God Is My Strength

*Continued from "Sometimes You're the Windshield"

I was still part-time at the pet shop, my condition hardly limiting my work as my bump was small and my energy reasonable. There wasn’t anywhere to sit during my shifts, but at around six hours, it was manageable. One night, while I was walking around the store, I tripped over a box that was left on the floor and landed hard on my stomach.

At first, I was a little shaken up but fine. A short while later, cramping and bleeding, I asked Michael to come pick me up and take me to the emergency room.

Pregnant patients are given priority in ERs, so we were taken back very quickly and left to sit for quite a while. Medicaid luckily paid for the visit. A sonographer had to be called in, as they did not appear to have one on staff that late at night. My abdomen hurt a lot and I was worried.

The naming process with Emerald had been so discouraging to me that I didn’t want to have anything to do with it the second time around. I told Michael that he alone would know the gender of the baby, and he alone would choose a name. I didn’t care what he named it; it could come out Gurpgork and I would have been fine with it, as long as I didn’t have to choose the name.

That night, convinced as surely that this was a boy as I was that Emerald was a girl, I was scared my baby was going to die nameless. I called my still, quiet little one Gabriel. Angel baby, “God is my strength”.

Obviously the baby was fine. I was suffering from a combination of upper urinary tract infection and a bad case of malnutrition. They gave me multiple shots and injected things into my IV, and we went back home with a small stack of prescriptions to be filled.

The semester rolled over and I arrogantly decided to try online classes for the semester I had the baby. I had gotten cocky with how much better it was this time, and I didn’t want to fall too far behind. With the experience of Emerald under my belt, I felt I would bounce back much quicker.

February finally arrived, and I was ready for that baby to be OUT. 

I didn’t really have a firm idea of what I wanted in the future, if we were going to have more kids or if we were done. Heck, I was 21 years old--I was supposed to be drinking too much or traveling the world and making (minor) bad decisions, generally having fun, not trying to plot out what I was going to do for the rest of my life.

Medicaid would pay for a tubal ligation, but with current policy, women must wait 30 days after signing the written consent form to obtain a tubal. Honestly, I did not want to make permanent sterility decisions when I was barely old enough to legally buy alcohol. I felt I could always have that choice, but once it was made, there was no going back. I didn’t know how I was going to feel in ten, fifteen years.

The projected Elective Repeat Cesarean Section (ERCS) was tentatively scheduled for February 10th, 37 weeks gestation. With the gestational complications I had, I am at increased risk for stillbirth the longer I gestate, so their general practice is to pop it as soon as the little fetus showed signs of readiness.

The amniocentesis revealed severely underdeveloped infant lungs.

One of the (many, I have come to learn) side effects of gestational diabetes is delayed lung maturation. My file had been mistakenly filed as “passed” instead of failed for one of the later GTT’s; I didn’t know to be watching my diet, so his little lungs were assaulted by an excess of glucose. I was given a couple of shots of steroids in my hip to promote accelerated lung development and sent back home to let the baby bake another ten days.

Because of the delivery confusion, my parents were unable to be at the birth. For all that I was now a married woman about to give birth to my second child, I was still so young, and I needed my mom. I didn’t want to be in the hospital having surgery with her eight hours away.

Emerald fell ill that week, getting the flu, RSV, a double ear infection, and a yeast infection. We were told to keep the newborn in isolation away from his disease-carrying sister for eight weeks after he was born.

The stress was starting to wear on me. I was pretty much dutifully ignoring my online classes; I am not sure what I thought would come of it, but it was more than I could handle so I just wasn’t thinking about it. My hands were full with trying to keep up with sweet baby Emerald and the housework and the twice-weekly Nonstress Tests and everything else.

My first c-section, I was confident and calm. Ignorance is bliss, in that regard. 

This time, however, I knew exactly how sore I would be afterwards, how the staples would itch and pull on my skin. The surgery wasn’t bad, not for me at least. It was actually the preferable of the two options presented to me--c-section was relatively quick and effortless, the pain completely manageable, and hardly anyone was looking where I didn’t want them to. Not a bad alternative, in my book.  

What I was dreading was being immobilized.

Generally, this is how it goes:

After paperwork and signing in, you are checked into a room where they snap a bunch of identifying bracelets on your wrist that say your name and your doctor and that you cannot have penicillin (if you are me). You wait around for a little while for an operating room to open up.

The nurse wheels you down the hall, you kiss your spouse goodbye. 

You’re taken into the OR where you sit on the table. You arch your back like a cat, the anesthesiologist scrubs near your spine with iodine. Injects you with a local. Sort of stings, kind of like being stung by a bee. Then you feel pressure as a hollow tube is inserted for the spinal block.

You’re laid back as your legs get warm and heavy. The nurses strap your arms down and bring a sheet up between your breasts and your bump, stick an oxygen tube in your nostrils. Then your spouse gets to come back and stroke your hair and hold your hand while they rip you open and wrench your infant free.

Still a bit barbaric, what can I say.

It was that interim time that bothered me--the time between Michael kissing me goodbye in the hallway and the time he would be standing beside my head, whispering quiet encouragement during the surgery. I was absolutely petrified of being unable to move from the ribs down, alone in that cold metal room.

In the hallway, sitting in the wheelchair, my teeth chattering and my whole body shaking, I told Michael “I don’t want to do this. I want to go home.” His heart was broken, listening to his terrified wife beg him to save her.

They took me away, everything proceeding as planned...until it came time to put the curtain up.

