Kings of the Road

Look at how punk rock my baby is:

Stella Is A Punk Rocker

I fell down the stairs yesterday.  My foot just slipped out from under me on the first step, like falling on black ice on a sidewalk in the winter. I landed right on my ass, and then bumped HARD down the next two stairs. I felt a searing pain in my tail bone and midway up my back. The wind completely knocked out of my lungs, all I could do was groan in agony. It reminded me of a time when I was young and fell on a roller skating rink. I couldn’t even talk, it hurt so bad.

I was also carrying the baby.

She is just fine–I think she thought it was a fun ride that I invented, just like the “bounce on mommy’s knee” game. Except this time, it was bounce in mommy’s arms while she gets the shit kicked out of her back and butt.

I have always wondered what would happen if I did fall or slip holding her, and now I know-I instinctively protect her above all else. My super mommy powers prevent her from any harm. It was instinct–do not let go, do not let go, do not let go. I still feel so guilty though, for having come so close.

I was just talking to Amy about this subject, because she has a bad knee that sometimes goes out on her, and she just tumbles to the ground. I told Amy that  if she was carrying a baby while it happened,  I thought her body would instinctively protect the baby.

So, I am grateful that it was ME holding her when I fell, and not someone else holding her and falling–I can’t say for certain that everyone has the instinct to protect a baby in their arms at all costs.

I have to admit that I did get nervous when she was just a newborn when certain other people would hold her. Those not used to holding babies, or clumsy people. It is awful to admit, but it’s true. If you’re reading this and you held my baby when she was a newborn, then the answer is YES, I was hovering over you because I was nervous. Because I was trying to protect her should you have stumbled or dropped her. Maybe this is a normal feeling for new moms?

As soon as he heard me groaning, Larry came running. He took the baby from me, and I sat on the stairs, unable to really move yet. SO. MUCH. PAIN. Fighting back tears and losing the battle. The impact jolted my spine badly. BADLY. I made it down to the couch and immediately took four ibuprofen.

I could walk and move my arms, legs, fingers and toes. I had no numbness anywhere. JUST PAIN. When I had back labor during childbirth, I had never felt anything like it before. Well, THIS FELT LIKE BACK LABOR. FUCK.

When Larry asked if I wanted to go to the hospital, I said no. More because I am scared of what they will say. What if they tell me I can’t hold Stella? What if I need surgery? What if I broke something or slipped a disk? What if the pain is PERMANENT? It’s better that I just grit my teeth and deal with the pain and not know. Not the best way to deal with it, I know. I don’t need any lectures.

Today the pain is better. It still hurts though. I will not go to the doctor unless it gets worse. I can hold my baby, and that is all that matters.

I think that Stella LOOKS LIKE A GIRL. She’s not one of those androgynous babies that could go either way. And practically every day I dress her in girly outfits. She looks like a cute blob of pink. Oozing girlishness. She has a pink pacifier. She wears pink socks. She has her name, STELLA, pimped out in stickers on her stroller. So why do people ask me if it’s a boy or a girl? Do people really dress second-born boys in frilly pink dresses and stick pink pacifiers in their mouths? Is it not completely obvious that she’s a girl?

My old self would say that people are just being polite, and don’t want to offend me and say the wrong thing. (”Oh, your little boy has such broad shoulders, he’s going to make a great football player, and with those giant feet, he’ll be a fast runner too!”) But having heard every sort of rude, intrusive comment when I was pregnant, I now know that people are NOT that polite. (”Your nose is so huge! You look like a lush!” “You’re about to pop!”)

We’ve managed to avoid the kidnappers thus far. But, we’ve found that there’s another downside to having the world’s cutest baby–the Paparazzi. The cameras. The fans. They follow us everywhere.

On Monday, Stella and I ate lunch at the Dominion Deli at Arlington Boulevard and Gallows Road with seven fabulous mommy and baby friends (which is always a sight-eight women, eight babies, eight strollers, and several gratuitous flashes of breasts as we feed our babies. I try to tip the servers well). We sat in the corner of the patio and managed to avoid the paparazzi all through lunch, although this was probably because I had Stella in a sling and no one could see her face. When I put her in her stroller and put her sunglasses over her eyes, it was ALL OVER. CUTENESS OVERLOAD. BRING ON THE PAPS.

