Musings on a second child.

In an email today I was mentioning to a friend that I missed out on having a third trimester entirely. Even though there are actually positives for me as a result (like being in good physical form when Shaughnessy comes home) I still feel cheated out of that experience. She was kicking quite a lot by the time I had the c-section, but there has been a major portion of the pregnancy experience missing for me, even if it's one that is described as often uncomfortable.

The thing about preeclampsia is that if you plan to have more children, you're supposed to have them sooner rather than later. The sooner you have your next child, the less chance there is that you'll have preeclampsia again. After a c-section you're supposed to wait at least a year to get pregnant again, and if you give birth within two years you have to have another c-section or there's a chance your uterus could rupture during birth.

Andrew has been kind of shocked to hear me saying things like, "Yeah, if we have another kid we'd have to start trying next year," and things along those lines. I'm not saying that I definitely want to start trying that soon, or even that I definitely want to have more than one baby. I think that a large part of that kind of talk stems from me trying to deal with the fact that I'm not in the middle of my third trimester when that's exactly where I should be right now. I can only think about a complete pregnancy experience as something I can have if I do it again, so I currently kind of want that even if the desire is ridiculous and totally hormone-induced.

I was a middle child and loved it. I got to be the baby for six whole years, then I got to be a big sister without having to be the oldest child and do everything first. There wasn't any of that oldest or youngest baggage involved for me. I don't really know what the only child experience is like, and since I love having siblings so much I kind of want that for Shaughnessy. I never did have a brother, but I always wished I had one, too. Siblings are crazy-fun to have, or at least mine are!

As for the c-section thing; I like the idea of a c-section again. Call me insane, but I know what having a c-section is like now and it's no worse than getting your gallbladder out (which I have also had done.) I HEARD women giving birth the natural way while I was in hospital and I guarantee you that as far as physical comfort is concerned my experience was WAY better. That's including recovery. There was nothing involved in my experience that made me scream, dudes. The kind of pain you feel after c-section surgery isn't fun, no, but it's also not earth-shattering and I know I can take it. This is also something I reserve the right to change my mind about, but if I want to have kids close together I'd be hard-pressed to find a doctor willing to let me have a VBAC.

She's mighty mighty.

Shaughnessy shrieked at me in rage tonight! I was doing Kangaroo Care with her in the NICU and her legs seemed a little scrunched up in a possibly-could-get-uncomfortable way, so I tried to shift them so that she was more stretched out. The nurses like it better when their legs are extended because it gives their lungs more room to breathe, too.

So, I attempted to get her to straighten out her legs a bit and she squawked, then literally shrieked at me. Not a pain yell, but an anger yell. Her nurse, who was tending to another baby, hardly even glanced over, just laughed and said, "Heh, you're trying to move her, aren't you?" I finished what I was doing and tucked her back in against me, at which point she immediately settled down and got totally quiet and happy once again. It seems that when she's comfy she does NOT appreciate being relocated, and gives her nurses the same attitude. Trying to move her to her stomach from a different position always results in stiff, stick-straight legs stuck out in front of her and much bitching.

Apparently she is also trying to figure out how to escape her incubator. The nurses have been reporting to me that she's been discovered up against the back of her incubator, entirely out of her head hugger, and this morning she was wedged into a corner of it, happy as could be. They had no idea how long she'd been like that, but only discovered her when it was time to give her a feed.

The capper, though, is her CPAP. They tried her off of it permanently earlier this week since she was doing so well with an on/off cycle. She did great for the first 24 hours, but then had an episode where she choked a bit on some spit-up, after which they put her back on the CPAP as a preventative measure after the choking so she wouldn't tire out. As of today the CPAP was making her so angry that she spent three hours this morning fussing over it and fighting with it, so they made the decision to take her off of it permanently again rather than have her blow a gasket. Her nurse told me that as soon as they took it off her head she calmed right down and went to sleep.

I'm thinking that girlfriend doesn't realize she's a preemie, or just doesn't care. Apparently she has places to go and people to see and we're cramping her style in a big way. Since she's really doing so well and is what one nurse referred to tonight as a 'straightforward baby' in terms of care needs she'll be moving to the next level NICU fairly soon. That means moving to a different hospital since she's been so healthy and had so few things wrong with her. I'm VERY sad to think of her no longer being at Women's College Hospital, but I can deal. Whatever brings her home to us sooner is good.

