mallorys_camera | Entries tagged with birth

RTT turns 30 today.

Here is the schedule he devised for b-day activities:

Stage 1 [8:15 am] breakfast at Drippanys (INVITE ONLY)
⁃ Everyone dress fancy and we get breakfast at the Ithaca Deli then eat it in Dewitt Park or at my house if weathers bad.

Stage 2 [10 AM] The InterRobinental Title Match (SELECTED ENTRANTS)
⁃ Entrants compete in a battle royale (WWE2K24, PS5, may need to borrow controllers I’ve got 3) for the InterRobinental Title. Sponsored and DJ’d by DJ Jonah

Stage 3 [12 PM] The Trumansburg Bar Crawl (VIP WRISTBAND)
⁃ We go to Trumansburg for the day and hit up all the bars there, so atlas then Garrett’s then the ice cream bar if it’s open then little Venice. We act super into it like it’s a big deal to make it to every bar in Trumansburg

Stage 4 [3:30 PM] The Boringon Trail (VIP WRISTBAND)
- siesta everyone rest up and find ur way back to Ithaca while bumping exclusively Lofi Kanye remixes

Stage 5 [4:30 PM] Lalala Music (Early Bird Access)
- the 89ers at deep dive, optional siesta for people not interested

Stage 6 [6:30 PM] Robin’s Personally The Best (General Admission)
- personal best eat food and drink it’s a big place

Stage 7 [9 PM] (VIP WRISTBAND) happy bday to me
- everyone watch me play 2K

I worry about RTT incessantly because he seems to have inherited his parents’ grasshopper genes. But he seems happy, his life seems to suit—it’s big on music festivals, mad midnight excursions with pals, sports. If there’s very little in the way of contingency planning—disaster preparedness, as one might say—perhaps that’s a reflection of a generational attitude. There are just so many disasters, and increasingly, they erupt out of nowhere: How can you possibly plan for them? Better to party and be fatalistic.

I am going up there tomorrow for a couple of days.

###

It’s impossible to think of RTT’s birth and not think of Ben.

I will say this for Ben: He was extraordinarily supportive of me while I was giving birth.

With Ichabod, I’d had an epidural, and the labor turned into something long and grueling. When it finally came time to push, I couldn’t—because the epidural made it impossible. They had to use vacuum aspiration to get the baby out and that gave him a large hematoma that I imagine was pretty painful: For the first two weeks of his life, Ichabod cried a lot.

I did not want a repeat of that. Whatever happened to me, I wanted a smoother entry for my new little guy. So I decided to do natural childbirth with RTT. (Ironically, RTT turned out to have a more serious medical issue than a hematoma: He was a meconium aspiration baby and ended up spending his first week in a NICU.)

Natural childbirth hurt.

Natural childbirth hurt a lot.

I didn’t feel human.

I was a she-wolf alone on the dark side of a bloodred moon, and I was howling.

And whenever I howled, Ben howled with me. He stared into my eyes, and he howled.

I couldn’t tell you why that helped except that it did help, there was someone else on that moon with me, and that was enormous.

And the labor went really quick. It was over and done in five hours, and once it was done, it was done, I felt fine.

In the unlikely event that I ever become pregnant again—some Midwitch Cuckoo scenario, maybe, or Yahweh feeling playful—I would definitely opt for natural childbirth.

###

I suppose the deal with Ben was that he was seeing me ugly—and make no mistake, childbirth is an ugly process, all blood and shit and glistening membranes and tearing tissues: It may be a miracle, but it’s an ugly miracle—but he was right there willing & able to get ugly with me.

He cared for me when I was at my ugliest.

I think that’s what real love is.

Ben was such a jerk in so many ways.

But he did give me that gift.

Ichabod and I were chatting about his prep for an upcoming trial that probably won’t take place because why would Ruralcino County want to spend all that money on a trial for a misdemeanor charge?

The accused steadfastly maintains his innocence, but of course, the DA knows he is guilty, and is gnashing her pearly little teeth that she can’t lock him up for a thousand years, so she is arranging endless numbers of pre-trial hearings to fuck with him.

Can the defendant be represented at this contingency hearing by his counsel, your honor? He will have to take time off from work—

No, the defendant cannot be represented at this contingency hearing by his counsel.

Is it worth noting that Ruralcino County has a Black population of 0.2% and that this defendant is Black?

Probably.

###

Just as a sidebar:

Ichabod is passionate about reforming the criminal justice system, and I’d advised him long ago, this being the case, it would make far more sense for him to pursue employment within a district attorney’s office. DAs are the ones with discretion. My motto has always been: Subvert from within!

