Parenting is hard, y'all. I'm sure some of you are already laughing at me, you veteran parents, you. But seriously, it's hard. In spite of becoming an aunt at age 7 and acting like a little mama when they were around, and in spite of working childcare as a part-time job for roughly 8 years (shout out to SECC Weekday Childcare!), you're never really prepared until it happens. During my years working childcare I took care of infants beginning at 6 weeks of age all the way up to 11 years old, and everything in between. I saw great parenting, mediocre parenting, scary parents, well-behaved children, mischievous kids, colicky babies, and much, much more. I can vividly recall working the baby room and each worker hoisting a baby on either hip, leaving the remaining baby to cry on the floor. We always had to decide which baby was going to cry regadless of whether or not s/he would stop when held, and so the unlucky one who we deemed a whiny-baby was left to CIO.
Lots of these things gave me great experiences that I locked into my Save For Later file in my brain, but no book or experience prepares you for the lack of sleep and crazy hormones that you encounter once you have your own baby.
The pregnancy experience with our sweet Vivian Scout Eisinger wasn't ideal. From the beginning things were somewhat tricky. About 30 seconds after I got a plus sign at 6:00a on a random Tuesday morning and right before Rolf spent 15 minutes in the shower shaving all the skin off his face as he tried to process the news, The Nausea settled in. You know, the "morning sickness" that was really like "start at 10am every day and last until you go to bed" sickness? Yeah, that. Once the excitement had settled a bit, I would cry daily because I just couldn't imagine another X weeks of the nausea. The night before our first doctor's appointment, I was unfortunately t-boned by a Trinity student who wasn't paying attention and pulled out right into me. I had just picked up my car from repairs an hour beforehand. Nothing ruins the surprise of showing your parents your first sonogram picture and annoucing new grandbaby news like them unexpectedly showing up to the hospital when they find out you're in the emergency room, which is exactly what my mom did. She couldn't possibly have known that we didn't want her to show up because we hadn't yet told her we were expecting and the whole trip to the emergency room was largely due to my being pregnant and therefore requiring extra precautions. Cue to us telling my mom over Qdoba take-out in the waiting room. Awesomeness, check one. At any rate, Baby Smalls and I had checked out just fine, and it was a fairly mundane first trimester, with a bump along the road here and there. At around 25 weeks we were fortunate enough to have a well-timed babymoon; some friends were getting married in Savannah, GA, a city long ago listed on my bucket list of places to visit before I'm old and decrepit. The trip was wonderful and filled with long days of walking. My back ached, I had to go to the bathroom every 5 minutes, and I went from peckish to famished in about 5 minutes on a continuous basis, but overall things were great.Just 4 days after our return, I woke up with horrible back pain that wrapped around my lower stomach. It was enough to have woken me up intermittently during the night, and I cried through my shower as I got ready for work that morning. At the coaxing of my colleagues to call the doctor since it was a Friday, I agreed, thinking that they would tell me it was normal pain and to take Tylenol. It was only when they told me to come in because it didn't sound normal that I became mildly alarmed. Two hours and some miscellaneous tests later, I was officially declared as having pre-term labor. At that point, I was instructed to go to the Labor & Delivery unit one floor below, where I was monitored and given two Terbutaline shots, a medication used to stop the contractions of the uterus. The shots were successful, but not without awesome side effects like ridiculously rapid heart rate, massive shakes, and headache. Right. I was forced on bed rest so that my body would settle down and keep our sweet Vivi girl in for the remaining weeks. Panic settled in as I realized that I was stuck in Louisville for the remainder of pregnancy, that the clock had officially begun ticking on the use of my FMLA time, and that I had no end date for bed rest in sight. Try nesting when you're quarantined to a couch, why don't ya? It was a really difficult time, though I'm thankful that it happened after our Savannah trip rather than before.