There are still some hurdles for her to get past, like regulating her own temperature, learning to nurse as her sole means of food intake and being entirely independent of any breathing assistance. That last is basically no longer an issue unless she has a setback, so the other two just need a few more weeks of growing and learning. Since she is so obviously determined and strong I'm not too worried about her getting there in good time.

I don't know if you can tell, but I am incredibly proud of our baby girl. :)

Some pictures for you to enjoy:

They tried her off the CPAP permanently and moved her feeding tube, but it's been moved back to her mouth since:



She had some gas and Andrew got this great smile shot out of it:



She is such a peaceful baby:



Caught in a rare moment of rudeness:



She's kind of spilling out of this head hugger:

Admittedly maybe it's SOME kind of science.

I think that upon finding out I was pregnant I, more than anyone else, was curious to see how I responded to motherhood. I don't mean the overall, lifelong experience of it. What I mean is the very fact of having a child. I wondered what my reaction would be to the actual baby that popped out of my womb.

For most of my adult life I didn't have a desire to go forth and procreate. I never really did, even as a kid. I didn't play house with the whole, "I can hardly wait to grow up and be a mommy," sort of thing going on. I think I played the parts of daddy, kid, cat and dog with enthusiasm equal to that of the mommy role. The 'baby rabies' was a foreign concept to me as I reached my twenties. I liked kids, I just didn't feel the need for any of my own. I also didn't choose to spend much time around them. I babysat for my entire teenage career, and did so even into college, so I tried to avoid getting involved in children's ministries at church. That wasn't a popular choice and I did end up getting pressured into it from time to time, but I tried my best to stay out of it.

So ... yeah. I've just never been that 'someday ... a baby' person. Getting married did not equal having kids. Being an adult didn't either. It wasn't something I was going to jump into recklessly.

At times when I found myself doubting that choice I tried to picture myself with a baby. It was less than convincing. The baby was always very conceptual. Chubby, roly-poly, wispy-haired and warm with vague features. It was just some baby. I didn't feel anything emotionally significant when I imagined that baby. It was like any number of babies I'd seen and while it was appealing in an infant way, it didn't make my heart jump or my ovaries twitch. I'd heard and read about parents who didn't feel a bond with their baby when it was born and I wondered a bit if I'd be like that; that I just didn't have that instinct in me.

And then Shaughnessy was born. I spent her first 30 hours away from her, flat on my back being pumped full of magnesium sulfate and unable to visit the NICU until I was off it. I couldn't tell physically that I'd given birth since I'd had a c-section and was still medicated against any pain, and I hadn't yet seen her with my own eyes. I worried that I wasn't connecting with the fact that I'd had a baby, and that I didn't feel enough emotion regarding the whole situation. Yes, I was being very hard on myself in a very turbulent time, but I couldn't grasp what had happened and it concerned me a LOT. I thought I was already failing the parenthood test.

The next day I met my daughter. And while there wasn't some instant, mind-blowing connection that opened up the floodgates of motherhood and swept me away on a tidal wave of maternal instinct, there was something just as surprising to me. I met her and instead of feeling that neither-here-nor-there feeling I had toward the conceptual baby of my imaginings I realized, "Oh, it's YOU!"



It wasn't just some baby after all. It was Shaughnessy. I recognized her. I saw her and knew her as my daughter and that was that. Of course, that didn't make things easier. No; it made everything more difficult in the most amazing way. I was terrified of losing her as quickly as I'd gained her. I hated that her nurses had the freedom to handle her any way they wanted to while I had to stand by and watch and get permission to do any little thing. I lay awake in bed imagining all the horrible things she'd had to endure so far and the potential things I'd been told could go wrong yet. I wanted to be the one caring for her and protecting her and comforting her and sustaining her.

Basically, I felt like any other parent of a premature baby. But boy, oh boy, did I feel it. Any worries I had about not feeling enough for her were erased very quickly.

So, my deduction is this: It's not rocket science. Babies are not conceptual. They are YOUR FRIGGING BABY and even if you don't like kids in general, you're still very likely to feel something pretty strong for your very own child. While there may be parents who don't have an initial bond, I'd be willing to bet that they do form one sooner rather than later and it ceases to be an issue.

