Pregnancy/Childbirth Experience

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 🙂