Motherhood: June 2005 Archives

Before Steven and I met face to face we talked on the phone every morning, every night, more and more and more. Eventually we were talking several times a day and hours and hours on the weekend. It was nothing for him to call at 7pm and we would talk till midnight or later. In that time you get to know a person and to trust their words according to the tone of their voice. I knew up front he never intended to marry again or to have other children. I chided him often. I would tell him how much of a disservice he did to himself banning everyone from his life based on the shitty experience with his ex-wife. I told him one day a woman would come along and be worthy of his heart. He shouldn't deny himself real happiness. Eventually he grudgingly agreed maybe someone out there was worthy of his trust and devotion. About a month later he said to me, "One day I am going to ask you to marry me." I believed him. We talked about children. He once told me that he never wanted another child. For several reasons. One children are used as weapons by some women. Two he didn't think he could love another child like his first. Three he didn't think J. would grow accustomed to impact of another child, so he didn't plan on having another. I could fully understand the first. I told him the second was a crock. Love grows it doesn't take away. The third I got angry with him. I told him if he ever met a nice woman that he could he should tell her up front so she can walk away if she so chooses. I fussed about how he was letting a child make decisions for his future and the future of the woman who did come into his life. About a week later he told me he had given real thought to the issue and concluded once again I was right. He had never looked at it that way before and it was in no way fare to the woman who might win his heart. Eventually he did ask me to marry him. Then he bought us a farm and moved us back to the country where I belong. He also gave me a great cool car the day after Mother's Day. We have lived happily every after. Until a few weeks ago. I have been very sick. Tired beyond tired. Snotty nose, slight cough. As my symptoms worsened and I became sicker each day I decided I should make an appointment to see a doctor. I knew without a doubt what the diagnosis would be. Steven would not believe it until a PhD confirmed it. I have been on the couch for the past two weeks. Sicker than sick. He has been so worried. I went to the doctor today. I married a geek I met on the net. And then we bought a farm. And then he gave me a cool car. And then he gave me a baby. Shhhhhhhh ... I am not supposed to tell anyone until the family knows but I can't keep quiet any longer. It is our secret. O'kay?

After my first experience with motherhood and learning things about the person I was married to I had fully resigned myself to the fact that I would not have other children. When it is wrong to bring another living being into the world, when that child will not have the best of both parents, you turn off the alarm on the ticking clock and forget the best you can the dream of having a flock of children. Had I married the right person the first time I would have many children. At the age of 30, finally I thought things had changed enough, evolved enough, that having another child would add to our lives. That having another child would continue this good path we were walking. I made the conscious decision to have another child. So we did. Previously I had agreed to try again at surrogate mothering. I had in-vitro that resulted a viable pregnancy. My body however could not do it. I had developed an intolerance to the hormone therapy. We had switched from injection to micronized forms in suppository method. I got sicker every day. I developed a yeast infection from hell and eventually my body just gave up. I miscarried what we believe to have been triplets. For me that was the end. I did not have it in me in try again. My body bounced back very quickly. In the following months I got pregnant by choice. In no way did it having anything to do with being a surrogate in the past. It had everything to do with saving my marriage. I really thought having another baby at this point in my marriage would solidify the newfound goodness, bring us closer together and make us happier. It was like starting over. I am not suggesting these are good reasons to have a child. It is the reason I did. Being a mother at 31 is so very different from being a mother at 20. At 20, regardless of how grown up you think you are, you are still a kid in so many ways. I know I was. Having a baby at that age I had a choice to grow up and be responsible or not. I chose to grow up. A lot of my growing I did with Colby. It was all trial and error with a great big learning curve. I learned how to be a mother to and for Colby. When Gracie was born in no way did the learning stop but I was already mother. Most everyone will tell you that after the first time it is easier with a second and successive children. You have a pretty good idea of what to expect. You have confidence in caring for a baby. You know that name brand diapers (back then) didn't mean anything and it was ok to use a cheaper diaper in the day time. You learn that saying no very early does not cause deformation of their growing little mind. You know that eating dirt in the sandbox will not give your child stomach worms. You just know instinctively how to do the job. I also belive you don't question yourself near as much. You begin to trust your judgement. At 30 we had a very nice home, filled will lovely furnishings. We had the cars and some money. We weren't struggling to make it like we had ten years before. I had grown as a person. I was confident in myself. I had developed a bit of patience far beyond what a 20 year old ever has. At that age I was ready to be a mother. Being a mother is physical. Being a mother is emotional. Being a mother is spiritual. In the past I had been all these things over a period of time. Having a child at that stage in my life being a mother was all of those things at the same time. Motherhood was wrapped up in a great bundle where the physical, emotional and spiritual came together in this big swirling vortex of oneness. To be continued ...