Of course, this is all coming from the perspective of the mother. I was hopped up on hormones, magnesium sulfate, pain meds, blood pressure meds, fatigue, hunger and fear. I'm going to have to quiz a few formerly-childfree dads on their reaction to their newborns; especially dads of premature babies.

Update-y goodness.

As soon as Andrew got well enough to finally get into the NICU to see Shaughnessy I got sick with whatever it was he'd had. At least we managed to pass off the baton, but still ... it sucks to not be seeing her together.

Andrew seeing her does make me extremely happy, of course. I hate to think of neither of us able to go in, so the fact that at least one of her parents can see her daily makes me feel a lot better. And Andrew made sure to get a great shot of himself holding her for the first time. See:




While he was there Shaughnessy's nurse was doing her hands-on care and had Andrew help out with it, but didn't make him change her diaper, hee hee. The diapers that they use are ridiculously small preemie diapers but they still come up to Shaughnessy's armpits if they're not folded down. When Andrew asked about that the nurse said they just fold them down so they don't look dumb, not for any practical reason. I think I'll start folding them down first when I change her, because I always end up giving her saggy-butt diapers and that's probably why.

Her IV burn is healing well, it seems, so I'm going to stop worrying about it. She's been doing really well with breathing off of the CPAP machine, too, so hopefully that means soon she'll be off of it for good! It hasn't bothered me so much with regards to her breathing because I know it wasn't hurting her and was necessary to keep her breathing and strengthening her lungs, but it'll be nice for her to not have to wear the gear on her head and face any more. It gets in the way of how cute she is, and always seemed uncomfortable on her face and cheeks. There are two different kinds they use; a mask and a two-pronged one that sits inside her nostrils. They both have their pluses, but I'll be glad to see them gone!

She's off the IV altogether because after the IV burn happened they didn't want to chance another interstitial vein and she was nearly at full feeds anyhow. Now she's at full feeds, is off the IV, is soon going to be off of the CPAP and hopefully I'll get to start nursing her within a month! I can hardly wait for that!

Learning the preemie ropes.

I had an appointment with my blood pressure doctor this morning so went to visit Shaughnessy in the NICU right afterward. Her nurse today is a really nice, sweet woman who's had her a couple of times before, but she informed me this morning that she'd finally seen what the other nurses mean when they say our daughter has 'an attitude'. I can't recall what she said she'd done to make her angry, but apparently Shaughnessy had herself a right little fit over it and showed her what she's made of.

I know I should be more worried for my future than amused by that, but to know that she doesn't put up with crap warms my heart and makes me laugh. If she was crabby about everything I think I'd be more alarmed at what the future holds, but she's really not. In fact, she's downright peaceful most of the time and I've only personally witnessed her getting angry a couple of times myself. Sneezing made her really mad the first time we did Kangaroo Care, and when she was first born she didn't really like being handled much so had some mini meltdowns, but honestly when I go in to see her she's always just very peacefully sleeping or blinking.

I don't think I've mentioned Kangaroo Care here. That's when they place your baby right against your skin and you have about an hour-long snuggle session with her. I've only done it twice so far, but man, does it feel nice. This last time she was super-content and just cuddled on my chest, moving her fingers on my skin and holding on to the tie from the hospital gown. She had the hiccups when they first put her on me and man, preemie hiccups are about the cutest hiccups in the universe. They are hiccups, but the tiniest hiccups you have ever heard.

I've been changing her diaper and getting better at it. The first time I changed her diaper was a shock because I wasn't prepared for how different it is to change a preemie's butt. I've changed countless diapers in my time what with all the teenage babysitting and nieces and nephews. Diaper-changing was something I wasn't worried about since I know how to do it, so it was a blow to find out I kind of had to re-learn the art. I keep telling people that changing Shaughnessy's diaper for the first time was like changing a bullfrog. She has these skinny, kicky little legs, no butt and a teeny little waist. The nurse told me to do the diaper up tighter than I thought I had to but it's hard to do that when you're so afraid of breaking your miniature baby.

