One Month

Here's a list of things that are easy when you have a newborn:

• Nothing

That is all.

We were so ecstatic to bring Noah home. It seemed surreal that he would actually be in our house and be in our family and not hooked up with machines anymore. My family came over and made us dinner the night he came home. That dinner should have been a good indicator to me of what my life would be like from then on: everyone at the table eating, with me sitting in our comfy chair, breastfeeding, attempting to shove food into my face without dropping it on Noah's head. 

Everyone said May was the best time to have a baby, that way we could get outside and have the summer "off". This is kind of true. Yes, I was happy to not be pregnant for very long once it got hot out (especially with how swollen I was), and I'm grateful to not have Noah in the middle of the winter. But the reality is that you don't go easily sauntering outside with a 2 week old. You don't scurry off to the beach on a 90 degree day with your girlfriends. You don't even leave the freakin' house without a 20-pound diaper bag, clunky carseat, and a screaming child. On the other hand, I think if I didn't have the option to at least go on a 10-minute walk every day I would probably die.

What they don't tell you about newborns is how much time you will be sedentary, sitting on the couch, wondering if there's another Netflix series you can watch. This is probably dramatically different for people with multiple children, but that's not the case for me. And what are you doing all day, you ask? 

Breastfeeding. Changing diapers. Breastfeeding. Changing diapers. Breastfeeding. Trying to comfort crying baby. Breastfeeding. Trying to comfort crying baby. Sitting perfectly still while previously unhappy baby naps on your chest peacefully. Frantically Googling "normal 2 week old behavior", "infant green poop", "cluster feeding", etc. Breastfeeding. Breastfeeding. Changing diapers. Breastfeeding. Breastfeeding.

Do you get the point?

Newborns are the most complex simple creatures ever. They have few needs, but they only have one way of communicating them (crying). They don't come with instruction manuals - unfortunate for two people that have no experience with newborns. Suddenly a ~9 pound being has entered your house, taken over your entire life, and made it look like a tornado rolled through. You can take a shower if you're lucky. 

Changing diaper is easy, and sometimes even comedic. The lack of sleep is tough, it shortens your fuse by a whole lot and makes you realize you're not as patient of a person as you might have thought, but you eventually adjust to that, too. Breastfeeding is by far the biggest challenge for me.

Breastfeeding is portrayed as a beautiful, wonderful, easy process that everyone should do and enjoy and oh-my-god-it's-magical. It is those things, sometimes, but mostly it's hard (for many people). It's a mental and physical challenge for both mom and dad. So often when newborns are really upset it's because they're hungry, and it's hard to know that only mom can comfort them. There were so many times that Adam wants to be able to "fix him", and I wish I wasn't the only one that could. Breastfeeding does so many other things than just feeding, a lot of it is just for comfort, and babies don't really get that from a bottle when they're used to mom since the day they were born.

I can't tell you how much of the Internet I have browsed while breastfeeding - either googling questions about newborns or just mindlessly scrolling. Newborns "should" eat every 2-3 hours. Mine wanted to eat every hour. There were days that I literally had him attached to me the entire day. The Internet tells you to let them nurse as long as they want, and frequent feedings are probably a growth spurt and should be over in a few days. I nearly lost my mind when after a week and a half mark his "growth spurt" didn't stop. I finally saw a lactation consultant and that helped a bit, but we're still in the phase of "crying unless I'm on the boob". Thankfully a pacifier has made a big improvement, but it only works like 25% of the time. Hey, better than 0% of the time.

The best advice I read was to not quit on a bad day. Sometimes I freakin' hate breastfeeding, which you're not *supposed* to, but it's true for lots of people. It sucks that his feeding schedule makes a trip out of the house seem impossible sometimes (that, and the fact that he HATES this car seat). I wish I could share the load with someone else, and I know that Adam wishes he could take it. Introducing a bottle a day has helped my sanity, but I sit here and type this attached to a breast pump as Adam feeds him a bottle. I remember getting my pump and having a hearty laugh at the woman on the coupon for the hands-free pumping bra... now I AM LITERALLY THAT LADY. RIGHT NOW. Hey, at least I can use both of my hands. What a luxury!

The ability to nourish and sustain human life by providing milk from your body is pretty incredible, don't get me wrong. I love when Noah is a happy baby and falls asleep on me after we're done... but that only happens like 15% of the time. The other 85% of the time is a total hit or miss. 