In the fall of 1993 I met a lovely woman 8 years older than I. We became friends very easily. We had similar backgrounds growing up in the south. We believed in the same fundamental principles of what children should be in our lives. We had been taught the same religious beliefs. We also believed marriage was forever and divorce wasn't an option. I worked in a little business near where she lived. We would often meet for lunch. She would come into the business and take care of whatever was on her list of errands. We saw one another alot. Her story was one that made my heart ache. She had lupus. The antibodies she developed attacked her heart and kidneys and also was the cause of many miscarriages. For those who do not know lupus is an autoimmune disease. The body sees many things as an enemy and produces antibodies to fight off what it sees as infection and sickness. The normal ability of our body to mask our pregnancy so that our bodies do not attack the fetus is supressed. Therefore the baby is seen as foreign matter and the body attacks and kills it off. Just before we met she had undergone another round of infertility drugs and egg harvesting. Her experience with a prior surrogate had used up all the embryos she had stored in a clinic in California. She was willing to try once more. She and her husband where both well trained professionals who had made their semi-fortune, traveled the world and lived a rather exotic life. At this point they wanted a baby, had the money to use the means available by modern science to try. Because the husband was 40 they had been denied adoption. She was (and still is) open minded and a very loving and giving woman. She has never been selfish and some call her a guardian angel. Many never will know where the miracle of help came from. It is just her nature. She helps those who cannot help themselves and never asks for anything in return. Surrogacy was something I had read alot about. I even knew it something I would do in the event it was presented to me and the people involved met with my own personal scrutiny. After a lot of praying, thinking and talking, I picked up the phone one day and called her house. I told her if she was willing to take the risk with me I would be willing to be her surrogate. In many ways it was a very easy thing to do. In others it was the most difficult. If things worked out I would be entrusting another woman with the life of a child -her own flesh and blood. This is not something to take lightly. Motherhood is a responsibility like no other. Even though she was older than I it was an area where I had experience and she did not. After a few months of prayer and thinking herself she called me back. Yes, she was willing to take the risk on me if I was willing to take the risk on her. This was the beginning of the longest friendship of my adult life. We shared the same dreams of what motherhood should be. We were (and still are) so much alike. I went through more tests than you can imagine. Physically and mentally I was turned inside out, looked at from every angle and needed legal representation to enter into the program for surrogate mothering at the fertility clinic in California. I passed muster. The doctor once commented how much alike we were biologically. I had many of the same antibodies she had, even the ones that gave her lupus but I did not and do not have lupus. We have the same hair color, eye color, fair skin, blood type, rh factor. It is amazing really. The doctor said that was very rare to be so similar and we had a good chance of a positive outcome because being so similar my body would be less likely to reject her genetic material that was an embryo. May 1994, all things were a go. We were waiting daily for my period to start at which point the hormone therapy would begin. I started my period on May 4th. That afternoon she came to my house and gave me the first injection of estrodiol valerate -.25cc packed in oil every 3 days. Each week I would be required to go into the doctor's office and have a sonogram to look at the growth of the unterine lining. I went to the lab and had blood drawn to determine if my body was accepting the synthetic hormones and rising steadily. By the time a week rolled around we were in California at the clinic waiting for the doctor to decide if implantation of the embryos were possible. My blood levels were excellent. The lining of my uterus was four times the required thickness for implant. The doctor agreed I was healthy as a horse. He also encouraged us not to get our hopes up. So many things could go wrong so early. On day 7 a call came to the hotel we were staying in and the doctor ordered the injection of 2cc progestrone daily. This causes a change in the uterine lining that makes it sticky so that an embryo has a chance to latch on and grow to a viable pregnancy. Essentially we were fooling my body into thinking it was already pregnant. Women do not produce high amounts of progesterone until an actual pregnancy takes place. The morning of the in-vitro we prayed. We went to the clinic. She stood by my side and