Andy's story is untold. Back when I had him, birth wasn't an important thing to me; it was means to an end and the final chapter of pregnancy. Now I see birth as the first chapter of my child's life. Funny how those two vantage points carry such different priorities for me.
Andy's turning 7 soon, and I've been thinking about his birth recently. I've actually been dying to tell people about it but it seems so irrelevant 7 years later. It makes me sad that I never wrote anything down when it happened because I know so many little details are gone now. Now that I've allowed myself to embrace how important birth is to me, I feel like his birth story and whole birth experience is a piece missing from me. And it makes me sad and frustrated with no one to blame, but myself.
So in the spirit of healing, and in the spirit of celebrating my son and his birth regardless of the means, I'd like to share my story now. 7 years late, but still important.
I found I was pregnant with Andy when Elyse was 7 months old and exactly 4 months before my wedding with David. I was leaving Scottsdale Fashion Square and felt bloated. Absentmindedly I thought to myself, "This bloating feels like when I was pregnant..." and it was like a light bulb. Just like that, I knew I was pregnant. I took a pregnancy test that night, and it was negative but I knew it was wrong. I must have been really early pregnant, probably 3.5 weeks. I took another pregnancy test a week later and it was positive. I was heartbroken. Isn't that sad? I loved my daughter soooo much, and I couldn't imagine sharing my love for her with another child. She was still a baby! Add to that I had already purchased my wedding dress and who wants to be pregnant on their wedding day?? I cried face down in the carpet for an hour. But after crying, and after all the swirling thoughts of doubt and disappointment were cried out, I stood up and felt better. I won't say that I went to be that night excited to be pregnant, but after I got all the sad thoughts out of the way it made room for the happy ones. I really did love being a mama, and I started to get excited.
My next disappointment came at the gender reveal. All I knew was having a daughter and I loved every single ounce of it. The pink, the earrings, the dreams of her wearing my clothes and being my little shadow. I didn't want to WANT another girl, but it happened. When they put the little ultrasound over my belly and announced it was a boy I hated that I felt disappointed. I remember going to Babies R Us after the appointment to buy cute boy stuff to get myself excited, but buying baby boys clothes sucks. It is nowhere near as adorable as buying little girl stuff, period. With time, I started to accept that I was going to have a baby boy but I want to honestly admit that it wasn't immediate. Most of me wants to delete this part and write about how elated I was to have a boy, but I know that my experience has helped more than one friend ease their own gender reveal guilt. It happens, we have ideas and expectations and we adjust when they don't go as planned. And my disappointment in having a boy didn't last long, in fact when I saw him it was like falling in-love for the first time and mothering a boy was a puzzle piece I didn't know I was missing until I had him.
Andy measured big the whole pregnancy. They ended up bumping up my due date half way through because he was more than 2 weeks "bigger" than his estimated due date. His original due date was November 2nd, and they moved it to October 19th. I remember asking my doctor early on if I was even able to try and go for a vaginal delivery, he said, "A vaginal delivery is more danger for your baby, and a cesarean is more dangerous for you. Most moms chose to do what's safest for the baby." That was the only conversation I had about my birth, and I scheduled my repeat cesarean at that appointment. They wanted to schedule him at 39 weeks, which would have been October 12th but there was no surgery available that day so they asked if I wanted to do it the Friday before, October 9th. Elated that I would get to meet my baby 3 days sooner, I squealed in agreement. No one told me that I should let me baby chose their birth date. No one told me that 39 weeks is probably too early. No one told me that maybe I shouldn't have moved my due date earlier and scheduled my cesarean a week before my due date. I was TRYING to shave off as much time as I could. I was so infuriatingly ignorant.
