’ll figure it out.” What if I have to go back into the hospital and we need help taking care of Everett? “We’ll figure it out.” Slowly, my anxious thoughts grew bored with the same response repeated over and over, and they began their retreat. My conversations with God began to soften, slowly shifting from bitter, hopeless mutterings to include receptive listening and prayers of gratitude. Finally, I began to exhale, and I noticed bits of Joy beginning to leak into my being.

  It was like waking up from a terrible nightmare – and in this new reality, I had a beautiful son. The child for whom we prayed for years.  The child we thought would never come. The child who existed only in our imagination is now in front of us in the flesh. And I get to be his mom.

The months since have consisted of settling into the “typical” parts of motherhood – diapers, bottles, sleep training, watching him explore and grow, developing his personality and slowly learning he is a separate being. I have begun to feel the deep, profound connection and love I had wondered if I would ever experience.

And also, interspersed both during and between the feedings and naps and super-fast-crawler-chasing, I have continued my own healing. I have learned to recognize and admit that the events of the past few months – a traumatic delivery, severe postpartum depression/anxiety, and my ITP diagnosis at an extremely fragile time (not to mention the infertility and loss up to that point) – are capital-T Traumas and thus require time, love, and work to heal. Part of this is directed inward with prayer and introspection; part is directed outward with a newfound passion for helping other moms who are struggling.  I feel compelled to share the mission statement of the amazing organization Postpartum Support International: “You are not alone. You are not to blame. With help, you will be well.” And, as I continue to reach out to others, I will further believe these words to be true for me:

I am not alone. I am not to blame. With help, I am becoming well.

Our Birth Story

So. I had a baby.

When I was pregnant, I anticipated it would be a bit before I wrote again simply because I would be in the throws of sleep deprivation and overall deficits in my free time and cognitive abilities. And while those are true, it’s just recently that I’ve gotten far enough into parenthood that I’m able to look in the rearview mirror and make any real sense of what has happened. It’s sort of like pointillism, that type of painting that uses millions of small dots to make a painting. When I was too close to the immediate aftermath of childbirth and my new identity as a mom, reflecting on it all was like looking at one section of the painting – it was just a bunch of pieces that didn’t really fit together. Now, although it is all still new, I am far enough away from the most intense events to see them more as a cohesive whole.

Towards the end of my pregnancy, I imagined that my first blog entry would be a relatively lighthearted account of new parenthood, discussing the challenges frankly and honestly and with a healthy dose of sarcasm and inappropriate humor, but also writing about everything I had dreamed about in the years leading up to it – an intense but emotionally rich delivery, immediate bonding and connection, awe over this new life so long hoped and prayed for.

That’s not quite how this one’s gonna play out.

While I love our son intensely and am incredibly grateful for him, it would be entirely dishonest to just write about the things above. There have been many, many incredible moments over the past few months, certainly. It has been life changing. But I must be honest that the past few months have been the most difficult of my life thus far.

There is a part of me that feels… guilty maybe?... for writing about “negative” things here. I spent years writing about how much I wanted to be a mom, and there is a subtle sense that I “should” focus on the positive and just be thankful for what we have been blessed with. And I think that one of the reasons I struggled was because of this – this habit we have of “shoulding” on ourselves, creating arbitrary expectations of how we should be handling something even if said expectations aren’t healthy or life-giving. As we struggled to conceive, I subconsciously created a very specific picture of how the birth and postpartum would be; when they turned out remarkably different, I mourned what “should” have been and despaired over not feeling how I was “supposed” to feel.

So, I will share our story without trying to appraise pieces as positive or negative or good or bad but simply what they are.  There are pieces that are hard and beautiful and dark and profound and terrifying and joyful. I will share pieces that are hard to verbalize, much less write down and click the “publish” button. But they are real, and they are important, because I know I am not alone in feeling them and others need to know that they are not alone too. I share these pieces in part because it allows me to hold my experience at arm’s length and examine it, to step outside my experience and describe it from an observer’s perspective, which elicits healing and growth. And, also, I hope others will see bits and pieces of themselves and their experiences reflected in our story, be it childbirth, postpartum, or otherwise.  You are not alone.

At 41 weeks, baby showed no signs of coming, and thus we found ourselves heading to the hospital late on a Wednesday night to be induced. Before we left the house, I stopped in the doorway and looked back; quiet, still, empty. I sat in that unsettled place when you’re standing on the precipice of an entire shift in reality, when life as you know it will never be the same.  I stared for a few seconds, hoping for a profound realization or words of poetry to flow through my mind. But really, I just heard silence. It was time to go, and time to start the next chapter.

