Malachi's Story

( This was written about 9 months ago. As tomorrow is Malachi's first birthday. I thought I should finally post it. Sans editing. Like I normally painstakingly do. (Ha ha. Spell check is as close to editing as I get these days/years.)


8:30am  Shane announces over coffee that today is the day. I say ok. We wake up the kids and they join us in the library. We watch Baumgartner jump. Wow!

11:00am  I eat a snack and take a nap in preparation. We wait. I try to pack in as many calories as I can not knowing how long I have or many reserves I'll need. Each bite could be my last. I finish up some baby laundry and put drinks and things I might want in various places. The baby blankets are stacked neatly on my vanity.

9pm Standing in the kitchen I feel a contraction that makes me grumpy and think Shane must be right. I wish I had gotten more sleep.

11:00 We go up to bed to get more sleep as the nap has worn off. I can't sleep. Shane starts timing- 9 min, 4 min, 13min. I call my sister and say it is probably going to be tonight and to share the information with the rest of the family. We'll call when it gets serious.

1:00  I tell Shane they are getting stronger and to page the midwife and call his mom and Tirzah. And run me a bath. While he is talking to Heike my water breaks. Fortunately I'm on the toilet.

1:45 Heike arrives. I am in the tub. Counting towel thread loops, bathroom tiles, or watching a piece of lint floating in the water. Anything I can think of to focus on. Heike says baby's head is right there and wonders if Tracy will make it in time. The contractions are strong but I'm staying on top of them. Tirzah, my mother-in-law, and the second midwife, Tracy, arrive. Tirzah brings freshly made muffins and half-and-half. I'm really glad because our fridge has been broken for three weeks and we are living out of a cooler on the back porch. Which would not accommodate a Cotstco trip's worth of anything so food is a little scarce.

2:10  I say I want to push. Heike says  baby's head is right there 'shoots away' or something like that. I float on my back and wait for the next contraction. I am visualizing getting in bed with the baby and having a good sleep. Soon.

2:40  I feel the baby kick. A contraction starts and I get ready just as it starts to fade away. I wait for the next one. I start drumming my fingers on the tub wall. The contractions get shorter and weaker and very far apart. I feel way more aware of  what is going on around me than I think I should be. I ask Heike what's up. She suggests trying a new position. I float a little while longer just breathing through the contractions. Pushing feels like a waste of energy.

3:10  I move to the birth stool and the contractions get a little stronger. Then weaker. I get up to pee, walking starts a contraction. I sit down. It goes away. I'm flummoxed. I'm feeling exhausted already. This was why I was hoping for labor to start in the morning with a full night's rest behind me. So I decide to try and rest instead.

3:40  Shane helps me get back in bed. The contractions are strong and I can't sleep.

4:00  Back to birthing stool. Uterus still trying to go AWOL. Heike gives me some sublingual pills advises on various techniques to jumpstart things again.

4:20 Hurts like crazy burning across my abdomen when I push. Heike suspects full bladder and unceremoniously and almost imperceptibly inserts a catheter. I think 'wow that was not a big deal.'  But it still hurts when I push.

4:25 Heike says my body is out of energy. The athletic equivalent of bonking.Tirzah brings up some of Shane's gel shots left over from his bike rides. They taste horrible but I eat two. Supposedly they are different flavors.

4:30 The poor excuse for contractions start up again. I'm feeling fed up. We had planned on Shane  delivering the baby but Heike decides he needs to stand behind me and be a restraint. Which is good. He holds me around my shoulders and with the next pseudo contraction I push like there's no tomorrow. It starts to ebb quickly but I keep pushing, grab another breath and go under again. It feels like a do or die moment and I want to finish. Now.

4:31 Out comes Malachi's head- along with about 1000cc of blood. I look down and see him. I am so relieved to finally see some progress for all my work but know it's not done yet.

4:33  Feeling a little betrayed, I give up waiting for any assistance from a contraction and push the rest of him out. Along with another gush of blood.

4:34 I nuzzle Malachi. Shane and I admire him and declare it to be the best birth yet.

4:40 Placenta delivered. more blood. Heike gives me two shots, one of Pitocin one of methergine. More blood. Shane cuts the cord and helps me get in bed, leaving a scene from Donnie Brasco in the bathroom and blood on anyone standing in a 4ft radius of the birth stool.( Over the next few days we find and clean up  more remnants of the birth. I just discovered yesterday, three months later, some spatter on the wall that was overlooked before.)Partial abruption found on placenta.

