Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Monty Waits in the Wings

Sunday, May 19th

Kurt is walking through our apartment describing the things on the walls to our son while I sit on an ice pack.  "Here's the pots and pans.  We use that one to cook bacon.  You'll have bacon someday.  It's awesome."  In the one week since we got home, he has already become expert at calming the baby when he's fussing and we know he's full and has a clean diaper. 

Sunday, May 12th

I'm sitting in the back seat of Kurt's truck with my sleeping newborn in his carseat.  We're driving home from the hospital, a trip I was hoping we wouldn't have to take.  Outside, all around us in Los Angeles families are having brunch, celebrating Mother's Day.  Life goes on like normal for everyone else, while our lives have just been changed forever.  Everyone sips mimosas like it's any other day.  I am a different person than I was 48 hours earlier.

Thursday, May 9th

1:30pm:  My midwife checks my cervix.  I'm one centimeter dilated, which means nothing in terms of when I will go into labor.  It could be hours or it could be days.  I ask if I can get the induction points done in acupuncture.  She says I can and reminds me that it won't make labor happen if the baby isn't ready.  The most it will likely do, she says is head things in that general direction.  That's good enough for me.

3pm:  The acupuncturist warns me that I may feel some cramping during the session and again later in the day.  At this point I'm used to cramping, so I don't pay too much attention to it.

7pm:  I'm hungry and once again have a mean craving for roast chicken and mashed potatoes.  We order in.  I pull out my thank you cards and write a couple notes.  The cramping starts.  I ignore it. 
"Dear Susan, Thank you so much for all the (cramp) baby gear!  We are so touched by your (cramp) thoughtfulness. (cramp)  I can't wait to start reading (cramp) the (cramp) breast feeding (cramp) book. (cramp)"  I put the note down, run a bath and Kurt pours me a glass of wine.

7:30pm:  Kurt is sitting next to me as I writhe in the tub.  Kurt wants to call the midwife.  I assure him the nice acupuncture lady told me I would have some cramping.  "It'll pass. (cramp)" I say.

7:45pm:  "I think we made a huge mistake," I tell Kurt.  He calls the midwife.  She tells us to call our doula right away.  "Really?" I ask.  "It's not just (cramp) cramping?"  She stays on the phone with me through the next few cramps.  "I'm on my way over," she says.  This is when it hits me that I am actually in labor.

I lose track of time.  Our doula arrives.  I am flopping around on the bed trying to "stay on top" of the contractions.  "Imagine riding out the contraction like you're on top of a wave," my doula says.  But I'm not a strong swimmer and being in the ocean kind of scares me.  It's not a good analogy, but I can think of no other, so I do what she says and imagine myself riding the top of a wave, trying to ignore the shark that inevitably makes an appearance.  It doesn't help.  I am bleating like a sheep.  My midwife arrives.  She checks me and I'm at 9 centimeters.  "You're going to have a baby today," she says.  "Oh, thank Christ," I bleat.  She gently chides me about not tensing up when the contractions come.  "Sink into the pillows," she tells me.  I want to tell her to go fuck herself, but I remember that she's been through this thousands of time while I never have.  It would be smart to do what she says.

But there is no sinking into anything.  With each contraction I am tightening up my body.  I'm still bleating like a sheep.  My midwife wants me to use lower tones.  "No screaming," she says quietly.  "Moaning."  Now I'm moaning like a cow.  "MooooOOOOoooo!  Moo!  Moo!  MOOOOOOOOO!"  She tells Kurt to pour me more wine.

She calls her assistant and I remember from my child birth class that the assistant comes when it's time to start pushing.  I vaguely think to call my parents but that thought flies out of my head as a sensation comes over me that I can only describe as throwing up backward.  I have no control over my body and I begin to push without thinking.

Everyone keeps falling asleep and I don't understand why.  It seems like I've only been at this for a couple hours.  Why is everyone so tired?  I feel bad every time I have another contraction and everyone has to spring back into action to rub my back and remind me not to bleat like a stuck sheep and to "drink more wine!"

I move to the toilet, hoping the sitting will make relaxing easier.  The assistant is standing beside me and all I can think is, "She's going to get blood on her socks."  My water breaks.  Someone announces it's 4:30 in the morning.  I am shocked.  No wonder everyone is falling asleep.