We arrived at the hospital and settled in for the night. Induction began in the late evening, and I dozed in hour stints in between doses of mild pain meds. As morning came I was surprisingly reasonably rested, and induction meds were slowly increased. Not knowing how long it would take, I did what I could to avoid an epidural, as the pain was still tolerable and the thought of being stuck in my bed for an unknown amount of time was still worse than the discomfort. Despite increasing of meds, labor did not progress, and a discussion began of increasing them more.. At some point, later in the evening, it appeared we were at an impasse, and it wasn’t clear how long things would take. I sent family back to their hotels to get some rest and told them we’d call then when things got real. I sent Seth to the cafeteria, and for the first time in twenty-four hours, I was alone.

It was at that moment that shit got real.

A nurse, examining the monitors that measured the baby’s vitals, noted some irregularities in his heartbeat. She kept her demeanor calm enough to fool me, so I was genuinely surprised when my OB, Dr. Ponder, whisked in urgently a couple minutes later. She sat down close to me at my bedside and spoke in that low, even, calm tone with carefully chosen words that tells you things are serious. She explained that there were irregularities in his heartbeat that were of concern and that we were not making any progress with the induction. She watched his heart rate on the monitor and narrated it as if she was a sports commentator, updating me with her prognosis with each dip and spike. She told me one option would be to break my water and see if that helped. I called Seth and told him to come down from the cafeteria and he called our families to come back to the hospital. She then broke my water, an incredibly painful experience when you are barely 1 cm dilated.

She held my hand as she continued to explain the options. She shared her concerns about the patterns in his heart rate, as well as the fact that labor had not progressed at all in 24 hours. I had a couple choices: I could continue to labor and hope for a non-surgical birth, and she would fully support me in doing so. However, there was a chance that we could end up with an emergency c-section, which is not the route anyone wants to go. Or, we could go with a c-section that was urgent but not an emergency. At this point, Seth came in, and we reviewed the options again.

It’s a hard moment when you feel very clearly what the best choice is, and it’s not the choice  you want. I knew that this was likely my only biological child and therefore likely my only chance at experiencing a “natural” birth.  My heart sank as I realized the movie I had played over and over in my mind of what the birth would be like would differ starkly from reality. And yet, I knew what we needed to do. I didn’t want to risk the chance of having an emergency c-section, and I could feel deep in my bones that this baby wasn’t coming on his own. Nothing in my body felt ready to push out a baby. I told Seth, “I think we need to do the c-section.” He hesitated, knowing how much I had wanted to experience a vaginal birth. But when I made it clear that it was what I thought was best, he relented, and we agreed to move forward with the surgery.

Right after the decision was made, the baby’s heart rate became of increasing concern. Things moved rapidly as we signed consent forms for anesthesia and Dr. Ponder explained what would happen. Things moved both quickly and slowly around me and I felt both acutely aware of everything happening and yet also a bit numb and removed. I was grieving the loss of the non-surgical birth I had hoped for yet also relieved to avoid what would be a very long labor. I was excited to meet our son and also terrified of what lied ahead.

My mom and mother in-law arrived just before they were going to wheel me back to the OR.  I clung to them, crying, unsure what to do with all the aforementioned emotions. My dad was still on his way back when they told us it was time to head back. I asked if we could wait longer, but it was time. I cried again – a very childlike part of me just needed to see my dad before we went back. I settled for a phone call, and back we went.

Back in the OR, things moved in both double time and slow motion as the surgical team prepared me for surgery. As I lay back on the gurney, I began to get prepared for the epidural. Since my pain was tolerable, the epidural was not a relief; I went from moderate discomfort to fully numb from the chest down, and I felt myself begin to panic. Looking back, I realize that it was at this point that my birth experience began to become traumatic. It has taken me awhile to get to that point, the point where I began to realize that the “t word” would accurately describe my experience.  Part of my job is to support educators in implementing trauma informed practices, and one of the core principles that we teach is that whether or not an event is traumatic depends not on the event itself but how the person experiences it. An event becomes traumatic when it exceeds one’s ability to cope. And for whatever reason, I was not able to cope.