We've officially made it through the first month and we only have two more to go to get through the "fourth trimester", something I'm looking forward to. On the other hand, I'm really trying to enjoy this time as much as I can. I always hear the newborns are easy, it's the older ones that drive you crazy. So, Noah, we'll try to enjoy this precious newborn time while we can... and I'll try to remind myself of that while you're screaming your head off in Target and people are trying to talk to me and ask me about you when clearly we just need to leave and then we do leave and you fall asleep the second we walk out of the store. One day I'll embarrass you on your first date - HEY, LOOK AT THIS PICTURE OF WHEN I WAS PREGNANT WITH NOAH!

Payback ;)

The Loud One in the NICU

Nothing prepares you to have a baby in a neonatal intensive care unit, or a NICU, even if it is just a short stay. All the childbirth classes you take, all the articles you read, all the birth stories you take in, they don't really tell you what to expect. It may give you the tools you need to get through the experience and enjoy it as much as possible, but it's still a foreign language.

Then there's the "it won't happen to me" mindset that everyone is plagued with, probably for the better. It never even crossed my mind what it would be like if Noah wasn't perfect. Correction: he is perfect (... actually, it depends on which hour your ask me, haha. Right now he's perfect because he's napping peacefully in his Moby Wrap). It never crossed my mind what would it be like if he wasn't MEDICALLY perfect when he was born. I didn't really know what the hours and days after birth would be like, but I certainly didn't picture our family being apart, commuting back and forth between two hospitals, trying to recover and figure out what the hell our next move was.

To start, Noah went to what is probably the state's best Children's Hospital. We had to option to send him to CHAD (Children's Hospital at Dartmouth-Hitchcock) or Children's Hospital Boston. We chose CHAD for commuting reasons. The thought of sitting in a traffic jam on 93 that soon after giving birth felt like the 7th level of hell to me. I spent 6 years in Boston traffic, there was no way on God's green earth I was subjecting myself to that torture.

I was able to "see Noah off" (meaning he was wheeled in to me in his incubator) with the team that brought him to CHAD. It was 5am, I had finally dozed off to sleep, and suddenly the awful hospital LED lights kicked on and there he was. The team of people that took him was awesome, something I knew even though I had only known them for about 30 seconds. I don't remember what I felt, but I remember not wanting to cry in front of these strangers but also feeling weird that I wasn't crying (I should be, right?).

I stayed another night in the hospital attached to the breast pump to get some precious colostrum (the liquid gold that babies need right after birth before your milk comes in). The first few go arounds were successful, then my supply of it seemed to disappear. This is perfectly normal and okay since a baby's stomach is so tiny, but seeing so little of that liquid gold made me nervous. All of the nurses and lactation consultants told me it was fine that I was pumping every two hours and not getting anything. I still felt shitty.

The weirdest thing for me was that I didn't feel weird without Noah. It felt weird to not be pregnant, it felt weird to be in the hospital, but I didn't feel like he was missing from me. I think it's because we didn't get a chance to bond like we would have in a more "normal" birth experience. That being said, I've read countless tales of parents that don't feel immediately bonded to their baby. It takes time - you have to learn each other.

I left the hospital still barely able to walk. I had lost a lot of blood, I had stitches in places you don't want stitches - in short, I was still kind of a wreck. We immediately went from my hospital to CHAD with a stop for my narcotic painkillers at the pharmacy. I had a lot of anxiety when we got the hospital. I remember sitting in the sun in my wheelchair while Adam parked the car and got our belongings, and I wasn't sure what to expect. Adam and my mom had gone back and forth between the two hospitals already and knew the deal with the NICU. My doctor had warned me what it would be like to see him in there, and that I might have a meltdown.

To back up, realizing you're not going home right away comes with a whole host of other logistics to figure out. How would we get clean clothes? Where will we stay? How can we take care of him and of me? What do we have to do for him? What does he need from us? Where will we eat? Can Adam eat there (for those that don't know, he's allergic to 13 different foods)?

