Biologically Impaired

Simple Rule: If I didn't ask your advice, don't give it. If you think I should know something, ask if I'd like your thoughts on that particular topic -- and if I say no, then kindly respect that.

I have gotten so much advice for my health, my family, my kids... Busybodies need to go away. For real.

Today's rant is brought to you by another person trying to tell me how to lose weight. I have an ARMY of doctors. I have multiple autoimmune disorders. I have mobility issues. I have digestive issues. I promise that whatever you are suggesting has been suggested, and either implemented and failed or has been eliminated as dangerous to my cocktail of conditions.

Today's suggestion was (again) going vegan or vegetarian. I think bc I'm fat folks assume I don't like veggies. I love veggies. We eat a ton of veggies. The 2 biggest problems are 1) Soy and I don't get along (huge barrier for a lot of the veg/vegan alternatives out there), and 2) My cocktail of conditions means I have a REALLY hard time digesting plant proteins, so at the very least I need eggs, chicken, or fish (which are the most common animal proteins in my diet). No, I don't feel like getting into the biochemistry of it with you; I don't owe you my medical history.

Geez we’re almost through November already?? Goodness. Sorry it took so long to post. Life has been crazy, to say the least.

The surrogate pulled through like a champ and is healing well. We are adjusting to an infant at home. I’ve already had a flare up where I couldn’t do the Mom Thing and gotten sick and couldn’t do the Mom Thing, and tried to deal with all that emotional stuff -- tho luckily I have a great support system. I expect this stuff will show up more in future posts, so I won’t dwell on it here.

For the birth itself… that was something. There are a LOT more nitty gritty details but honestly I’m just too tired to go through them all over again. So here are the highlights:

*He was born Nov 2nd at 8.5lb and 19.5”. He came out with the cord around his neck and blue. They got him breathing (god waiting for that cry felt like an eternity) and bundled him up on me for skin to skin. It was supposed to last an hour and I got like 2 min. He wasn’t pinking up. In the moment I was terrified and angry they ripped my baby away from me right when I FINALLY got to make contact with him for the first time, but luckily they know how to explain stuff to an overly-emotional mom by now.

*They got him warmed up and he pinked up really well. They gave him back to me for more skin to skin. At some point the surrogate managed to pump some colostrum? I really don’t remember how that happened. I just remember getting a syringe with the colostrum in it to feed him. He took to feeding REALLY well. However, I noticed pretty quickly he wasn’t breathing right. I brought him over to the pediatrician to re-evaluate him. After a few minutes under the lamp and being monitored, he just wasn’t breathing any better. They took him to NICU.

*He was on oxygen for ~16-18 hrs (not really sure, it was all a blur; I honestly thought it was longer but timeline tells me otherwise). Then they were on regular air being pushed through his nasal tubes. He was also on a sugar drip & ABs and had to have a BATTERY of blood tests which made him VERY not happy. ~20 hrs after he was born, my husband got to hold him for the first time and we slowly learned how to handle a baby covered in wires.

*At some point during all this, my husband, who had stayed with the surrogate to make sure she was ok, came and got me from NICU to come back to the room. It was a 10min walk away from the NICU. Which is just beyond dumb. We didn’t get a closer room until literally our last night there. I walk into the room, after crying for HOURS at my baby’s bedside, finally a little more stable, and what greets us is an empty crib. I broke down again because that is where my baby was supposed to be. My family was amazing during all of this.

*On 11/3, after pleading with a few folks to give us formula to give him since he was clearly STARVING (he was a chonkster and the colostrum was slowing down), we talked to an amazing night nurse who helped us get it done. Apparently, some asshole nurse with an agenda made a note on his chart for family requested "Breastmilk ONLY" even tho we NEVER said that. The night nurse listened to us, deleted the note, and in 5 min had a script from the NP for baby-led feeding with formula supplementation. He took 9.5mL colostrum and 19mL formula. He stopped crying and slept like a champ. We're livid about the initial note but glad that it was fixed -- and that the other nurses are just as mad about it. [Also, this explains some of the dirty looks I’d been getting and the snark one nurse threw at me scolding me for not “letting” the surrogate breastfeed directly instead of pumping (like, she had a fever and cough so she couldn’t even go there, also that was a mutual decision).]