My c-section was the sixth surgery I’ve had, and it was more difficult than the previous five combined.  What people don’t often realize is that the procedure is not delicate. My body was literally rocking on the table as my Dr. Ponder (who is a very respected and skilled surgeon) cut through layers of skin, tissue, fat, and muscle and began moving my organs around to reach the baby. While I couldn’t see what was happening, I could feel it. I couldn’t feel the cutting, but I could feel pressure and imagine what was happening. I couldn’t see myself losing over two liters of blood, but I could feel myself getting cold and shaky. I couldn’t see my organs being set outside my body to get to the baby, but I could feel myself being violently jostled.

I stared intently up at one of the surgical lights above my head, trying hard to focus on its shape and dimensions not because it was interesting but because I was trying hard to tune into my senses to stay grounded. And truthfully, sight was the only sense I could tune into that didn’t involve something traumatic. Smell was the sterile scent of rubber and disinfectant mixed with my own body fluids. Taste was the vomit beginning to find its way up my throat. Hearing was the talk of medical professionals as they chattered on, describing my body in a lexicon foreign to me. Touch – touch was most of my body being numb and lifeless, aware enough to know my body was being invaded but helpless to respond. And so, I was left with sight. I stared intently at that light as I tried valiantly to focus on the breathing I had learned in my Hypnobirthing class.

Despite my best efforts, though, I could feel myself slipping into panic. While cognitively I “knew” I was safe and in good hands, the primitive survival part of my brain was sounding the alarms. Danger. Danger. Danger. I began shaking violently and uncontrollably, not out of fear but as a physical response to the surgery. I began to feel the onset of intense nausea. I typically get nauseous with anesthesia, but had been assured by the anesthesiologist attending the birth that “this was different” and “most people don’t get sick at all”.

Ha.

I know my anesthesiologist went to school for about 290 years and did many smart things during my c-section, but from my perspective, I paid him several thousand dollars to stand by my head and hold a barf back under my mouth every time I barked “Bag!”.  He seemed surprised as I continued to tell him I wasn’t feeling well, and pushed anti-nausea meds into my IV. He said, “You’ll definitely feel better once I give you this,” but that proved to be a dream, and the nausea remained unrelenting.  I spent most of the surgery gagging as vomit crept up my esophagus. Fun fact – it is very hard to vomit when you are paralyzed from the chest down. Vomit just creeps up like it’s a Gogurt being pushed up by the world’s most patient five-year- old.

Laying on the gurney, shaking, crying, choking, gagging, I could feel anxiety turn to panic and begin to spiral.  I now know this was in part because I was losing much more blood than I should have, but I didn’t know that then. I could feel myself begin to disassociate from reality; on some level, I knew that wasn’t good because disassociating is the trauma response our body uses as a last resort. Everything in the room began to feel far away and I prayed for it to all be over soon. From a distance, I could hear Dr. Ponder announce “He’s almost here!” I trained my gaze on Seth’s face, as I knew he would see him first.

I heard the surgical team cheer, and a second later I saw pure joy spread across Seth’s face, his eyes lighting up in a way I’d never seen before. I focused intently on his reaction, and for a moment, I was there, fully present with the experience, borrowing from his joy and excitement. His son was here, and he was a daddy. In the midst of the trauma, that isolated moment was one of the most beautiful of my life.

And yet, the moment was fleeting, and panic and nausea crashed back in like uninvited waves during a beach sunset, toppling me over psychologically and emotionally. I heard Seth say, “Here he is! Here he is!” excitedly to me, and I knew I was about to see my son for the first time. I watched my OB’s arms begin to rise, knowing my son was in her hands. I craned my neck, feeling pinned down by my inability to move. After years of waiting, he was about to arrive, and waited for the joy and love that surpassed anything I had ever experienced to flood my body, flushing out all the fear and panic.  And then, all of a sudden, he was there.

And I felt nothing.

Perhaps nothing isn’t the right word, because I did feel something. It was far away and distant, but there was a faint sense of knowledge that there is my son, but it felt cognitive and logical instead of primal and emotional. I’m told I was emotional, and I do remember a choking sob when I saw him… but the emotion was so much more muted than I had dreamed and hoped for.

Looking back, I’m able to understand why this happened. The parts of my brain responsible for connection and emotion were too busy at the moment worrying that I was going to die, because the primal alarms were still sounding – I was cut open, losing a lot of blood, struggling to breathe, choking, and horribly nauseous. My body and brain simply didn’t have the capacity to see beyond themselves and connect with the world around me. But at the moment, in addition to the physical pain and panic, other thoughts began to race through my head.  Where was that feeling I’d been imagining for years? Why don’t I feel connected to my son? Where are the fireworks? Where is the overwhelming sense of love and joy? Where is the immediate feeling that I would lay down my life for this being I just met? And then, the self-evaluation – Is there something wrong with me? Shouldn’t I feel connected? Will the feeling come? 

