We didn't have infertility.
We didn't have the trauma of IVF
We didn't have to endure the horror and mental anguish of miscarriage.
We didn't have to tell each other that children were not in our cards.
Deciding to have another child after what she . . . we . . . went through with our first boy was a tough decision. But we thought we knew what to expect and that we would be ready this time. We would know what to watch out for and know what the struggles will be and it will be easier.
Yeah, that is what we thought.
First, though, there was a big stressor in our marriage that was like an elephant in the room. It all had to do with the aftermath of the first birth. Can I be blunt? Are we all adults and understand those things that two people that love each other that no one talks about but know happen? Can we can be open and plain with each other? I hope so.
After the first birth, my wife had pretty extensive damage to her birth canal and the recovery was not the most pleasant. The aftermath left her with scarring and it was very difficult for her to be intimate with me because she would have bleeding and bad pain (more like excruciating) for days afterward. Seriously, she would suffer. Like, hard to walk piercing pain don't touch her suffering.
I am not sure how others would treat this but you can imagine that my wife was in quite a mental state about it. She just could not get in the "mood" because to her it was going to hurt and she would be paying for it for days afterward. But on the other hand, she truly believed that I would leave her because of her unwillingness and hesitancy. That guilt was so much that she decided to endure the pain and not tell me. Can you even comprehend what she was doing to herself? Because she feared that I would leave her is why she chose to have sex even though it was excruciating and she would suffer pain for days afterward. So, she went through the pain and the suffering quietly and endured it.
And it ripped my soul open when I found out.
I am not oblivious. It is an irritating quirk of mine to always be on the lookout for anything that changes with my wife. Chalk it up to being a science guy. I am observant. It started with seeing her wearing a pad for a couple of days after we were intimate. After I made the connection between the two, I ask her about it after I saw her wincing and then she shrugged it off. It was more than just my size and her size like before. I could tell, it was more than just an inconvenience. When I understood, I was broken inside. She was choosing for me to abuse her body and to suffer in pain for days instead of telling me out of fear that I would leave. She did this out of fear of me leaving her because of something she had no control over. She did this for like one and a half years. Can you even come close to being able to see what I am trying to describe? We tried to see if there was anything we could do to fix the problem.... yeah, "fix" is not really a good word to describe it but it is the only one I can think of. She had a surgery (episiotomy) and some scaring removed but it didn't work. So, what now?
And she wanted another baby and she knew I wanted another one too. We had decided two years difference in our boys would be a decent gap so we stopped using birth control measures. We didn't know when but we hoped it would be sooner than our first boy. And, again, it was just not in our cards. We would try and then wait for her to recover ..... Wait for a positive test. Then we would try again. Wait, again.
It was not really a great experience for us to tell the truth. Here we are trying to have another baby but one of us is physically suffering pain for days after each try and both of us are suffering emotional pain from things that are out of our control. We went through the whole ordeal again (see the births part one). This time though, you can add the fact that I was basically assaulting my wife. Well, I suppose technically I was not if it was consensual but, in my mind, and heart..... Hurting her like that on purpose even if she wanted me to was as good as abuse. It is not really easy to ...... Well ...... Be able to..... Perform? God, how do you explain something like this to people that have no idea what it is like..... What we were both physically and mentally and emotionally suffering with?
God. You can't even imagine I bet. I still don't think I am coming close to describing it...... To really put words to this thing that is like a twisted little devil that sits in the room just putting pressure on a relationship and the pure will and love power we had to keep it at bay.
And this went on for months. And then over a year.
Then, just like that...... just like the first time. We got a positive test. She was pregnant again.
We were so excited but that was tempered by the effort it took. It was tempered by what we knew was coming up. There was a lot to do and to plan for. And so it began.
Everything seemed to be going so much better this time. We were being treated at Vanderbilt and she was placed on high-risk but no bed rest. She developed pre-gestational diabetes and that was caught a lot sooner than with our first. All her vitals and all of the milestones hit when and how they were supposed to. We even were told that if there was a problem with the birth, they could have the baby out in less than 5min.
It was a lot better this time around. But as always. . . . when things seem too good to be true. . . . you know
Everything was going pretty good until the morning which was one month from the due date. My wife and I were sitting at the table before school started.
She flippantly looked at me and said, "You know, if this was our first boy, he would be born today."
I was like, "Shhhh! Don't jinx us! Damn, Girl!"
We giggled a little and then went about our day.
And what was a small joke in the morning with a little giggle of reminiscence, became real.
Her water broke that night.
My wife was not quite in the mental state she was the first time around. We've been through this once before and everything was rolling just like it was the first time so there was nothing to worry about compared to last time.
Me? I was worried about everything. I was worried about more hemorrhaging. I was worried about hospital time. I was worrying about whether or not there was something wrong with the baby. I was worrying about why this baby was early just like the other one. But of course nothing could be answered till we got to the hospital so off we went.
On the way to the hospital, we had our first stumble. Our first son got car sick on the way and threw up all over himself. It was all over the front of him and all in his booster seat. That was quite the ride to the hospital smelling that of course! And when we got to the hospital my aunt was there waiting for us and I told her that he was sick and he had vomit all over him. She said she'd take him anyway. I don't know if she truly realized how much that meant to me. So, I unstrapped his belt and put him in her car in his car seat and all, Up chuck all over him and all. She gave me a hug and off we went our separate ways.