held my hand. The doctor came in and gave me the vaginal exam with the 'little pinch' that actually caused the cervix to open a tiny bit. (That is why we sometimes spot after a gyn visit.) A lab technician came in with a syringe and a long but tiny catheter. Gravity is all that was neccesary for 5 living embryos to drain from the syringe and into my body. The embryos had been frozen for over six months. They were the product of her eggs and her husbands sperm. Of seven that had been thawed, 5 were living at the moment. There is no way I could give away one of my eggs. I believe those types of surrogacy are dangerous. They are also the types that appear in the news when the surrogate mother refuses to give up custody of the baby after birth. We came home. She came everyday and gave me the shots. The two weeks waiting for the pregnancy test was the longest in the world. They day I got the results I went straight to her house. The minute she opened the door I started crying. Her face dropped thinking the worst. "Hi, Momma," I said through sniffles. I do not think I have ever seen a person more filled with happiness and joy than seeing her at that moment. For 14 weeks she came to my house and forced 2cc of the progesterone packed in sesame oil into the mucles of my hips. For 14 weeks not only did I have the all day long morning sickness but my body was developing an intolerance for the progesterone. It was chewing it up like wildfire but at the same time it was making me sick. It took nine months AFTER the birth for the deep muscle bruising and the tenderness to leave my hips. She took care of me the entire time as if I were her child. She brought me food. She cooked supper and dropped it off. She made all the clothes I wore. I guess at this point I should tell you that she was retired as a clothing designer. She made me clothes from the fabrics she had collected from all over the world. I was far more fashionable than any of the young women these days will hope to be. Everything was custom made for me, my body shape and size, my skin coloring, my hair. A shipping package would arrive and I would open it to find maternity bras, jeans, a winter coat I could button even at 9 months. Sometimes I would even get flowers and letters from her mother thanking me for making her daughter so happy. She went with me to every doctors appointment. She was scared to touch me and knowing how pregnant women hated to be touched she never asked to feel the baby move. I knew she wanted to so I would take her hand and lay it on my stomach and she would laugh and cry at the same time. We shared EVERYTHING that concerned the pregnancy. I wanted to make sure she wasn't left out of the one thing she wanted more than anything in the whole world. The experience of being pregnant was lived through me. January 27, 1995 I delivered a healthy bouncing baby boy two weeks ahead of my scheduled delivery date. It was a hard day. The labor was induced. It was so slow going. She convinced me to take the epidural and not to be brave. They gave me way too much and I went completely numb from the hips down. I could not even move my toes. This caused labor to slow down. After 12 hours my doctor came in and said, "Let's get this over with. You have suffered long enough." He ordered the putossin to be pumped up then he looked at me and said, "You can push through this and get it over with. Ready?" God, yes, I was ready. He took one leg and bent it up as far as my knee would go toward my chest, one hand gripping the back of my calf the other gripping the bottom of my foot. He instructed my husband to do the same with my other leg. He told me to use the hand grips and when he gave the word I was to push with everything I had in me. 20 minutes later a baby boy was being cleaned up and he was putting stitches in -3 sets inside and 2 sets outside. Later I would notice the 2 sets of hand prints that shown in bruises on the backs of my calfs. This baby's shoulders were wider than the circumfirance of his head. We later found out both of his collar bones broke during delivery. I remember hearing a pop that had given me so much relief just before he was completely out. No worries, he healed completely and perfectly. Just maybe I pushed too hard. We don't know for sure. The physical part was grueling. The emotional part is beyond most people's understanding. I knew from the beginning this baby was not mine. His flesh was not of my flesh and there was no difficulty in going home without a baby. She stayed with me at night at the hospital. I pumped and she bottle fed him. I filled out the paperwork, the lawyers came a couple hours after the delivery with the adoption and custody papers. The legal part in no way took away from the joy of the event. I was the vessel through which God performed a miracle. It is one of the best experiences of my life. On his birthday I would get flowers. When he was old enough to draw I was sent artwork he had made. We talk on the phone and he knows who I am. We have a wonderful relationship and she has never once tried to keep him from knowing me. One