The morning of cesarean, I wasn't allowed to eat anything so David and I went to an "early breakfast" at 2am at Dennys. Do not get in the way of pregnant Jenni and food, because I will find a way! Bless David for agreeing to that. My mom came over early that morning to stay with Elyse while David and I went to the hospital to prep for surgery. I remember feeling so unexpectedly nervous. I hadn't anticipated being nervous because I thought I was a cesarean pro by now, but it was so much different the 2nd time. My first cesarean was after three days of failed induction and there was a medical need for it. All of my own cares and concerns were out the window and I was only worried about keeping my child safe. With Andy's birth, I didn't have the distraction of labor or medical crisis's to distract me. It was just me and my mind. David wasn't allowed in during the spinal, but the nurse was wonderful. I remember the room being very very cold, but I tried to get myself out my mind and just focus on meeting my pretty boy soon. It worked.
During the operation, there was a metal light above me that was reflective. I could see red spread over the reflection as they cut me open. I had to look away. I started to get a terrible pain in my left shoulder, I told the anesthesiologist and he said, "If you were older I'd worry you were having a heart attack, but I'll just turn the pain meds up." I spent the rest of the surgery and recovery in pain and convinced I was having a heart attack.
When they pulled my baby boy out, I didn't hear any crying. David left my side and went over with the doctors and nurses working on him, and no one was really saying anything to me. I asked if they could bring him to me and if something was wrong, and one of the nurses said, "He's just having a little trouble breathing, it happens!" She seemed calm, and that calmed me. They took him out of the room and said "Dad's going to stay with him." and I was left alone in the operating room. They must have given me a lot of medicine because I don't remember anything about getting stitched up or recovery. I know I didn't see my baby at all.
This next part is based purely on what other people tell me because I was stuck in my room, unable to move because of the cesarean for 12 hours. Evidently Andy wasn't breathing well on his own. As my family looked through the glass at him, they said he flopped around and was unresponsive. My Mom says she can remember them bending his hand all the way back to put an IV in he didn't make a sound. Everyone got to see my baby before me, and people even got to touch and hold him before me. I remember telling my Mom to call everyone and tell them to go away and not to come. I didn't want people coming to visit me and talk about how my baby wasn't with me. He was in the NICU, and for the first 12 hours of his life, they debated whether or not they were going to air-evac him to the closest crisis nursery. At the 11th hour (literally), he started to stabilize. Right around that time, I got the clear to get out of bed and go see him. My mom was with me, I assume David was home with Elyse.
I was so anxious to see him. It wasn't a happy anxious, it was more of a stress anxious. I was afraid of what I would see. My mind had turned off my emotions because I couldn't handle the fear of my baby being in danger of living. It's really sad to me that I was so emotionally turned off, because I don't remember the overwhelming joy that should have been there when I saw him. He looked small and sick. At only 6lbs and 14oz (smaller than his sister), this was NOT a big baby like they said. He looked fragile and it made me cold with terror that I shoved down. I loved him, I remember thinking how beautiful and perfect his little face was. I remember loving that he looked like a little Herrin instead of a Vidal. Ah, I just loved looking him but more than anything I remember feeling a fight or flight style fierce protection feeling. I wanted to run out of the hospital with him, my arms wrapped around him. Picture a feral woman enveloping her baby, crouched in a corner growling at everyone who gets close. That's what it felt like. It's sad that I didn't get to just relax and enjoy my precious boy, but I did what I needed to. The experience of having Andy in the NICU singlehandedly taught me how to be a mama bear. For the first time I realized that doctors didn't know everything. Why had they told me he was too big? David and I were both big babies, it wasn't normal for him to be born at less than 7lbs. The hospital pediatrician said he presented as a 36 weeker. If they hadn't moved my due date, he would have been 36 weeks and 4 days. I was furious. There's so much I could say about that NICU stay. They didn't feed him for the first 48 hours, and I couldn't get a clear answer to why. Then they told me I couldn't nurse him. They forced me to feed him through a feeding tube until he would vomit. VOMIT! God, it was horrifying. I remember holding the bottle over his head, letting it go down his nose into his tummy and he would start gagging, his whole little body heaving and they would try and make me keep giving him more. He hadn't even lost as much weight as my daughter had in the hospital, but they were treating him like he was losing "too much". They were forcing him to eat more milk than my daughter did at 2 months. All of these things felt wrong, and my mama instinct told me to fight it so I did. At one point, I had him in my room alone with a nurse and we decided to try and breastfeed him. He did awesome! From that point, I just started doing what I had to in order to get him out. I could see he was okay, but they were putting all of these unfair expectations on him and treating him like a sick baby still which included . I started challenging what they were telling me, and asking them the risks, benefits and alternatives to what they wanted me to allow for the treatment of my child. I grew 10ft as a mother in that week and I gained the confidence of trusting my gut as a mother. I knew he belonged at home and wasn't sick anymore, and after about a week in the NICU, we were able to go home.
