February 2nd, 2010

The Scarlet C: A History of Cesarean

Hearing about a cesarean being performed on The Today Show* this morning triggered a lot of traumatic feelings for me. I cannot watch. Just knowing it’s out there is bad enough. Knowing that the Today Show is passing out bad information about the supposed necessity of this operation makes me feel that the odds are forever going to be stacked against healthy birth. It hurts my heart.

One thing I have not addressed so far on our journey toward conception is my very real, all consuming fear that despite my best intentions, this birth could end in another cesarean. This fear paralyzes me. Part of the reason I announced our plans to conceive was because I needed other people to be excited for me. I cannot be excited for myself right now. I’m simply too afraid. I’m trying – desperately – to get excited about conception. I do want another baby, this part I know. But I also know if I never get pregnant again, then I would never be exposed to the risk of another cesarean. It is a 100% avoidable surgery, provided that I avoid pregnancy. When we started talking about conception plans last week, for a few minutes I tried to talk the husband into getting his vasectomy right now (which he has already agreed to do after we’re done having kids). But he wants another baby. And I want another baby. And I’m trying not to let this uterine scar make these decisions for me. But – it’s hard. (<–Boy, if that isn’t the understatement of the year…)

I know that my chances of having a cesarean are dramatically decreased by my education about the birth process. I also know that my chances for a VBAC are incredibly high, especially since I’ve already had one. AND, I also know that I willed my last VBAC into existence by the sheer power of my determination. I can do anything; my VBAC taught me that. I could never let another cesarean happen to me if I had any control over it whatsoever. However, once the doctor cut into my womb, my uterine health was forever changed, and I will never get to experience pregnancy or childbirth with an unscarred vessel.

A friend once told me, as she was trying desperately to find a provider who’d let her have a VBAC, that she felt like she walked around with a Scarlet C on her chest. If we want a vaginal birth after cesarean, many providers won’t touch us. Many providers won’t help us. Many providers treat us like ticking time bombs – or worse – like bad mothers. And even when they do agree to see us, we are often forced or coerced into “mandatory” interventions that other non-cesarean moms can opt out of. It doesn’t matter if it’s illegal and unethical – providers can often talk a mother into anything when they threaten her baby’s well-being. Even when luck is on our side, and we can find a provider willing to treat us like a “normal” mom, we often still carry a fear that makes us envision an exploded uterus and the unhealthiest of outcomes. I believe that anxiety alone is what causes the vast majority of repeat cesareans. How many non-cesarean mothers fear uterine rupture? I’m willing to bet, not too many – even though it is certainly something that can happen to first time mothers.

I carry plenty of emotional baggage from my cesarean, but I also carry scar tissue – The Scarlet C.   I hope the Hypnobirthing can help me overcome this fear once and for all, but at this point, I really have no idea what will ease my concerns. I just want to feel…normal, again.

UPDATE:  To hear me speak about this subject, listen to Karen Angstadt’s radio show A Labor of Love – episode titled “A Healthy Baby Isn’t All That Matters.”

January 19th, 2010

For You Blue

Last week, we said goodbye to one of our FurChildren, Blue Dog.  After much consideration, Hyphenated Husband and I decided that we were no longer the best family for him to be with, so we gave him to a very appreciative disabled family friend.

John and I got Blue Dog from the Anti-Cruelty Society about a month after we started dating.  We knew we were going to be together, and we knew we were going to move in together relatively quickly, so we adopted Blue Dog and made him the first extension of our little family.

He is a Border Collie-Black Lab mix, and has a personality that melts everyone’s heart.  He’s great with children, so gentle and loving, and everyone who ever met him fawned over him.  Blue was in our wedding, as pictured here, and during the entire reception he walked from table to table greeting our guests, as if to say “Hi, I’m Blue Dog, let me give you a snuggle and welcome you to the party.”

But Blue also came with some special challenges.  Part of what made him such a lover was his intense separation anxiety.  He needed constant attention and constant companionship.  Where ever we were, he had to be there as well.  I could not leave a room and shut a door between us or he would lose his mind and yelp like his foot was caught in a vice.  If left alone behind a door for too long, he’d rip through it.  When I bathed, he laid next to the bathtub.  When I cooked, he laid under my feet at the stove.  I was always on the verge of tripping over him and breaking my neck.

This separation anxiety was so bad, when we first brought him home from the shelter, Blue Dog ruined most of our apartment.  After leaving him unattended while we went to work one day, he ate through the couch.  We thought we learned our lesson, and put him in a steel crate the next time we went out.  Later that evening, John met up with me at a bar, and he says to me

“Why in the world did you shove my entire comforter in the crate with the dog?”