Anyhow, I'm much more confident now but today I got a poop diaper. She'd spared me that up until now and I finally lost the diaper lottery. Not that her poop is all that hard to deal with. A big poop for her is still a teeny poop in the realm of pooping. One of my favourite things to do, though, is wipe her face. All we use to do that is a clean bit of gauze and sterile water, so when I'm cleaning her mouth she gets really still and thoughtful and seems to be trying to figure out what exactly is going on. It's little moments like these when I feel like I'm connecting with her a bit, since she opens up her eyes a lot during handling time.

Right now the only thing I'm really concerned about is the IV burn she got. It wasn't looking good yesterday so they changed the ointment they were using and this morning were talking about having a plastic surgeon look at it. While I was in today, though, they reassessed it and seem to think it's healing better. I got my first look at it and it's nasty-looking, but I can't really bring myself to be angry at anyone or the hospital. Veins can go interstitial, especially so with preemies, and these things happen. I HATE that it happened to Shaughnessy and I'm still nervous that it'll turn into a bad infection, but for now it's being treated and she doesn't seem to be in any pain or distress over it.

I did get in trouble from the lactation consultant today. I'm still producing lots of milk, but they want me to pump more times a day. Dang it.

Angry and sad.

With Shaughnessy's birth has also come the emergence of the 'Motherbeast'. The Motherbeast personifies all the primal, raw feelings of protectiveness and nurturing that have flared up in me. It's overwhelming, to say the least, and sometimes kind of scary. Seeing my daughter endure all the things she's had to endure so far in her tiny, short life has been like poking a stick at the Motherbeast and I get truly angry. There's so much frustration and helplessness in having a preemie that you just want to BLAME someone, take it out on someone and make them FIX it. I literally want to resort to violence at times, and I'm surprised at myself.

Which brings us to the other side of things. Because when I'm not feeling the protective fierceness of the Motherbeast, I'm feeling the frightened guilt of a puppy who knows it's done something bad and that there's a reckoning coming. I did it wrong. I didn't carry my baby until she was ready to come out. My body was so inhospitable that I couldn't make it a safe place for her to stay. I FAILED her and she has to suffer for my inadequacies. Isn't someone going to punish me for that?

It's been drilled into me by many people (doctors, psychiatrists, social workers, nurses) that these feelings of guilt and shame and self-blame are normal, that every mother who suffers from pre-eclampsia has the same thoughts. Intellectually I am thankful to know that. Emotionally, it's hard to hang on to it. I know that my part in this wasn't easy, that it wasn't my fault, that I could have died from the pre-eclampsia as well and that having Shaughnessy when I did saved both of us. But I visit the websites that tell me how she should be developing in my womb, still safely tucked away in a warm, pain-free environment until being born a fat, healthy full-term baby and I mourn that for her. And for me. And for Andrew, who has had a painful few weeks and has had to juggle work, illness, worry and stress around all the hospital business, not to mention having to quarantine himself away from his brand-new daughter almost this entire time. He hasn't been able to comfort himself with sitting at her bedside, giving her hand-hugs, holding her from time to time. He's had only pictures and my reports on her sweetness to satisfy his paternal instincts and it's just not enough.

I know this will all get easier. We'll look back on this time as difficult but necessary, and it'll seem like such a short blip in the bigger picture of her life. Right now, though, it's fricking hard.

Mother bear is gonna rough you up.

OK, so after singing the praises of WCH like I did in my last entry I will admit that there are a couple of nurses that I simply do not like. NICU nurses, specifically, since it really didn't matter if there was anyone taking care of me who wasn't sweetness and light all the time. Motherhood, however, apparently makes you very protective and the thought of someone not treating your fragile little premature daughter with anything but love and tenderness is awful.

Mom came to town again yesterday and we got to spend hours visiting Shaughnessy. The day nurse was nice, if a little bit less than self-confident about absolutely everything. I think she was pretty new, but it didn't matter because any time she second-guessed herself she got someone else to step in so there wasn't any reason for us to feel like Shaughnessy wasn't getting proper care. Shaughnessy's night nurse, though, was a nurse that simply rubs me the wrong way. I've seen her get impatient with crying babies before, and she just has a really brisk, clinical way of doing things that doesn't include the parents at all if they happen to be there.