We walked to the Starbucks for an after-lunch grande Lite Mocha Mint Frappuccino with chocolate whipped cream. The paparazzi, made up of three women, spotted us. They followed us to our car. They oohed and aahhhed over Stella, saying things like:

“Oh My GAWD she is the CUTEST BABY EVER!”

“I didn’t know they made sunglasses for babies!”

“Are you on maternity leave?”

“That sure is a nice car seat!”

and my favorite…”CAN I TAKE HER PICTURE?”

The youngest woman pulls out her fancy blackberry/camera phone/MP3/GPS/whatever and takes a picture of Stella. Because she is the cutest freaking thing she’s ever seen. Oh well, at least she asked.

One of the downfalls of having the world’s cutest baby is that people want to steal her. Seriously. Today we went to my local CVS Pharmacy to pick up a prescription, and the pharmacist told me to watch out, because she and her accomplice/pharmacist colleague were going to kidnap Stella.

How scary–these women had access to thousands of powerful, prescription-only drugs, and could have probably flung a syringe across the counter and injected me with a crazy kidnapper drug concoction, causing me to pass out right there on the stained blue CVS carpet. I would have woken up hours later in the dumpster out back, surrounded by bottles of expired Tylenol and Mylanta, my memory hazy from the drug cocktail the kidnappers gave me, unable to remember the last 47 hours and who stole my baby. They would have taken her home to their old, demented Vietnamese grandma to watch during the day while they continued to work at CVS, and the grandma would have dressed her up in those gawdy princess outfits and kept her locked up in the closet, taught her the secret family recipe for Vietnamese noodle soup, and I would have never seen her again.

I could not let this happen. I laughed nervously and gave them my best Chuck Norris glare. (Sticks and stones may break your bones, but a Chuck Norris glare will liquefy your kidneys.)

Sensing a threat, they decided instead to make Stella the “Shopping Center Mascot”. I considered this. Does it involve posters of my baby plastered all over the parking lot? Are people going to want to kiss her? Will we receive large sums of money so I can quit my job and buy a new car and sit around eating ice cream and watching TLC all day when I’m not out shopping and lunching with other mommies? Probably not.

Besides, the shopping center is ghetto. My baby ain’t no ghetto baby, yo.

I wheeled my chi-chi chicco stroller out of there as quickly as possible.

Stella is two months old now. Her favorite things to do are sleep, eat, poop, burp, babble, smile, go for walks, and stick her tongue out. Her favorite color is clear with a black background.

Here is a little video of the princess doing about three of her favorite things.

Stella LOVES her bee mobile, as displayed in this video (in spite of the fact that she lets out a little cry at the end. I think she was mad because she thought it was stopping). When it’s on, she stares at it intently. The only problem is that it requires someone with full control over their hands and fingers (i.e. Mommy or Daddy) to wind it for her every minute or so. Over. And Over. And Over. But it keeps her happy, so I love it too.

We took the baby on her first beach vacation last week to the Outer Banks of North Carolina. My parents rented a fabulous oceanfront penthouse condo and generously invited their kids, significant others and grandkids to come along on vacation with them.

Some highlights from the trip: Bramanda temporarily renouncing their vegetarian ways in order to eat seafood, so they could fully experience the ocean and all its bounties; countless hours playing Mario Kart on Nintendo Wii, in spite of the fact that we were only several yards from the beach; watching the baby smile and laugh over and over and over when Grandpa said “where’s your mama?” (we call it “Stellavision” because it’s so entertaining to just sit and watch her); climbing Jockey’s Ridge again, but this time taking the shortcut; relaxing on the beach with a good book, the sound of the ocean in the background, and a salty breeze on my face; Eric’s complete lack of knowledge on sunscreen, and the fact that you have to rub it around after spraying, or you end up with blotches of white and red skin; and watching the fishing boats come in at Oregon Inlet.

This time around, I didn’t get attacked by a single dolphin or bird like last time we went to the Outer Banks and I was gruesomely attacked by an angry gang of killer dolphins high on crystal meth, and then a gang of evil rabid birds  flocked around me and tried to peck my eyes out. To be fair, though, I did not go in the ocean this time. It was too cold, and babies and oceans don’t mix. I also didn’t make eye contact with any birds.