And I say

“Um, I totally did not do that – why would I?”

We go home to find that Blue Dog had chewed his way out of the steel crate just enough to grab John’s comforter off the bed, pull the entire thing into the crate with him, and rip it into little snowflakes.  When we walked in, pretty much all we could see was Blue Dog’s eyes peaking out from under this mountain of shredded feathers and fabric.

Blue had many more hilarious feats like that one.  After the crates failed, we tried barricading him into the kitchen with a wall of gates.  A few days into that experiment John calls me up from work and says

“So, why did you leave Blue in the living room when you left?”

And I respond with

“Um, I totally did not do that!  Why would I?”

As it turns out, the dog scaled the barricade – which was upwards of 5 feet high – and climbed through to the other side.

Finally…finally… one day Blue’s anxiety settled, and we no longer had to consistently contain him anywhere.  We also got him a plastic crate that he had a little harder time ripping through for those few occasions when we did still need to crate him.  Blue came to trust that we wouldn’t abandon him, and he stopped ripping through couches.  However, he never really stopped trying to destroy at least ONE thing when we left him alone.

Blue Dog came to love the garbage.  Ripping through the garbage became his payback tool any time I had the audacity to take Jonas to school, or run out for a coffee.  We always tried to make sure there was NO garbage to destroy before we left the house, but invariably there comes a time when we’re rushing out in a hurry, and one of us forgot to put the garbage outside.

On those days, I would come home to whole house carpeted in trash.  And then, I would want to kill me one dog.

It was very difficult coming to the decision to give him away.  He was our family, and I’m not the type of person who would usually give up any animal.  Before I had children, I was an active supporter of the ASPCA.  When I originally decided to pursue a career in law, my dream was to one day work for them.  I even interviewed on of their attorneys and wrote about it.  Animal welfare means a lot to me, however, it has taken a backseat to the Mother’s Rights that have come to rule my career goals now.  The reason for that is, animals have a few high profile nonprofit agencies working for them.  Mothers have almost none.  At least none that are on par with PETA or the ASPCA.  So, this was the reason my focus shifted, but I still love animals just as much as I did pre-baby.

But ultimately, I knew that the reason Blue acted out the way he did was because he had become 3rd fiddle in the house.  I have two sons to shower with affection now, and the dog just got lost in the mix.  He needed someone who could love him all the time, whose lives weren’t as hectic, and who would be home with him more often.

Thankfully, we found him that very person.  A family friend has a disabled cousin who lives with a brother that takes care of him.  The man needs a companion, and he doesn’t leave the house enough for Blue Dog’s separation anxiety to cause a problem there.  So we decided to let Blue go and live a better life with someone who could devote lots of love, affection, and attention to him,  and he could return that favor to his owner.  As far as we’ve heard, they’ve taken to each other beautifully, and I’m really very happy that Blue is getting what he needs.

The boys haven’t even asked where the dog is, so all our worries that this would totally traumatize them turned out to be much ado about nothing.

So goodbye Blue Dog.  We will miss you, but we are happy you have a better home.

Love, Your First Mom

October 26th, 2009

Do You See What I See?

I generally sit around thinking my life sucks.  I mean, yeah, I have these kids that I love.  And yeah, I’m certainly doing better now than I was when I couldn’t eat and had no roof over my head.  I have a place to live, running water, and heat, which is much more than I had most of my childhood so that’s definitely a step up.  And sure, things aren't as bad for me as they are for some other people.  Thinking about that doesn't help though.  I am nowhere near where I want to be – and I have always filed "Not what I want” in the same box as “Bad.” 

So it always shocks the shit out of me when other people talk about how great they think my life is.  All I ever think about is what I don’t have.  It consumes me.  The Void is what keeps me sick with stress, and motivates me keep reaching higher/farther/deeper.   I don’t have a perfect marriage.  I don’t have perfect children.  I don’t have the house that I want, or the career that I want, or the hair that I want, etc. etc. etc.  (I could keep adding to this list all day, but surely you get my point.)

Yet in the last week – three different friends have made comments to me, apropos nothing, about my life being “amazing.”  Huh?!

