Further Adventures in Baby-Having

In this previous post, I told the story (in excruciating detail, I'm sure) of the birth of our first child, 1F. Of course, we've had seven other children since then (what can I say? I think she kinda likes me), and there are a few stories to be told of their births, as well. . .

-------------------------

2F's birth was much quicker than 1F's. Whereas Molly had been in labor for 13 hours with 1F, her second labor was over and done with in about 5 hours. This time, Molly let me be in the birthing room the whole time, although she had another experienced birth-giver for her labor coach again.

-------------------------

When Molly was pregnant with 3M, she tripped on some steps, and broke her foot. So, to the normal discomfort of pregnancy, was added six weeks of crutches. And, when 3M had some growth-hormone issues in his toddler years, he was at first diagnosed with a form of short-limbed dwarfism (a very interesting episode in our family's life, all in its own right), and Molly and I immediately wondered if it had anything to do with the X-rays on her foot. Which was the occasion for some major second-guessing, for a while. But it turned out to be a pretty garden-variety endocrine thing, and we breathed large sighs of relief.

-------------------------

With 4M, all was well, until about a week after his birth, when, out of nowhere, Molly got extremely light-headed, and lost her vision. I mean, she couldn't see - her eyes were open, but there was only a black screen, so to speak. And she passed an extremely large blood clot. Fortunately, she was visiting with one of our neighbors at the time, who put her in her car and drove her to the emergency room, with baby 4M in tow. When Molly got to the ER, her blood pressure was 60/0. Yeah - that 'zero' was not a good thing. Turned out that there were some micro-fragments of the placenta left inside her uterus, and that was stimulating some nasty infection. A D&C cleaned out the gunk, and she was good as new.

But not before spending another night in the hospital. Which got us into a kind of 'Catch-22'. Molly was nursing, and didn't want to have any interruption, so she wanted to have the baby with her in the hospital. But 4M was not, technically speaking, a patient, so he couldn't be admitted, and no-one in the hospital was willing/able to tend to him, even just to bring him to his mother (who was bedridden) to nurse. So we ended up working out an arrangement where we brought a bassinet from home, and they let me sleep on the floor (shades of John & Yoko), and when the baby fussed, I could bring him to Molly. Thankfully, that only lasted for one night. Major gratitude to the folks from our community who took in the other three kids so I could be at the hospital, too. . .

That situation after 4M was born was probably as close to abject terror as I've ever experienced. I was staring into the face of the non-trivial possibility of losing my wife, and having four children, including a week-old infant, to figure out how to raise without her. When her vital signs stabilized, I may have been the most relieved husband and father in the entire civilized world. . .

-------------------------

After 4M, I don't remember so many of the details of Molly's pregnancies or labors. I do recall that, as she went along, Molly got MUCH mellower and more laissez-faire about who came with her for her birthings. Once she arrived at a certain 'comfort level', where she pretty much knew what she was doing, some friend of hers would tell her that she'd never witnessed a childbirth, and she'd always wanted to, and Molly would invite her along to watch. I remember that 2F, who was only 10 at the time, came to watch 6F being born (1F had declined the offer). 1F (who was 16 at the time) saw 7M being born. 'Labor Coach' became, for all intents and purposes, an honorary designation; I joked that we should give the hospital advance warning when Molly's labor started, so they could bring in bleachers. And I would take orders for carry-out, if the labor started going long. I think it was for 7M's birth, though, that Molly's labor coach was a bit too low-key (or maybe just timid). Molly started flagging a bit in mid-labor, so I, having been through six of these before, and having a pretty good feel for what was required, stepped in and got Molly back on-task. So I got to take my turn as 'labor coach' after all.

-------------------------

By the time Molly was pregnant with 8M, she was 45 years old. And 45-year-old women just don't do pregnancy quite as well as 25-year-old women. As the due date drew near, Molly was beyond weary of being pregnant, so when a few desultory contractions began, she walked (yes, walked) to the hospital (it's a bit less than a mile from our house), hoping to get things going, but by the time she got there, the contractions stopped, and they sent her back home. The next day, contractions started up again, more vigorously this time, and when she got to the hospital (this time, she had a neighbor drive her), the docs were all set to give her the pitocin and let 'er rip (uh, so to speak), but when they did the preliminary checks, they found that 8M had flipped into a breech presentation, so they gave her a labor-stopping shot instead, and sent her home again, with a different set of instructions.

