Superstition (my story continued)

Superstition: a belief or notion, not based on reason or knowledge, in or of the ominous significance of a particular thing, circumstance, occurrence, proceeding, or the like.

I’ve always had a sort of God will punish feeling or idea, mostly tied to my lack of gratitude.  The biggest and most glaring illustration I can think of happened at the time my son was born.

To begin with, I had wanted a girl, very badly.  When I was pregnant with my daughter I felt sure she was a boy.  This was in the days before routine sonograms.  I sort of felt like I wanted this thing so much, I wouldn’t get it.  After having a daughter, I thought of myself as a “girl” person, and couldn’t picture mothering a boy.

When I was pregnant, everyone, including the doctor, said the baby would be a boy.  Again, without any tangible evidence.  I didn’t want a boy, and I said as much.  I didn’t think I would have one.  I sort of feared having one, which I know now is not an unreasonable or uncommon fear.  To go from not having a son to having one is a huge life change.

I was due March 10.  On February 26, I started to get a weird rash.  Again, without the internet, I tried to look it up in books (how quaint!).  Dr. Spock described what I had as chicken pox.

I had not had routine immunizations as a child because of my severe excema.  I was the only I knew without a small pox vaccine scar.  When I was 16, the doctor finally gave me the MMR vaccine and polio, and I was fine.  But a chicken pox vaccine didn’t exist in the US back then.  I had slept with my cousin while she incumbated chicken pox.  Chicken pox went around my classes and through my friends, and I didn’t catch it.  I sort of thought I was immune.  Then, at 26 years old, over eight months pregnant, and with no one I knew having chicken pox, I caught it.

I called the doctor that Friday night, and talked to the doctor on call.  The doctor said not to worry, that if I have birth with chicken pox, they would just isolate me from the other mothers and babies.  All weekend my grew slowly, and that two in the morning on Monday morning, my water broke and I went into labor.

I went to the doctor at nine in the morning, and he sent me to the hospital.  I must remember to come back and write about child birth and standing pain.  For the purpose of this story, though, I’ll just record that he had several doctors look at my rash at the hospital and that finally they analyzed it in a lab, and they found it to be chicken pox.

Apparently this is very dangerous for a newborn.  They called the Centers for Disease Control, and helicoptered in immuniglobulin for the baby.  They told me I might not be able to see the baby for a while after it was born.  I remember crying about that, and the doctor telling me it was a medical decision.  OK, but can’t I be sad?  I was very desperate to breast feed.

My son was born and he was whisked away.  I was shocked to hear it was a boy.  After about two hours, they decided I could see him.  He was born after seven at night, and we went home the next morning.

I was told to check his temperature at every diaper change, and to go right to the hospital at the first sign of a fever.  I had to bring him to the doctor’s office every day to get checked.  They said that something like half the babies born to a mother with active chicken pox die.  Of those that don’t die, about fifty percent needed drugs that cause brain damange.  It didn’t look good.

A week went by, and I started to feel better about his chances.  The doctor said I didn’t need to bring him every day any more, but to keep up with the temperature taking.  At ten days old, he developed the rash that indicated he had chicken pox.  I guess the immuniglobulin didn’t prevent it, and he was exposed at birth, and ten days is the usual incubation period.

Here’s where my superstition comes in.  I had a strong feeling that my story was going something like this:  God was saying, “Oh, you don’t want a boy?  Well you don’t have to have one.”

I know that’s not true.  I know that it was chance that gave me then my baby chicken pox.  I know it’s chance that let us recover without any complications.  He was fine, after all, but he was much more appreciated by me than if that hadn’t happened.

My Story continued – 25, 26 continued – Being a Young Mom, Giving Birth

I’ll list a few of the things that happened in my life at that time.  I’ve written about my fear of flying and my fear that my house would flood.

I had moved withmy ex and my one-year-old daughter.  At first we rented a townhouse, then we bought the first house I’ve owned.  I went to meetings and I had good friends in my playgroup.  When my daughter was about 18 months old, I got pregnant with my son.

I had always wanted many kids.  Lots of that desire had to do with being an only child.  I was born in 1962, and there were no only children back then.  I literally knew one girl who was also and only child, and when we were 12, her parents had another baby.  I really hated it, and I still don’t like it much at all.  It’s much more common now, and grown up only children are likely to say it doesn’t bother them or that they like it.  Not me.  In a coincidence, my ex is also an only child.  My kids have no aunts, uncles or cousins.  I do look at this as something impoverished.