These aren’t cyber friends either.  These are people who’ve either witnessed babies come out of me, or who drank MadDog 20/20 with me before either of us was old enough to drive.  I may not talk to them often, but suffice to say they know me.  So hearing this come from them really got my attention.  My life is amazing?  You can’t be serious!  Have you not been paying attention?  Remember:

• I have no degree
• I am the embodiment of stress
• I feel like everybody hates me
• I doubt my mothering skills every second of the day
• I’m wondering why I ever agreed to be married to anybody (and he’s a fine husband, so that leaves me feeling endlessly guilty because I know some other low-maintenance woman would be lucky to have him, only he doesn’t want some other low-maintenance woman, he wants me, which means I’ve effectively brainwashed a totally innocent man into tying his life to mine.)
• I don’t own a home
• I’m not cool anymore
• Maybe I never was?
• I cry all the time – for no good reason – without provocation
• No matter what I tell anybody else, I do not really believe I’ll ever finish my law degree – because seriously?  No Crosley ever finished High School, let alone got a freaking Juris Doctor so who the hell am I kidding here?  That kind of thing does NOT happen to Crosleys.
• But I still try because I cannot accept defeat. 
• And yet I still feel defeated every day.

Sometimes I truly feel that I’m trying to save the Titanic by scooping out one cup of water at a time.

So how can someone else, someone whose life I admire and whose life I wish I lived, look at me and tell me that my life looks so great?  How can they think I have an amazing life?  In a conversation with one friend, I told her how everything was just too hard and she said “You can handle it, you’re the strongest person I know.”  What?  Me? I’m the weakest person I know!  She for the record, is the strongest person I know.  As far as I can tell, everyone everywhere is doing a better job than me, including her. 

So what is wrong with me?  Why can’t I appreciate the fact that I do have a husband who puts up with me, and two healthy kids, and a roof over our head?  Why can’t I just enjoy the fact that I’m in school, even if it will take me another 5 years to be where I want?  Why can’t I be okay with where I am in life, instead of always thinking about where I’m not?  Am I a habitual pessimist?  Maybe I’m just a brat. 

Or maybe my life does suck as much as I assume, but I’ve somehow managed to fool the people around me with some superficial appearance of happiness?

I get this way about my grades too. Yes, I have a perfect 4.0 GPA.  But even that is not good enough for me.  It’s a rouse.  I feel like I must have tricked them into giving it to me because I am a Crosley after all, and we’re generally good-for-nothing.  How could one of us possibly be on the Dean’s List?  I think that if I have a 4.0, they must not be that hard to get.  Maybe I go to the one private university in the country that gives A’s to every single student?  I don’t know.  On the one hand I’m proud of it, but on the other hand even the pride I feel from looking at my perfect grades won’t fill The Void.

Oh… The Void.  The ever present monkey on my back.  The hunger that won’t be satiated.  The hole that won’t be filled.

All I know is that I’m tired of feeling sad and defeated all the time. I wish I could live this “amazing” life that other people think I live.  Maybe I really should go back on Zoloft, but being medicated is just one more way of being defeated.

Will anything ever be enough?

Blah.

September 23rd, 2009

Why Don’t Men Have a Choice? (Part 2 of 2)

Some time back I enjoyed a thought provoking post by a blogger I admire.  I don’t want to make her uncomfortable by naming her outright, because in this post I am going to (gently, if I can) disagree with what she said (scratch that, she's given me permission to name her, so if you want to see who it is, make with the clicky-click on that link).  I’m glad she posted what she did, because it was not something I had ever thought too much about before reading her position on it.

In her post (and I’m paraphrasing here) this blogger expressed her annoyance with people who had always asked what she wanted to “be” when she grew up.  She claimed she had always wanted to be a mother.  End of story.  Simply put, she never wanted a career, unless that career was being a Mom.  And she felt that anyone who thought that she needed a life plan outside of motherhood was being critical and disrespectful.  After all, feminism is about the choice to be a mother or not, right?

I certainly think it’s just fine if a family agrees that one partner should stay home with the children.  Sounds totally fair to me.  Marriage is a partnership, and families need to figure out what works best for them.

But what I find problematic about her position is this: How can you decide you’re going to be a mother when you grow up – and not a wage earner – before you find the person who’s going to give you babies and support you?  Do you know of a single man who got to decide this for himself as a child?  With women, it’s expected that they should have this choice. With men, it’s expected that they won’t.

Picture this:  Teacher asks a little boy what he wants to be when he grows up.

Little boy says:  "A Stay at Home Dad."

Teacher says:  "Okay, you want to be a husband and a father – great, admirable even – but what do you want to do, like, for money?"

Little boy says:  "Nothing.  I only want to be a house-husband."

Teacher: "Okay son, but you really need a backup plan."

