Battles with Tarzan

There is one thing that I hope my girls ...

STOP. "My girls." Those words still sound so weird to me. They are so beautifully, magically, unbelievably weird. And fantastic.

ANYWAY.

I hope that some day my girls think back and remember these words that were written in this blog:

C-SECTIONS ARE THE WORST.

I don't mean that as a complaint; I mean that as blackmail. Someday when they are picking a nursing home where I will spend my golden years, I hope that they remember that getting cut open, gutted, having nearly 10 pounds ripped from your body, and then getting sewn back up is a level of misery that I wouldn't wish upon my worst enemy. Drugs help, but they certainly don't make it OK.

Go with the nice nursing home, girls, because I'm about to detail exactly how much you owe me.

(Mila, you owe me a tiny bit more than Alexis does. I'm just sayin'.)

The same drugs that make a c-section almost tolerable apparently make my body SUPER unhappy. It was the sort of thing that I figured out back when Alexis was born, but I didn't know it was the drugs back then. I thought maybe human error was to blame for the nausea that hit me like a tornado in the moments before and following her birth. One of my most vivid memories of that night is puking into a burgundy bedpan while the husband sat at the foot of my bed eating M&Ms.

He was hungry. I vowed to never eat M&Ms again.

It occurred to me that I should mention the puking thing to the anesthesiologist before we got started this time around. He double-checked some things and vowed that he was prepared. We even had a signal I could use if I couldn't talk when it hit.

And I couldn't. Minutes before the cutting began, before the spinal had even set in, the nausea came flying into the room like Tarzan. I was toast. I made the signal, the anesthesiologist jumped like a jack-in-the-box, and things were quickly under control. I'm pretty sure I owe the guy a hug for moving as fast as he did.

But eventually Mila was a real, live, awesome thing that I can stare at for hours on end and we were back in my room. We were back in my room with the anesthesiologist still there, waiting to make sure the drugs did everything they were supposed to do. Tarzan came storming in again. That time my bestie with the drugs wasn't quite as quick and I had to wage war against the contents of my stomach.

I won. Barely.

That was the beginning of hours of battles against puke.

Some of the battles were relatively easy, others not so much. But when another soldier entered the battlefield, things got more complicated.

Alexis.

As soon as she was out of school, she was rushed to the hospital to meet her new sibling. There will be more on that later because it was The Best Ever, but once Alexis was in the room, the battles had to be fought more subtly.

Alexis was super worried about me. APPARENTLY seeing your mom all tubed up and immobile is a little bit upsetting when you're as empathetic as she is. I didn't want her to worry and I definitely didn't want to traumatize her, so I kept trying to play it cool.

Picture, if you will, a grown woman getting punched in the stomach by Tarzan (The King of the Nausea Jungle), fighting like hell to keep everything down, sweating like a pig because TARZAN PUNCHED HER AND OUCH, with her eyes darting to and fro hoping her kid wasn't seeing what was going on. Add on a layer of concerned people in the room asking, "Are you OK?" and wanting to scream DO NOT DRAW ATTENTION TO TARZAN'S VICTIM but unable to scream because puke. Just ... puke.

Over and over again.

But! There is a happy ending in this little story. After a few hours of Tarzan beating on me, I mentioned something about the Nausea Battles in a text to a friend. Within moments, I had a reply that said something to the effect of, "Me, too. Ask for this super magical happy drug."

And it was a super magical happy drug. It fixed everything.

Except for the whole "just got cut up and then puked for hours" thing. That part wasn't quite fixed.

So ... nursing home. You owe me a good one, girls.

Mila's Story Begins: The Prologue

Thirty-nine weeks.

It turns out THAT is the point at which I do something about the "uneasy."

At my thirty-eight week appointment with what turned out to be a 9 lb 6 oz ball of awesome named Mila, my doctor finally seemed to have come to his senses and recognize that we were not in for a truly tiny Tiny Human. At that appointment, he stated that I could continue to consider a VBAC, but that we wouldn't be going past 41 weeks. Period. End of story.

But then at my thirty-nine week appointment, Dr. Know It All tilted his hand of cards and something seemed ... not right.

After determining that Mila was still "sky high" and that a whole ball of nothing was happening, he officially ruled out induction. Risks with induction and VBAC and blah, blah, blah were enough for him to just plain take that option off of the table.

Then he took a late ultrasound to check size off of the table as well.

And it seemed ... not right.

Long of the short, he said that he saw no reason to do an ultrasound to check size because women have big babies all the time.  "You shouldn't have any problems with a VBAC," he said. "Don't waste your money," he said. "Ultrasounds are wrong anyway," he said.

I still don't know what that all adds up to, but the fact of the matter is that I wanted to go the VBAC route. Why get major surgery if you don't have to? I wanted to buy what he was selling. So, while I could have scheduled a c-section on my way out the door, I didn't. Instead, I scheduled my forty-week appointment, knowing full well I would be there because there was no way anything would happen anytime soon.

Everything was set up to go the way I wanted it to (other than the whole part where nobody handed the Tiny Human an instruction manual on which way was out). I figured I would wait it out and everything would be just fine.

I left the office with that plan and promptly headed to Dunkin' Donuts. I figure that any time someone shoves their hand somewhere it doesn't belong, I deserve a donut. Or five. As I was shoving said donut or five in my face, I just couldn't shake the uneasy feeling. AT ALL.

I knew what I had to do.

I picked up the phone and called the doctor's office and scheduled Plan B. I scheduled a c-section for as far out as seemed reasonable. I even scheduled it around Dr. Know It All's rotation because I figured if Plan B became a thing, I wanted to avoid him.

With the appointment set, the waiting game began. And HOLY CRAP was it a wait.

False labor started late Friday and never did end. 20-30 second contractions started to pepper my days and nights, making it harder and harder to do much of anything. Sleeping became a joke as erratic and completely pointless contractions riddled my nights. And days. And everything in between.

Six days later, the time came for Plan B. I wasn't disappointed AT ALL. I was stupid relieved. There is no way that I could have dealt with even a few more hours of pointless contractions that were doing exactly nothing other than hurting and being stupid and pointless.

Not long after the "stupid and pointless" was confirmed by a doctor, something else was confirmed.

Mila was a big baby. Obviously.

But she wasn't just weight big -- her head was big, too.

Déjà vu, anyone? Because we have played this game before. It's name is Alexis and it's clearly spelled out in my medical records that she was born via c-section because of lack of progress and a large head. General size was an issue, but it wasn't really her weight that caused the drama. It was her head. It was all known facts because a late term ultrasound clearly laid out the facts.

Mila's head was 1/2 inch bigger than Alexis'. 15 full inches of beautiful and perfect, in fact.

She wasn't going anywhere on her own. She hadn't dropped because she couldn't drop and no amount of labor in the world was going to fix it all.

It obviously all worked itself out in the end and Mila is perfect and amazing and wonderful, but HOOBOY am I annoyed with myself for not acting further on the uneasy and forcing the issue on an ultrasound. But, at least I scheduled that c-section.

These big-headed girls are going to rule the world.

Best. Ever.