You may think that taking a 6-week old on vacation would be a silly, stupid idea, but it was pretty easy. In fact, maybe it was easier than staying at home. We had a Grandma that wanted to hold Stella, change her diaper, give her baths, and even feed her (which is kind of hard since she is on a breastmilk-only diet–and breast pumps aren’t exactly soft and cuddly like a newborn baby, so bottle feedings are rare. I’d rather just feed her and not pump and then feed.) We also had a Grandpa that just wanted to play with the baby (”what do you mean she’s asleep? Wake her up so I can play with her!”). And with Uncle Eric and Auncle Bramanda, and we had a whole village. Remember? It takes a village.

I have pretty much gotten over any issues I had with breastfeeding in public, because a) I’ve learned to be more discreet, so I don’t have to whip my breasts out and flash the whole world each time the baby is hungry; and b) I’ve decided that I don’t care. If someone is going to stare, I’ll just stare right back. This worked well all week, and I fed her in restaurants, coffee shops and benches. The only time it didn’t work was when she was over hungry, tired and crabby at a restaurant on our last night. I was sitting on a wall, facing the restaurant, she was fussily eating and having a hard time staying focused, and I just felt like I was one of those big stuffed animals at Chuck-E-Cheese, putting on a show for all the families eating dinner there. People were staring, it was just bad. And the food was mediocre, and the floor was sticky, and the baby had a diaper blowout, and the bathroom was too tiny and gross to change her diaper in, all of which only added to my discomfort and irritation.

Ah, I wish I could be on vacation again.

I just think this photo is funny–what the heck is he doing?

At Jockey’s Ridge. These poor suckers didn’t know about the shortcut:

Stella turned one month old yesterday. We celebrated by going to dim sum at Mark’s Duck House today–it was our first trip to a restaurant as a family. Stella was an angel and slept the whole time in her car seat. We even made a trip to Target after lunch. It was a very successful outing.

My feelings for her are just so overwhelming. I can’t believe that this amazing little girl is my own, that Larry and I made her, and she is so perfect and beautiful and the smartest, most advanced baby on earth. I think she’ll be walking and talking in weeks. She’s already started smiling–isn’t one month incredibly early to start smiling? I told you she is advanced. Maybe it’s because she had a whole extra week to grow inside me, so she’s actually one month and one week old.

She also makes a great model–I discovered that she likes to look at dark colors, especially my dark digital SLR. Here are few of my favorites from her one-month photo shoot:

First Trip to Mark’s Duck House for dim sum

I’ve always considered myself to have child-bearing hips. I’m built to have babies. My uneventful pregnancy confirmed this fact for me—my body just knows what to do. So I thought.

In my head, I imagined that my water would break on my exact due date, and I would go to the hospital when the contractions were five minutes apart, and the doctor would meet me there and I would labor for a few hours and push out a healthy baby girl the natural way, and things would go just perfectly. Even when, during my pregnancy, I entertained the possibility that I just might end up having a c-section, Larry just laughed it off and told me that no way, you’re not having a c-section. You’re pushing that baby out. Yes, that was the plan; that was my vision. I wanted as natural a delivery as possible.

One of the first lessons of motherhood that I have learned is that things don’t always go according to plan, and that I have to be flexible, and that sometimes life will not always play out the way that I have envisioned it. That is a hard lesson for me, because I am a planner. I always have a vision. And I like things to go my way.

When I checked into the hospital on Tuesday, April 15, I was a wound-up ball of nerves and excitement. I was being induced the next day. The end of the pregnancy was tangible, and without a doubt the baby would be in my arms in about 24 hours. I had hoped and wished that I would go into labor naturally before my induction date, but I had no contractions, no water breaking, nothing.

Larry and my mom went with me to the hospital and my mom left once I was settled into the labor and delivery room. This was the room that my daughter would be born in the next day. Larry camped out on the extra fancy reclining chairs that they provide for partners to sleep in—chairs that Larry later coined “torture chairs” because they were so uncomfortable. That evening, I was hooked up to monitors, examined, questioned, and given drugs to “ripen” my cervix. Then I was given an Ambien to help me sleep through the night. Damn, if only I had known that Ambien was safe for my unborn baby, I might have taken it during a few of the sleepless nights during my pregnancy.

The night went by in a hazy blur. The next morning I was allowed to wash my face and brush my teeth, but not to eat breakfast. It was also the last time I would stand up for a long time. Dr. B., my obstetrician, came in that morning to check on my progress. Before they administered the Pitocin, the drug to induce contractions, I was only a couple of centimeters dilated. My blood pressure was higher than it should be.

