Calvin Walter

Henry came 9 days late. Calvin came 9 days early. I have two children now! This is Calvin's story.
        
Calvin's cesarean section was scheduled for 9:30 am on a Thursday. It actually started at 11:20. It was so easy. The only scary part was the dip in my blood pressure following the spinal block. I was laying on the table as they prepped me for surgery, and I can't describe how it felt except for what I told the anesthetist: "I feel like my body wants to fall asleep but I don't want to!" (James says that's what it feels like to pass out, but I've never passed out and never felt that before. For a few minutes I thought I might not wake up if I fell asleep.) The nurse calmed me down and told me that if I fell asleep it was okay, they'd monitor my vitals and make sure I was alive and breathing. They gave me medicine, my blood pressure sorted itself out, and I felt just fine.

James has done some rotations where he's seen c-sections, so it was fun for him to watch over the curtain and tell me exactly what was happening. Just a few minutes later, with lots of pressure pushing on my belly, they pulled Calvin out! "Woah, he's a big one!" said the doctor. There was no pain, but boy oh boy, I could feel every little jostle! Then came my favorite moment: Calvin's first cry. It's magical. It's spiritual. It is unlike anything else in this whole world.  I couldn't see him, but suddenly his whole presence filled that room. Another soul had joined us. This boy I hadn't met but had yet known so well for all these months was among us. I cannot even describe it, but I hope everybody gets to experience that first cry of a new soul, with the veil so thin, at some point in their life. He cried and coughed and cried and then they brought him around to see us. They let me touch his face and look at him for a while before James carried him down to the nursery. Born at 11:26 am, Calvin was 22 inches long and weighed 9 lbs 5.1 oz. I was expecting a much smaller baby. The estimates had put him at about 8 lbs even. Imagine his weight if he hadn't been 9 days early!

While they started stitching me up, a lifelong dream of mine was fulfilled: I got to see the placenta! I realize that this isn't everyone's lifelong dream, but I hadn't seen one in real life before, and so I asked them to bring mine over so I could see. It was worth it.

I knew they'd sedate me a little while they finished stitching me up, and it had been one of the biggest fears I'd had when anticipating the surgery. I have always had anxiety in my life, and the weeks leading up to the cesarean were very (often almost paralyzingly) scary for me. The night before Calvin came, James gave me a wonderful blessing that brought me so much peace. This helped me for the whole procedure, and so at that moment I was no longer afraid I wouldn't wake up.

And the rest was easy. I woke up and we got to my room before the pediatrician was even done doing the preliminary exam of the baby! Then the baby came in. We'd planned on either Walter or Calvin for his first name, and we settled on Calvin with Walter as his middle name. He was beautiful! Nothing was wrong. All was well.

He had some issues at first - jaundice and low blood sugar. We had experience with low blood sugar, but it got pretty extreme with Calvin. We could not wake him up enough to nurse, and the supplemental sugar water and formula weren't cutting it. Finally, with threats of an IV looming on the horizon, he got enough of something or other to help raise his blood sugar. The jaundice was a different story. We had to put him under bilirubin lights for two days and he eventually required an IV anyway because the lights weren't helping enough. We stayed in the hospital an extra day for his jaundice. They even thought we'd have to stay another additional day, but we were surprised and delighted when they let us go home!

My own recovery was unexpectedly fast. I'm still recovering some (no marathons or mountain climbing for a few more weeks at least!) but overall I feel wonderful. Nursing has been surprisingly difficult, but I think we're starting to sort it out. Calvin has Henry in the palm of his hand. We are a happy little family!

1 week

3 weeks old, playing with the webcam on the computer

2 weeks old. My three boys!

Mom and both sons squashed-in-the-back-seat selfie. I love Henry's face here!

The love will come, the pain will fade

As this next baby comes closer to arriving, I've been thinking about Henry's birth and about pregnancy. It's weird, isn't it, how much and also how little about birth is in our control? Today I'm thinking about what happened with Henry and what I wish I'd known. These problems may seem silly to you, but they were very real to me at a very intense and emotional time, and I hope that perhaps someone who has these same emotions may read this one day and realize they're not alone.