Friday, May 10th

5am:  I finally get in the birthing tub.  Despite the immense pain I am overjoyed as I know that getting in the tub means I'll be having my baby any minute now.  The contractions keep getting worse and the urge to push is so strong I feel like there's a bowling ball in my pelvis.  My midwife tells me that I can labor in the tub but that I'll have to deliver "on dry land" because I took Wellbutrin through my pregnancy and it may cause breathing problems with the baby.  It seems like it's time, so I climb out of the tub and waddle back to my bedroom.  I was born on this bed and my child will be born on this bed.

My midwife checks me again.  I have regressed.  My cervix has swollen and I'm down to 7 centimeters.  The baby is in the wrong position.  He's sunny side up and he needs to turn 180 degrees if we want things to progress normally.  Which, of course, we do.  And this might explain the unmanageable pain that I can not "get on top of".  She urges me to stop pushing as it's not helping my labor progress and it's most likely the cause of the swelling.  But I can't help it.  She orders up more wine, but I have already drunk the whole bottle and we don't have any more.

The sun has come up.  I hear garbage trucks lumbering down the street.  I get out of bed again and wander through my apartment.  I wind up at the threshold of the kitchen in between the dogs' water bowls and the garbage can.  Someone puts a chucks pad under me and I imagine someday telling my child, "You were born next to the garbage can." ....  I see the midwife's assistant's feet and again worry that she'll get blood on her socks.  Her socks are really nice.  It would be a shame to ruin them.

My midwife wants to check me again.  She rigs the couch with chucks pads and towels.  The walk from the kitchen to the couch is maybe 15 feet and the distance seems impossible.  I haven't progressed any farther.  I'm still at 7 centimeters and my midwife again asks me to stop pushing.  "No dice," I try to say, but it comes out like, "No diiiiiiiiiiiiUUUUUUUGHHHHMOOOOOOOOOOO!"

10am:  My midwife says the thing I don't want to hear.

"The wise thing to do right now would be to go to the hospital."  She says it without pity or apology.  "You're exhausted and something is wrong."

"Is there something wrong with the baby?" I stammer.

"No.  But you can't keep going like this.  You're not progressing and you're exhausted.  You should go to the hospital and get some relief.  It's what I would do."

Everything I had worked so hard for.  All the walking.  The yoga.  The eating right.  The chanting.  All the times I said these words to my unborn baby, "Head down.  Chin to chest.  Hands over your heart.  Back to belly.  Don't play with the cord.  Crystal clear water.  You can poop when you get out.  And give me a nice big holler."  All that hard work and good intention.  The tiny t-shirt my father brought from Brooklyn that had been mine that says "Born at Home" across the front.  The pictures I wanted of me holding my baby for the first time in our home.  The not wanting the cord cut right away.  The not wanting all the drugs pumped into my baby from my blood supply.  The desperately not wanting my baby to born in a sterile, cold hospital room.  In that moment it all felt like a waste of time.

I feel like a failure.

I consider crying, but honestly, I'm too exhausted and I don't see the point.  Apparently I had been asking to go to the hospital for hours, but I think I was using the idea of going to the hospital and getting the epidural as a coping mechanism.  I really didn't want to go to the hospital, I just wanted to know that I could.  Kurt feeds me some yogurt.  It's the first thing I've eaten since 4pm the day before.  It's plain and unsweetened and disgusting, but I know once I get to the hospital there will be no eating until the baby is born and at the rate I'm going that could be some time next week.

I ride to the hospital in my midwife's car.  Kurt and my doula follow in their cars.  My midwife makes small talk with me as if we were on our way to breakfast.  "I saw the picture on your wall of you with the Clintons!" She says.  "Yeah."  "That's pretty impressive!"  "I was on Broadway as a kid.  So, I got to sing at Clinton's inaugural ball.  (Ugh ugh. Moo mooo mooooo.)" 

She reminds me that the hospital staff is there to help me and that I should try to be nice to them.  There's no need for the reminder.  These people are going to give me pain relief.  As far as I'm concerned they all have a special spot in heaven waiting for them.

 ***********

Stay tuned for part 2 in which this baby finally makes his entrance.

Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Baby?