Mom and I stood back and gave her room while she did Shaughnessy's hands-on care and even though she wasn't being precisely rough with her it still made me feel uncomfortable to see the way she was flipping my baby around like a rotisserie chicken, fast and not exactly gently. Shaughnessy didn't cry at all and seemed more thoughtful about it all than anything and she's not a baby that's afraid to complain when something's not right. I'm sure this woman knows her job and knows it well, but parents of preemies feel like their babies aren't getting enough affection as it is so to see their major caregivers dealing with them like objects rather than a son or daughter is upsetting, to say the least.

I asked her if she wanted us to leave the NICU entirely while she worked with my baby girl and her answer was, "Oh, I don't care what you do." All righty then. You don't have to be Nurse McFriendlypants, but 'I don't care' is not a helpful answer. I asked a few questions and made a few comments but she just wouldn't engage, so I pretty much gave up and went and sat in the waiting area since my back was hurting and I didn't feel good. After she was done Mom came and got me and we sat with Shaughnessy a while more until Mom had to catch her bus back to Kingston, but I felt sad that for the rest of the night my girl had this woman instead of someone more affectionate and interactive.

I was also starting to get a scratchy throat last night and when I woke up today it was even worse, so I can't go in to see Shaughnessy until it's better. I'm hoping it gets better with a quickness because it WILL break me if I can't go visit her. I don't know how Andrew's managed since this is the worst illness he's had in forever and it's kept him out of the NICU for a long time now. I called today to see how our girl was doing and as it turns out she got an IV burn from the IV line they put in yesterday, which means that the vein the IV was in got compromised and the IV fluid leaked out and damaged the surrounding tissue. I haven't seen it yet and they assured me that it was being treated so I'm trying not to assume that it's horrible, but it's extra-difficult not to be able to go see her now that I know she was in pain the night before. Poor little monkey.

WCH Rocks!

While being in the hospital is never FUN, it does have nice moments. I suspect that the Women's College Hospital has some sort of rigorous testing system in place to make sure that all the medical professionals working there are part guardian angel or something because I've never in my life experienced so many indescribably kind people in one place. Most all of the nurses who took care of me babied me extravagantly, bringing me countless cups of ice water and apple juice, chiding me about eating my meals, tsking over the state of my poor, swollen, scabbed-up, bruised arms (from all the blood-drawing and the bandage tape that ate away my skin) and generally treating me with more compassion than I'd ever expected. There was no sense of it being anyone's job; they were genuinely caring.

Of course, they were also doing their jobs, as evidenced by the carefree way in which they regularly walked into my room and demanded to see my crotch or boobs or incision. The most amusing thing to me was Fart Watch 2009. They were very concerned about my first fart after surgery and every time anyone entered my room the first thing out of their mouth was, "Have you passed gas?" I wasn't allowed solid food until that happened, so by the end of Fart Watch I was eagerly anticipating it as well. It finally, finally happened at 10:43 a.m. on Wednesday the 5th. I farted. And it was awesome.

I think this is possibly the only time in my life I will ever openly and publicly admit to engaging in that particular bodily function, so write down the date or something.

The people who have made the strongest impression on me were Maja, the nurse in charge of me from the minute I was admitted to the high risk delivery unit, and Beverly, a lovely nurse in the NICU.

Maja really did remind me of an angel, which is SO cliched when it comes to nurses, I know, but she was an incredibly solid rock of support and comfort during a time of shock and fear for me and Andrew. We were being swept along on this unstoppable tide of sudden major surgery and our daughter coming into the world three months early, and Maja very calmly explained everything to us that she could. She also had no compunction at all about physically comforting me, putting a hand on my shoulder or hand whenever she could just to remind me that she was right there beside me. When I was getting the epidural injected into my spine she stood in front of me with her hands on my shoulders and reminded me to breathe whenever it seemed like I was getting panicked. She told me afterward that there came a moment when she herself got overwhelmed with everything going on and head to leave the operating room for a moment to breathe deep and calm down, and I have to say that I didn't even notice, she was just so ever-present and reassuring.

They delayed moving me to the recovery part of the floor long enough that Maja couldn't come with me to see Shaughnessy for the first time and she was visibly upset about it, telling me that she'd been looking forward to sharing that special moment with me and how disappointed she was that the nurse taking me was someone that I didn't even know. I was disappointed too and ended up having some separation anxiety over the abruptness of my move and being taken out of her care so suddenly. She was the best nurse I've ever had in my life, bar none, and I'm immensely grateful for her. We'll definitely be bringing in a major thank-you gift for her soon.

