Mostly, I guess I am surprised that people want to hear our story, told as it is by the wandering mind of the mad matriarch.
For those that read though, I will try and be more diligent about writing. When there are life lulls where little of note is happening, I have many stories in the vault of my mind that have not yet been recounted here. Emerald actually gave me that idea.
Emerald asked me why Benjamin has a whole book about when he was born and she does not.
What book she could possibly mean, I haven't the foggiest--for years, I made and kept scrapbooks about the earlier days of the children's lives, but the more we added to the family, the less I was able to maintain that. As for baby books, I own several that are as painfully sad and empty as my own was (sorry, Mom).
As tragic as it sounds, the one in our family least likely to have a book about their birth is baby Benjamin.
For one thing, most of his story was told right here. For another, I was just plain worn out by the time the littlest arrived. Every second of that pregnancy I reminded myself, "This is the last one. You are never going to be pregnant again." So I chronicled it and enjoyed it as much as I was physically able (he was a dreadfully, dreadfully uncomfortable pregnancy, a fact I attribute to his enormous head and active fetal body). I posted pictures of my bump on Facebook, wrote out the story of his name and all the doctor's appointments on here, and generally celebrated my motherhood.
For my only daughter, there is much less in the digital plane. I didn't have as consistent access to the internet and a computer then, for one thing. For another, I was suffering, a lot. I didn't have the energy or mental fortitude to expend on much else than laying in the bath for literal hours on end (don't believe me, ask Michael).
The biggest was probably because I got knocked up before I was married.
At the time, there was a significant amount of shame. I let down a lot of people, it would seem. Smart girl like me, getting myself into a situation like that. Shame, damn shame.
Not really going to touch on all of that today because I want to focus on the positive, on the Emerald of it all.
"It is my body, I would know if I was pregnant, Michael", I said haughtily from the bathroom floor. There is vomit in my hair and exhaustion ringing my eyes.
He looked so sad and worried, but he didn't argue, just helped me clean up and put me back to bed. I spent most of my time sleeping. In my head, it made sense--I was trying to fight off whatever bug had made me sick the last couple of weeks. And I was so sick. Between blinding migraines and not being able to keep any food down whatsoever, I was weak and weary, barely able to stand on my own strength.
That night, I dreamed of a dark-haired baby girl. She lay on my chest, warm and heavy, in a room filled with light; I whispered her name and woke. With my chest still feeling the imprint of that imagined baby, I called Michael at work and asked him to pick up a pregnancy test on his way home.
Michael and I had met two years before at a coffee shop next to campus. He was a junior psychology major; I was a baby-faced freshman with braces on my teeth and aspirations of becoming a doctor. Not just any doctor--a pediatric neurologist. I was interested in neurodevelopmental disorders, the functionality and origin of these mysterious brain discrepancies. My whole life had ramped up to this point, my singular focus and drive for the incalculable volunteer hours, extracurriculars, and individual study. I was finally here on my first big step of my journey.
Second semester of my sophomore year of college is not a good time to get pregnant. “Nineteen, with her whole life ahead of her,” people like to say as if I had died that day. I can understand their reasoning, to an extent--it did send my life into an upheaval that I have struggled ever since to re-calibrate into something recognizable. That semester I barely scraped through, little less making med-school worthy grades. Vomiting became my major pastime and I dropped twenty-five pounds, transforming into a wraith in pajama pants that haunted the science building.
The test couldn't wait to tell me I was expecting a child--no two minute wait time, as the box had predicted; it immediately, joyously blossomed a little blue plus sign. I still waited the recommended time, though I doubted the second line would fade away. I had never been late since I had started puberty; predictable as clockwork, a day and a half every thirty days. Never until now, I guess.
At that point, I was already some nine or ten weeks in, but we didn't tell anyone right away. I was bleeding and cramping and so, so sick. There was no way this was turning into a viable pregnancy. Why tell anyone when there were so many signs that it wasn't going to last?
