8) When are you rescheduling that party? I wanna go!!
10) When can we get together again? Are you going to reschedule the party?? 🙂
I’ll ask the social director, sambear, about when the party will be rescheduled. Yes, we want to see y’all too! And look, lady, you have my number, you know where we live, you know we’re home during the day too—we don’t have to wait for a party 🙂
9) Tell me about your childbirth experiences. (Ok, so not really a question, but it’s along the same lines.)
Actual childbirth, the whole pregnancy, what?
Okay—I was told, for years, that there was absolutely no way that I’d be able to get pregnant without fertility treatments due to PCOS. I had unprotected sex for five years with my first lover/husband without ever “catching” so I figured the doctors must be right. And the first while with the second husband was the same.
Then I had an encounter at, of all places a Mensa Annual Gathering (AG), with a woman who said she was a nurse and did energy healing (Reiki, I think). She approached me because she said she saw an imbalance around my root chakra (I think that’s the right term), and she asked if I would allow her to try to help me. For some reason, I felt very comfortable with her (very odd), and agreed to go back to her room with her. She had me lay back on the bed and she spent a fair amount of time with her hands simply hovering just above my body. I felt—something. A lot of something. I had no impression of time passing. Afterward, she looked like she might faint, and I asked how I could help her. She finally agreed that I could bring some fruit and cheese back from the hospitality area for her, and I left to do so. I went to get them, and couldn’t find that room again. And never saw her again, and couldn’t find anyone else who had seen her. In fact, I found it increasingly difficult to even describe her. I’d been gone several hours, and my husband was absolutely beside himself with trying to figure out where I’d gone and with whom (he was off somewhere when I left and I couldn’t reach him—of course, I didn’t think I’d be gone long, either). I don’t think he ever did believe me about what had happened.
I felt peaceful, and full somehow. Just—good. And not long afterward, I was pregnant. I believe I had an encounter with Goddess, and Katie is my beautiful Goddess-touched child.
I thought I had stomach flu, and only had a pregnancy test so my husband would stop saying I was pregnant. I made the doc-in-the-box do the test THREE TIMES because I didn’t believe the results, so they were saying, “Um, it was MRS. Armistead, right?” When we called my in-laws to tell them the news, Wayne said “Hello, Grandma” to his mother and she said, “Are the dogs having puppies?” (Both males, so that would have been a shock of its own.)
I kept the “stomach flu” 24/7 for the entire 8 months I carried her. We were living 150 miles apart at the time and KNEW the exact date of conception, and I was sick within a scant few days of that date—my body just doesn’t like hormones. She was butt-first breech and I kept going into labor, so the doctor did a C-section on October 26, 1990. She was covered in that fine fur that babies are supposed to lose before they’re born, but she weighed 8 lbs. 7 oz. too. The doctor said, “She would have been 10 lbs. if you’d gone full term!” I said, “Well, I wasn’t going to enter her in the county fair.” She had a full head of very dark brown hair, and she was the biggest baby (and the only one with hair) in the hospital nursery from Friday when she was born until Sunday when an 11 lb. baby was born (and I swear, that boy had FUR! everywhere!).
The hospital didn’t have any arrangements for an OB-only surgery, so I was alone for the operation, and they didn’t have “rooming in” arrangements. I fought to keep Katie with me the whole time because I knew that they’d give her one of those damned bottles of sugar water if they got her away from me (nobody was really supportive of breastfeeding).
I’m allergic to codeine. That was communicated to the doctor, the hospital, everybody in the world. Well, when the anesthesia really started wearing off on Friday afternoon, the nurse gave me the pain pills the doctor had ordered, then said “spit it out!” and I did. They contained codeine, and she had suddenly remembered the allergy note on my chart. She couldn’t reach the obstetrician—nobody could. His answering service couldn’t. I waited, and waited, and waited, and had been very clearly feeling absolutely everything down to my toes for over 12 hours before they got SOMEBODY to prescribe a relatively minor painkiller that I could take. I just kept holding Katie and focusing on the fact that she was 100% worth it.
My family came down on Friday to see their first grandbaby. My mother stayed with us for a week, then Wayne’s mother came down from Michigan for a week (and caused my maid service to quit). Then one of my girlfriends was there for a week. I was very, very lucky! I went home on the Monday following her birth and took my first business call that afternoon (I telecommuted back then), and was driving the next day. On Friday when I went back to the doctor he said something about allowing me to drive in the next week if I kept doing so well—whoops! I decided that what he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt me.
So—there’s the story of my pregnancy and childbirth experience 🙂