I remember Dr. B. saying that morning “someone probably should have told you this, but 50% of inductions end in cesareans.” Yeah, someone should have told me that. But would it have mattered? I really didn’t have any choice but to be induced, since the baby was already a week late.

Around 7:30 a.m. the nurses started me on Pitocin and hooked me up to monitors to track my contractions, the baby’s heart rate, and my blood pressure. Soon, I was feeling the contractions. So this is what they feel like, I thought. Dr. B. broke my water a few minutes later using a tool that looked like a giant knitting needle. THAT was not a pleasant experience—they really need to put a bucket or something down there, because there was fluid EVERYWHERE, gushing on the floor, on the bed, and on me.

The contractions kept coming, stronger and stronger. The doctors and nurses warned me that it sometimes takes a while for the anesthesiologist to come to administer the epidural in my spine, especially if there are multiple women requesting epidurals, and I should not wait until the contractions are unbearable. I asked for the epidural around 10 a.m. when they started to get really painful. The doctor came a short while later, stuck a big needle in my spine, and by 10:30 I was pain-free. For a while, at least.

This is when things started to go downhill, at least the way that I remember it. I kept having stronger and stronger contractions for the next few hours, but NOTHING ELSE HAPPENED. My cervix did not dilate any larger, and the baby was not making her way towards the exit. Dr. B. kept coming in and checking me, and he would say things like “the baby is still in Northern Alaska” and “she’s still in Upper Volta.” I didn’t even know where Upper Volta was, but I had a feeling it wasn’t DOWN.

To make matters worse, the baby’s heart rate seemed to be decelerating every time I had a contraction. Going into distress. And my blood pressure was going up, up, up. Dr. B. started seriously talking about the dreaded c-word: cesarean. He told me that if I didn’t make any progress (i.e. dilate a few more centimeters), the best/only option would be to have the c-section. It was dangerous for both me and the baby. There was talk that maybe I was beginning to show signs of toxemia, since my blood pressure was so high. And I distinctly remember him talking about women in Africa that don’t have access to hospitals and doctors, and how they labor for days with no progress, and their babies die and turn to mush before they finally come out. I guess he was going for the scare tactics.

When the cesarean became a real possibility, I lost it. As Dr. B. sat in my room, explaining it to me, I couldn’t help but cry. It was just not at all how I pictured it. I know many women who have had cesareans, and I’ve always felt bad for them, with a certain pity that they had to endure the surgery. And I thought the recovery was so much worse, not being able to lift anything or bend over, and ooohh the scars. I still get choked up, thinking about that flood of emotion I had, the doctor trying to tell me how not bad c-sections are, my mom trying not to cry as I sat there sobbing, and Larry trying to comfort me.

I wanted so badly to have the baby as naturally as possible (not counting the epidural, of course. Duh.) I decided to give it another hour, and I spent that hour lying still in my bed, trying to will my cervix to dilate. I repeated in my head over and over “at least 8 centimeters, at least 8 centimeters…” Mind over body.

Then, my epidural started to wear off—I could feel painful contractions again. My faith in the magic of the epidural was quickly waning, because I didn’t think it was supposed to hurt again this soon. The anesthesiologist came in and gave me more medicine. Ah, relief. I used zero of the techniques I learned in the childbirth class for managing labor pain. Just give me the drugs.

After that last hour past, Dr. B. came in to check my progress. And there was no progress. I was still at 4 cm, and unless the baby was a pinhead, it was not coming out the natural way. I was diagnosed as failure to progress.

The word failure echoed in my ears and my heart, because I felt like a failure. I failed. FAILED. I, the overachiever, do not fail, but I somehow failed at this basic (yet so complicated), natural act, which all the women in my family had so mastered, and which billions of women before me had mastered. And that stung me.

But I had no choice. Actually, I had a choice, but I knew I was making the only logical decision. At 2 p.m., I told Dr. B. that I would have the surgery.

Things happened quickly after that, and it was mostly a blur. They stopped the Pitocin, so my contractions mellowed out a bit. Doctors and nurses came and went. They started administering a stronger dose of medicine for the epidural, and that is when I began to feel such terrible back pain, like nothing I have ever felt. It wasn’t like back pain that you feel when you pull a muscle, or throw your back out, or sleep wrong. This pain felt so deep in my back, like someone was hammering my spinal cord. I complained of the pain, and the doctors took notice immediately. They asked me to describe the pain, but I couldn’t even verbalize what it felt like. I just hurt.