fall after they had moved to Florida where the father is in private practice she came up for a visit. We sat at my table and had lunch. This beautiful little boy looked at me and said, "I know momma is my mommy. But you are my momma too. You loved me before she held me but she loved me before you ever knew me." All we could do is look at this beautiful boy with tears streaming down our faces. A five year old knew more than any adult ever could. I know this post is bogged down in details. They are important details to this story. I know this post is long. Please bear with me. You see, being a mother is so much more than a physical thing. It is spiritual. It is a conscious effort to be responsible for a life other than your own. It is a chance to give a gift, a gift of life and love. It is a chance to step beyond the bounds of everything you know and be somebody better than you ever dreamed you could be. It is also the hardest thing to do. Colby understood the baby was not ours. She never questioned it. I made sure she understood everything that was happening. I don't think my mother completely understands why or how I did it. She accepts the fact that for me being a mother and childbirth are not the same experience she had. My sister thinks it is the most amazing thing she has ever witnessed. My grandmother never understood. It pulled us apart for a long time. My grandmother did not understand the advances and the ability of modern medicine. She could never grasp the concept of science that made it possible for me to have another woman's baby. She always believed I gave away my baby with no thought to what I was doing. Eventually time passed and it was pushed back into the far reaches of her mind. She didn't ever talk about it again. But until the day she died she believed I gave away her greatgrandchild. Nothing could change her thinking. My only regret, and I have very few in this life, is that I could never make her understand it was not my baby. He wasn't my child to keep. He wasn't a baby born in my heart. My body was a vessel and he was not of my flesh. He is her baby. Her flesh. Born of her heart long before he ever came to be born of my body.

Growing up all I ever wanted to be was a mother. In high school I went through all the career goal stuff and picked journalism and law as directions I might someday seek. My love of history came much later. Deep down I just wanted to be a momma. Secretly I had this dream. A most perfect and rose colored image of what my life would be. I would marry a great guy with a simple yet beautiful wedding. He would work and I would stay home and raise my babies. We would get through life together and in the end we would find a away to be financially stable. Our children would grow up to be intelligent people who traveled and saw all the things in the world to see and would come home to tell me about their lives. I would sit on the front porch and rock my grandbabies. Life would be perfect in an imperfect world. I was 18, young and dumb. I had this image of motherhood that was live and in technicolor. I would be a most loving and gentle earth mother. I would grow vegetables and herbs. I would tend my flock of children, teaching them all the things I knew. We would do homework at the family table. We would take summer vacations. Life would be grand. Then I got pregnant at age 20. I still had the ideals and dreams of this life that was to come. Dear heaven, someone should have told me in advance what was to come. I might not have believed them but someone should have bellied up to the bar and shed some light on real life! Being pregnant was not easy. I was so god awful sick. EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. ALL. DAY. LONG. No one warns you about being sick! I was so sick I could hardly hold my head up. It took most of the day to motivate myself to do anything. Laundry piled up. Dishes didn't get washed everyday. I was drowning. The least little thing would set off my gag reflex. I dreaded brushing my teeth. I knew it would make me physically sick. I had to brace myself and plan for teeth brushing. I had to prepare myself for the sickness to come after and then brush my teeth again. It was a grueling ordeal to wade through. Then one day I wasn't sick anymore and everything was almost normal again. The morning and all day long sickness is a filthy trick Mother Nature plays on a woman. The next six months was spent making baby clothes and blankets, pulling together a nursery and planning for this beautiful little creature that was coming into my life. People were generous with showers and gifts. It was indeed a lovely time. I read all the books. I understood exactly what was happening to my body and the complete development of my baby. The earth mother thing kicked in again and I was determined to do it the old fashioned way - no drugs. Just learning to breathe to control the pain. Natural childbirth was my choice and I was determined to carry it through to the end. Did I tell you I was young and dumb? The night I went into labor I realized what a big damn mistake I had