4:45- I start shaking and shivering. Shane gets in bed next to me. I can't talk my teeth are chattering so hard. I don't even notice who has the baby. They give me a hot pad and extra blankets.

5:10 Midwives clean up the delivery site and the trail I left from the bathroom to the bed. Somebody brings me Malachi and he nurses right away. I am finally warm. I take some ibuprofen.

5:40 -Cyril sees Tirzah in the laundry room  and assumes it  means one thing. He comes to our room with big eyes and is enormously pleased to meet his new little brother. He runs off to wake the other kids and soon we are all gathered together on the bed. The midwives let the kids have family time before they do the newborn exam. The kids ooh and aah over his tiny fingers and toes. Trudy feeds me chicken noodle soup. And muffins with lots of butter.

6:00- Midwives go down. Tirzah and Grandma feed them muffins and coffee. Then they regroup upstairs. Somebody feeds me something.

6:20-The midwives do the newborn exam there on the bed. Nothing of note but a suspected tongue-tie. He weighs in at 8 lbs  even. 21 inches. Kateri puts on his first diaper.
Everyone goes home or back to bed. I am put on bed rest for a week until my iron recovers. I lost more blood ( about 2 cups,) than I did with Cyprian. I'm glad I didn't pass out again. And do glad to finally be snuggled up in bed with Shane and the baby.

Please Pray

I'm asking anyone who comes across this post, to please pray for my brother-in-law and his family. He was just diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. He and his wife have four young children. My sister-in-law has decided to share their journey. You can read about it here http://theborgesons.blogspot.com/2013/08/war-and-peace.html?m=1

If you'd like to read something really entertaining...

Go to this blog. You will not be sorry.

A little lunch reading

I sat down to peruse the internet while eating lunch today and this article caught  my eye:

http://www.examiner.com/article/multiple-sclerosis-death-due-to-tecfidera-unlikely-but-still-investigated

My favorite  paragraph was this:


The introduction of the drug has exceeded expectations though and, coupled with therapies like Gilenya, these pill-form medications are changing the way patients are dealing with their disease. i.e. They are DYING!

OK. I added that last part. But it's still true. When I went to the neurologist last she listed all the new drugs coming out. But cautioned it is always a good idea to wait and see who dies first. And of what, as the market guinea pigs are more numerous than the trial rats and new information (side effects) really come out once a drug is FDA approved.

Not that I was thinking of trying it anyway. But its fun to keep up on the news.

Speaking of MS, I have been blogging in my head a lot lately and have been looking forward to sharing stories about walking into doorways and falling off exam beds, and cleverly and desperately peeing in a diaper only to find the '12 hrs of wetness protection' is a lie. (Also, some of those stories have a basis in reality and some do not. But I'll let you wonder a bit for now.) Because for real my hands are numb and typing with the fingers that are just mobile enough (popsicle sticks would work as well) is really slow so no longwinded diatribes about the state and fate of man or mice (especially ones in trials). For now. But it started with my legs and they are feeling some improvement so hopefully that means its on its way out and I will be a fully functional battle station in a few weeks. I'm bummed because I did want to participate in Jen's 7 for Seven idea. At least I have something new to read every day this week.

Summer What?

Well, our summer is off to a normal Seattle start. It's been rainy the past two days. I took a picture through the back door. I didn't want to step out, because its all wet. We put the down blanket back on our bed last night, after having it off for awhile. I suppose it had to start cooling off to get ready for 4th of July. Another Seattle  tradition. But at least we have cousins coming to visit for the week, starting today. Never mind we might all be cooped up the whole time.

Pregnancy, on the other hand, is still off to a good start. But  I don't usually start to feel yucky until about week 6, and then feel better by week 12. Though I am still planning on not feeling queasy at all. I have started  making notes on quick snacks to keep around. I didn't try this one last time but for breakfast I'm  going to try a banana, strawberry, blueberry, kale, and cashew butter smoothie. I can chop and freeze it all then just blend in the morning.

Lately in the evenings I've been having whole wheat crackers with triple crème brie and apples. I am going to try and keep that up as well. Just because I really like it.

I was a little worried the other night in bed, the best time to worry, about Malachi and how long I'll be able to exclusively nurse him. He's been really fussy in the evenings. even if he goes to bed early, he'll wake up just to fit in his fussy time, which is generally from 9-11pm. Though he is not adverse to starting it earlier, if he feels the need. Or going later. The other night he extended it until midnight. Which was really fun because it coincided with my snack time so I got to try and assemble my crackers with one had while standing and bouncing up and down.  But I am trying to be very conscious of my diet so we powered through it.