Why does he need a backup plan?  Well, not to be insensitive, but his plans in life rely on a whole lot of things that are entirely out of his control lining up perfectly for him.  What if he doesn’t find a wife?  What if they can’t have children?  What if the person he falls deeply in love with either cannot support him, or she had decided at age 9 that she wanted to be the one to stay home?  Who gets to stay home?  Or what if his perfect wife loses her ability to work?   What then?   And let’s say all these things work out perfectly for the little boy.  What does he do in the meantime?  You know, that time between age 18 and whenever you meet your spouse?  Surely he needs to make some cash while he’s waiting for Mrs. Right (and their offspring) to come along?  Right?

But come on.  Boys don’t get this choice.  Okay, in some progressive relationships they do (like how mine started out) but this is not a societal norm.  The fact is, when kids come along, and one person can afford to stay home, it’s usually assumed by everyone on the block that it will be the mom.  People say “It’s her choice – that’s what feminism is all about.”  But where was Daddy’s choice in the matter?  Nobody ever mentions that Daddy should have gotten the option as well.

But why?  Some would argue that mom is better at it, and I would say that is just not true in our house.  My husband is just as good of a parent as I am.  In some ways, he’s better.  He’s more patient, and less jumpy.   He doesn’t handle the minutiae the way my Type-A, over-achieving, aggressive personality does, but he’s also a lot more temperate and rational than I am.  Who says the kids would be worse off with him (or any dad) at home?

I find the whole argument that “feminism is about choice” problematic in and of itself.  That’s all I’m saying.  I can’t quite figure out the solution to what I see as an unbalance, I just want to acknowledge that it’s there, and it’s strange to me.

These two posts aren’t meant to be any sort of hard line political statement on the issue (though I’m quite certain some people will read something into them and send me hate mail anyway.)  They are merely meant to be a written catharsis about my guilt over quitting my job and subsequently putting all of the burden on my husband to pay the bills.  Maybe if he made more money, and my joblessness was barely noticeable to our finances, I might not feel so bad.  But when everyone talks about how feminism gave me the right to stay home with my kids, the equalist part of me just wants to know what sort of movement will give Dads the right to do the same thing? 

I started to write a long list of things I think our society could do to “even” out the parenting roles, but I’m more interested in what you all have to say about this.  Tell me – can you imagine a world where it was okay, expected even, for a boy to grow up with only the dream of becoming a Stay-at-Home-Dad?  What do you make of that world?

(Before you comment, I will say that we can probably have a truly intellectual little conversation about this providing that nobody decides to take this as some attack on their Stay-at-Home-Mommyness.  It's okay to be comfortable with your choice, but to also question the meat and potatoes of that choice at the same time.  That's what I'm doing, and I hope you'll join me.)

September 20th, 2009

Mothers are like Vampires…

No…really.  Think about it.

Mothers are nocturnal.

Mothers can sense when their loved ones are in danger, even if they're not in the same room.

Mothers can move faster than the speed of sound to snatch a falling child out of mid-air just seconds before they hit the ground.

Just like Vampires.

And today, I decided there's a new trait.  After trying, and failing miserably, to refresh my appearance, I've decided it's not even possible.  In the same way that vampires cannot change their hair, neither can I.

I went in to the stylist today and asked for my punk rock hair back.  I used to be cute.  Before people came out of my vagina, I looked like a rocker.  I looked on the outside what I felt like on the inside.  You could tell by being in the same room with me what I was about.  You could tell by looking at me that I played in a band and lived an exciting life.

But not anymore. No matter who I get to cut my hair, I cannot look like anything but a mother.  It's impossible.  Look at that haircut.  Could I LOOK anymore like a soccer mom?  I asked her for Punk Rock/Joan Jett in 1978 —- DOES THAT LOOK ANYTHING LIKE JOAN JETT IN 1978?!?!!?!?!?  I would insert many, many expletives here, but I know some Christians read my blog so I'll spare y'all the blasphemy.

Apparently I will have the "Mom Bob" for the rest of my natural life now.  It's inevitable.  People will never again look at me and think "oh, I bet she plays guitar" or "oh look, it's that girl who played in those cool bands!"  Nope.  They will look at me and think "I wonder how many kids she has" or "yeah, she clearly never did anything even remotely cool in her entire life."

And with that, I will leave you with this video. It is hilariously, painfully true.  There is no avoiding it. Time to mix up some oxycotin and Jack Daniels, then drink away the pain
of assimilation.  I'm a mom, and there ain't nuthin' cool about it.