Induction Junction What's Your Function?

And yes, you can thank me when you're singing that tune for the next however many hours while I go to the hospital at 6pm tonight where they will begin the process of ripening my cervix -- with the probability of labor beginning tomorrow -- though I'll still hold out for the rare hope that I can labor without pitocin -- I'm not so sure.

Basically my doctor told me that the baby's size -- and the elevated protein in my urine was enough for her to recommend induction -- that this is the 'optimal time for a good outcome' -- and to wait much longer would be 'a wash' in terms of c-section --because the baby's growing size (a baby she already thinks is probably about 8.5 lbs). My blood pressure is fine but she did say it would merit close watching if we were to want to wait it out -- a 24 hour urine catch etc.

When G said "it sounds like you're advocating this" she pretty much nodded her head and said yes, she thought it was the best decision for both of us.

Now. I have been a natural childbirth advocate as I thought about this process -- wanting to reclaim the process that I felt had been so medicalized in IVF -- but I also said that my primary concern was healthy mom/baby (which goes without saying, I guess) -- I found that though my OB was very pro-natural onset of labor -- BUT that being said, given a few criteria of concern she was clear about the need for induction.

Our doula was clear that this is a routine process that most OB practices will go through -- ie. your baby's size -- the proteinuria...

I guess what it came down to is that I wasn't comfortable going against my doctor's recommendation -- and so? Check back later this week and please keep us in your thoughts!

Love,

Pam & G & W & Lucy & Henry (the very fat cat who doesn't get enough billing around here)

Reflections

I love this site. I was introduced to tarot cards nearly twenty years ago by a smart, funny woman my cousin used to date -- she's a political philosophy professor now somewhere in the deep south. She gave me a deck of celtic tarot I still have today. I used to do readings for friends but haven't for years -- this site has an oracle button -- and I've visited before -- I love these cards and love the space that it lets me sit in while I contemplate the outcome.

I clicked on them tonight while thinking about the impending birth -- and motherhood -- and the fact that I've been so damned cranky -- and not very open-hearted with W's presence -- which is making ME mad at myself -- although last night I took some time at dinner to tell him, with tears in my eyes, truthfully -- how remember I once told him I couldn't love him more had he come out of my own tummy -- and I surprised myself by getting all teary -- and he looked sort of sheepish and rolled his eyes, but had a grin on his face -- and we talked about the baby coming -- and how I knew I'd been sort of crabby -- and how the baby's arrival would mean things would be shifting -- "and it means I'll get in trouble more" he said -- and sure, for a high-spirited nine year old whose had the run of the house -- I'm sure his sister's arrival in the other house meant exactly that -- and he knows his freedom will be curtailed to a certain degree.

I'm having a hard time reveling in the boyness of it all right now -- the wrestling and terrible table manners and the first-person shooter video games and the fart jokes and the shooting rubber bands and the flying balls and the flying footballs -- did I tell you about how G and W shattered something made for us for our wedding? I crouched over the pottery shards on the living room floor crying in a kind of motherly/wifey cliche 'I never get to have nice thiiiings...' and then I curled up to cry for like a half an hour.

The strange thing is -- this is also the exact wonderful energy that has turned my life around and made my life full.

It is difficult though -- if G and I are cuddling in bed for a precious few minutes while W is doing his thing -- he'll suddenly climb into bed and wedge himself between us and drape himself over G. "Daddaddaddaddad" is the constant refrain these days. "Come here." Last night G asked how he fared in the blog responses -- and we talked about what I'd written in the past few posts and I said again that this pregnancy flew by -- and so much of it so routine, just like the rest of life -- making dinner and the normal plod of life -- and not like a girl needs to be a princess or up on a pedestal -- I know how much he adores me -- feel it in my bones, but that here we were at the end and this last bit of time where it could have been just us and when alone he brooded about W's absence -- and we took on our custody schedule in the middle of another cold/virus import --which now is plugging my nose and creating crackling in my ears. I told him that one of my best memories of this pregnancy was the intimacy created in the yoga class/birthing intensive we took -- a two hour course -- because it was all about us -- just the two of us -- him and me -- focusing on one another.

Last night in bed I told him that many of the comments addressed what it meant to be a stepmother -- and the difficulties of coming to a situation with your needs and wants and desires -- and the changed dynamic of blended families -- added to this was the fact that this is my first birth and it is a powerful and profound thing -- and for him this is a second child coming into his life with all the complicated emotions that a second pregnancy brings -- he was quiet. "I feel like I let you down" he said.