It turned out that the hospital had a doctor - a woman, unsurprisingly - who was trained in a technique for 'flipping' breech babies. And Molly, being on her eighth pregnancy, was an ideal candidate for the procedure - her uterus was sufficiently 'pliable'. So the docs told Molly to come back the following day, and they would have the 'baby-flipping' doctor on-call. I took the day off work, and we walked to the hospital again, Molly's third trip in as many days. When they did the preliminary checks on the baby, he was still in a 'head-up' orientation, so they called the 'baby-flipping' doctor, and she came right over. I watched as she laid Molly on her back and sort-of 'lifted' the baby, and just slowly torqued him around, all while hooked to an ultrasound, to keep track of the umbilical cord, and such. The whole procedure took less than a half-hour, and once he was properly head-down, she got him 'engaged' with Molly's pelvis, and all was in readiness. And at that point, the regular family doc started the induction, and a few hours later, we had our eighth child, and fifth son.

-------------------------

Looking back, I'm actually a little bit impressed at the number of stories that have been generated by Molly's eight pregnancies and deliveries. I mean, we might have had eight pretty uneventful pregnancies/deliveries, and I'm sure a decent percentage, even of mothers-of-eight, have exactly that. But we have more interesting stories to tell. . .

*************************

Our week at camp went wonderfully well. The weather was beautiful all week - mid/upper 70s, hardly any rain (quite a bit was forecast, but hardly any actually fell). Just a wonderful time in the woods, on a lake. And for the Entertainment Night, eight of us Joneses (Molly and me, 2F, 4M, 5M, 7M and 8M, along with 6F, who came up for a visit that evening) regaled the camp with a rousing rendition of 'Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da'. And yes, it was definitely nice to have Molly at camp with me, for the first time in the 18 years I've been going to this camp. . .

Adventures on Spring Break

A while back, I posted about a near-miss automotive mishap that occurred several years ago, while our family was on its way to Florida. We've actually traveled to Florida for spring break twice. The first time was in 1989, after I’d re-established contact with my ‘first mother’. At the time, we only had three kids – 3M was a year old at the time, 2F was almost four, and 1F was almost seven. My aunt (my dad’s sister) was living in Sarasota at the time, and gave us a standing invitation to come down and stay with her at her place, and so we did.

It was the first time I had ever been south of the Ohio River (Molly had been to Florida once in college), and we generally soaked up the whole ‘heading south’ experience. Leaving Michigan with snow on the ground, and watching leaves appear on the trees and the grass get greener, the further south we went (and just seeing things like the red dirt in Georgia, for the first time). By the time we crossed the state line into Florida, it was 85º and the sun was shining, and we just felt like we were somehow cheating the system in a major way. We stopped at the ‘Welcome Station’ just across the Florida line, and 2F ran over and spontaneously hugged a palm tree. . .

We arrived at my aunt’s house, and she did a wonderful job of playing the gracious hostess and local tour guide. We drove over to Disney World (for which I’m sure I paid way too much for five of us to spend most of the day standing in line, but my kids wouldn’t have let me leave the state without going there), took in a Tigers spring training game, and consumed all the fresh-squeezed orange juice we could get our hands on (since then, frozen/canned OJ has just never been the same).

Two events stand out in my memory. First, was the initial face-to-face meeting with my ‘first mother’, for the first time in over 20 years. We were both pretty nervous, but we had a good visit. Molly’s winsome personality (she covers for my shyness in a most happy way), and the kids, went a long way toward relaxing the mood.

And there was the beach on Siesta Key. Oh. . . My. . . Goodness. It was the most incredible, beautiful beach I have ever seen. The sand was white, and fine – about the consistency of flour. We scrambled around to find a small container to take some of it back with us, just to show our friends. The water was a luminescent blue-green color, and we watched with delight as pelicans hovered high above the surface of the water, before diving to snatch a fish. And most incredibly, the beach was virtually deserted – we could look more than a mile in both directions, and see fewer than a dozen people besides ourselves. It was just incredible. We stayed on the beach until it got dark (the only not-beating-the-system aspect of the whole experience was that it was 85º and sunny on the beach in March, but the sun set at 6PM; (*sigh*) you can’t have everything).

Our week in Florida ended all too soon, and we piled back into our minivan and reversed the process we’d so enjoyed on the way south – with every passing mile, the grass got browner, the leaves on the trees got sparser and then non-existent, the air got colder, and by the time we crossed the state line back into Michigan, it was 35º and raining. . .

But we’d had a wonderful trip, and made a bunch of family memories.

-------------------------

Three years later, we went to Florida again, with four kids this time – 4M was a year-and-a-half old – and Molly was six months pregnant with 5M (this was when we had our vehicular near-miss). Our main goal this time was to meet my birth-father in person, for the first (and so far only) time; he also lived in Florida, not too terribly far from my aunt. We mainly stayed with my ‘first mother’ and her husband, for that trip, but we stayed at my aunt’s place for the meeting with my birth-father.