As for Beverly; she's a lovely, kind Australian woman who goes to great lengths to make sure that I feel involved in Shaughnessy's care and gives me as much information as she possibly can whenever she sees me, even if she's not assigned to Shaughnessy that day. She was the first NICU nurse to insist that I help her with Shaughnessy's 'hands on' care, when they change their diapers, feed them, give them a little break from the CPAP and do various other things related to their well-being. She let me pick my daughter up in my hands for the first time while she changed the bedding under her, had me wipe off her face and mouth of the bubbles they blow when they're on CPAP, take her temperature and just generally interact with her in ways I hadn't before. They do this with all the parents, yes, to ease us into taking care of a preemie, but Beverly did it with so much kindness and understanding of how I must be feeling to watch what amounts to strangers having so much more access to my own child than I do. You can tell when the nurse working with your baby actually cares about how you feel, and Beverly cares. A lot.

These are just the two standouts, of course. Like I said; almost every single person at WCH has been unfailingly kind and caring and genuine. HAVE YOUR BABIES THERE, Torontonians! I recommend it!

Hey, let's talk about my chesteses.

So far this mom thing is really bizarre for me. Obviously nothing happened as planned or expected, so I'm kind of swimming in the deep end with regard to exactly how I'm supposed to be feeling or acting. Mostly I just give myself permission to feel however I happen to because what's right or wrong in this situation?

Now that I'm out of the hospital and back home I'm spending most of my time pumping breast milk, preparing to pump breast milk or figuring out when to next pump breast milk. I HATE pumping breast milk. Really, really do. It's so detached and impersonal to sit there attached by the boobs to a machine for twenty minutes at a time and stare into space while waiting for it to end. The type of breast pump the hospital sends you home with is called a double electric, meaning you pump both boobs at once with great, electricity-fueled force. This is nice and efficient, yes, but also extremely limiting as you have to hold the contraption in place with your hands. So I sit there, like a bored dairy cow, and stare around while enduring the least sexy form of nipple torture ever.

The cats are intrigued, of course. Mong sits a small distance away and just watches kind of askance, not really approving of the process. Shelley, unsurprisingly, is much more scientifically interested in the whole thing and wants to get right in my lap and watch up close. Because my range of movement is extremely limited I am reduced to doing a kind of chicken wing flap with my occupied arms to try to dissuade him, or draw one knee up to make my lap less inviting. He is not easily dissuaded and will eventually park himself up against my leg if he can't get in my lap, watching in a very intent and discomfiting manner what is going on with my poor, poor nipples.

Nipples, nipples, nipples. I never really thought I'd end up talking much about one of my MOST PRIVATE body parts in this blog because I wasn't planning to breastfeed. Since Shaughnessy ended up being preemie, though, breast milk is one of the best things for her and I can certainly oblige. It turns out that producing breast milk is a crazy skill I have. It's like, effortless for me. When the lactation consultant came to talk to me in the hospital I was in the middle of pumping and quit early so I could chat with her. She did a total double-take when she saw the amount I'd already pumped and was all, "Is that the volume you usually produce?" I was like, no, I usually get more. She was impressed. My boobs; they are enthusiastic. Which is awesome, because as much as I HAAAAATE to pump it's extremely gratifying to feel like I'm doing something so directly beneficial and mother-like for my daughter.

Even though breast-feeding in itself is also a procedure that limits your movement and takes up time I can only look forward to it as a great improvement as I'll actually be holding my daughter and bonding with her, able to look down at her and into her eyes and interact with her. I won't be hooked up to a happy yellow robot that doesn't want to bite me and pull my hair.

How to have a baby in the most dramatic way.

Let me tell you what happened.

On the night of February 27th I had a pain in my upper right torso area. It was not incredibly excruciating or anything. It felt almost exactly like mild gallbladder attacks used to feel when I still had a gallbladder. I had any of a number of things to blame such a pain on, of course, such as coughing due to the cold I was recovering from or a newish heartburn effect. Whatever it was I kept noticing it, but not feeling affected enough by it to worry overmuch. It was annoying and I took some Tylenol and hoped for the best.