Henry was born via an unscheduled c-section. It wasn't technically an emergency, but if we had continued with labor it would have turned into one. It was a necessary thing. We would both be dead without it. Several things about that surgery stand out to me. I had been in labor over 24 hours with zero progress (I hadn't even dilated to a 1). I had always thought hospitals had pain options for labor, but mine apparently had one shot you could use (it worked for 45 minutes) but only worked once...or an epidural. Which they would not give until you were dilated to a 4. No options were available to me that night for pain; none had been available for hours since that shot earlier. I was done. I was drained. So there I was at 10 pm being told that for a number of reasons I almost certainly needed a c-section. What's more, they could do that then (10 pm ish) or re-evaluate in the morning (8 am ish) to see how things had gone. I guess now I realize I could have asked for one at say, 3 am, but it was late and we have a small hospital with staff who wanted to head home for the night. I felt like my options were: have a c-section now OR ELSE have a c-section after 10 more hours of this awful labor with zero pain options. My water had broken, and things needed to happen to protect the baby. I felt like I didn't really have a choice.

They prepped me eerily fast - I wonder if maybe the nurses thought it was an emergency cesarean? I know they were worried about the baby. I gave my consent for the surgery and in less than 5 minutes I had been prepped and was in the OR. It happened so fast, and that speed scared me.

I remember walking into the OR and sitting on the table for my spinal block. I have never been so afraid in my entire life. I did NOT want a c-section; that's why I had avoided being induced for so long! That's why the baby was 9 days late! I did not want one; it wasn't supposed to happen for me. I had never even once considered that it might, and I had done nothing EVER to prepare or learn about it. I sat on the OR bed and knew that I had no choice - I had to have this. This was the only way this baby could come out. It was terrifying to feel completely out of control. During the procedure, they discovered that Henry's head was too big to come out naturally - his head was so big it couldn't even enter the TOP of my pelvis, not to mention exiting through the narrower side! I remember hearing my doctor say as he first removed the baby, "Wow, there was NO way he was ever going to come out on his own." I know that if this had been pre-cesarean days, he wouldn't have come out. He and I would have died. I know this. The surgery saved our lives (which is scary to think about - another year, another country, another place, and we'd be dead). Of course I am thankful for a healthy baby. My grief was unconnected to his health; I was grieving something of my own.

Labor and childbirth were (to me) things I was supposed to participate in. Something I myself did, that I was a part of. Instead, it was a fairly traumatic experience that happened TO me, instead of WITH me. I felt betrayed by my doctors, my body, my baby. Mostly by myself. I had failed at doing the one thing my body was meant to do. I couldn't even give birth. I wasn't a real woman.

And when it took Henry and I a very long time to bond (several weeks, maybe over a month), in my head I connected it to the surgery. It was my fault I couldn't bond with my baby because I couldn't give birth normally. I didn't know that sometimes it takes longer for people and that this is normal. You only hear the stories of instant bonding. They would hand him to me in the hospital and he was just a baby, not MY baby. Just somebody's child. The good-intentioned comments of "Oh don't you just love him so much??" stung. I didn't, not yet, and I was afraid I never would. That seemed like another failure of myself. The guilt slowed things down.

People would say, "He's healthy! Be grateful for that!" And of course I was!! Of course! I was grateful we didn't die, grateful he was here. But that didn't mean I couldn't mourn something I had lost that was so important to me.

It took just over a year for me to no longer be upset when I saw people's birth announcements. "My wife just gave birth at home in our kitchen! She was in labor for 45 minutes and pushed for 3 minutes, no meds needed! What a rockstar!!" As though time in labor, pushing, and pain tolerance were in anybody's control. I wanted to scream at those posts. "I was in labor for 26 hours! I never got to push! Somebody took away my power to use my legs and cut him out of me! I had no control!" The posts hurt and they obviously weren't trying to. You don't hear many "she's a rockstar!" stories about cesarean recoveries, and I am so glad I had so much love and support from James. It took a very long time to not be hurt by my own experience when I saw that of others. And I don't wish that that person's life had had more pain; I just wondered if maybe I had been more like them, mine would have been a different story. But I know it wouldn't. It just took me a while.

And so if you feel like you're alone in mourning this, or if you feel like all mothers must bond immediately, it's okay. You're not alone. It's normal to have these feelings. The love will come, I promise. Just hang on. The pain will fade. Just hang on.