Those weeks were filled with watching Downton Abbey and crocheting the granny square blanket I was making for Vivi. It was also filled with visits from sweet friends, tears, and longingly staring out the window as we had our warmest February in many, many years. Three weeks later, I'd finally convinced my doctors that it was okay for me to return to work, so long as I limited myself to in-office work only and didn't do a lot of extracurricular activities. I have never been so excited to return to my job, that's for sure. Another bump in the road occured on Easter evening. Rolf, Tina and I were finally getting back into the routine of taking our typical walks along Frankfort Avenue. Just in front of a bar, I walked off the sidewalk and into the road to avoid a confrontation between Tina and another dog. I mis-stepped as I was merging back onto the sidwalk and landed on my left side. Though my big belly didn't receive the brunt of the fall, it was too big to avoid any direct contact with the sidewalk. None of the bystanders could tell I was pregnant in my puffy vest, and I was mortified at how foolish I must've looked. I brushed off their concern and the dust off my vest and waited until we'd reached a bench a few yards away before I began to cry. It was shortly after we began walking back home that I noticed, in between the throbbing pain in my knee and elbow, some cramping that occured every couple of minutes or so. Something told me to call the Labor & Delivery unit for reassurance, but I was instead told to come in just to be checked out. A couple of hours and contractions later, I had yet another Terbutaline shot for pre-term labor and then was sent on my way.
Things continued smoothly for another two weeks, and then I was hit with the sniffles, the first illness I'd had since I was pregnant. What began as the sniffles became bronchitis, and I spent the next weekend quite sick, including the entire time I was at my own baby shower that weekend, not to mention a husband that was 8 hours away for the entire three days. That Monday, I headed to the doctor, where I was declared as having bronchitis, being contagious, and therefore not allowed to see my sister and meet my brand-new niece who had been born that day. That same day, I experienced what I believed to be the loss of my mucus plug. When I called my doctor they insisted that it was likely normal discharge and not to worry.
Cut to a day or two later: My belly dropped. When I say dropped, I mean there was some serious slopage going on. I could breathe again! It was greatly appreciated, albeit a little alarming. I had read that dropping signals the near-end of pregnancy, but I wasn't even 34 weeks yet. Wasn't it a little early? After having something going on every night that week and still in the throes of The Bronchitis, we finally left our required engagement on Thursday evening. Just as I was getting comfortable on the couch in my pajamas, I felt a little gush. Nothing big, but nothing I had experienced before. Several bathroom trips and many little gushes later, I came to the conclusion that my water had broke. So when I mentioned this to Rolf, he had what appeared to be something close to a panic attack and I made a mental note to keep any and all information surrounding this issue to myself for the next few hours. There were a couple of times during the middle of the night that I noticed these small gushes, but decided to go about my business and get ready for work anyway. Did I mention that it was a Friday? I went in to work and honestly debated about whether or not to call my physican's office in light of the mucus plug dismissal earlier this week, but finally decided to do it since the weekend was upon us. I even decided to leave a voicemail on the medical assistants' line instead of holding for the next medical assistant. Big mistake. The surest way to get in trouble at your physician's office is to leave a message stating that you think your water broke. I was scolded like a school girl before I was told to come in.
I decided to shut my computer down and bring all my personal belongings, because I had a feeling that I might not be back for a while. I first went for an ultrasound, where the tech told me that there was plenty of fluid surrounding the baby and that at this point in pregnancy it was easy to confuse urine for amniotic fluid and "Oh by the way, do you tend to worry a lot and look things up on the internet?"No, but thanks for single-handedly making me feel like a hypochondriac.
At that point I was scooted into the nurse practitioner's exam room, where she proceeded to do a special test that checks whether or not the fluid is indeed amniotic. As she showed me a bright blue stick, I was told that it was for sure amniotic fluid and that I wouldn't be leaving the hospital without a baby. And that's where the panic really settled in. "So, this would be a good time to call my husband then?" I asked. "Yes. You've got a long road ahead of you. Wait here and we'll get a wheelchair to bring you downstairs."And that was the beginning of our sweet Vivi's grand entrance into this world on Thunder Day. Stay tuned for Part II.
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