Soon after I was wheeled to the operating room, feeling nervous and jittery. There were people everywhere, working on me and around me. The drugs took effect quickly, and my toes went from feeling like pins and needles to feeling like NOTHING. What a scary feeling, to be awake but not able to move half of my body. They stretched my arms out on both sides of me as if I was lying on a cross and hooked me up to monitors, IVs, wires, and who knows what else. A curtain was raised to block my view of my abdomen. Larry was let into the room to sit next to me and hold my hand.

The surgery began. I could feel pressure and movement, but no pain. I could, however, see things in the lamp hanging above. Nothing too gory, but hands and metal instruments moving about. I started to feel a slight sensation of pain, and the anesthesiologist immediately fixed that. Oh yeah, and they conveniently placed the suction tube with my blood directly between Larry and myself, so we could see my blood being sucked out of me.

In about ten minutes, they had the baby out of me. Stella Moxie King, born at 4:09 pm. I heard her cry before I saw her, and I started crying. They took her to be cleaned and checked out, and Larry went over to meet her and take pictures. Apparently they were using a brand new machine for measuring her, and there was a big red light on top of it. I could only think of Veruca Salt in Willie Wonka and The Chocolate Factory when she jumps onto the egg scale and is judged a bad egg. Luckily, our little baby passed as a good egg, and soon she was brought to me so I could see her face while they sewed me back up. A nurse held her close to my face and insisted on a picture, which is probably the worst picture of my life. My abdomen was split wide open. I wasn’t feeling my best.

We learned that she was “sunny side up”—babies are supposed to be born with their faces towards the mother’s spinal cord, but Stella was facing up. The back of her head rubbing against my spinal cord probably caused the intense back pain I felt—literally known as “back labor.” She also had the cord wrapped twice around her neck, causing her heart rate to plummet with every contraction as the cord tightened.

The anesthesiologist kept trying to make small talk with me, like asking me if I would play Mozart for the baby. I told him that I would most likely be playing her the Beatles and the Old 97’s. I’m not sure if all the talk was to make sure I was still lucid, or to cover up the noise of the staple gun they were using to close up my incision. Yeah. Staples. (The doctor who later removed them asked if I wanted to keep them as a souvenir. Ew.)

Larry went off to recovery with the baby, and I was soon all put back together and able to meet them there. I finally got to hold my baby. And it was all so worth it. All at once, I didn’t care one way or the other if she was born naturally, by c-section, or if they had to cut me from breastbone to pubic bone. She was here, and she was perfect.

We spent three more nights in the hospital. I was finally able to eat real food on Thursday evening—a good 48 hours after my last meal. They wouldn’t give me food until I farted—yep, that’s right, I’ve never had so many people concerned with whether or not I passed gas. Since the epidural put everything to sleep down there, they needed to make sure that all systems were operating before I could eat, and farting is a sure sign that everything is back on.

We were discharged on Saturday evening, after a few interesting days in the hospital—I had my breasts fondled by a lactation consultant; an evil nurse made me cry by first taking my baby away for a suspected fever (which turned out to be nothing) and then telling me that my baby was losing too much weight; a cord blood donation administrator made my husband and mother leave the room while she asked if I knew any prostitutes from Cameroon; and about fifty people came to survey me on everything from my hospital registration experience to the effectiveness of the previous survey taker. They also took my blood pressure so often that I got scabs on my arm, and they somehow managed to take it at the most inopportune times.  For example, the evil nurse would come in, say “your baby is running a low fever, and she’s lost one pound since birth! Haha! Now give me your arm so I can take your blood pressure! Haha!” Of course my blood pressure was ridiculously high, I think around 190/110. Now I’m on blood pressure meds and I’m beginning to feel light-headed.

I admit, Dr. B. was right. The c-section was not nearly as bad as I thought it would be. The first few days were rough, and it was excruciating to use my abs to sit up or get out of bed, and the first time I coughed I thought I had ruptured every stitch inside me and I was going to die of internal bleeding. As I write this three weeks later, I feel really good, except for an occasional twinge of pain at my incision. I stopped taking pain medication after about 10 days. I can bend over just fine, I can walk, I can take the stairs, and the scar is so low that I think I’m likely to forget it’s even there. And honestly, given the alternatives for where I might have had stitches and scars (you know, down there), I just might admit that I prefer the one I’ve got. Plus I’ve got the world’s cutest baby.