In the hospital, My wife was all hooked up and ready to go. She was having contractions regularly and it seemed as if all was fine. Of course, that was not going to be the case soon.
When she was having a contraction, three nurses and a doctor came rushing in and set on her with what they thought were voices and actions that were just normal procedure, but I could tell were not as they seemed. They were moving with a sense of urgency even though they were trying to hide the fact. They were asking a lot of questions and checking a lot of readings and palpitating all over her belly. I could tell that there was something that was not right and that they were worried.
It happened all at once. They told my wife that they were going to turn her while telling her that they were struggling to get a heartbeat for the baby. They inserted a device up to the baby to check the heartbeat. That's when the doctor looked at the nurses and said, "we go now." I one nurse pull cords out of the wall and the other nurse grabbed the chords on the other side of the bed while the third opened the door to the room.
And they were gone.
Just like that - - they were gone.
One moment I was in a room full of people and the next I was standing in an empty room wondering what the hell just happened. Right after that thought a nurse came with some blue outfit and told me my wife was ready and that I needed to come with her right now. I did. Putting on the outfit she handed me which was an overalls-like paper thing that was labeled "one size fits all," I rushed with the nurse down the hall to where I hoped my wife was.
I walked into the room and saw her laying on a table with a surgical cap over her head and she was covered down to just below the breasts with a green sheet and a green sheet was upright over the upper tummy like a screen. I thought - c-section. When I looked down to my wife, I saw that she was shaking uncontrollably. I asked why she was shaking, and they told me that it was the anesthesia that did that. I whispered to her that everything would be ok while tears trickled down her cheek.
When I looked up to see what was happening, I was shocked to see my baby boy's head clear the top of the sheet screening the bottom of my wife's body. Later when all was said and done, I would think to myself that when they said that they can get a baby out in a few minutes that they weren't kidding! But for now, I was barely hanging on to thinking straight and everything was happening so fast. I stood up and moved to keep my son in sight as they handed him off to a nurse who set him on a sheet covered table under a bright light.
The first thing I noticed was a deep depression in the middle of his chest as he cried like someone was taking their finger and pushing the center of his chest hard, pushing the skin down to the table. It was deep and I didn't like the look of it. It didn't look right. When he gasped in a breath, the depression would rise up to be flat with the rest of his chest and when he screamed it would plunge straight back into his chest again. It was definitely not right.
I was then being guided out of the room and back to the room we started in. They ushered me in and told me that my wife would be there shortly. I asked if I could go with my son and they told me that I would not be able to and that I would be able to see him later. That worried me because I was able to follow my oldest son to where they prepped him and I still had that image of his chest in my mind that I was rolling around and building worry about.
It seemed like a long time for all this to happen but in reality, from the time they took her from the room to the time I was put back in the room was probably less than 10 minutes. As I look back it was one of those time where times slowed down to be a crawl as the stress and anxiety took hold. And as for me, I was taking in an incredible amount of information through sight and sound and it all was overwhelming. Standing there in the room afterwards when it was over almost had me fall to my knees with the confusion of it all.
My wife came back and was asleep. They told me she did just fine and to let her sleep it off. I sat next to her to just take a few moments and calm myself in her presence and having the comfort of her breathing in the comfort of sleep. I was mentally and emotionally spent and needed that time to recharge.
Later that morning we found out that our boy was not ok. He was not in danger or critical but he was not able to be brought back to our room. They told us that he would have to stay in the NICU for awhile but that they didn't know how long. You see, that depression I saw in his chest was a problem. They told us that since he was not born naturally that he was not squeezed and that an air bubble was in his chest keeping one of his lungs from fully inflating. That was why his chest did that when he cried. They said it was nothing to worry about and that the air would just defuse out of the body on its own. It was somewhat common for C-section babies and all we had to do was wait.
It was devastating for us. No one really prepares you to see your baby in NICU. He was so small and he had all these wires and tubes hanging off him. We could only look at him through the incubator and I would watch the lines and numbers roll across all the screens of the machines he was hooked up to. We would visit him as much as we were able to for the next couple of days.
And on the third day they told us that our insurance would not cover my wife staying at the hospital until our boy was released. . . . and if she wanted to stay it would be over a $1000 a day.
It was heart breaking to have to be told that we couldn't stay with our baby and that we couldn't afford the absorbent costs of staying in the hospital with him. We were crushed and we were frightened. We had one more visit with our baby and they let us hold him for the first time since he was born. We sat and cried. We were going to leave soon. We were going to leave the hospital without our baby. We were going to leave him there. And it broke us.
We reluctantly handed him over to the nurse and slowly gathered up our belongings. We struggled towards our car in the basement as if there was someone holding us back every step of the way. We sat in our van in the basement for probably two hours . . . neither of us wanting to go. Neither of us wanting to leave with our baby still in the hospital. But the time came where it had to be done. We had to go and I had to be strong enough to do it.
She cried the entire way home.
After a day of crying and pain, we received a call to be told our son was ready to come home the next morning. We didn't even sleep that night and waited to head back to get him. The one thing I remember vividly was how the nurses said that they didn't want to see him go since he was one of the few that they could actually hold because the others had to stay in the incubators. But he was ready and healthy, and he was ours to take with us! We were so ecstatic!
The next several weeks were nerve wracking as we worried about every little hiccup. But as we gained confidence that he was growing and he was being a normal baby, we eased into being new parents and enjoyed every moment with him.
And that was our journey with our second boy's birth.
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