But I think for Ichabod, working for the DA’s office would be like sleeping with the enemy.

###

Anyway, half an hour or so into this (to me) fascinating conversation, we get a text from RTT on the shared Mother-Courage-and-Her-Two-Sons texting hotline: RTT wanted to do Facetime!

I was overjoyed because getting RTT to communicate is always like pulling teeth.

So, Ichabod and I jumped onto Facetime.

Ichabod was preoccupied and soon went back to trial prep, leaving RTT and I for the solo chat.

RTT was deeply depressed.

“I miss Dad,” he said and began to cry.

I didn’t know what to say.

Because not only do I not miss Dad, I can barely remember what Dad looks like. I don’t think I entertain any active ill will toward Dad—although I could be lying to myself about that one. I just don’t understand why I spent 17 years in thrall to the man. He was very, very good in bed—I supposed that was part of it. And, of course, an excellent editor and writer, and very serious about my stuff—I suppose that was the other part.

“Dad loved you very much,” I said to RTT.

What the hell else was I supposed to say?

Of course, I knew that something else was going on with RTT that was deeper than missing Dad, but I didn’t know how to approach it. Was he feeling invisible? Was he feeling unloved? Was he realizing that time is rushing on but that he isn’t hitching a ride? RTT is 26 now, and this is the age where people do need to start thinking about getting it together.

Was this the crash after some alcohol-and-weed-fueled party? I knew from stalking him on Instagram that there had been some wild goings on at the casa the night before.

New Thing to Worry About: Could RTT possibly be bipolar?

“Dad loved you more than anything,” I continue. “And you know the thing he worried about most in the world was your tendency toward… depression. How’s therapy going?”

“Oh, I stopped doing therapy.”

You. Stopped. Doing. Therapy.

If there’s one person on the planet who really benefitted from therapy, I mean palpable improvements that I could see, that person was RTT.

“Why did you do that?”

“I missed a few appointments in a row. So, she terminated me.”

“Why did you miss a few appointments in a row?”

“Oh, I got busy.”

Busy doing what? I wondered. Is this whole stock market/cryptocurrency tracking thing he’s been into for the past four months evidence of some kind of manic phase? It does have the hallmarks of a manic fixation.

“Did you burn that bridge?” I asked.

“No. She was very nice about it. Said I could start again when I had more time.”

###

He was as low as I’ve ever seen him.

I stayed on Facetime with him for half an hour, taking him on a tour of the Patrizia-torium. The awful Sculpy cat figurine, destined to live in the retablo, which I’m gonna scrap and start again from scratch since the cat looks like a reptilian space alien. The real live cat, her own self. The daffodils on my desk. My Jackie Onassis doll. My I-Love-Lucy doll. The teddy bears that somehow got saved from my childhood back in the Jurassic. The Tropico city I'd been building when he called.

But I had an Easter party I was already late to.

And I remembered a conversation I had with Ichabod a long time ago when Ichabod was really, really depressed.

“And you know what the worst thing about this is?” Ichabod said savagely. “That I’m talking to my mother about how depressed I am.”

RTT’s a grownup now.

I can offer him the understanding and support I might offer any other grownup I loved who was feeling down.

But any other comfort I might offer veers dangerously into infantilization territory.

I don’t think it’s mentally health to wander off in that direction.

###

It’s absolutely the worst thing in the world when your kids are in pain, and there isn’t a damn thing you can do about it.

I'd been in a really upbeat mood that morning, but the interaction with RTT leached all joy from the day.

I felt hollow. And grey.

A contact depression, I suppose.

Bit better this morning, which is good since I have a shitload of stuff that Needs to Get Done.

###

The other interesting thing that happened yesterday: The Former Mother of My Unborn Grandchildren posted that she’d had a miscarriage and was looking for miscarriage stories.

The first thing I ever published professionally back in 1993 was actually a Studs Turkel-style piece in which I interviewed a bunch of women about the narratives behind their experiences with being pregnant and giving birth.

One of the women I’d interviewed had had an incredibly poignant miscarriage experience.

I texted Liza: Would she like to read… ?

Yes, yes, yes!!! she texted back.

So, I hunted down the magazine in which the story had appeared.

The type is very faded, which makes merely scanning the story and then uploading it into Google Docs kinda problematic.

Fortunately, Google Docs has an OCR feature.

Anyway, I have been scanning. And, of course, rereading.

The piece is actually purt-ty good.

I’d written it originally planning to pitch it as a book proposal.