Noah's bed on the "critical" side

I hope you've never been to a NICU, but if you have you know that most of the babies are very small and very sick. Noah outweighed most of the babies by 6-7 pounds. I saw baby feet that were as big as half my pinkie finger. He was clearly on the healthier end of the spectrum (just the fact that he was a full-term baby put him way ahead of the rest), but when we arrived he was still on the "critical" side of the nursery. It was like entering a space station. There's crazy machines, wires, beeping, hustle and bustle, lights, etc. I have pretty much no experience with newborns, so not only did I have to learn how to hold him but I had to do so with him being hooked up to a bajillion different wires. I had to learn how to breastfeed him basically out in the open with a thin curtain, beeping machines, and the watchful eye of his nurse. We had a lot of anxiety about breastfeeding - I wanted to be good at it but I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, and as nice as his nurses were (I can't say enough how awesome they were), it was a little stressful to have them watch me try to figure out something so intimate and so NOT easy. Breastfeeding is portrayed as natural and beautiful and easy - trust me, it's not always that way, especially in the beginning.

Holding him for the first tune

We were transferred over to the non-critical side the same day, which was great. It was a bit more calm, the lights were dimmer, we had a little more privacy. We were lucky to have the one bedspace that had a pull-out couch, meaning we could stay there overnight with him. It was great but it came with its own set of challenges. A "bedspace" is not a room. It's his little tiny bed, a small sink, a tiny dresser, an uncomfortable couch that pulls out to an uncomfortable sleeper, and a curtain. Saying this makes me feel ungrateful because we were so fortunate to be able to stay there, be with him for everything, breastfeed on demand, etc., but it was a less than ideal way to recover from birth and try to bond with this little stranger.

Our bedspace

I still couldn't really use the bathroom comfortably on my own when we got there, and the closest family bathroom was on the first floor (we were on the 5th). Going to pee (or worse, # 2) after birth isn't simply getting up and walking to the bathroom to do your business... especially when the bathroom isn't yours. There was a whole baggy of things I had to bring with me, I was still in a wheelchair because of the physical recovery and being on narcotics, and we had to boogie 4 flights down to the family bathroom. Eventually I started to walk more confidently on my own, but I still had to go through three security doors to a public restroom on our floor. Then there's the dreaded, much feared "first poop after birth", which for me took place, again, in a crappy hospital public restroom. Dartmouth-Hitchcock is an amazing hospital with incredible resources for patients and families, but this bathroom wasn't one of them. Your first poop after birth is scarier than birth itself. I often found myself thinking, "eh, it's okay, I'll just never poop again."

Having a baby in the NICU is tough for all family members, but I was also dealing with a serious roller coaster of hormones. I was tired, I was weak, I was attempting to take care of this little stranger that I loved but was also so foreign and attached to beeping things, I was trying to keep it together for myself and for Adam. Our first morning we went down to breakfast and I just sobbed in the hospital cafeteria (not uncommon of an event after birth because of those pesky hormonal changes, it just usually doesn't take place in public).

On the flipside, it was great to have a team of nurses with us in those first few days. They exclusively focused on Noah, but they were able to reassure us that everything was okay. We got to talk to them and be humans. They found us a spare room that we could shower in. They could watch him while we went and got our three meals a day. We also had a lactation consultant visit, and I felt so much  more confident about breastfeeding after she helped us. Don't get me wrong, breastfeeding is still a roller coaster, but I at least left the hospital with some sense of what I was doing.

As with the stolen phrase in my post about Noah's birth, his stay in the NICU felt like the longest shortest time. 5 days is nothing in the grand scheme of things, but it was painfully long for us. I can't imagine having a baby there for weeks, months even, as some people do. They started talking about a discharge date and I made sure to not get my hopes up in case he did need to stay longer. At this point he was off his assisted oxygen and the only thing we were waiting on was to finish out a course of antibiotics. A marker in his blood that indicates infection had been very high, and they were going to re-test that after 5 days. If it was still high he would need to stay another two days. He would be re-tested on Thursday at 11pm, meaning we would leave on Friday morning. Thursday morning came and the doctor's made their rounds. The doctor decided to test him at noon, because if that marker was going down it wouldn't make much difference if it was at noon or 11pm. We waited anxiously and packed up our things *just in case*. The results were good, we thanked the doctor, pulled the curtain that separated our tiny couch-bed from the nurses station, hugged each other, and cried.