It faded by the next morning and I carried on with life. Saturday night, though, I noticed a headache starting up on the left side of my head. Kind of radiating up from my neck and around to my forehead. I popped a couple more Tylenols but by the next morning it was on both sides of my head and was much worse. I figured it was a migraine since it had some of the same symptoms and results, like nausea and light sensitivity. So Sunday night I still had a headache that hadn't really responded to pain meds much. On Monday morning the headache seemed a bit less, but still present, and by Monday night I was getting pretty worried. I get lots of headaches, yes, but three-day headaches are a rarity for me and headaches that don't respond to pain meds during pregnancy are a bad sign.

I'd read about pre-eclampsia, and one account in particular that I'd shared with Andrew as an example of something that I hoped would NEVER happen to me. One of my favourite webcomic authors had her daughter quite early as a result of pre-eclampsia and had presented symptoms from quite early on, mostly very swollen feet. I wasn't having any issues like that, my pee sticks for protein had been coming up clear at the doctor's office and my blood pressures seemed to be OK. The visit to the obgyn right before Jen and Colin's wedding had a tiny bit of protein in my urine, but it was a trace amount.

So, the three-day headache was concerning me but I wasn't having any other symptoms like swelling or vision disturbances. I decided in the end that it was better to be safe than sorry so on Monday night after Andrew got home from work we headed out to the emergency room at Toronto General to ask about my headache.

I'll just get this out of the way right now so I don't have to repeat it a lot: We don't really know why we went there instead of Mt. Sinai. We were on autopilot or something, it's where we went last time we visited an emergency room and in the end it worked out pretty much the same as it would have in any case.

The wait ended up not being too terribly long for me to get in and talk to a nurse at the ER. She sat me down and asked me what all was going on, I said I'd had this three-day headache that was unresponsive to pain meds, she strapped on the blood pressure cuff and when it beeped she did a total double-take. "That can't be right." Yep, she thought the machine was broken, like in some cheap movie script. So she took it again, it was even more alarming and she was like, "OK, this is an issue." I did have to go wait again in the general waiting area but it really wasn't all that long, thankfully, as it kind of turned out that I was a walking seizure waiting to happen. Andrew and I were called back into the ER and I got on a bed and pretty much didn't get up for days.

The poking and prodding and questioning and needling and blood-pressure-cuffing began in earnest. Things get fuzzy for me at this point because they started me on magnesium sulfate and it made me light-headed and flushed, which was very distracting. Basically after a lot of talking about pre-eclampsia, how I definitely had it, how dangerous it is, how close I was to having seizures and brain hemorrhages and dying we were told that the baby pretty much should come out that night so that I wouldn't die, and kill her in turn. My 28 week baby, since apparently I ONCE AGAIN had the weeks counted wrong, argh.

I was instinctively like, "No, that's stupid," but that was inside my head. In reality I knew there wasn't much choice, so Andrew and I were like, "Um, OK." They were talking about DYING, which is scary to hear in your face like that.

Usually I'd have been transferred over to Mt. Sinai for the c-section, but they were having a flooding issue so I was taken by ambulance over to Women's College Hospital at around 10:00, to Andrew's best recollection. I am SO thankful that's where I had my baby. I cannot say enough good about the place or the people that work there. It is just yes in every way possible.

Things happened fairly quickly. I was taken to the high risk delivery floor and they got me ready for surgery. Andrew wasn't allowed in the operating room while they did the epidural and that part ended up taking longer than we thought it would. I have to say that the epidural was the most unpleasant part of the entire operating procedure for me. Mostly when women giving birth have one they've been in labour for a while, so the physical sensation of the epidural is overshadowed by the pain of labour. In this case not so much. I felt everything the anaesthesiologist did, and it was pretty unpleasant the time he injected in a spot where there wasn't enough anaesthetic. Once it was finished and took effect everything was great. I couldn't feel a thing from my chest down and I was immensely grateful that they waited until then to insert the catheter!

So they found Andrew and the surgery started. I was feeling weird because of the mag sulfate and they also gave me some morphine so it's somewhat fuzzy for me, but I remember thinking that it felt exactly like a description I'd read of getting a c-section, where you are on a bed and there are people trying to wrestle a pair of too-small jeans onto your body. It really did feel a lot like that. Then there was a HUGE sensation of pressure and pulling and suddenly I heard someone say, "It's a girl!" Then I heard a couple of little tiny cries and I knew our daughter was born. It was 1:35 a.m. on March 3rd.