I felt myself spring away from my previous moment of connection and joy and fly like a slingshot back into panic. I experienced reality in fragments and interspersed around my episodes of violent shaking and choking on vomit. I saw my OB lean over me and explain that I had lost a lot of blood, and because of that, she was going to close my incision a different way than we had discussed earlier – was I okay with that? At that point I didn’t care if she stitched me up with a glue gun and Christmas ribbon, as long as I felt better and got out of there. I was vaguely aware of Seth’s voice as he stood over the table where was being tended to, taking pictures and talking with the surgical staff. I laid on the gurney, feeling far away and separate. The anesthesiologist continued to hold the barf bag, which looked like an elephant condom, under my face. I continued to shake and gag. Deep in the back of my mind, I remembered how I had dreamed of this moment being the most profound moments of my life, full of a love I had never experienced before.

Instead, it was one of the most profoundly lonely moments of my life.

The primal part of my brain continued to sound the alarms. I felt small and childlike. And in that moment, the thing I wanted most in the world was not to hold my baby. More than anything else in the world, I wanted my parents.  I wanted my mom, who had laid on a similar gurney 36 years prior, enduring the same experience to give me life, to run her fingers through her hair and tell me I was going to be okay. I wanted my dad, who I believed as a child could shield me from all harm, to grab my hand and say, “Squirt, you’re doing great.” I needed the presence of those who brought me into this world to speak to the deepest part of my psyche and tell me that I was okay.

After a time, Seth brought our son, bundled like a burrito, over to me. I stared at him and felt a vague sense of warmth. It felt odd to see this being, this little body who I had carried around in mine for 41 weeks, who had spent months sitting on my bladder and kicking my insides, staring at me.  I continued to wait for that intense and inexplicable feeling that I would give my life in an instant for this strange little bean I had just met. But instead, it just felt like I was looking at a stranger.  A cute stranger who I felt vaguely and distantly attached to, as if a mile-long cord stretched between us, but a stranger nonetheless.

Seth put him on my chest, still holding on to him since I could barely move.  Immediately, I felt my panic heightening. I can’t hold him! my brain screamed. I can’t even take care of myself right now. I can’t be responsible for him. The surgical team began to push my bed down the hallway, where our family was waiting. I continued to feel disconnected and distant, as if I was underwater. The doors swung open, and the first thing I saw was a camera lens pointed at me, my dad’s face behind it. I saw our mom’s faces next, full of tears and smiles. We pulled back into the room I had labored in, this time with a baby on the outside.

It was at this point that I suddenly became extraordinarily tired. It felt as if I was at 1% battery and someone unplugged my charger from the wall. Staying awake to engage with my family seemed like a herculean task.  The energy of the room felt alive and engaging, dissonant with my feeble demeanor.

I don’t remember much during this time. There are some distinct memories that stick out like colored shards of glass against a black and white backdrop:

Our doula snapping dozens of pictures on my phone.

My dad doing the same with his SLR.

Seth announcing his name.

My mom crying when she heard her maiden name as one of the middle names.

Seth, my mom, and a nurse trying to get Everett to latch.

And through it all, one desire remained the most salient, drowning out the excited buzz of those around me who surfed a wave of euphoria –

Sprite.

More than anything, I wanted Sprite.

Having not been allowed to drink prior to the surgery, I was ravenously thirsty. I sucked down sip after sip of the can next to my bed until Dr. Ponder warned me that I would vomit again if I didn’t slow down. I then would take a drink and wait, watching the clock and counting down the seconds until it felt safe to drink again. Everything else felt distantly second to consuming Sprite.

When I had finally drank enough to quell my body’s appeal, another primal need knocked on the door. Sleep. It was time for sleep.  Immediately, with the same intensity as my thirst, I felt the urge to sweep everyone out of the room, assuming the adults would take care of Everett. All I wanted was quiet and dark and sleep. At some point, we were moved up to the room where we would spend the next four days, and Everett was taken away for some sort of procedure. My dad stood by me, not wanting to leave me alone. This was comforting, and I immediately fell asleep.