On Friday night the contractions that have been coming and going for the past few weeks started coming more frequently and with increasing intensity.  I managed to sleep through the night (if you call getting up to pee 60 times between midnight and 10 "sleeping through the night") and Kurt and I made it to a couple's prenatal yoga class on Saturday.  The contractions continued throughout the day without regularity and got more and more painful.  We had tickets to see Jacques Pepin give a cooking presentation at The Valley Arts Center in Northridge at 8pm.  I knew we were taking a gamble when we bought the tickets considering it was the night before I was actually due.  But I keep being told I will go past my due date by ten days most likely, so I figured we'd be safe.  And Pepin is one of Kurt's heroes, so we wanted to at least make an attempt.  My parents' flight got in around 6pm, so we had just enough time to drop my car off with them and head up to Northridge.

On the way to Northridge my good friend, Annie called to check in.  She has two kids.  She wanted to know how I was doing.  "Well," I said, "if I wasn't pregnant, I'd be about to have the most epic period of my life."  "Dude, that's labor," said she.  She urged me to download a contraction timer app (yes, there's an app for that), to Google the nearest hospital, you know, just in case, and to keep her posted.  I did what she asked, even though I was sure I was imagining the whole thing.  If I really were in labor it would mean I'd most likely be delivering on my actual due date, something that only happens 5% of the time. 

It was not happening.

I spent most of the presentation concentrating on what was going on in my body, trying not to distract Kurt too much.  He kept half an eye on me, but frankly, watching Jacques Pepin debone a chicken in 3 minutes is pretty difficult to compete with.  The baby could have been crowning and I don't think it would have done much to sway Kurt's focus.  I don't blame him.  Jacques Pepin is a fucking kitchen god.

As soon as the presentation was over, I called my midwife and told her what was going on.   Her expert medical advice was to take a bath, have a big glass of wine and try to get some sleep.  Considering the task ahead, rest was going to be pretty important.  I got off the phone and burst into tears.

It was happening.

When we got home, we prepared the bed with two sets of sheets (the good ones under the crappy ones with a layer of wee wee pads in between), put the tarp and towels under the birthing tub and set up the lighting I wanted in the room where I was planning on doing the bulk of the laboring.

I took a bath, drank a glass of red wine through a bendy straw and went to bed.

But here's the thing, when the possibility of bringing a new human into this world THE NEXT DAY is on the table, there's not enough wine om the planet to put you out.  Even after the contractions stopped, I laid in bed, tossing and turning.  Around 2 a.m, I resigned myself to a night of no sleep, got up, made myself some food and watched TV.  Finally, some time after 4, with the contractions completely stopped, I fell asleep. 

It was not happening.

At 7:30 I woke up with another contraction. 

It was finally happening.  For real this time.

I ate some breakfast, took a shower and blow dried my hair.  Because God only knows what my face will look like after hours of natural labor, but at the very least I can make sure my hair is did.  Priorities, people.

Once my hair was done I did the next logical thing.  I fell asleep.

And now, here it is, more than two days after the call to the midwife and nothing is doing.  The best thing to do is to keep myself distracted, go to yoga, go to the movies (Ben Kingsley is out of control goood in Iron Man 3), half-heartedly write blog entries, but of course the ONLY thing I'm thinking about is what might happen any minute and what will definitely happen some time in the next 12 days.  Kurt is also trying to stay distracted, though, with a job that's easier than it is for me.  He can't wait to be a dad and put tiny socks on our baby.

Meanwhile, Krumholtz continues to stretch his/her tiny little butt and legs and I look like the dude from Total Recall right before Quato comes bursting out of his abdomen.  "Open your vagina.  Open your vagiiiiiiiiiiina."

Incidentally, one of the best pieces of advice I've gotten was to tell people my due date was two weeks later than it actually was so that people wouldn't start bugging me around my due date.  I REALLY wish I had listened to that one.  I now consider the "Is it happening?" phone call to be even worse than the "Did you know you look just like Lena Dunham?" phone call.

Also, I'ma let you finish, but here's a picture of me last Friday eating a tangerine in the pool like a boss.