On the tourist front, we visited the Kennedy Space Center, which given my own youthful fascination with all things Space, was a major highlight. The tour of the space center was really cool, but we got an added bonus, because while we were there, a shuttle was due to land there in Florida. So, we found out the details, awoke at 4AM, inquired about the best place from which to view the landing, and staked out our spot. We were about three miles from the runway; looking across open water, we were looking right down the runway – the shuttle would virtually fly right over our heads.

As the sun rose, the crowd of shuttle-watchers grew, so that, by the time the shuttle was due to arrive, cars were parked pretty much all along the shore of the little inlet we’d parked on. The guy next to us had his radio tuned to the Space Center communication, and we could listen as the commentator tracked the shuttle’s progress – “Atlantis has just crossed the California coast, at such-and-such altitude, flying at such-and-such speed.” “Atlantis is over Texas now. . .” And so on.

A few minutes before the scheduled landing, suddenly a fleet of helicopters popped up all around us, while the radio told us that Atlantis had crossed the Gulf Coast of Florida. We heard a sharp double-crack, almost like a pair of rapid-fire gunshots, and then we heard over the radio, “Atlantis is on the runway!”

AND WE NEVER SAW IT!!!

The damn shuttle flew right over our heads, and we never saw it! We heard what we were told was a double sonic boom (although I don’t think the shuttle would have been supersonic at that point; that’s what we were told, though), and we were certainly present for a shuttle landing, but somehow, despite all that, we managed to completely miss making visual contact with the bird itself.

(*sigh*)

Returning to my aunt’s house, we were eager to get back to the beach on Siesta Key, remembering what a slice of paradise it had been three years previously. But you know, a lot can change in three years. . .

Driving out to the key, it was instantly apparent that this time, the beach wasn’t going to be quite so deserted as it had been on our first visit. We parked the car and walked, farther than we remembered having to walk before (and Molly six months great with child). And as we stepped onto the celestial white sand, it became instantly obvious that, in the three years since our previous visit, the college students had discovered Siesta Key.

The beach was crammed, virtually wall to wall (if beaches can be said to have walls) with college kids, in various states of drunkenness, and various states of, um, undress. As we walked across the sand, trying to scope out a place where we could put our blanket down, at one point we were walking behind a young woman in a very, um, skimpy thong bikini (the kind that Molly refers to as ‘butt floss’; and actually, ‘skimpy’ vastly overstates the amount of actual cover the suit was providing for her). 2F, who was not quite seven at the time, turned to me and asked, in that innocent six-year-old manner, “Dad, how come that girl’s butt is hanging out?”

“I don’t know, dear,” I replied. “I wonder if her mother knows.”

The girl briefly sort-of half-turned her head and cast a quick sneer in my direction, and those pleasantries having been taken care of, we all continued on our way.

And with every passing minute, Molly was getting more and more steamed, her rotund self, great with child, juxtaposed most unfavorably (at least in her own mind) with the nubile young ladies on display all around her (and ‘on display’ does not begin to do justice to the situation). To be fair, a spring-break beach full of scantily-clad college girls is not a happy situation for a six-months pregnant mother, with four kids in tow. I practiced as much ‘ocular self-discipline’ as I could muster, and reassured her repeatedly that, as far as I was concerned, she was more woman than any of these girls would ever be, but her embarrassment could not be assuaged. And I knew that this was not going to redound to my benefit. I took a few minutes to let the kids get wet, and we hightailed it out of there. And the whole way back to my aunt’s house, Molly fumed at me, for taking her out in public looking like a whale, to be embarrassed by all the Sweet Young Things on display, etc, etc, etc. I have mostly lived it down by now, but I know better than to bring it up. . .

We had a good visit with my birth-father, and his two daughters, my half-sisters, and once again headed back home.

I don’t think I’d want to live in Florida (I’m told August there is pretty brutal), but the two times we’ve visited have been interesting, and a lot of fun. . .

Being Pregnant

Molly and I have been married for almost 26 years, and we've had eight children together. That means that she's spent six years of her life being pregnant. Throw in roughly a year apiece that she's nursed them, and that's 14 years of her life that someone besides herself has been drawing on the resources of her body. That's amazing.

I have always been in awe of the female body, and not just because of its obvious sensual and aesthetic features. The capacity of the female body to nurture within itself a complete, distinct PERSON, touches on the holy. I mean, think of it - every one of us here today came into being in the exact same way, within our mother's womb. And while I'm thinking of it, every human being who has ever lived corresponds to an act of sexual intercourse between his/her parents (OK, with the one very high-profile exception . . .)

I have often told Molly that reproducing ourselves together is the coolest, most amazing thing we could ever do. In a way, it is the biblical 'one flesh' in its most concrete form (or, if you will, in our case, eight fleshes). I mean - think of it - we're making another PERSON out of the substance of the two of us, and our love for each other. Completely awesome. . .

(5/1 comments)