made. Natural childbirth is not pleasant. Holy hell I would have killed someone for drugs to make the pain stop. At one point I remember begging for just a little something because I knew I was going to die and I didn't want to die screaming and writhing in pain. I did not scream. Not one time. I clench my teeth together to the point I broke one and later ended up having a crown put on it. Mother Nature might be a bitch but there is a God in heaven. He saw my misery and delivered me from the pit of hell that childbirth pain is. In no less than two hours and fifteen minutes what had started had come to a full end. I held my new baby in my arms and then AND THEN the doctor gave me something for pain! He also explained to me that at a certain point there is no turning back and pain medication shouldn't be given. I think they tried to tell me while I was begging but it did not register at the time. Within hours I had lost my mind again. I went home 36 hours after Colby's birth with all of these glorious plans of the perfection of motherhood I would carry out. Somebody should have taken my rose colored glasses and stomped on those damn things until they were nothing but crushed metal and shards of glass. Hours after going home I was in a rocking chair crying my eyes out while this red faced baby screamed and nursed. The image in my mind is likened to huddling in a corner with red eyes and rocking back and forth mumbling mindless babble. I kid you not! No one told me about stitches. No one told me about constipation. No one told me about blisters from letting a baby nurse at will. What was I supposed to do? A baby that is nursing is a baby that is not screaming. To top it off I was scared to death! I was scared I would break her! I was scared I would do something so wrong she would be scarred for life. No one tells you anything! Babies do not come with instructions! How is a young woman to know what to do? Thank God for my mother who came to my rescue. Every evening after work she came to my house. She did chores. She helped me take care of Colby. She taught me how to bathe her and burp her and she brought me cream for the blistered nipples that were an ungodly sight. Now there is more to this than just telling you a story. I have been following a couple of blogs written by soon-to-be first time mothers. God save these young women. They know NOTHING! They think they know what to expect. Oh no, they don't know jack and are in for a rude awakening. I actually feel sorry for them. There is no class that will ever prepare them for motherhood. There is no book that will tell them that lettuce and broccoli and onions will give their breastfed babies so much gas that they will screaming for hours. There is nothing that gives them an acurate picture of things to come. No one has told them that $300 diaper bags are a waste of money. No one told them that a $700 stroller is throwing money at foolishness. No one has told them they would be better off using that money to hire help to come in for at least a couple weeks to wash dishes and clothes and floors. I see the obsession with skinny bodies and fear of stretch marks. No one has told them that in a few months they will be more concerned with using a tucks pad and A&D ointment. No one has told them the fear of peeing for the first time knowing there is a string of stitches in the area. No one has told them about cramping until you think you will go blind. No one has told them about the weeks after when there is bleeding like no period they have known before. Some have been warned about a babies need to breast feed every two hours. They have no idea how extremely tired they will be trying to recover from birth and then getting no sleep because a baby needs to feed. They don't seem to understand you better catch some sleep while the baby is sleeping. Even more so they don't realize how assinine they look dressing their pets up in baby clothes pretending how it might be. Every birth story is unique. We women share them like battles fought. The basics are all the same, no matter who you are. Childbirth is hard on your body, mentally and physically. You do not go back to work after a week. You don't pick up where you left off. Everything changes. Unless maybe you are independently wealthy. You know what the saddest part of it all is? You can tell them EVERYTHING and they think you are kidding or exaggerating. Some even reply with "Ewwww." Even sadder are the ones who are giving advice about birthing and motherhood. How can you give advice about something you don't know anything about? Thank God we do not stay young and dumb forever. One more thing. To all the soon-to-be mother's who might read this. No one wants to see photos of shit covered babies. No one wants to read about the shit and the puke. Stop now before it starts. You will suffer a major loss of respect. Plastering the internet with those types of things makes you look like ghetto trash. It is not pretty and it is not funny. It is the MOST disrespectful thing you can do to your new little family. Thank you in advance for not doing this.