So of course I start to worry maybe he is hungry and not getting enough.  Or, God forbid, should lose a chin .

I've never been pregnant this early. Usually it was after a year and they were eating some table food. So it feels weird to be thinking about his diet already. After doing some research and talking to my mom, which are the same thing, I felt better about sticking to the course of holding off on loading up the conveyor belt with the fridge contents and sitting Malachi in front of it. Instead I've just focused on making sure I get lots of nutrients and water.

                                                      What, fat boys get hungry too!


I've also been checking blogs of anyone with a baby near Malachi's age hoping to find a similar story. Come on, my baby is X months younger than yours. Aren't you pregnant too? But so far, no. I still wonder why I am. Malachi still nurses a lot at night, in the mornings, and all day. He's never not with me, unless he's napping and I make a Costco run. Nothing is different from my other kids.  I've only recently started to thin about exercising. The best I can some up with is Malachi has some big things to do in life, and he's going to need a side-kick.  If this baby comes out wearing boots and a cape I'll take that as a confirmation.



Speaking of Malachi coming out, I just realized I still have not posted the story of his arrival. It feels hard to go back and read what I did write down. Because it was hard. And I might just post what I wrote without revising it. And maybe that will remind me to  clean up some of the blood that is still on the floor trim. Yes, I have cleaned the bathroom since, it was just an out of the way spot so it was overlooked. For 8 months. But then I think 'you'll just have to clean it all up again in 9 months, maybe you should wait? Besides, you need a snack.'


On an even better note, this study says breastfeeding is OK for mom's with MS. And goes back on an older study that showed no benefit to prolonging the protective period that pregnancy affords by saying it actually does. Not that I needed anything to convince me that nursing was best. Sadly, the article does not state strongly that women 'should' breastfeed, just that they can. But when you read the research it is pretty clear that moms that breastfeed  are better off. As a side note, I have never had the much warned about post partum relapse.

Well, wherever you are, hopefully a sunnier place, I hope your summer is off to a great start. We'll dream about sprinklers and sunburns and enjoy free rootbeer floats that our grocery store is offering as consolation prizes for the crummy weather. Where, I will probably pick up some more cheese and apples.

 

XRJQZ&&&%#! : o : )

No, this is not a guest post by Malachi. The first part was a tribute to my Scrabble letters. The last part was my reaction when I finally found a gift for Father's Day. Shane is notoriously hard to get things for. The things he does not get for himself are things I'm not really qualified (or funded enough) to get him. Like, a 60ft catamaran or something. So instead, I found the most unique, literally one -of-a-kind presents I could find. And then I woke him up early to show him the test results. Because I know he needs his sleep on the weekends. But I knew he'd want to know and it was way too early to call anyone. I was going to take a picture of the little digital 'pregnant' symbol. But it was gone the next day and when I tried to pee on the second one it came up with an error symbol. So I looked up the  symbol in the manual and it said the results mean you need to do another test. Which I didn't have. Who can screw up peeing on a stick? Oh. Someone with 5 kids one of which is sitting on her lap while she tried to do said test ( I know. Too much information). That's who. So no cutesy picture of a positive test.

I was surprised, and not surprised. On Monday I went into the clinic. I wanted to make sure the UTI from the week before was all cleared up. I had sort of a funny slightly full feeling and it made me want to check it out. So I left the baby at home and ran up to not pee at the drs.

I had purposefully drank a large glass of water before I left. But much to my dismay, and drs surprise, I couldn't go. So we chatted a bit and I explained how it didn't feet like a typical UTI, but jus funny enough as to feel like something was trying to get my attention. And sometimes that is how UTIs start for me. They always ask if I'm pregnant and I always tell them there's always a chance. Unless  I AM pregnant. Then I tell them yes. So he said they could check that too. He looked over my charts and saw that every time I had come in suspecting something was amiss I had been right so he wrote me a prescription for the Monurol  again and we discussed what I might talk to the urologist about next week. It was all very nice. And finally I had to pee. He came back in and said,

"You were right."

At least about the leukocyte level being high. He said he'd call me in the next few minutes when he got the hcg results back, if it was positive. I went to the pharmacy and waited. He never called.