So I was eager and glad to give Erika a sibling.  The kind of mother to infants that I turned out to be interests me.  I always liked babies and baby sitting.  I did it a lot so I knew lots of what to expect.  The way I view myself now and then, I would have thought that being pregnant, giving birth and breast feeding were all activities I would absolutely adore, but I didn’t.  I disliked being pregnant.  Giving birth was fairly horrific.  Breast feeding was OK, but there was a slightly desperate edge to it for me.  I had severe allergies as a child, and I was determined that my kids not have formula or other foods for as long as possible.  I tried and just couldn’t pump my breasts, and the babies were not interested in bottles.  Had I known that I would make it through OK, I would have relaxed more about it.  But as it was, I felt there were mild threats, but threats none the less to my nursing and being constantly with my children.

I was with them constantly.  I didn’t leave Erika except for very briefly until I went to the hospital to have Nicholas, and even then I didn’t leave for even 24 hours.  I liked it that way most of the time, though I understand most mothers do not.  I also find it vexing that doing something difficult like exclusive breast feeding, you often can’t complain at all because you will be told, “Then don’t do it.”  In case I forget to return to this theme later, I want to put it down here that my kids actually had about zero separation anxiety when they were preschool aged and I did leave them on a regular basis.

I wasn’t completely the earth mother I sought to be, but pretty much I was.  As I have written, my daughter’s birth and early infancy was traumatic for me, and I don’t think we as people treat it as the ordeal it can often be.  I had moments when I worried that my son’s birth would be as bad or worse, and that his colic would be like hers and drive me and Erika nuts for months, but mostly I was more relaxed and happy about being pregnant.  During my first pregnancy, the hospital taught child birth classes that used the Lamaze method.  I bought the Lamaze book, and I saw the very first thing talked about being on a subway, reading something engrossing, being oblivious to everything going on around you.  That’s not me.  I’m aware of everything, I can’t tune it out.  Lamaze didn’t work for me, and at one point one of the nurses said very nastily, “I hope you know you wasted your husband’s money” on childbirth classes.  This was 1985, and I was 23, but whatever.

I moved far away, and for the next baby I researched the Bradley Method by reading books and practicing.  I also planned to have an epidural.  Before I had a labor pain, I was all for medication free childbirth, and I still think that’s ideal.  But when it feels like death is a better option, I see no reason to suffer like that.  With Erika, they gave me a spinal block at the very end.  I don’t know why.  I went in with the plan for Nicholas’ birth to have an epidural and not want to die.

When my water broke and my labor started, I spent about seven hours at home, doing OK through the contractions.  When I went to the doctor’s office and he sent me to the hospital, he asked me about being induced, because seven hours had passed since my water broke.  I feared the induction drugs, and I know I said pitifully that I should have lied about the time my water broke.  I think he took pity on me.

But I had a mysterious rash.  It had appeared on that Friday, and this was Monday or Tuesday, and pre-internet I had diagnosed myself with use the of Dr. Spock as having possible chicken pox.  I had not had many immunizations as a child until I was about 16 because of my allergies.  I had been exposed to chicken pox many times, but had never caught it, and so my mother and I thought I was immune.

As the day and my labor went on, they tested some of the fluid and said it was indeed chicken pox.  They didn’t know what to do, but one thing they knew was that they couldn’t put anything in my spine.  So no epidural, not even a spinal block.

After my son was born, they whisked him away lest I expose him to chicken pox.  I was afraid to sit down because I had hurt for days and days after Erika was born, and I walked back to my room.  My nurse rolled her eyes at another nurse, telling her we were walking.  I didn’t want to be a hero.  I didn’t want to hurt.

The doctors consulted with the Centers for Disease Control and decided the helicopter in chicken pox immuniglobulin for Nicholas, and then they decided I could see him.  The part where having and holding the baby happens after the drug free birth didn’t happen for me.  I didn’t get to see him for hours.

He was born at 7:39 pm, and by the next morning, they wanted us to leave.  Our chicken pox germs were endangering the maternity ward, and I went home about 15 hours after he was born.