My legs already completely useless, I sat up with surprising abdominal control and attempted to use my arms to drag myself to “safety”, insisting to the nurses that I wanted to stand up. I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t want to be there, I wanted to go home. Another day, I’d come back and we could have the baby.

The doctor came in, my trusted friend, and tried to soothe me. I just kept shaking my head no and telling him that I wasn’t doing this, not today. Bad day to have a baby. I wanted to go home. 

He nodded sympathetically and patted my shoulder, harshly whispering behind my head to the anesthesiologist, “Why haven’t you sedated her?!”

“I already did! Twice!” was the reply. Three nurses were attempting to hold me down, lest I wrench my IV out.

It was quickly discovered there was a kink in the line, a problem that once corrected sent a flood of sedatives into me. 

Michael, who had been in the hall growing increasingly concerned as time ticked by with no updates, was brought in for just the few minutes as the popped the baby out, got his APGAR score, and sent them both on their way.

I was so drugged that I couldn’t even open my eyes to see my son being born. I just remembered Michael holding him next to my face and saying, “Meet your son, Gabriel Lynn.” My eyelids struggled to open, but before they even left the room, I was out cold and didn’t wake up until well into recovery.

Gabriel was 6 pounds, 9 ounces, the exact same weight his sister had been, but 19 inches long, a full inch longer. Emerald had slight hypoglycemia (low blood sugar) when she was born, as well as some slight jaundice.

My Gabriel was perfect though. 

He didn’t cry, didn’t fuss, such a contented, darling little baby. The pediatrician even commented that Gabe slept through his circumcision, which relieved me as I was apprehensive about the procedure.

One notable difference between the births was that when I was covered by Medicaid and in the hospital, any time I was given pain medication, the nurse had to thoroughly check my mouth after to ensure I had swallowed the pill. They assured me that it was common practice and they did it to everyone, but I had a baby at the same hospital two years before and two years after. Neither of those times did I experience that particular policy.

There wasn’t a baby shower the second time, but Rhonda’s work delivered meals for the first couple of weeks, as well as dropping off a lot of diapers. I may prefer that; we had so much left from Emerald’s birth like the pack-n-play, the swing. Food and diapers we really needed though.

Emerald was curious about what was going on; we didn’t know enough to even explain to her what was happening. One night she went to sleep in Mama’s arms, the next mom was gone and didn’t come back for three days. My grandparents came up for the birth, able to take Emerald for part of the time. The rest, she stayed with Michael’s parents.

The recovery was much easier the second time around, even with my stubborn refusal to stop picking up Emerald and incessant picking at my surgical tape. It may have been the day of or day after I had gotten home from the hospital, making it 4-5 days after having major abdominal surgery, that my bottle of painkillers was lost. Insurance refused to refill it, so I just went without for the rest of the recovery.

Without the medicinal haze that had accompanied Emerald’s first few weeks at home, I had a significant amount of clarity in which I got to know my newest. Were boys always this different? 

He was so...quiet. Almost unnervingly so. He didn’t cry if he was wet, dirty, hungry. Emerald was hardly a fussy one, but she had this high pitched squeak she would make when she needed something. Gabriel never made a peep.

And why didn’t he sleep?!

I swear that kid was always watching me. Well...sort of. His eyes would be fixed on you until the moment you tried to make eye contact, and then they’d slide off to look at the fan or the cat or really anywhere else. Unnervingly alert.

Nursing Emerald had come so readily and naturally, and I still hated it. With Gabriel, the only one that seemed to dislike it more than me was him. He spent the entire time trying to use his ineffectual arms and legs to propel himself as far from my radiating body heat as humanly possible. Expressed milk was a reasonable substitute, but he still didn’t want you cradling him in your arms. Laying on your legs with his feet against your belly was doable; bouncer or swing was better.

It wasn’t a fight I was willing to have. If he didn’t want to nurse and I didn’t to nurse, I wasn’t going to force the issue. After seven weeks, six being the least I was willing to try, we approached WIC again about formula.

This time I was much more confident, firmly and politely insisted that formula was the route I was choosing to go, refusing to give reasons. I had discovered it was much harder to argue with a person that refused to engage. They relented, and we got that expense covered.

I had tried to potty train Emerald to no avail before the new baby arrived, so we now had two children in diapers. The average child will use 2,700 diapers in the first year alone which can add up to more than $550 annually ($46 a month), plus $240 for wipes. For two children, it is just under $1400 for the year. (http://www.investopedia.com/articles/pf/08/budgeting-for-baby.asp)

There is no program to help with diapers, not at that age at any rate. We discovered that the community health center where I got my prenatal care would give you a Walmart sack full of diapers if you needed it, but it was more of an emergency, once-in-awhile situation, not intended to be used consistently.

Emerald’s daycare cost us $50 a month, on the scholarship. Gabriel would not start going until the fall, when he was a bit older and less vulnerable to sickness. With baby clothes and diapers and all the things we were going to need, we were looking at spending significantly more on household expenses.

Michael was making decent money at AT&T; nothing extravagant, but we were making it. During our stint in The Dank, it was so tempting to get credit cards to help make it through, but we agreed that it would just start a dangerous precedent. With Michael working again, the food stamps we were receiving were scaled down to a little over $200 a month.

At the call center, they have a points system. Every time you call into work or miss a day, you receive a point against you. When you have reached a certain number of points, you lose your job.

We apparently filed the wrong paperwork or filled it out in the wrong way regarding the time off for Gabriel’s birth, which we did not know until three months later when Michael takes a sick day.

The next morning, he was unceremoniously fired.

--Andie