But, being the 'I love tests that tell me about me' kind of person  that I am, of course I came home and started peeing on things. But the first positive was not until Sat, so that will be useful information for the midwives as my cycles had not been perfectly regular. All two of them. Also, for anyone interested, because I always am, the 'practice' or warm up ovulation thing  is totally true. I had two periods of suspected ovulation, complete with lh surges and everything- I told you I liked tests. But the last one was the real one. Also, lh looks suspiciously like hcg, so if you get a string of positive lh tests you are probably pregnant. It was a good thing I was testing so often so I could pinpoint approximate implantation and then and not just tell the midwives 'surprise me' when it comes to calculating my due date.



So I might have a short window of actually coming up with real words at Scrabble. Before the pregnant brain sets in. If it ever left. I'm still not sure it did. Thank goodness for spellcheck.  Real words. Not just silly arrangements of letters pulled out of a bag like I think the MS drug companies do. Why else would they call things like Tysabri, Copaxone, or Tecfidera unless they were just going for points. Not 'easy to say easy to spell. I laughed out loud when I read the newest Plegridy. Really? That's the best they could come up with? It doesn't even have a Z in it. Another fun part is keeping the names straight all through the trial and release-to market phases. Just when you get a handle on BG-12, they go and change it to Tecfidera. Ok so Tysabri is a little easier than it's  natalizumab (sounds like a space alien name). I think they laugh when they come up with their silly names. 'Hey, guys. I got a good one. Even the neurologists won't know how to say this one without the secret decoder ring! Oh, and tomorrow we're doing no vowels.'

Marc Stecker's post informed me about the newest candidate in the funny names line-up. Whether or not you are interested in funny named drugs, MS research, or zombies you should check it out. His blog is Wheelchairkamikaze. The link is to the right.

(Haha. Spell check is having a hayday with all the drug names.)

Let Them Eat Food

Malachi is teething. Hard. One tooth is through, but the second is clearly giving him a hard time. Which is a hard time for all of us. Eating, bathing, and conversing are things of the past. I told Shane we should just get some French comedies as subtitles would allow us to actually get the movie. Instead of trying to read lips and coming away with vastly different plot themes. Were we watching the same movie? He was confessing to the murder? I thought he was professing his undying love and affection.

Teething tablets, Tylenol, frozen chewy rings. None make  much of a difference. He's also started nursing like he's smoking a cigarette. He takes long, slow drags. Then lies there contemplatively, the cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, and looks around before taking another puff. The he feels the cigarette slipping so he employs his newly emerged snaggle tooth and catches it just in time. At which point I take a sharp breath. Which scares him. So he cries some more and I cry some more and I wonder how the detective knew the murderer was the wife.

So I laughed, yesterday, when the therapist advised me to work on getting some time for myself. To exercise, think, grocery shop- without the distraction of kids. Actually, I had already set aside some time on my calendar next week. At 4am. To pee. These days that's about as luxurious as it gets. She also advised me to focus on nutrition and making every calorie count. As in make sure every calorie comes from butter, heavy cream, bacon sandwiches, or triple cream brie with crackers and apples. Or at least that is what I took it to mean. Given the few opportunities and the speed, and positions, which go with trying to get food past a grabby Muffin and into my mouth, the fewer in number and more calorie-dense in composition of each bite the better chance I won't pass out before the next meal. At this point I don't know if my freaky metabolism could support me, a growing fat boy, and  some jumping jacks.

I surprised myself last night when Shane, who had already worked late and through some of Malachi's evening fussiness - it gets worse at night-asked if it would work to take the big kids to see the midnight showing of Man of Steel. And I said sure. By work, it ended up meaning that Cyprian would discover they were going and he was not as he was awake when they left.   Because my kids stay up way too late and a midnight showing is not really a big stretch for them. His sadness would not be assuaged by the opportunity to camp out in mom and dad's room and Malachi, who was almost starting to stop whining, felt inspired by the competition  and set up wailing with renewed vigor. I was starting to regret my support as Cyprian threatened to pack his bags and leave and Malachi bit me for the umpteenth time. Then Kateri took the baby and walked and the  change of scenery and pace helped him finally quiet down and I slipped him a cigarette and  he went to sleep. Just about the time the movie was starting.

And I  was so not ready when Malachi started repeating all of the bushman's lines from The Gods Must Be Crazy. At five in the morning. He finally went down for a nap. 45 min ago. He's up now. Probably he sensed I was about to make lunch.