Photo by Nia Renee Hill


Friday, May 3, 2013

The Letter

Dear Little Krumholtz,

I've been meaning to write to you for a while now, but it's hard to write to someone you don't know.  Like in 4th grade when they make you write to a penpal in Malawi.  All you end up writing is, "Dear Ngulinga, Hello!  My name is Daisy.  I live in Brooklyn.  I have to cats that are named Spot and Sofi Sofie Sophie.  I like them very much.  My favorite teem is The Mets.  What is your favorite teem?  My mom won't let me eat anything Nestles makes because she says they go into your country and tell wimen to use formula insted of brest milk.  Do you like formula?"  Meanwhile Ngulinga is like, "I have no shoes and I have to walk 5 miles every evening to get fresh water for my family so we don't all die of dysentery."  Also, I was a terrible speller in 4th grade.  You will be better.

You are due to arrive this Sunday, but I am reminded at every turn that you will probably be late.  I can't blame you, it's very dark in there and I don't think they gave you a map when you got there.  I hear if you have an iPhone you can't rely on the maps app that came with it.  Best to download Google maps.  If your smart phone isn't working (water damage, probably) or you don't have one, just head in the direction you're already facing:  Down.  That should do it.  If all else fails, just follow the sounds of shrieking.  That'll be me.

Your dad and I are about as ready as we can be.  Everything is all set up for your arrival.  I still try to walk as much as possible.  My midwife assures me that walking will help you "slide right out".  I think she may be exaggerating a touch.  I have now walked every inch of this neighborhood and have listened to about 6000 hours of This American Life.  Incidentally, wait til you hear my Ira Glass impression.  It will blow your mind.

There are so many things I want to teach you.  The world is a big, scary, wonderful place and I want you to have to best possible opportunities.  Basically I want you to be exactly like me, only much, much better.

With that in mind, here are some things you should know:
  •  Cats are assholes.
  • Math homework is stupid and you're right, you will never need to know how to calculate sine and cosine in the real world.  You will, however, need to know how to do that in order to pass to the next grade and therefore go to college and then get your masters and then your doctorate which, by the time you're ready to join the job market, you will need just to get hired as a "sandwich artist" at Subway.
  • "Sandwich Artist" is a thing.
  • People will tell you that bullies grow up to be fat, miserable people.  This is not necessarily true and anyway the point is moot.  When you're being bullied it hardly matters how that bully will end up in life.  The truth is bullies are shitheads, regardless of where they will end up.  Besides, you should feel bad for them.  Chances are they'll grow up to be Republicans.
  • If anyone ever bullies you I will seriously go all Tonya Harding on them.  I have no qualms maiming a child.
  • If you ever bully anyone I will make you wear a sign around your neck that reads, "I'm a douche".  I'm not kidding. 
  • Try to pick a recession-proof profession like lap dancing or plumbing.  No matter what the state of the economy is, people will always need a lap dance and clean pipes.
  • Don't buy bananas in bunches.  You will never eat all the bananas before they go bad and there's only so much banana bread you can make.
  • "The Office" was a really good show for about the first four or five seasons and then it went off the rails big time.
  • Feel free to practice whatever religion you want.  Just know that if you come home and tell us you're Wiccan we will not take you seriously.  Also, you will feel really stupid when you realize how much money you wasted on candles, sage and dream catchers.  But, you know, be who you are!
  • Always wipe from front to back.
  • Your father and I don't care who you love.  As long as they're not a member of the NRA.
  • Do not do any of the following things before you turn 30:
    • Get a tattoo
    • Get married
    • Enter show business
    • Get yourself/someone pregnant
  • Learn Chinese.  That way, when China takes the entire west coast of this country to settle up the massive debt we owe them, you will be ahead of the game. 
  • It is impossible to "foster" a dog After five minutes with the dog you will already be weeping over its eventual death.  Unless you are a sociopath.  So, if anyone asks you to foster a dog, be prepared to have that dog for the rest of its life.
  • Do not become the kind of person who has 7 million dogs.  I don't want to see you on Hoarders.
  • People will always post nonsensical, nasty or ignorant comments on even the most innocuous content you put on the internet.  Have some compassion.  They lack basic critical thinking skills and are convinced they have something useful to add to society.  Also, their mothers never loved them.
  • Don't be an alcoholic.  For one thing, I have too many of them in my life already and for another, just don't.
  • If you ever tell me you want to be an actor I will come down with sudden brain damage that renders me unable to understand words. 
And that's it.  That is everything you need to know to lead a healthy, productive, happy life.  I'm pretty sure that's it.

Oh, also?  Don't be a dick.

Here's a picture of you and me from last Sunday:

Over it

I love you very much.

-Mom