The campus doctor saw me, then got me in to see an obstetrician. Michael and I were still pretty shell-shocked at the news, though he had several more weeks to sit on it than I did in my denial.
That first visit, they took me back alone, leaving Michael in the waiting room. The nurse was obviously unconcerned; she performed an ultrasound and showed me the screen, saying "Look, see? Your baby is just fine."
She didn't know that was the first time I was seeing the child. It was actually baby shaped, no ambiguous blob that I had been expecting; a tiny, defined head and body. I watched her roll over in her sleep, bouncing slightly in her cushioned room, and I was so taken with her immediately and completely.
In the waiting room, a white-faced Michael looked at me with apprehension in his eyes. I silently handed him the sonogram picture and his eyes grew watery. He said, "We are having a baby."
We made a follow-up appointment for a few weeks later, where the doctor sternly warned me that I would be hospitalized if I could not start keeping food down. At four months pregnant, I weighed 102 pounds, skin mottled in dehydration. The one blessing of my decreasing size was that I felt her much sooner than the pregnancy books predicted; a delicate little butterfly's wings, this wonderful and magical feeling. If I was laying on my back, you could see bulges of her protruding, too; as soon as I moved though, she would scurry away, leaving my stomach an expanse of flattened skin.
That was my first bump at five, nearly six, months. I was so proud that I had finally "popped".
Michael was...troubled, trying to figure out how we were going to raise a baby. Well, specifically how he was going to pay for the baby. In the coming year as we struggled just to survive, his worries were justified. He worked at JCPenney as a sales associate, making some $7 an hour or so. I couldn't work at all, not in my condition and as ill as I was. They had recently made it so that a child could stay on their mother's insurance until they were 26, so my medical expenses at least were completely covered. God be praised for that.
My biggest concern was the baby itself. There were so many questions first time parents have to answer: formula or breast? Vaccinate or unvaccinated? Co-sleep, crib, bassinet?
Most importantly, what was I going to name this thing?
In the dream I had, her name was Irish. I loved it, so unusual and beautiful; I have Irish blood in me, and paired with the dream, it felt perfect.
Mike hated it.
Well, hate is probably too strong of a word. He didn't want to talk about baby names. That was such a non-concern in his mind because obviously the baby will not go nameless. We'll figure that out later, closer to the time the baby is born. Maybe after, when we can see what she looks like. Plenty of time for that...just not today.
I was hurt and distressed by his attitude. He had more tangible concerns on his mind, but to me this baby was already so real; I wanted to have something to call her, other than "Belly Fruit".
There were several names I tried during that time. We sort of tossed some boy names around, but before we knew for certain, I felt in my heart of hearts that I was having a girl. I was absolutely, 100% convinced, and you could not tell me otherwise.
Tula, which was Michael's great grandmother, was a top contender for the name, but people were not in love with it. I now know that you can't please everyone and should just pick the name you like, particularly because finding one that you and your spouse can agree on is hard enough without adding every other opinion in the world to it. Michael is into traditional girl names--he liked Sophia, Gwendolyn. I liked more....unusual names, like Niko, Myka, Amarantha, Olympia.
I won't recount the whole name journey here; you can read about all of that on the blog post-- http://weardenfamilynews.blogspot.com/2011/07/emerald.html
Eventually, I did stop getting so sick--I was able to keep down individual boxes of cereal, one every six hours. They held off doing the test for gestational diabetes until I showed some improvement, so at 28 or 29 weeks, I was able to do the one hour.
And I failed it.
Nurse said a lot of people fail the one hour; I would have to take the three hour and see what that said. She was pretty confident I would pass the second time; I had no risk factors, after all.
So I take the three hour. It was unpleasant; during the last draw, I was so weak and shaky that the (very cute) phlebotomist in training had to carry me back from the waiting room.
And...I failed that one, too.
We controlled it through diet and exercise, with me having to test my blood sugar around 8 times a day. Walking when it was too high; eating when it was too low. It is hard to gain weight appropriate for your baby when you have to count carbs; at the very end, I had gained a grand total of 7 pounds, against the 25 I had lost.
