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Posts from the ‘Infertility and Pregnancy’ Category

Jun 15

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Diabetes Pregnancy: Now and Then, Part Two.

Welcome to the continuation of Laddie’s pregnancy story, showing what pregnancy with type 1 diabetes was like back in 1979 and 1982.  Today is a continuation of her story, with details about her sons’ births, the cost of care, and how diabetes did, and didn’t, play a role in bringing her sons into the world.

For more about Laddie’s life with type 1 now, you can visit her blog.  She’s awesome.  🙂

  *   *   *

1979: Baby Boy #1

I was diagnosed with diabetes late in 1976 and became pregnant with Mike less than 2 years later. I was referred to the obstetrician down the hall from my internist’s office. I didn’t know to ask for more intensive care and my personality probably would have insisted that I was not “different” from other pregnant women in their mid- 20’s. There were no home BG meters in those days and I was in good health. So I am not exactly sure what would have been done differently.

What are some of my memories? I had “morning” sickness that got worse as the day went on. No puking—just sickening nausea. I was hugely sensitive to smells and barely survived the weeklong visit of my mother who smoked. Although women who suffer from morning sickness are advised to avoid greasy foods, I totally craved Kentucky Fried Chicken and without fail it made me feel better. I remember the clothes: two jumpers, one hunter green and one navy blue, that I alternated daily with different turtlenecks and the horribly-patterned tunic blouse that I wore with beige corduroy pants. Because we didn’t know the sex of our children before birth, I sewed gender-neutral Winnie the Pooh cafe curtains and yellow-checked bumper pads for the old wooden crib that had been my husband’s. Crib safety standards weren’t a big thing in the 1970’s.

If you want a clue about my birth experience with Mike, just look at his statistics: 11 pounds 11 ounces and 24 inches long. Labor and delivery were hugely painful and towards the end, I received a drug that was magical. Most of the delivery is a blur in my mind but my husband vividly remembers the forceps. We always joke with our grandchildren about the “yankers” used in the Berenstain Bears dentist book to pull out teeth. Well, Mike had the big yankers that pulled him from his warm comfy floating life inside Mom. It took weeks (or months?) for the dent on the side of his head to resolve.

Although I mentioned previously that I only had two glucose tests during my entire hospitalization, Mike had five on the day he was born. I assume that this was to monitor hypoglycemia that is common in babies of moms with “poorly-controlled” diabetes. There were other health concerns that required specialized monitoring, but ultimately Mike was fine. He developed jaundice and required a couple of days under the lights. In today’s world I would have gone home on my third day with daily nursery visiting privileges. Not in 1979. I was asked whether I wanted to stay in the hospital with him and I did for a total of six days. I might argue that for psychological reasons and breast-feeding, it was medically justified …

1979 Statistics:

  • Birth Month/Year:  April, 1979
  • Birth Weight:  11 lbs 11 oz
  • Birth Length:  24 inches
  • Mom Days in Hospital:  6 days
  • Baby Days in Hospital:  6 days
  • Total Fee to Obstetrician:  $450
  • Mom Hospital Bill:  $1,079
  • Baby Hospital Bill:  $1,044

1982: Baby Boy #2

When I became pregnant in 1981, nobody had learned their lessons from my first pregnancy. Once again I visited the obstetrician down the hall from my internist. Once again I visited my doctor every 6 weeks for a blood test and probably drank a lot of water to dilute the sugar in my pee for Diastix tests. It is only because I know the story of Chris’ delivery that I am appalled that I did not see a high-risk obstetrician during this pregnancy. I am appalled that a C-section wasn’t performed. I am appalled about a lot of things. But I didn’t know any better and I guess my doctors didn’t either. Once again I had no home blood glucose monitoring. My insulin regimen was better than in 1978-79 with the addition of Regular insulin. However, as far as I know the doses were fixed and not an equivalent of today’s MDI (multiple daily injections) regimens.

I remember less about this pregnancy than my first. Probably I was too busy taking care of a 2-year old to pay much attention to routine doctor appointments. I do recall that Mike knew where every bathroom was in the southern suburbs of Minneapolis. “Mom, why do you need to go the bathroom again?”