Finally untethered, we were able to put him in his "take-home" outfit - another learning experience... how do you a dress a newborn? It seems like you would just rip their head off with the slightest movement so how the hell do you get a onesie on? It's not that hard, it turns out, but Noah HATED it. The nurses said it was nice to hear a baby scream so loudly, which was a heartbreaking complement. We busted him out of there 5 days after he arrived and brought him home to start the next step in our adventure - "We're home with a newborn... now what?" More on that later ;)

Welcome to the World, SpaceMan

Our Noah-boy made his entrance into the world over 3 weeks ago, and it's been the longest shortest time in my life. I stole that phrase, "longest shortest time", from a podcast about parenting. It's the most accurate description about the passage of time with a newborn. Life with a newborn will get its own entry, maybe once my head isn't so fuzzy.

I'll start before he was a "newborn" and go back to just being "born". No new. I wrote out my birth story in full detail to recount my take on his birth. I'll save you from ALL the details (especially the goriest ones). Without further adieu, here is Noah's birth story:

I made a deal with Noah. He could hang out past his due date, but only by one or two days. I don't qualify for Family Medical Leave Act, so I would be going on short-term disability leave. I had to be "permanent" in my position for 90 days to qualify for a month at 100% of my salary + 2 weeks at 60% of my salary. I would get the same amount of time no matter what, but if I didn't hit those 90 days then the last two weeks of leave would be unpaid. My due date was, like, day 88 or something (I kid you not). If I made it just one more day and finished out the week then I would hit day 90 (the weekends count). My due date came and went, I went to work the next day as usual, and I triumphantly left and thanked Noah. Really, he should have been thanking me. Diapers are expensive. 

I woke up at 12:30am the next morning after 2 hours of sleep thinking my water had broken. Ultimately I was wrong, but I got up to pee and noticed mild contractions but this time they were coming in noticeable intervals. After about an hour I woke up Adam and sent him to start collecting everything we needed for a trip to the hospital. His check list included doing the dishes at 2:00am and depositing his paycheck, something I still laugh about today. Hey, we didn't have dishes to do when we got home!

Before the $*@T hit the fan

Unfortunately, my water had not broken and my cervix was still high and closed - for those of you that don't know much about birth, "high and closed" is akin to "try again later". They kept us there and I was re-checked later that morning. I was excited to have Dr. Wasserman, who was delivering babies when I was born and is still as sprightly, hilarious, and obviously knowledgeable now as he was then. His calm demeanor about pregnancy, labor, and delivery made everything seem normal and okay (especially important when you’re in the middle of the most physically and emotionally taxing experience of your life). Dr. Wasserman re-checked me around 8am, and I hurriedly ate a small breakfast before that thinking it might be the last time they let me eat. Unfortunately, even after a night of regular and stronger contractions there still wasn’t any progression. I wanted to avoid induction because I knew it had a higher chance of a C-Section. The doctor told me he felt like it was time to have the baby, especially since I was past my due date and was already having contractions. I can’t explain how it felt to finally be in the situation where you know you’re not leaving the hospital without a baby. On the other hand, I was scared that inducing would kick things into high gear unnaturally and I might have to get the C-Section.

Nitrous Oxide: Making Time in Between
Contractions Pretty Fun!

I started with a medicine that is meant to soften the cervix, not really "induction" but more like "okay, body, start to take the hint". Within about 20-30 minutes of taking the pill my contractions started coming 1-2 minutes apart and were getting more and more intense. Apparently my body took the hint too well. I got through that stage with just breathing, but eventually opted for nitrous oxide. It’s a much less invasive option that the epidural, and it would allow me to just have pain medicine when I wanted to (it leaves your system when you stop breathing it through the mask). I don’t even know how much time passed, but it was a long process of contracting, hitting the nitrous, coming down from it (which takes almost no time at all), and going back to fighting through another contraction. I had to get a shot to try to slow down my contractions, they were close enough together and too intense for the doctor to be comfortable with. My mom arrived at the hospital in the middle of an intense contraction, at this point I was really yelling through them (into the nitrous mask, so it didn’t sound loud to everyone else but I felt like I was screaming at the top of my lungs). I remember seeing my mom out of the corner of my eye, realizing she was crying (she had been in the room for about two seconds!), and saying “it’s already so hard to see her in pain”. I had a bit of a meltdown, but it lasted about 45 seconds before I had to refocus on the next contraction.