But life intervened. 1993 was actually the year I found out I was pregnant with RTT.

Would it still make a good book proposal?

Maybe.

Crossposts: https://mallorys-camera.livejournal.com/1004151.html

And the Democrats stage yet another opportunity for Trump to cherry-pick nasty comments for the upcoming election with the disclaimer, Hey! I didn’t say it! A fellow Democrat said it!

Three debates—maybe—are all the Democrats need.

Twelve debates is suicide.

Honestly. I do not understand how the DNC powers that be can be so tone deaf to how badly it plays to the majority of Americans when Democrats knock each another.

It’s like they want to lose in 2020.

And maybe they do.

###

Work blitzkrieg continues.

Bitchy mood continues.

Yesterday, I was beset by flashes of a particular stretch of the 580 freeway that I drove every day on my way to Oak Knoll Naval Hospital, which was the last place I worked as a nurse.

The memories are really smudgy. As if I’m seeing those highway loops from above—which, of course, I never did.

Perhaps connected to RTT’s upcoming birthday?

Because while I was working at Oak Knoll, I got pregnant with RTT.

I also had a miscarriage while I was working at Oak Knoll. The timing of that miscarriage and RTT’s subsequent birth have always been a bit of a mystery.

###

I didn’t know I was pregnant with RTT until I was about five months along in the pregnancy. Willful not knowing? Maybe. But I wasn’t gaining weight. And the D&C I’d had at Kaiser after I started gushing blood and barreling over with severe cramps one day on Oak Knoll’s well baby ward had made my periods very sporadic.

Finally, when I missed two periods in a row, I went to see a doctor.

I thought I might be going through premature menopause.

The kindly doctor smiled. “Well. We can run some tests. But as long as you’re here, let’s do a Pap smear.”

I climbed up on the table, stuck my feet in the stirrups, assumed the position.

The kindly doctor sank down between my legs.

And emerged a few seconds with a strange expression on his face.

“Well, it’s not premature menopause,” he said.

“Is it cancer?” I screamed. “It’s okay! You don’t have to beat around the bush!” (In retrospect, a most unfortunate metaphor.)

“You’re pregnant,” said the doctor.

Pregnant cervices are a very distinctive grapey color. That’s how he knew.

Since the pregnancy was confirmed so far after its onset, my due date had to be determined by the size of the fetus. That meant I really didn’t have a due date. I’d give birth some time. Probably in mid-October.

By this date 25 years ago, I was the size of a beached whale. Really uncomfortable.

My cervix remained undilated though the baby’s head had engaged.

I desperately wanted to go into labor and tried everything I could think of—orgasms, chili peppers, raspberry tea. B and I even went for a long walk around Lake Merritt, which was the only exercise I was capable of at that point.

I think my OB may have finally decided to induce me on October 19.

Think.

I honestly can’t remember.

Booter had wanted to be a birthing coach, but poor Booter is a fastidious, maidenly sort, and she got incredibly squicked by the attendant birthing activities and had to leave before an hour was up.

I’d decided to have a natural childbirth.

With Max, I’d had an epidural, and the result of that epidural was that I could not push. (The labor had been ridiculously long anyway, like 34 hours—I couldn’t believe they weren’t giving me a C-section.) They’d ended up using a vacuum suction device to dislodge him from the birth canal with the result that he was born with a huge hematoma on his head. I think Max must have had a bad headache for the first two weeks of his life; he was really fussy.

I was determined this would not happen to my second child.

###

So. Natural childbirth.

It hurts.

A lot.

In fact, nothing can prepare you for the pain of natural childbirth.

That ridiculous Lamaze breathing?

Fuggeabout it. It does nothing.

The pain was like being an animal abandoned on the dark side of the moon. I howled.

And Ben, who cradled me the entire time I was in labor, threw back his head and howled, too.

You know what?

That helped. Immensely. I didn’t feel so alone.

I also had a super OB nurse who kept doing perineal massage so that I didn’t tear when Robin was finally delivered. With Max, I’d had quite a sizeable episiotomy. I actually had to relearn how to have orgasms after that episiotomy; it was such a dramatic rearrangement of my intimate anatomy.

(I’ve never read anything about having to relearn orgasm after an episiotomy, so I have to believe that this is yet another topic which male-dominated medical science willfully ignores. An awful lot of women have episiotomies, and I can’t believe I’m the only woman whose sexual responses were affected by one.)

I will say that for all the unreal levels of pain, the natural labor went very, very fast: Robin was born in four hours.

In the unlikely event that I had to do it again?

Natural childbirth. Definitely.