If you look at the birth weights of my children, you might think that I had better diabetes control during my second pregnancy than my first. Fooled you! Chris was born three weeks early and missed the final weeks of sugar-saturated nutrition that is baby-poison.

Three weeks before my due date, I made a new casserole that had spaghetti sauce, hamburger,  and crescent rolls from the tube. This recipe is not on the list of the Top Ten Meals to have before delivering a baby and I have never made it again. Later in the evening my water broke and off to the hospital we went. My baby book notes indicate that I spent the night at the hospital with light contractions and Dad slept at home.

I did not go into labor and the next morning was given Pitocin to induce contractions. Pitocin labors tend to be “rougher” and ‘harder” than natural labors but I don’t remember whether this labor was worse than my first one. 5-6 hours later Chris was born. Once again, I want to ask: why wasn’t a C-section performed???

I don’t have many memories of Chris’ birth. I remembered the incredible pain of my first delivery but had the confidence that it would be over soon and I just needed to breathe and relax. My husband has the nightmarish memories of the birth of a baby who was delivered and stopped breathing. Chris had broken his collarbone during delivery which is not an uncommon occurrence. Unfortunately the broken clavicle bone pierced his trachea and lung. I don’t remember anything else before hearing from my husband later that Chris was in intensive care at Minneapolis Children’s Hospital and was doing OK. Actually I do not think that I even knew that there had been a problem with the delivery and must have been in some drug-induced stupor.

I recovered quickly from the delivery and 3 days later began the daily commute to Children’s Hospital. I was provided with a tabletop breast pump that I recall weighed a ton and was about a foot square. Chris was amply provided with breast milk through a feeding tube. I’m not sure that there had ever been a baby like Chris in the NICU which is usually filled with tiny 1-4 pound premies. At 10 pounds 3 ounces Chris probably weighed more than the combined weight of the other babies in the unit! He spent 15 days in the hospital on a ventilator as his trachea and lung healed and his lungs matured. In those 2 weeks there were two record-setting snowfalls of 18-24 inches and my memories are of cold and endless 11-mile commutes on slippery snowy back roads.

Chris ended up being fine and 35 years later I continue to give thanks for that. His close call didn’t need to happen. Of course I blame my diabetes for putting him at risk, but I also blame my obstetrician who didn’t perform a C-section based on the history of my first delivery.

1982 Statistics:

  • Birth Month/Year:  January, 1982
  • Birth Weight:  10 lbs 3 oz
  • Birth Length:  21.75 inches
  • Mom Days in Hospital:  3 days
  • Baby Days in Hospital:  15 days
  • Total Fee to Obstetrician:  $575
  • Mom Hospital Bill:  $1020
  • Baby Hospital Bills:  $898 + $14,795

Babies at Home:

I don’t have memories of how diabetes impacted my life once I was home with babies. However, just because I don’t recall anything doesn’t mean it wasn’t hard. If there were lows while nursing, they are lost in the brain frizz of watching soap operas and snippets of TV shows in the middle of the night and never knowing how they turned out. My scary memories of lows with young children are all a few years later when I was driving and I can’t stand to think about that. I didn’t know anyone else with diabetes when I was a young mom and I was very private about it anyway. I think I just ate lifesavers and took my shots.

I don’t recall worrying that my children would have diabetes and I don’t think that I ever pressed a Diastix strip into a wet diaper. Diabetes books indicated that the risk was low and without the DOC, I didn’t know any Type 1’s parents with Type 1 children. Also in my family, only my sister and I had diabetes and not my brother. Therefore only girls got T1 and I had boys…. That ignorance used to be bliss, but I now have 4 granddaughters.

I hate diabetes and it tried to rob me of a lot of good things when it came to having children. But it didn’t win. My babies were warriors and I was pretty darn tough also. I rejoice for the great medical care that women with Type 1 diabetes get these days and I admire how incredibly hard these women work throughout their pregnancies. Healthy babies are a prize worth fighting for.

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Diabetes Pregnancy: Now and Then. Month 8,455 of Pregnancy. Diabetic Pregnancy: Third Trimester.