Andy was an awesome baby. He came right out of me as a good sleeper. He was sleeping 8 hours a night by 4 weeks. I could lay him down in his co-sleeper wide-awake and he would fall fast asleep. Our nursing relationship wasn't great. I was chasing a baby and trying to nurse a baby all day long. He wanted to eat every 90 minutes for 30 minutes, I couldn't get anything done. I ended up pumping full time and that boy didn't get a drop of formula - EVER. Everyone said I couldn't pump that long, but I did.
Having Andy completed a part of me that I didn't know was even missing. It is such a precious privilege to be a woman raising a boy to be a man. It's such a unique relationship. I feel so lucky to be loved by him.
Andy made me into the Mom I am today. Looking back, there isn't a lot I am proud of in the decisions leading up to his birth but I am proud that I had the strength to fight for him in the hospital when no one else was. I'm grateful for that birth, because it gave me the passion to want something different for Milo's birth. When Milo started measuring "big", I knew to stand strong with my dates and not let them change them. I didn't want to be pregnant, and I didn't want a boy but God gave me exactly what I needed. He knew what I wanted before I did. I am so filled with joy and so richly blessed by Andy's presence in my life and I am so grateful for him.
And happy 7th birthday to my sweet boy!
Andy's turning 7 soon, and I've been thinking about his birth recently. I've actually been dying to tell people about it but it seems so irrelevant 7 years later. It makes me sad that I never wrote anything down when it happened because I know so many little details are gone now. Now that I've allowed myself to embrace how important birth is to me, I feel like his birth story and whole birth experience is a piece missing from me. And it makes me sad and frustrated with no one to blame, but myself.
So in the spirit of healing, and in the spirit of celebrating my son and his birth regardless of the means, I'd like to share my story now. 7 years late, but still important.
I found I was pregnant with Andy when Elyse was 7 months old and exactly 4 months before my wedding with David. I was leaving Scottsdale Fashion Square and felt bloated. Absentmindedly I thought to myself, "This bloating feels like when I was pregnant..." and it was like a light bulb. Just like that, I knew I was pregnant. I took a pregnancy test that night, and it was negative but I knew it was wrong. I must have been really early pregnant, probably 3.5 weeks. I took another pregnancy test a week later and it was positive. I was heartbroken. Isn't that sad? I loved my daughter soooo much, and I couldn't imagine sharing my love for her with another child. She was still a baby! Add to that I had already purchased my wedding dress and who wants to be pregnant on their wedding day?? I cried face down in the carpet for an hour. But after crying, and after all the swirling thoughts of doubt and disappointment were cried out, I stood up and felt better. I won't say that I went to be that night excited to be pregnant, but after I got all the sad thoughts out of the way it made room for the happy ones. I really did love being a mama, and I started to get excited.