*On 11/4, the surrogate is sent home and thus we no longer have a room. We are told that the baby will have to stay in the hospital another 48 hrs to wait for another blood culture since the last one came up positive for Staph. We shuttle back and forth that night a couple times to deliver colostrum/milk but we really couldn’t manage more trips since we live an hour away from the hospital. God I felt so bad having to sleep away from my baby. Even worse, I felt super guilty that I actually got a good night’s sleep -- the first good sleep I’d had in a week tbh since I hadn’t slept well leading up to the birth and between the morning of 10/31 and 11/3, I couldn’t even manage a nap.

*On 11/5, my husband was on his way for his trip to take colostrum/milk when we got the call that the cultures were so clear there likely wouldn’t be anything on them (meaning a false positive for Staph on the last culture), and that he was breathing well enough & blood sugar was stable enough that they felt comfortable sending him home. He turned around, grabbed us, and we headed there. They had the IV sugar/antibiotic out before we got there and they let us take off his nasal tube.

I've been wanting to write this out for a while, but feel like I don't know where to start. So I guess I'll just start typing, and hash things out over multiple posts. I am terrified of my abilities as a mom. Not because of my affection, ability to provide, or anything like that. But because of my Lupus. There are days when I can't move at all. I am very fortunate that work affords me the luxury to take a few days off here and there without it demolishing my paycheck. But sometimes it's not just a few days. Sometimes, while I take a couple days off bc I'm bedridden due to arthritis, intestinal issues, stomach bleeds, kidney issues, whatever... I go back to work relatively quickly. But that doesn't mean I'm "okay" once I'm back at work. I barely have the energy to do anything once I get back home. For those first few days, my stepson is incredibly patient with me. It's the sweetest thing on earth. But an infant can't just get by without me for a few days. And what about after those first few days, once I'm out of bed and back at work, yet too exhausted to do anything once I'm home? Yes, there are other caretakers in the house. But that doesn't help the feeling of not being 'enough'. And I know I shouldn't feel this way, but I can't help it. I want to be the all-powerful, entirely fictional, Super Mom. I don't want to tell my kids that I'm too tired or in too much pain to play with them. I want to be able to play with them every time they seek that affection from me.

App: Here are some milestones in the fetus! Like forming fingerprints!

Short Story: They didn’t tell us if it was 10 days or 10 business days and I’m dying. *headdeskheaddeskheaddesk*

Medium Story: We’re waiting on one last set of test results so we can announce. These test are pretty much the last of what we can get in the first trimester and will tell us a lot of genetic stuff and risk factors -- thus what we need to know before we announce..  Longer Story: EVERYBODY IS GUESSING IT. We really can’t hold off on announcing, especially since we’re having a large handful of friends over Saturday. The results are coming back either today (10 days for results) or Friday (10 business days for results... IF they come in on time...). But until we get these test results back, we don’t want to announce. If there are abnormalities, risk factors, or if the fetus is non-viable, we don’t want to be like “yay baby!” and then like 2 days later “well, nevermind”. These tests will also let me start thinking of Parasite as Little Bean and not as Bundle Of Cells. But we really need these results to help the chaos that is all the “what ifs” in our minds right now. Also we can’t hide it Saturday, we really can’t. The surrogate is showing. We normally are very vocal about our process and are suddenly on radio silence. PEOPLE KNOW.