Jun 14

6 Comments

Diabetes Pregnancy: Now and Then.

Managing diabetes and pregnancy in 2010 and then again in 2016 was a lot of hard work, and my story is similar to so many moms in the diabetes community:  a heavy focus on blood sugars, piles of doctor appointments, and dozens of tests for mom and baby.  Today’s management of diabetes and pregnancy is very different than what was available 30-something years ago.  Which is why I’m thrilled that my friend and fellow mom with diabetes, Laddie from Test, Guess, and Go, offered to share her story about what diabetes and pregnancy was like 30 years ago.  

Laddie held on to an incredible amount of information regarding her pregnancies, which is why I’m breaking her guest post into two sections; I didn’t want to leave anything out but I didn’t want anyone’s finger to fall off from scrolling.  🙂  Here’s part one of her incredible journey.

  *   *   *

Like everyone in the DOC, I’ve followed Kerri’s pregnancy diaries with smiles, tears, and warm fuzzies in my heart. I’ve watched her hard work optimizing blood sugars and the intense and state-of-the-art medical care. I’ve delighted in the joy of her posts and the depth of her love for her children. At the same time I’ve always felt a little sad at how much fear and self-judgement was mixed in with the good stuff. I can’t pretend that I don’t have 40 years of diabetes inner demons, but sometimes my rose-colored glasses allow me to forget them. Unfortunately diabetes loves guilt and blame and few of us are exempt from its demands.

I’ve never been able to read the pregnancy narratives of Kerri and other T1 bloggers without a few chuckles at how different my childbearing experiences were. I am a woman with diabetes who had really big babies and no c-sections. That is not necessarily a good thing or anything to brag about, but it is my story. I had two children before the availability of home blood glucose meters and before the landmark Diabetes Control and Complications Trial that proved that good blood glucose control makes a difference in diabetes outcomes. As a mom-to-be in my late 20’s, I received no more intensive medical care than my gluco-normal friends. That was probably fine for my health but the risk to my babies was off the chart.

I must stop here and confess that I can only tell my tale because it has a good ending. Two adult children and 6 grandchildren are testament to my good luck, the grace of God, and good medical care interspersed with less than optimal care. My story could have had a nightmare conclusion and it scares me how close we came to losing our second son.

Recently I approached Kerri with the idea of collaborating on a “Then and Now” discussion of having babies while living with type 1 diabetes. We shared a few statistics back and forth and Kerri quickly discovered in a diabetes circle-of-life way that she and my first son were born the same year. Maybe I should be talking with Kerri’s mom! For sure this explains my once-in-a-while tendency to overstep DOC etiquette and write bossy-Mom comments to her.  [Note from Kerri: my mom would love you, and also I value your mom-ments so much.]

With a seven-year old daughter and a son not yet one, Kerri’s memories of pregnancy are current and accurate. Suitcases of BG logs, Dexcom tracings, medical records, and insurance EOB’s allow her to neurotically detail how many doctors appointments she had during each pregnancy, how many miles she drove to and from Boston, and what her blood glucose numbers were every minute of every day. I have muddled memories and little way of knowing how accurate some of them are. I don’t have medical records from those years but do have itemized medical bills, handwritten spreadsheets, and faded photos. For the most part anything I write here will be a combination of fuzzy recall along with a “Follow the Money” analysis of my paperwork.

I’ll start by paraphrasing and answering a few questions from Kerri’s email.  [Another note from Kerri:  the details of both pregnancies will be included in the second post.]

What kind of preparing did you do diabetes-wise? The answer is a straightforward “Not a darn thing!” I was diagnosed with diabetes when I was 24 years old and have a vague recollection of my GYN telling me not to delay pregnancy because it would be easier sooner rather than later. I wasn’t afraid of pregnancy because I was naive about diabetes and had few books, no community, and no Internet to remedy that. Unlike women like Kerri who were diagnosed as children, I didn’t have years of doctors warning me about the dangers of pregnancy. I had no Shelby-dies-nightmares because Steel Magnolias hadn’t been released yet.