It's funny, G's a Cancer -- and as I was reading about astrological signs last night it talked about how Geminis (me) are such communicators -- and Cancer's are so insular -- how they admire the gemini's ability to communicate -- and how committed they are to familial life -- the hearth and home -- and I realize that for G, this is true, and for him -- the home is incomplete without W -- so the weeks he's gone it has been as if we're coasting until his arrival -- and G is happiest when the mechanics of daily life are churning -- me happily cooking (and I do), W puttering around padding after his father -- them coming to dinner when I call. I wonder what this arrival will bring -- perhaps more stability and happiness for G in those weeks between? Perhaps a closer bond between us all?

Anyway, back to the tarot -- these were the cards in the resolution place each time when I thought about the baby's arrival --

The Gardener
Resolution comes in on a wave of great fertility and abundance. You are pregnant with new creations — an art form, a book, a project, even a baby. You embody both the nurturing Mother and the sensual Lover. You are a steward of the land when you plant, weed and nourish your garden in a sustainable manner. At harvest time, you offer the best possible of all foods to those whom you love. You are a hard worker, but you take great delight in the scent of lavender fields on a hot summer day and the dizzying riot of color, shapes and textures in the garden. You love your own body; you love your mate, your children, your friends, your community; you love the natural world around you. Your appetite for connection, sensuality and creativity seems boundless. The people around you are blessed to have you in their lives.


The Teacher

You have the opportunity to learn from a new spiritual teacher, or to become a teacher to others. It may be that this teacher will appear in disguise — the weeds that grow along the roadside, or a heron feeding in the mud flats at low tide. The natural world around you has some of the most profound spiritual teachings you will ever encounter. Perhaps it is time to get to know your Place on this earth in a more intimate manner. Do you know the names of native plants in your area, and how the indigenous people used them? Do you know how to interpret the different calls and songs of the birds in your neighborhood? Do you know where the sun rises and sets on the horizon in summer and in winter? The Teacher calls you to become intimately acquainted with the natural world in the place where you live, as part of your spiritual practice.

Nothing to Report.

*sigh*

Fathering

Just a little one.

I just got my new subscription to Mothering Magazine. It had a really compelling article about how torn a mother felt with the birth of her second son -- she said something, and I'm paraphrasing here, about the bond between a mother and her firstborn -- and how one can't anticipate the wrenching experience of sharing your life with a second child -- the bittersweet quality of it all. I remember X talking a bit about her feelings when her daughter was born.

I was just thinking that these magazines, reflections, discussions about birth and parenting -- so much of it centers around 'the mother' or 'mothering' -- and I often think that it does the role of fathers a disservice. I thought about G when I read that article about adding a second child to the family -- what of the father's bond with their first born? Are we so focused on the physical passage for the mother that the father's role/emotions are diminished somehow?

Someone should start a magazine called Fathering.

Epiphany

Yesterday I was angry.

Anger usually sneaks up on me, settles on my chest like a giant animal and growls there -- keeping me from speaking to anyone.

W has been sick, as I mentioned, and his Oma has been taking care of him -- a godsend, really -- his fever had subsided but he still had vague symptoms -- stuffiness, sore throat -- and X took him again to the pediatrician to make sure he was on the mend -- explaining to the doctors our situation --about to give birth etc. The doctors said they do think he had h1n1, but since he was a day without fever that it was safe. I, avid -- nay, obsessed reader of the CDC website and all things H1n1 related understood that there was some controversy surrounding how long one was contagious after illness -- the CDC stating that it could be up to a week or longer in children regardless of the old adage of 'after fever resolves.'

Rationally I know I've been vaccinated, G has been -- even W has been which speaks to the fact that children his age don't get full immunity from one dose -- his Oma has not -- and so I wondered to myself -- will this be an issue -- will she get sick? Should I limit her access to the baby? What if the baby were to come before next Tuesday when, conservatively, it had been a week for W without symptoms -- do we limit W's contact with the baby -- I began to feel that if I were to suggest these things that I would be the bad guy, the over reactive new mother -- I felt that I was the only one advocating for my best interests -- and I was furious.

I couldn't look or speak to G. W exploded into the house, clearly happy to be home -- he even came over and put both hands on my tummy -- sweetly saying 'she's still there huh? Guess she likes swimming around.'

"Are you going to give me the silent treatment all night?" G asked?