My next disappointment came at the gender reveal. All I knew was having a daughter and I loved every single ounce of it. The pink, the earrings, the dreams of her wearing my clothes and being my little shadow. I didn't want to WANT another girl, but it happened. When they put the little ultrasound over my belly and announced it was a boy I hated that I felt disappointed. I remember going to Babies R Us after the appointment to buy cute boy stuff to get myself excited, but buying baby boys clothes sucks. It is nowhere near as adorable as buying little girl stuff, period. With time, I started to accept that I was going to have a baby boy but I want to honestly admit that it wasn't immediate. Most of me wants to delete this part and write about how elated I was to have a boy, but I know that my experience has helped more than one friend ease their own gender reveal guilt. It happens, we have ideas and expectations and we adjust when they don't go as planned. And my disappointment in having a boy didn't last long, in fact when I saw him it was like falling in-love for the first time and mothering a boy was a puzzle piece I didn't know I was missing until I had him.
Andy measured big the whole pregnancy. They ended up bumping up my due date half way through because he was more than 2 weeks "bigger" than his estimated due date. His original due date was November 2nd, and they moved it to October 19th. I remember asking my doctor early on if I was even able to try and go for a vaginal delivery, he said, "A vaginal delivery is more danger for your baby, and a cesarean is more dangerous for you. Most moms chose to do what's safest for the baby." That was the only conversation I had about my birth, and I scheduled my repeat cesarean at that appointment. They wanted to schedule him at 39 weeks, which would have been October 12th but there was no surgery available that day so they asked if I wanted to do it the Friday before, October 9th. Elated that I would get to meet my baby 3 days sooner, I squealed in agreement. No one told me that I should let me baby chose their birth date. No one told me that 39 weeks is probably too early. No one told me that maybe I shouldn't have moved my due date earlier and scheduled my cesarean a week before my due date. I was TRYING to shave off as much time as I could. I was so infuriatingly ignorant.
The morning of cesarean, I wasn't allowed to eat anything so David and I went to an "early breakfast" at 2am at Dennys. Do not get in the way of pregnant Jenni and food, because I will find a way! Bless David for agreeing to that. My mom came over early that morning to stay with Elyse while David and I went to the hospital to prep for surgery. I remember feeling so unexpectedly nervous. I hadn't anticipated being nervous because I thought I was a cesarean pro by now, but it was so much different the 2nd time. My first cesarean was after three days of failed induction and there was a medical need for it. All of my own cares and concerns were out the window and I was only worried about keeping my child safe. With Andy's birth, I didn't have the distraction of labor or medical crisis's to distract me. It was just me and my mind. David wasn't allowed in during the spinal, but the nurse was wonderful. I remember the room being very very cold, but I tried to get myself out my mind and just focus on meeting my pretty boy soon. It worked.
During the operation, there was a metal light above me that was reflective. I could see red spread over the reflection as they cut me open. I had to look away. I started to get a terrible pain in my left shoulder, I told the anesthesiologist and he said, "If you were older I'd worry you were having a heart attack, but I'll just turn the pain meds up." I spent the rest of the surgery and recovery in pain and convinced I was having a heart attack.
When they pulled my baby boy out, I didn't hear any crying. David left my side and went over with the doctors and nurses working on him, and no one was really saying anything to me. I asked if they could bring him to me and if something was wrong, and one of the nurses said, "He's just having a little trouble breathing, it happens!" She seemed calm, and that calmed me. They took him out of the room and said "Dad's going to stay with him." and I was left alone in the operating room. They must have given me a lot of medicine because I don't remember anything about getting stitched up or recovery. I know I didn't see my baby at all.
This next part is based purely on what other people tell me because I was stuck in my room, unable to move because of the cesarean for 12 hours. Evidently Andy wasn't breathing well on his own. As my family looked through the glass at him, they said he flopped around and was unresponsive. My Mom says she can remember them bending his hand all the way back to put an IV in he didn't make a sound. Everyone got to see my baby before me, and people even got to touch and hold him before me. I remember telling my Mom to call everyone and tell them to go away and not to come. I didn't want people coming to visit me and talk about how my baby wasn't with me. He was in the NICU, and for the first 12 hours of his life, they debated whether or not they were going to air-evac him to the closest crisis nursery. At the 11th hour (literally), he started to stabilize. Right around that time, I got the clear to get out of bed and go see him. My mom was with me, I assume David was home with Elyse.