As far as I know, I didn’t do anything special related to diabetes to get ready for pregnancy. I suspect that because of my apparent good health and the short duration of my diabetes, my doctor underestimated the care that I should have received and did not refer me to an endocrinologist or a high-risk obstetrical practice. With no home BG monitoring, I’m not sure what options there would have been to “intensify” my diabetes management. During my first pregnancy I took 1 or 2 injections of Lente insulin a day. Pharmacy records show that Regular insulin was added to my regimen before my second pregnancy, but I’m sure it was a fixed mealtime dose. I was probably advised to follow my Exchange Diet as best I could.

How did your OB/GYN handle your diabetes alongside the pregnancy?
I hate to say that I don’t know a lot about this except that I think urine tests were performed at each visit. Why do I remember this? Because one of my most vivid memories is drinking a ton of water on OB days and then going to the library near the OB’s office for a final pee before showing up at my appointment. This was all so that when I peed on a strip at the OB office, the pad might remain light blue instead of changing to the dreaded dark brown. Although I keep saying that diabetes education was minimal in those days, I obviously knew enough to try to hide what my blood sugars were doing. Too bad the developing babies in my womb weren’t fooled by the drink-a-lot trick.

Did you check your BG more? Cue the laughter track. I did not get my first home BG meter until my youngest son was 3 years old.

Were you using a urinalysis kit? Yes. When I was diagnosed with diabetes in 1976, I used Diastix several times a day to check the sugar spill into my urine. I dutifully logged the result as anything from Neg. to 4+. People diagnosed before me and many diagnosed at the same time used Clinitest with drops of urine, tablets, and test tubes. I never used that. My hand-written spreadsheets indicate that urine strips were not reimbursed by insurance and I remember cutting them in half to save money.

Did you see the doctor more often than your non-D counterparts? My copies of doctor bills indicate that I saw my internist about every 6 weeks for a Glycosolated HGB lab test (early version of A1c). I have no medical records to indicate the test results or my doctor’s advice. I do not think that I saw my obstetrician more frequently than other patients. I have few bills other than the comprehensive fee “OB Care – Total” and a couple of itemized lab tests. Fetal ultrasounds were extremely rare in those days and I did not have them. The tech-iest excitement I had was hearing the baby’s heartbeat with a magnified stethoscope device.

As someone who had two C-sections, I’d love to hear about labor with diabetes. These days few women with Type 1 diabetes carry their babies until 40 weeks. Doctors prefer to deliver early to minimize risks to mother and child. I went into labor with my Mike almost exactly on his due date and was sent home from the hospital I because I was not far enough along in labor. I have absolutely no memories of my blood sugar being a concern and my hospital bills collaborate that.

For the entire 6-day hospitalization including labor & delivery, I was billed for 2 Lab Glucose tests. For my second son three years later I had more intensive care with a total of 3 Lab Glucose tests! I was new enough to diabetes for both deliveries to know that I would have been symptomatic for any low blood sugars and I don’t remember any. My children were born in the heyday of “natural childbirth” and I didn’t have pain drugs until close to delivery. My memories of labor are of pain. My memories of delivery are excruciating pain. To you moms who had C-sections and think that you missed the beauty of labor, don’t stress over it. Enjoy your healthy babies and believe me, it wasn’t all that beautiful.

  *   *   *

Join Laddie tomorrow for her story about the birth of her two sons, the story about “the yankers,” and what pregnancy was like then versus what she’s seen the DOC moms do now.  Thanks for going back in time to revisit your beautiful babies, Laddie!!

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Apr 26

11 Comments

The One About the Gym.

UUUUUUUGGGGGGHHHHH the one about the gym.

Dude, I wanted to start this post with a story about how hard it’s been to regain traction with losing the baby weight and then end with a BAM I NO LONGER WANT TO BURN MY SHAPEWEAR IN A BONFIRE.  But no.  That is sadly not the case.

The road to my last pregnancy was paved with fertility drugs, miscarriage, depression, and other terrible crap.  Ends eventually justified the means and I was beyond grateful to find out I was pregnant after such a journey.  (The little Guy is my favorite guy.)  My son was born eight months ago and he is exactly who we had been waiting for.

