Mommy Della

I haven’t written a post in a while. It seems like recently life has changed so much after Charlotte’s birth that it is hard to know what to even say.

People warn you before major life events of changes and while you intellectually know what they say is true it hard to know exactly how it will change. It was the same with marriage. Everyone says marriage is hard work. You know that before going in but you don’t really understand how it is hard work until suddenly you are struggling to do life together and it all seems so hard.

It is the same with children. Everyone tells you that your priorities will change after you have a kid. The moment you hear that little cry the weight of that change comes crashing down on you. Suddenly, in that moment your whole life changes. Every expectation of what you imagined life would be like or how you would want to be like changes. Things you thought were important become not important and goals you had previously change. Maybe it is worse for the women who are also dealing with exaggerated emotions from the hormones that are stronger than a tornado.

I tried to mentally prepare myself for the birth of our daughter. For the 1^st and 2^nd trimester I read everything about natural births. I mentally prepared myself for the pain and the recovery involved. The pregnancy was smooth I had very little morning sickness at all if I just ate small meals throughout the day. The 2^nd trimester was so uneventful that sometimes I would forget I was pregnant except that I got to feel my little baby moving. Then the 3^rd trimester hit. It came with heartburn, acid reflux, and insomnia that was three times worse than my normal insomnia….if insomnia can be normal. Between those three things I got very little sleep. Then I quickly become more useless in the work here when my feet started swelling a lot and then I got a bladder infection and then later a kidney infection. It was the longest trimester for me. Then when our baby was supposed to turn to get prepared for delivery we found out she wasn’t turning. I tried every exercise from the spinningbabies website and several other suggestions from our midwife friend Chloe. Nothing worked. Week after week went by. I was depressed and frustrated. Nothing was going as planned.

Then I got over it. I started mentally preparing for a cesarean. I tried to read about experiences from other moms that had to have cesareans. I talked to my friends who had then. The only difference was I was having mine in a different country and far away from family. It is not that I believe the medicine is inferior here. I believe it is pretty much the same. I am not sure that was comforting though the U.S lacks in good maternal care in general. The only difference was that I didn’t really know what to expect as far as recovery or how exactly it would go. A lot of women seem to recover really fast from their cesareans. So I was hopeful that I would too. I argued over the date with the doctor. She wanted to do it sooner than I wanted to. I wanted to be able to go into labor naturally so that I knew my baby was ready for the outside. She was concerned about my fluid rate and the long drive down the mountain. So I chose the last day that she would let me.

That day came and I got checked into the hospital and I did well answering all of the questions. That felt like an oral Spanish exam my health Spanish class. And then they started and I got to lay flat on my back while I heard my baby cry and could do nothing about it. They brought her around to look at and I said “oh she has red hair!” The nurse replied that it was blond. She definitely does have red hair but I am not sure that people here know the difference because it is not a normal color of hair here. Because I had a spinal block I laid on my back for over 12 hours while all I could do was look at that precious little girl. Of course part of that time I was doped up and didn’t know any difference. But there was plenty of time that I was alert enough to know that I could not even hold my new daughter. It was heartbreaking to hear every cry. And they gave me morphine for the pain which made me loopy but did help with the pain. But then they would be talking so fast in Spanish and my brain was so sluggish from the morphine I had a hard time keeping up. That first night Charlotte kept vomiting up fluid and they were freaking out about her not eating. I couldn’t feed her because I couldn’t even hold her. They gave her a bottle and kept checking her blood sugar. She didn’t really want a bottle she wanted to sleep.  I guess they were worried about her blood sugar because she was vomiting so much. Then they said something that I think sounded like they were going to scope her to see if something was wrong. Then they took her and I waited to hear something… and waited.. and waited. Finally Caleb went to find her asleep behind the nurses’ station and they said she was fine that it was just from the amniotic fluid. The night seemed to go on forever.

Finally the next day I was allowed to sit up and hold my precious little girl. The nurses kept trying to feed her formula from the bottle. And I wasn’t allowed to try and nurse because of drugs I suppose. Finally later I got the go ahead and she was too asleep to have any interest. But later my doctor came in and said that if everything looked okay around 5:30 I could go home. I didn’t feel ready pain wise to go home. But I was ready to go home to have some peace and less stress. Luckily before then Charlotte showed more interest in nursing than the bottle. The pediatrician came in and showed me some painful and uncomfortable nursing position and also spouted off some instructions for formula feeding for the next 5 years of Charlotte’s life. I thought it was strange because I had made it clear that I wanted to nurse but I think there is a stereotype about gringos here.  And then we got discharged that night just 24 hours after the surgery. They gave me morphine for the ride home. It didn’t seem to help. It was probably the longest most painful car ride I have ever been on. Poor Caleb drove as slowly and carefully as he could. It took us an hour and a half to drive the usual 35-40 minute car ride.  And that night continued to be excruciatingly painful. And Charlotte was fussy all night long. I still had no milk to give her.

Finally the next night I got milk and she became much more content. I looked up better ways to hold her while nursing. We are slowly learning a routine together. She wasn’t ruined forever by formula. I feel extremely blessed just to have her and she is healthy.  Nothing seemed to go as I had expected.  But she has changed my life and my mind about everything in it. I am healing at a slow pace and the pain meds the doctor gave me don’t always seem to help very much. It is extremely frustrating after hearing many people that just bounced back after a cesarean. I just want to feel good while I take care of Charlotte and be able to move around without feeling like I might be on fire. But the good news is that I actually feel more rested now than those last few months. I still have my “normal” insomnia which actually goes well with a newborn. But I don’t have heartburn or acid reflux. I can eat spaghetti again.

I am just trying to live moment by moment. I am trying to soak in every moment with my tiny daughter. Some women don’t feel very connected with their newborns. That is normal. But then some like in my case feel overwhelmed by the amount of love they have for such a tiny person. Both reactions are exaggerated by hormones and are completely normal. I think in the end most moms feel the same amount of love for their babies.  It is overwhelming and it changes your priorities and your perspective about everything. This post has nothing to do with the ministry in Ataco. It has everything to do with my ministry. This is a season in my life where my idea of ministry had shifted. I don’t think it is a permanent shift but it has changed permanently. But this is the season that my ministry is to love my husband and take care of and love our tiny little red headed daughter.

This has been a humbling experience to have to rely on Caleb for so many things. You never know how much a person can love you until you go through something like this. There are things that Caleb helped me with that proved he took his vows seriously about the sickness or health part. I could not ask for a better husband or father for our child. Sometimes I take him for granted and then there are moments in life like this that make me realize that I don’t want to live life without him there beside me. 

So yes marriage is hard work and having a child or children changes your perspective but neither of those things are necessarily bad things.  And I am sure marriage will continue to be hard work and my child or children will continue to change my perspective. But such is life and we just have to live moment by moment.