When the nurse brought Everett back in, I remember asking her if I should set an alarm to feed him. I was surprised when she said yes – on some level I expected her to say, “Oh, honey, don’t worry about it. We’ll take care of him. You just rest.” The duties of a new mom towered over me, giant in comparison to how tiny and fragile I felt. I couldn’t understand how someone as weak as me could be expected to take on such a massive job.

The next four days in the hospital remain a blur. Night and day bled together as life became only about moving from one feeding to the next. A couple times, we took the advice of every smart person in our lives and sent him to the nursery so we could get three hours of uninterrupted sleep. I was told the nurses would bring him back in for his next feeding, so I didn’t set an alarm like I had been, and immediately drifted off. When I was awoken by them rolling him in, I looked at the clock and panicked when I realized it had been almost five hours since they took him. My immediate thought: “Oh no. I’m supposed to feed him every three hours. I’m starving my child. The nurses might call DCFS on me.” No joke, that was my thought, and in the moment I believed it. I began apologizing profusely, rambling about how my alarm must not have gone off. They handed him to me, unperturbed, telling me he had been sleeping and they had gotten busy with another baby who was struggling.

Despite help from every nurse and lactation specialist available, Everett was not able to latch. I tried every hold and position and tip and wept out of exhaustion and desperation. I just want to feed my baby. When it was clear latching was not happening, we resorted to pumping and finger feeding, where a syringe is filled with breastmilk and the baby sucks your finger while you slowly empty the syringe into his mouth. The idea is that it trains his tongue for latching. This was exhausting and time consuming, but at least my baby was eating.

Family and friends filled our hospital room, and I felt every emotion on the human spectrum towards them. One minute I would be overflowing with love towards Seth and gushing at his devotion as a new dad; the next I would be furious at an action that didn’t coincide with my needs at that moment. I knew I wasn’t acting rationally, but I felt helpless to stop it. It was like my amygdala was driving the car while the rest of me was tied up in the backseat.

My last morning at the hospital, I was awoken by a pediatrician doing rounds. I remember feeling instantly intimidated by her, her presence stern and professional. She began asking questions about feeding, immediately asking “Would you be willing to try a bottle?” My eyes immediately filled with tears, and I looked over at my mom. I had been trying so hard with finger feeding with the hope of being able to breastfeed him when his mouth was further developed. I knew that taking a bottle could decrease our chances of latching. The doctor, noticing my hesitation, launched in with a stern and powerful lecture. “Your baby is losing too much weight. He needs to eat more. If he doesn’t start gaining weight, he could be admitted back to the hospital for failure to thrive. You need to focus on getting food into him.” She checked a couple of his vitals, looked at me sternly one more time, and left.

As soon as she left, all the fears and anxieties and insecurities and overwhelm that had been simmering exploded and fired in several different directions. I began sobbing hysterically, muttering incomprehensibly, feeling like an utter failure. At this point, Dr. Ponder walked in, privy to the apex of my meltdown. She sat on the edge of my bed as I sobbed, “Maybe…I… should… leave… him… here… for a good mom to take care of him.”

Tears stream down my face as I write these words, reliving the moment back in that hospital room and recalling the complete desperation and instability I felt. While objectively I knew what I was saying didn’t make sense, I could not wrap my mind around anything rational. The thought of bringing him home was terrifying. I wasn’t up for the demands. It was too hard. I felt like I was already failing him.

Dr. Ponder’s incredible bedside manner attempted to make up for the pediatrician’s lack thereof. Despite being at the tail end of a 24 hour shift, she sat with me for a good half hour, reassuring me I was doing a good job and that he would gain the weight back. She gave some resources to my mom of in-home postpartum support. I felt marginally better. She, after all, was a smart doctor, and at least 50% of the doctors that had seen me that day felt I could do it.

So, later that evening, I found myself showering and packing up the hospital room. Somehow, the hospital staff had thought I had at least a marginal chance of caring for this tiny being and let us take him home. I left the maternity floor and breathed real air for the first time in four days. At first, I felt liberated, free from the confines of the hospital walls and regulations. Yet as we drove away and got further away from the nurse call button, and the 24 hour nursery, and the superpowered hospital grade breast pump, and the (mediocre) food brought for every meal… reality began to set in. We were really doing this. We were on our way home to begin our life with our son. I was excited, but also terrified… and exhausted. Ready or not, we were parents now. There wasn’t time to stop and wonder if we could do it. We were doing it, and there was no turning back now.