Table all the parental happies for a minute, though, because this post is not about infertility.  Or the little Guy.  It’s about the tarnish that’s settled onto the word “just” in the sentence, “I’ve just had a baby.”

No.  I did not just have a baby.  I had a baby eight months ago.  And I still feel like I’m trapped in the postpartum schlubby chub club.

So I joined a gym.

I used to go to the gym a lot.  It was kind of a family thing and while I never sculpted a physique that would stop traffic (unless a vehicle actually hit me), I was stronger and healthier and slimmer than I am now.  I didn’t feel ashamed of my shape and I wasn’t avoiding my closet in favor of athleisure wear.

Oh yeah.  “Doing absolutely nothing in my active wear” has been a theme these last eight months.

Postpartum anxiety didn’t help (better now, though) and neither did the c-section recovery.  I didn’t feel great after my first c-section and, despite rumors I’d heard that the second one is easier, I did not find that to be true.  Add in some wrist and hand issues (I ended up with breastfeeding injuries, which feels silly as eff to type but is actually a thing) and my body felt like something I was renting out instead of taking ownership of.

That did not feel good.  I want change.  Can’t wait around for change, though.  Have to chase change.  Change is exhausting.  So is this paragraph.

So about a month ago, I joined a gym.  It wasn’t a cheap decision, but the gym feels low pressure, has great hours, and also provides childcare for small baby people, so I have no excuse NOT to go.  Also, something about paying for it makes me less likely to NOT go because I hate throwing money away.  So I’ve been going.  Despite feeling shy (is exercise timidity a thing?) and despite feeling flumpy, I’ve been going.  I use the treadmill and the free weights and I’m debating a class or two if I can find some glasses and a fake mustache to wear while participating.  I’m trying not to weigh myself but instead using a particular pair of pants as my barometer for progress.

I hope to see some progress soon but I’m trying to find small victories in the steadier blood sugars and increase of energy.  And also in the “hey, I left my house and didn’t spend the entire day juggling kid requirements only.”

Hopefully, in time, I’ll schedule my shapewear bonfire, but in the meantime, I’ll try and find some pride in taking small steps now.  Especially wearing these mad cool glasses and this fake mustache.

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From NOPE to Yes.

Feb 16

6 Comments

From NOPE to Yes.

My friend Susan is a huge part of the Postpartum Progress group, and on her Facebook feed I saw an article that she had shared.  I like to see what my friends are working in and sharing in and out of the diabetes space, so I clicked.

Reading through the postpartum depression list had me nodding a little bit.  But the postpartum anxiety list had me leaning forward, nervous that I was finding myself in almost every bullet point.

This one in particular:

You are worried. Really worried. All. The. Time. Am I doing this right? Will my husband come home from his trip? Will the baby wake up? Is the baby eating enough? Is there something wrong with my baby that I’m missing? No matter what anyone says to reassure you, it doesn’t help.

After my daughter was born, I did not worry all the time.  I worried in a way that felt normal, about her eating patterns and my ability to meet them, or whether I buckled her in the carseat the right way … that sort of thing.  The worrying started right after she was born and was background noise by the time she was six months old.

With my son, everything was worry.  I worried the whole time I was pregnant, reluctant to get too excited or attached.  I kept thinking the pregnancy was ending, even though I saw his dancing little self on the ultrasound screen every few weeks.  My friends and family wanted to throw a baby shower and I avoiding committing to the idea for weeks, nervous that celebrating his soon-to-be arrival date would somehow make him not come.

After he was born, I worried incessantly about my health, and his.  My second c-section wasn’t as easy as my first, and I recovered slowly.  My son had swallowed some amniotic fluid during birth and he spent the first three days choking slightly and needing to have the fluid cleared from his mouth and through via suction.  We knew he needed assistance when he would gag and cough and then flap his arms because he couldn’t breathe.  The nurses in the hospital told us to push the call button immediately if he did this, so they could come in and help.

“This is normal.  It’s common for babies to experience this the first few days after birth.  He will clear the fluid out and be fine; don’t worry.”