I didn't see her at all. Andrew did get a glimpse of her, but they took her immediately away to get her intubated in case she couldn't breathe on her own, even though she'd definitely breathed enough to cry out which was a very good sign. I was left to get reassembled and stitched back up, then I was taken to recovery.

Things get even fuzzier for me at this point. I remember talking to my nurse, talking to Andrew, asking about Shaughnessy and things like that. I was probably in shock, plus drugged a bit and the mag sulfate was still being administered through the IV so I wouldn't have a seizure. Eventually I was wheeled back to the high risk birthing unit and I stayed there until the next day.

Andrew had of course contacted my mom and sisters and so my mom came as soon as she could the next day to see me. My mom is awesome. I know she pretty much had zero sleep and yet she came all the way to Toronto and sat at my bedside and just hung out with me while I lay there all woozy and stupid from the mag sulfate and whatever other drugs were messing me up. She and Andrew got to go see Shaughnessy; something I couldn't do while I was still on the mag sulfate since I was still a seizure risk and they didn't want that to happen in the NICU. It was really hard for me to wrap my brain around the fact that I was no longer pregnant since I hadn't actually seen my own baby yet and physically I didn't feel a whole lot different since the numbness was still present. I made sure to tell them to touch her, though. For some reason it was really important to me that somebody who loves her touched her.

Mom had to leave that evening, but I was so, so glad she'd come. The whole experience had been pretty terrifying and surreal and having my mom appear was incredibly comforting. Thank you, Mom, for being so awesome.

I finally got to see Shaughnessy the next morning after they took me off of the magnesium sulfate and moved me to the high risk recovery part of the floor. It was a bit rushed, but being able to see my incredibly tiny daughter for the first time was amazing. She was so very small inside her big old incubator, all wrapped up and covered in tubes and wires and things stuck to her body. I couldn't do anything but look at her and hope with everything in me that she was going to be all right.

There's lots more about being in the hospital, which I was up until yesterday with soaring blood pressure and general recovery from the c-section. It's not all that interesting, though. What's awesome is how great our little girl is doing. She's apparently a tough, smart little baby what with all the breathing on her own and not needing any assistance beyond a CPAP (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure) device that reminds her to keep taking breaths just in case she ever forgets. The nurses consistently tell us how cute and funny she is and that she has a feisty little attitude and lots of personality. While I was in the hospital I spent a lot of time beside her incubator staring at her little self, touching her sometimes (although preemies are not necessarily all about the wanting to be touched, as it turns out, although a hand placed on them and held still is comforting,) and generally just getting used to the idea of being a mother!

Andrew promptly came down with some kind of virus right after our daughter was born so his contact with her has been a lot more limited than mine, unfortunately. He should be better in time for us to both be able to hold her, though, since her belly button IV came out today and that means more mobility for her. We've been taking some pictures and admiring her teeny little self. Here; admire her, too:

We had a baby.

I've been trying to write a weblog entry about the fact that yes, we had our daughter, we have a baby now, Shaughnessy Patricia Joyce Jeanes was born on March 3rd, 2009, at 1:35 in the morning weighing exactly one kilogram and breathing on her own.

Somehow, that weblog entry hasn't been coming out. I'd start it and have to stop really quickly. It wasn't flowing the way I wanted it to. I couldn't tell it the way I like to tell a story. It took me a while, but I eventually realized why.

Why? Because it sucks. I had preeclampsia. My daughter should not be outside of my body. She should still be in there giving me heartburn, kicking my bladder, bouncing my laptop at unexpected moments. I should still be carrying her and I'm not. I'm not happy about that in the slightest and wish more than anything that it wasn't this way. So when I try to write about the actual events and find the humour in them (of which there is some, believe me) it's just ... too soon, I guess.

This week has been the hardest of my life, probably the hardest of Andrew's life, and no picnic for Shaughnessy, either. Our families and friends have been amazing, supportive and right there for us from the minute we let them know what happened and we're unspeakably thankful for all of you.

I'll write about it. I'll write about it the way I want to, tell the story the way I like to, and it'll be REALLY LONG.