It wasn't just about W's illness but I was thinking about how, in the weeks when W is gone, there are long stretches of days where G is out of sorts and has retreated into himself -- he works late because it is easier to do when W isn't here -- coming home at 7 rather than 4:30 as he does on W's weeks -- and I do understand it -- we talk about it because he needs to compensate for the work undone -- and like W who is in suspended animation until his father comes home -- there is something akin to that for G -- a light comes into his eyes and step when W is here -- all things are aligned and he is happy.

Once W went to bed and G was watching hockey I went out to the den and sat down on the exercise ball. I wanted to talk about what was going on. I explained that I wasn't angry at him, not exactly -- but that I was worried. That it raised my anxiety -- the possible illness and then there was the question of W being here while I labor at home prior to the hospital. Initially G just said "well f**k it, let's ship him back there, it's not worth it" -- and I tried to explain that I was trying to thresh through how I felt about it -- and I needed his help -- and his response was clearly conveying anger with me or frustration that I was not on the same page as he.

We finally got to the point where I would say "what I'm trying to say is..." or "when you say 'x' this is what I hear..." -- until he finally said "well I just feel like sometimes you don't think of W as part of the family as I do" which hung out there in the air.

When we took it apart it turns out that he felt that way because I had said that I didn't even think about W when it came to the laboring at home "where did you think he would be?" he asked me...and I explained how, just as we had set up something for the possibility of my water breaking and a trip to the hospital -- arranging for W to be with his Oma or his mom -- I had just imagined that when laboring at home got to a certain point -- the point where I would feel the need for the doula, for instance, then we'd make arrangements for W.

G. explained how important it was for him that W feel a part of it, connected. His eyes were glossy, an indication for him of high emotion.

I understood in that moment that this was a huge thing for him. I explained that I was such a private person that even if we'd already had children of our own that I would no more imagine them there than W -- that my brother and mother wanted to be there for my labor and I said absolutely not -- for me it was as intimate as sex or as private as going to the bathroom -- not something I'd do in full view of my child (okay, I know you don't get to go to the bathroom for many years by yourself so I've been relishing the 'alone time' for now...but you know what I mean.)

My not imagining W at those moments wasn't exclusionary -- it was just my own level of privacy -- whereas G interpreted it as my desire to have a separation of family time between us and W. I saw our differences in that moment -- and saw how raw his emotions were about it.

Okay, I said, but let's go back to the other times when we've held out hope for a similar outcome. The ultrasound -- remember? That is a moment we'll never get back -- and it was not, I said, as I'd always imagined it. There was little intimacy between us, let alone the three of us -- because he was managing W's reaction to it -- and trying simultaneously to protect me from W's reaction. He acknowledged that and said 'so if we see things going south he goes to his mom's or wherever.'

I'm willing he said, to forget this whole thing rather than have it tainted with any possibility of negativity he said. But we'd already opened the box -- it was already out there -- and I felt that this was such an important moment for him that I had to open my own heart to the different possibilities.

I sat on the ball swiveling my hips. He sat on the couch watching hockey.

The thing is sweetheart, I said, is that I really need you.

I said it again when I crawled back into bed with him this morning and my belly pressed against him -- the baby kicking at him. We threshed through it again and he said that his favorite part about pregnancy was the whole phase where the husband embodied all evil --- actually I think he said "my husband is a **** phase" -- and I know how rocky the pregnancy was with X and the aftermath -- how their relationship deteriorated so -- and I hugged him and assured him that I thought no such thing about him -- that he was the one person who helped me thresh through things, helped me understand my own mind, supported me.

He was the one.

The thing about pregnancy, I said, is you feel so incredibly vulnerable, almost as if you're on the brink of death -- the changes so profound -- that you really need to feel that you are taken care of -- that you are safe and protected. He pulled me closer to him.

I told him that I knew he wasn't keen on neediness that comes out of the blue (who is -- I know I've had relationships in the past where that insecurity drives me crazy) but that in this case I truly needed him.

It was still dark and the dog snored under the covers, W still asleep in his room.

These rituals as a blended family are so complicated. As he and I talked last night I expressed how this is yet another moment as someone married to a person who had been married and had a child before -- that this is one of those moments that is fundamentally different for me than for him -- in my mind the clutch of intimacy of birth was something that belonged solely to us -- and for him it was something that could serve as another strand pulling the three of us together.