The last two months of pregnancy, we did Non-Stress Tests (NST's) where they attach nodes to monitor the baby's heart rate and your contractions. It was about an hour twice a week; I was set up in a nice recliner and had a drink at hand and cable tv and it was horribly boring. Every now and then the nurse would come in and press a vibrating sound maker near the baby's head; she said this would excite the baby, and they would watch her heart rate to see how quickly she calmed back down.
(Side note: I sometimes look up what I am referencing in the posts so that I can add any additional information; according to the Mayo Clinic website regarding the issue, "Typically, a nonstress test is recommended when it's believed that the fetus is at increased risk of death." Oh, well then.)
They didn't tell me at the time, but apparently Emerald was not performing so well during these tests. We started the NST's because of a condition known as Intrauterine Growth Restriction (IUGR). She was clocking in at just the 29th percentile and not getting much bigger.
(Side note again, this time to author: Stop looking up these conditions! Thank butts you didn't have internet access to google these while you were pregnant, because they are scary! Geez!!)
At nearly 37 weeks, my mother-in-law Rhonda and her sister-in-law Melisa hosted a baby shower for me at Melisa's house. It was so lovely and had the most amazing strawberry cake. I vividly remember that cake; it was really good, and there had been concerns near that time that Michael's cousin Sydney was allergic to strawberries (it turned out she was allergic to cedar). Somehow that makes the cake more memorable. My grandmother, brother and sister-in-law, mother, and sister were all able to come down.
After the party, which was on a Sunday, we went to the park and had our maternity pictures taken. My brother's best friend was a photographer and her gift to us was the pictures. It was a little lake across from the hospital the baby would be born.
Everyone spent the night and planned on heading back home in the morning. Mom drove me to my NST the next day, where the nurse asked, "So are you ready to have your baby tomorrow?"
-record scratches-
What was that??
She looked abashed, because she thought someone had told me. Apparently, in the last sonogram they had taken, our little nameless baby had dropped from the 29th percentile to the 6th. She needed to come out. My blood pressure was also rising, likely to my sudden realization that someway or another, this baby was about to have to leave my body.
Everyone that had been heading home turned around and came back; Andie had a c-section scheduled for 5pm Tuesday evening.
I had to fast all the next day because of the impending surgery, so Mom got up and made me an enormous breakfast burrito right before the cutoff for food. It still makes so little sense to me, starving a diabetic and heavily pregnant woman, but I made it somehow.
At the hospital, they hooked me up to an IV, wheeled me down to the operating room. Not twenty full minutes later, I had a daughter.
The surgery itself was not bad. I was expecting it to be more frightening--I remember asking Michael, who was allowed to be in the room with me, to tell me when they started. He glanced and he could already see the baby. I could feel that something was going on down there, but I didn't feel pain. Just some tugging and then it felt like someone was pressing very firmly on my bump. All of a sudden, I felt like a deflated balloon, completely empty.
She was actually bigger than I thought she was going to be at 6 pounds, 9 ounces and 18 inches long. She was still too small for the newborn outfit I had brought for her, so Rhonda went out and got her some preemie pajamas.
Fumbling, we chose a last minute name from a flyer for the maternity photographer written in a pretty, eye-catching script--Emerald. Precious jewel, said to impart love on the bearer; could there possibly be a more perfect name?
It seemed to suit this little strawberry of an infant, with her florid and silken skin, fine dusting of red hair, and green hazel eyes. She was so sweet natured and precious, with her teeny squeaks instead of cries and bright eyed, smiling demeanor. Our precious little gem daughter, fruition of nearly a year’s worth of sickness and struggle.
She was everything I had hoped for, dreamed about and prayed over, and I loved her intensely.
So that is your story, baby girl. You have loudly proclaimed your existence since you were little more than a collection of cells, a vibrant, vivacious entity of life and love.
A unexpected, but very much welcome and needed, blessing in our lives.
--Mom
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