What the Hell is Wrong with me?

Okay, yes, I've been a long time gone, and I am sorry for that but I have a really good excuse. This new mom thing is a little more time consuming than I thought it would be. All you not so new moms go ahead and laugh, it's cool, I understand. Between the baby and the chemo I'm exhausted and any free time I have is spent sleeping. So the li'l guy is at his Grandthings' house tonight and I have a little free time, and get this...all I can think about is my son. Dammit, I really miss his li'l squirmy body. What the hell is wrong with me? I was looking so forward to a full night's sleep and now I'm kinda sorry that he's not here. What the hell! Where did this grown up, mommy type person come from?

Not Blogging Much

Its miraculous how swept away I am in this child. We went through so much together while I was pregnant and then we both had our own difficulties after birth, it feels like we have lived a lifetime together already. I know this child on such a strangely deep level that I do not know how do describe it. I find myself gazing into his eyes while I'm feeding him or running upstairs to just look at him. I find myself feeling closer to my husband, getting caught up in him too. I guess that's why I haven't been blogging much, there just hasn't been time between the men in my life, and I'm really okay with that. I can feel life slowing down and speeding up all at the same time and it is exhilarating. I have never felt like this and it's strange to me, to be so in love with life and the people who share it with me.

Pneumothorax

So Caleb is born and all is well with the world, right? Not really, no. We spend the day together; family comes to visit and leaves. We nap (Caleb in my arms, my husband in the chair in the hospital room). I finally talk my hubby into going home to sleep; I spend some time alone with the kiddo and call the nursery to take him for the night. I figured I'd get some sleep since I hadn't the night before and keep him in my room the next night. As soon as the nurse came to get him I wanted him back. I couldn't sleep and I was in pain from the c-section so I asked the nurse for a sleeping pill, I slept with the dead.

The next morning I woke up early, at 4am, took a shower got myself all ready and called the nursery to have them bring Caleb to my room and I was informed that my son was in the NICU. How could this happen and without my knowledge. What the hell! I called my husband and it appears that the doctor had come to my room during the night to talk to me about what had happened and couldn't wake me. He called my husband who told him to do what was necessary and drove to the hospital and sat frozen in his car terrified about what might happen. I can't imagine how horrible it must have been for him to deal with this all alone, me in an Ambien induce coma.

We went to the NICU together, my husband and I, where it was then explained to me that my son had a pheumothorax. When a baby is born at 36 weeks their lungs are not full mature and that first breath of air can cause too much pressure and burst a hole in the lung then gas and air collect in the space surrounding the lungs, this is a pheumothorax. Most of the time it heals on it's own, sometimes they need to insert a chest tube to clear the air and aid in healing or do surgery to close the hole. We were hopeful that he would heal on his own and he did but there were days in the NICU with feeding tubes and an oxygen tube in his nose, it was heart breaking.

At my husbands request my doctor arranged for me to have a room at the hospital for as long as I wanted so that I wouldn't have to go home without my son. My hubby knows from experience what it's like for a woman to leave the hospital without her new born child and knew how upset I'd be. I only stayed one extra day, I wasn't sleeping because I when I'd wake up to pee in the middle of the night I'd go down to the NICU to see the kiddo and I was getting really depressed, not to mention that all the nurses kept telling me that I should go home. Though I was more depressed going home without my son, I should have listened to my husband.

Well we have achieved child.

He is so beautiful! Caleb Stephen was born on February 15th, 2007 at 12:47am. He weighed 7lbs, 12oz and was 19¼ inches long. We weren’t expecting to even go to the hospital until February 19th to begin inducing labor not expecting to deliver until the 20th or 21st, but what is it they say about the best laid plans.

On Valentine’s Day we had our final appointment with the OB to discuss the birth plan and to ask whatever questions we had. My doc has evening hours on Wednesday and we went to see him at 7:45pm. We went in and began asking our questions and my doctor looked at my hands and interrupted me asking me how long I’d been that swollen. Now I’d been very swollen for weeks, but I just thought that was normal, apparently the kind of swelling I had was not normal and when I answered at least 3 weeks my doctor decided it would be best to finish this conversation in Labor & Delivery. So off we went, still not understanding what was so wrong with my swelling. Then admitted me to antepartum with the intention of monitoring me through the night for a condition called preeclampsia. Preeaclampsia is a condition in pregnancy characterized by abrupt hypertension (a sharp rise in blood pressure), albuminuria (leakage of large amounts of the protein albumin into the urine) and edema (swelling) of the hands, feet, and face. Preeclampsia is the most common complication of pregnancy. It affects about 5% of pregnancies. It occurs in the third trimester (the last third) of pregnancy.