I was so anxious to see him. It wasn't a happy anxious, it was more of a stress anxious. I was afraid of what I would see. My mind had turned off my emotions because I couldn't handle the fear of my baby being in danger of living. It's really sad to me that I was so emotionally turned off, because I don't remember the overwhelming joy that should have been there when I saw him. He looked small and sick. At only 6lbs and 14oz (smaller than his sister), this was NOT a big baby like they said. He looked fragile and it made me cold with terror that I shoved down. I loved him, I remember thinking how beautiful and perfect his little face was. I remember loving that he looked like a little Herrin instead of a Vidal. Ah, I just loved looking him but more than anything I remember feeling a fight or flight style fierce protection feeling. I wanted to run out of the hospital with him, my arms wrapped around him. Picture a feral woman enveloping her baby, crouched in a corner growling at everyone who gets close. That's what it felt like. It's sad that I didn't get to just relax and enjoy my precious boy, but I did what I needed to. The experience of having Andy in the NICU singlehandedly taught me how to be a mama bear. For the first time I realized that doctors didn't know everything. Why had they told me he was too big? David and I were both big babies, it wasn't normal for him to be born at less than 7lbs. The hospital pediatrician said he presented as a 36 weeker. If they hadn't moved my due date, he would have been 36 weeks and 4 days. I was furious. There's so much I could say about that NICU stay. They didn't feed him for the first 48 hours, and I couldn't get a clear answer to why. Then they told me I couldn't nurse him. They forced me to feed him through a feeding tube until he would vomit. VOMIT! God, it was horrifying. I remember holding the bottle over his head, letting it go down his nose into his tummy and he would start gagging, his whole little body heaving and they would try and make me keep giving him more. He hadn't even lost as much weight as my daughter had in the hospital, but they were treating him like he was losing "too much". They were forcing him to eat more milk than my daughter did at 2 months. All of these things felt wrong, and my mama instinct told me to fight it so I did. At one point, I had him in my room alone with a nurse and we decided to try and breastfeed him. He did awesome! From that point, I just started doing what I had to in order to get him out. I could see he was okay, but they were putting all of these unfair expectations on him and treating him like a sick baby still which included . I started challenging what they were telling me, and asking them the risks, benefits and alternatives to what they wanted me to allow for the treatment of my child. I grew 10ft as a mother in that week and I gained the confidence of trusting my gut as a mother. I knew he belonged at home and wasn't sick anymore, and after about a week in the NICU, we were able to go home.
Andy was an awesome baby. He came right out of me as a good sleeper. He was sleeping 8 hours a night by 4 weeks. I could lay him down in his co-sleeper wide-awake and he would fall fast asleep. Our nursing relationship wasn't great. I was chasing a baby and trying to nurse a baby all day long. He wanted to eat every 90 minutes for 30 minutes, I couldn't get anything done. I ended up pumping full time and that boy didn't get a drop of formula - EVER. Everyone said I couldn't pump that long, but I did.
Having Andy completed a part of me that I didn't know was even missing. It is such a precious privilege to be a woman raising a boy to be a man. It's such a unique relationship. I feel so lucky to be loved by him.
Andy made me into the Mom I am today. Looking back, there isn't a lot I am proud of in the decisions leading up to his birth but I am proud that I had the strength to fight for him in the hospital when no one else was. I'm grateful for that birth, because it gave me the passion to want something different for Milo's birth. When Milo started measuring "big", I knew to stand strong with my dates and not let them change them. I didn't want to be pregnant, and I didn't want a boy but God gave me exactly what I needed. He knew what I wanted before I did. I am so filled with joy and so richly blessed by Andy's presence in my life and I am so grateful for him.
And happy 7th birthday to my sweet boy!