Once I spoke to him openly and honestly about my vulnerability and fear and need -- I realized that we may be able to have both -- those moments with W here, the moments for us alone at the hospital and the days following the birth.

Whew.

I'm exhausted.

What The?

Where'd all my blog subscriptions go? Is anyone else having blogger issues?

Birthing in the Blender

Step-motherhood has been hard in ways I've talked about here -- but largely this blog had developed at a time when my relationship with W & G together had found its equilibrium -- and I had (perhaps we all had?) found a role I was comfortable with for the most part -- not without its challenges -- but as I've said before I thought of myself as the support network that allowed G to spend the most quality time with W -- and I was there too, of course, but I had to, over time, relinquish my ideas of the mother/son relationship I'd had when he was little -- that wrenching desire to want too much from him -- from it -- when we had a loving and active mother in the picture -- I became, as I've said, another loving adult -- not unlike an aunt. It was difficult in the beginning to balance my own feelings as G's and my relationship deepened and grew.

I can't say I was never resentful -- or that I didn't go through the growing pains so many step-families do -- I always tried my hardest to shift perspective -- back to W, back to one of the reasons I loved G so much was his devoted -- absolutely devoted love to his son -- and in the end if I could focus on his best interests -- that seemed to assuage the ego or whatever it was that got in the way when I missed my time with G, the weekends alone or whatever -- and it got to the point where I no longer thought of weeks in terms of the weeks that W was with us, or the weeks when he was away -- the house seemed empty when he was gone and I missed him, I missed us, as a family.

So, imagine my own discomfort when G and I were talking last night about my going into labor -- which is bound to happen at some point (isn't it?). W has been at his mother's for an extra weekend and these first days of this week because he's been sick with a fever and general malaise, sore throat. X understood my position and championed it really with G -- who, I think, would have preferred W just return here -- but I was feeling vulnerable and G wants to respect that -- but at the same time I see these powerful forces rippling beneath the surface for him. In his mind the place for his son is with us, with him, and I feel silly for my hyper-vigilance -- not wanting to get sick -- and not wanting G, my support person, to get sick either -- so close to the birth. So there's been a lot of logistics -- how sick is he? Is his fever up? Down? He doesn't seem to have a fever now -- but woke in the middle of the night at X's house with a nightmare and said his throat hurt when he woke. I know he wants his father -- because normally when he's sick his father is immediately at his bedside if he can be -- takes the day off, works from home -- but lately between the impending birth, time G's scheduled to take away from his business and an incredibly tight financial situation -- it leaves us both torn -- G because he wants to be with him, me because I want everyone to be happy but am erring in the side of caution.

Separate from the illness side of things we were talking about logistics when the day arrives -- I've wanted to labor at home if possible -- if my water doesn't break first -- and somehow I just didn't picture W being here for that. I asked G if it was important to him that W be here -- and he said he thought it was important for him to feel a part of the process -- but clearly if it isn't working then we'll call G's mother who lives down the street.

I heard him out. I retreated into myself for awhile. I couldn't really come up with an articulate reason why I wasn't comfortable laboring with W here (if it should come to that -- when in all likelihood it's looking like it may not happen). "I need you" I said to G "I need all of you" and I felt monstrous for saying it.

I kept thinking 'well, in a two-parent family this would be par for the course -- the children come to understand this transition the family is going through -- it is a natural part of life' but that assumption is based on a very different relationship between mother and child than W and I have -- which isn't to say our relationship isn't deep and loving -- but it is fundamentally different -- and he is not focused on me but rather his father -- and so anything I may be going through -- while a concern to him, of course, is peripherally important only insomuch as it affects his relationship with his father. Does this make sense? I don't want to have to be worrying about W and whether he's feeling left out -- or feel that G's attentions are dispersed -- or, as is my bent -- to dismiss what I'm feeling or needing in order to allow them their normal routine.

Is this making any sense at all? I told G that things must be happening because I am feeling much more hormonal -- ups and downs and closer to tears -- something that has happened rarely through this pregnancy.

I know that this is just another period of adjustment -- the flex of the blended family -- the difference of birthing in a blended family vs. the non-blended -- this is a huge upheaval for W -- and our excitement is tempered with that knowledge -- perhaps we haven't really even faced the reality of it until now.

I will need G as a support person in ways I've never needed him. W will have to share his father's attention in ways he's never felt. How to assure him that he is loved and how to keep the balance -- that is the question.

I don't have the answers today.