Except I worried.  Like professional grade worry.  I was afraid to leave his side because I thought he was going to choke to death in his sleep.

No one on my medical team was panicking about anything at all, yet I was panicking about everything.  When my son settled into a pattern of waking up every 20 minutes for the first 11 weeks of his life, exhaustion and anxiety dominated my mind.  I wasn’t myself for the first three months.  Which makes sense, considering the little bits of chaos we were managing, on so little sleep.

But around the 3 1/2 month mark, he started to sleep.  And my incision was healing.  And blood sugars were becoming more predictable, even with exclusive breastfeeding. Things should have been feeling better, but I had some trouble appreciating the things that were going right as I was already halfway down the anxiety slide at all times.  I had horrible thoughts all the time, born out of innocuous moments.

Like I’d be pushing the stroller around the neighborhood and mentally picture the stroller tipping over and my son’s body crushed.  Or a big hawk would fly overhead and I’d immediately picture the bird coming down and jamming its beak into my son’s leg.  (Fucking bird.  I had this particular thought often.  Weird shit, the mind.)  The thoughts would come ramming into my brain and I’d immediately banish them, saying, “Nope.  Nope, nope, nope,” to myself and physically shaking them free from my head, but I was feeling anxious regardless.  I had zero desire/thought to hurt myself or my child, but I kept picturing some scenario where he’d get hurt.

I felt like I was in fight-or-flight mode at all times.

Reading that list of symptoms jolted something inside of me.  I showed the list to Chris to see if that list put words to any concerns that he had.

“Seeing this all written down, I do see a lot of these in you,” he admitted.

I called my OB/GYN that afternoon and made an appointment.  After a screening process and a discussion about my concerns (including telling her that I called mainly because a list of symptoms had me nodding “Yes” to almost every single one) my OB agreed that there was some kind of postpartum thing going on.

“You have experienced a few things that would influence this kind of response, like infertility for several years.  And pregnancy after loss.  And then a complicated pregnancy due to diabetes.  And then deciding on permanent sterilization.  And then the sleep issues after birth.  One of those things might be enough to warrant intervention; all of those things definitely might.”

I felt weird that I was experiencing this stuff five months out instead of immediately after birth.  She reassured me that it happens often enough this way.  She made a recommendation for medication, I told her I wanted to try therapy before medication, and she deferred to my requested treatment.

“While you wait on your therapy appointment, I’d suggest that you get outside.  Often. And don’t stay holed up in your house; see your neighbors, call your friends, be as social as you can in efforts to help keep you from feeling so overwhelmed by the worries.  It might help.  And if you feel worse in any way at all, you need to call us,” she said, handing me a card with the therapist group’s number on it.  “This team will call you today or tomorrow.”

It felt oddly comforting to identify what was going on in my mind as something that could be addressed.  That I wasn’t stuck feeling this way forever.  That others have felt this way, too.  That there’s a light at the end of this sometimes dark tunnel that has made me feel so very much unlike my normal self.

And now?  I’m trying to ask for help instead of feeling like I have to shoulder the anxiety and chaos on my own.  My mother has been instrumental in helping me maintain my mental health, coming by regularly to spend a few hours with the baby and help with laundry.  My son is currently at my aunt’s house while I work from a coffee shop down the street.  My husband is quick to step in and make it possible for me to exercise daily.  And my friends in the neighborhood and beyond are vital to my mental health checklist, serving as people I can see throughout the week so that I don’t feel confined to my house. (Working from home with the baby makes for very long and lonely days without much grown-up interaction.)

There’s a network of people I can lean on, helping whittle some of the anxiety off me and reminding me that I’m still here, underneath all these worries.  That it’ll be okay.

And that?  That gets a big Yes, yes, YES.

 

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Sep 12

8 Comments

On the Other Side.