He left the room to give the nurses his orders and go home to get some shut eye. After a little less than a half hour later there is the doctor again, he had got about half way home and turned back around. He couldn’t give us a real reason but he had a gut feeling that the best idea was to deliver our son as quickly as possible. He just had this feeling that waiting for my condition to worsen was not the best idea and that he would begin to start inducing labor that night. Because of my earlier staph infection it would be safer to induce labor than to risk another staph infection with more surgery. He told us about what could happen if my condition got much worse and there was talk of seizers and bleeding in the brain and death and my husband wanted nothing to do with any of that so he chased the doc to the nurses station and asked him is a c-section wouldn’t be a better idea despite the risk of the staph infection. Relieved that my husband had suggested it our doctor put in orders for a c-section and off we went.

It was totally surreal. All of a sudden I was being rushed to L&D to have our li’l tadpole. I was so nervous, so unprepared. The took me to a small room and I met my L&D nurse, who was fabulous, they started my IV, prepped me for surgery and off we went to the OR. It was a lot easier than I thought it would be, they administered the epidural (which was the hardest part) and once I was numb enough, the c-section was under way. I think the whole surgery took about 20 minutes and at the end of it there was this perfect little baby boy. I didn’t get to see him for hours; at least that’s what it felt like. By the time he was in my arms he’d been to the nursery for his examination and a bath. I was moved to tears when I finally got my arms around him. I have never felt a love like that in my life and not just for my son but for my husband too. Seeing this little miracle who had gone through so much while he was in my tummy, seeing what a perfect little life we had created my love for my husband seems to be more true, more vivid, just more.

Holy Crap!

Oh my G-d, oh my G-d! He's almost here! I can't wait to meet our li'l tadpole, I just can't wait! In less than a week now I go to the hospital to start the induction process (that sounds so funny for some reason). We go to the OB tomorrow for the final check up and instructions. Yesterday we had our final sonogram, yeah he weighs something like 8lbs, 13oz. Thank G-d we're not waiting until the due date, he'd weigh something like 12lbs! It will be so amazing to hold him in my arms and kiss his little face. I can't wait to see him with his daddy. He is going to love his daddy so much. I just get this feeling about the bond they will have. All this is not to say that I'm not terrified. I'm scared to death. What if I'm not a good mommy? What if I fold under pressure. I still can't wait to meet him.

G-d Bless the American Cancer Society

This mastectomy has been very difficult on me. I had a very strong body image and then I gained a bunch of weigh with the pregnancy and then I lost my left breast and I am very insecure. Sure I know that later I can have reconstructive surgery, but that is two years away. When you first get out of the hospital you can't really wear a prosthesis because your still healing and wearing a bra and a prothesis is painful and is not good for the healing process. They give you or you buy this fluff thing to wear, which is pointless. It has no weight, it's like stuffed animal stuffing, so it just kinda floats around. Because your real breast has weight it has a natural sag (what a terrible word) and the fluff has no weight so they are never in the same place at the same time and you, or at least I, was constantly adjusting the fluff (which looks really strange to people who don't know you've had a mastectomy) and I have been very self concious. But now I've healed enough to get my prothesis and a real bra to wear. There's just one problem...being pregnant my one breast is huge compared to what it was before pregnancy. So what do I do? The American Cancer Society will give you 2 bras and a prosthesis. Do I get a size that matches my current and then buy another one when it shrinks or do i just suck it up and get the size I was prior to being prego and not spend the extra money? I decided to go with the latter. When I put on my new prosthesis I was so excited, it looked normal and didn't shift around, I wasn't constantly playing moving it back into position. Then I noticed how much smaller it was compared to my other breast and got all weird all over again. When I called the American Cancer Society to try to exchange it the woman was so who helped me was so kind and understanding of my situation that she just gave me the other one and 2 more bras. G-d bless the American Cancer Society! After pricing the prosthesis I never would have been able to afford to buy one let alone two.

What an Idiot

Sometimes I just don’t think. Granted I do have a lot on my mind right now with the impending birth and chemo, but still. So I have this website (www.MyBattleWithBreastCancer.net) (shameless plug I know) and it’s really important to me. I fell like I need to do something for other woman in my situation and it was really the only thing I could think of. In any event, I let my domain name expire on January 31st, what an idiot! I renewed it right away but still my site is down. I just received an e-mail from my web hosting tech support telling me I have to wait 24 to 48 hours for it to take effect. Wait it took all of 1 minute to take the site down and didn’t I just spend $26.95 to re-register the site name, what’s the hold up.

So hopefully my site will be back up and running by tomorrow. If not tech support is going to have to deal with a very angry pregnant woman, which is something no one really wants to do.