I went from "not ready at all" to 6cm dilated in a relatively short amount of time. I was keeping up with the nitrous oxide, but it was starting to get less and less effective. I don’t remember how much time passed, but I felt myself reaching my breaking point. I didn’t want to get the epidural, but finally in the middle of a particularly tough contraction I asked for it (or maybe DEMANDED it). 

Everyone wants to know what a contraction or hard labor feels like. It hurt enough that I don't even remember the pain of getting a 4 inch needle inserted into my spine. The worst part of the epidural was sitting still through contractions while they inserted it. I can't describe the pain (maybe that's mommy amnesia), but during the worst of it I felt like a feral animal, my eyes locked on Adam's, screaming like there was no tomorrow. 

I don’t remember the pain going away, I just remember falling into a state in between being awake and asleep. Apparently I was woken up and told to start pushing (I don’t remember this). I just remember I was pushing for a long time. It ended up being three hours total.

I had a sense that the doctors, nurses, and my cheer squad were seeing something I wasn’t able to identify – that ended up being Noah getting stuck under my pelvic bone. The doctor came in and I heard him tell someone (the nurse, maybe?) that I had 20 minutes to get him out or they may have to do a C-Section. I remember thinking I didn’t want that to happen, but I didn’t get any more energy or motivation. I was just so tired. What was probably 20-30 minutes later the doctor came back in, watched me push for a while, and decided to give me another 20 minutes. My nurse came up to my head, got in my face (in a good way), and told me if there was ever a time to get mad and get the baby out it was now. I remember Adam telling me I had to focus and do it. Again, I don’t know how much time passed, but I was making enough progress to get his head a little bit out but not enough. 

Are you wondering what it feels like to have an almost 9 pound baby's head sitting in your pelvis, patiently awaiting you to push it out? It feels like you have to poop a 40 pound brick, even with the epidural.

This is where it gets gory and the room started to look like a crime scene, so I'll omit those details. Noah ended up getting vacuum-suction on his head, and Dr. Wasserman basically yanked him out while I pushed. I don’t know how to describe the feeling, but Adam told me the noise I made when Noah came out is one he will never forget.

I was suddenly aware how much blood was in the room, and how many people were there observing what was happening. Noah was taken to the nurses immediately and was “singing”, which not a good sign. It meant that he had something wrong with his breathing. Adam and my mom saw more of this process than I did, as I was still reeling from a long labor. I tried to get a peek of Noah while the doctor and nurses worked on me. You don't think much about what happens to mom right after birth, but I'll just say "it ain't over, and it ain't pretty". Noah was put on my chest for about 30 seconds and they explained to me that he needed to go straight to the nursery. We had just enough time to snap a photo before he was taken away.

Noah's "Space Helmet" of oxygen

The pediatrician treating Noah made the call that he needed to be transferred to a NICU within a few hours of birth. Seeing Noah for the first time after birth was heartbreaking. He had inhaled amniotic fluid and meconium (the waste be built up over his 40 week, 2 day stay in Hotel Mother) in the womb, and that was making it hard for him to breath on his own. He was already attached to machines and I couldn’t hold him. I totally lost it. We stayed and talked to him for a while before going to my recovery room. The hours after birth are chaotic. You need to sleep but you can’t, really. You will either need to breastfeed every two hours, or if you’re in my situation you’ll need to get up and pump every two hours. I’ve never used a breast pump, and it was tough to learn how to after no sleep and 22 hours of labor. I was also trying to figure out how to take care of myself. You’re reduced to barely being able to go to the bathroom alone. The nurses told me I could shower, I didn’t think I had the energy. I just wanted to sleep but I couldn’t. Nurses would come in frequently to check my vitals, I had to pump, I was uncomfortable. Every hour that went by got a little less intense, but it wasn’t easy. 

I opted to stay an extra night in the hospital (they offered to discharge me the next day if I wanted to go to the NICU to see Noah, but I didn’t feel ready).  I remembered other moms telling me to stay in the hospital as long as possible, because it's the last time a team of people people take care of you, bring you juice and food, and make sure you’re okay. Once you leave, it’s all about baby.

We didn’t have the dream birth experience, it was intense and often times scary. It was the most visceral experience I’ve ever had and it really broke me down to my most animal-brained self, but I also learned what I was capable of getting through. I had an amazing team of caregivers that I couldn't have done it without, literally and figuratively. It's true what they say - it feels like a distant memory, but it's one memory that's burned into my brain and that I will never, ever forget.