The first time I was pregnant, the physical journey was the hardest part for me.  Building a baby, watching blood sugars, dealing with body changes … the list was long but included mostly body changes, and also a boatload of excitement about crossing the threshold into “parenting.”  Back in 2009/2010, it was inconceivable to me that something “bad” would happen during a pregnancy.  Once you are pregnant, you just stay pregnant and everything is cool, and then the baby is born.  Back then, my biggest fear was the actual birthing of my daughter.  Having never had surgery before, I was petrified of the c-section and everything promised to come along with it.  Looking back, I was grateful that I had no idea what it was like to “try” for a baby, and to spend the pregnancy wondering if everything would be okay.

And even though my first pregnancy was a little chaotic, with lots of doctor’s appointments and a four week hospital stay due to preeclampsia, my worries were somewhat limited.  I just didn’t know any better.  From start to finish, my body did what it was supposed to do, and my child was fine.  My headspace during the pregnancy was also reasonably solid, hormones not withstanding.

But this time was very different.  The birth of my son came after a lot of discussion.  Birdy was about three when we decided we wanted to have another baby, and based on our previous experience, we figured we’d become pregnant right away.  Our experience with “unexplained secondary infertility” was startling.  What do you mean, it’s hard to become pregnant?  We got pregnant right away the first time.  Why are we charting things and purchasing ovulation kits and now our cars are wearing a path between our home and the fertility clinic?

After 19 months of trying, I became pregnant as the result of fertility treatments.  I miscarried around the eight week mark, during a conference in the summer.  There was something highly surreal and emotionally numbing about examining discharge in a hotel room at Disney World at 2 in the morning to confirm that I had miscarried to completion.  It was the first time I’d ever experienced contractions.  It was the first time I’d felt hopeless.  It was the first time I’d ever felt limitlessly sad.

When I became pregnant again, 25 months after hoping to expand our family, the fear was instant, consistent, and did not abate until I heard my son cry in the delivery room three weeks ago.  Physically, this pregnancy was healthy and “normal,” with blood sugars that performed almost predictably, no pregnancy-related health concerns over the 38 week gestation period, and my body actually seemed to like being pregnant this time around.

Emotionally, though, I was unwell for the majority of the experience.  I never felt calm.  Every appointment was something I panicked before and got all emotional with relief afterwards, because that certainty of safety was erased the summer prior.  I didn’t want to tell anyone I was pregnant.  I felt oddly detached for the first few months of pregnancy, afraid to emotionally invest in the child I was growing.  I didn’t want to have a baby shower.  I was scared that if I acknowledged this pregnancy, it would leave me.  When the Braxton Hicks contractions started in the third trimester, I freaked out because contractions, in my mind, were tied to miscarriage.  Pregnancy after loss tripped me out entirely.  And even though there are so many people who have felt these same things and dealt with similar issues, I had trouble finding the support I needed for these feelings.  It was hard to admit that I felt entirely unsettled.  It was even harder to try and mask those feelings with the joy that everyone seemed to expect me to feel.

“Did you want to consider a tubal ligation after the c-section is performed?”

My high-risk OB/Gyn asked me this question around the twenty week mark of my pregnancy, after they did the big anatomy scan to check on the baby’s development and organs.  I was still all jumbled up, emotionally, but knew for sure that I was not equipped to go through another pregnancy in efforts to have a third child.  I longed for Birdy.  And my son.  And I knew instinctively that they were the limit of what both my body and mind, and our family, were able to manage.

So while we scheduled my c-section date (originally set for August 31st, but that timeframe ended up truncated), I signed the papers for the tubal ligation.  It felt strange to elect permanent sterilization after battling for years to have this baby; the finality of that decision weighed heavily.  But it also felt right, considering my age, health history, and our desires as a family.  After my son was born and we confirmed his health as excellent, the operation was completed and that chapter of my life was closed in full.

When I look at this little man I’ve made (and he sleeps soundly in my arms while I type this), I know in my heart that every decision we’ve made is the right one for our family.  That fourth chair is filled with the result of the hardest work I’ve ever done, and I couldn’t be happier.

Giant feet, giant appetite, little man. #🍅

A photo posted by Kerri Sparling (@sixuntilme) on

There was always this promise, this question, this gentle hum of you, my son.  We’ve always wanted you.  It just took a long time to get you here.

We’ll take good care of you, I promise.

 

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