Fetuses start to process sound ~18wks earliest, though they don't start to respond to it until a little later. My husband and I both are making recordings of our voices to be played using this cool against-the-tummy set of headphones. We're singing some lullabies as well as reading several chapters from a couple books. While the data sometimes varies on whether auditory recognition is a prenatal or a postnatal development, there is a fair amount of data that supports that prenatal exposure in general influences what a baby prefers overall in voices (be it cadence, language, etc.). We figured it couldn't hurt for the baby to hear our voices either way. We're also planning on leaning against our surrogate's stomach and reading from those books as well, which also gives bonding time with my step son since we can look at him and read these stories to him as well.

This is an interesting book that's (mostly) available on Google Books, Comprehensive Handbook of Pediatric Audiology, 2nd ed. (Tharpe/Seewald), and the link should take you to Ch 3 which has a LOT of info about early life audiology. Ch 2 is about ear embryology which is really fascinating too btw.

The main article linked to this post is some cool research by Ockleford et al (1988, yeah I know w/e), "Responses of neonates to parents' and others' voices" that I really liked. ["Results support the suggestion that sounds which are repeatedly experienced before birth (especially the mother's voice) become familiar to the fetus so that the neonate responds selectively by orienting to them during the first few hours after birth." <-- cool, huh?!]

SO: *shows me rendering of what our 6wo embryo looks like* Me: *cooing in babytalk* Aww! Hello, little baby alien parasite! You’re adorable! Look at your little gills! SO: *sigh*

(PS: No, embryos/fetuses don't actually have gills, but if you're looking for some interesting reading on human development, pharyngeal arches are fascinating! This is a fun little primer, but there is a lot of info out there: https://teachmeanatomy.info/the-basics/embryology/head-neck/pharyngeal-arches/)

In all seriousness though, we're really liking BabyCenter's Pregnancy Tracker (here are the links to GooglePlay & Apple). It addresses developmental stuff, what's happening to our surrogate (both good & bad), as well as certain dangers & risks (which we really appreciate, since a lot of trackers seem to be all fluffy happy rainbows... and actually getting pregnant doesn't mean you get a healthy baby at the end of the process :/ ).

I'll start this off by saying that I am not religious nor do I believe in a non-religious approach to "fate", though I have plenty of friends who do hold those beliefs.

It honestly depends on how the sentiment is delivered, to be perfectly honest. Whether it's in reference to our difficulties with reproduction or my health issues, I generally try to approach those comments from the perspective of the person saying it meaning well, because, well, they generally do mean well. For them, it is meant as a comforting thing -- even though, for me, it isn't comforting at all. For me, it being "part of God's plan" or "fate" is almost like telling me to stop trying to do everything I can do to overcome the hardship because, *shrug*, it's part of some grander plan. However, I know that 99% of the time they don't mean it that way, so I just smile, take the sentiment for how it's actually meant, say thank you, and move on. If it becomes a consistent problem with a specific individual, I will pull them aside and explain that while I know they mean well, they come across to me as telling me to give up. Luckily I've only had to do once, and it led to a deep and meaningful conversation about how we grow with our journeys through various struggles, both in and out of the context of religion.

That being said, however, there are ways that it should absolutely NOT be phrased. The worst way it's been said to me thus far has been "maybe you not being able to conceive is God's way of telling you that you shouldn't be a mother." I honestly had to just walk away from them and I legitimately couldn't talk to them for a week, it made me that angry. I KNOW they were trying to be comforting. But the thing is, phrasing it that way negates ALL THE OTHER WAYS someone can become a mom -- medical intervention, surrogacy, adoption, step-parenthood... It was like they were telling me that pursuing other options was pointless, and that other moms out there that became moms that way were somehow less legitimate. (Hell, I’m a step-mom myself. Was she negating that existing identity as a mother?) It made me feel that she would see me as a lesser mother if I wasn't the one to carry the child through a conventional conception. And that HURT. I still need to talk to her about it tbh, but even typing this is making me angry-sad all over again, so I may not be able to calmly talk to her about it yet.

I say this knowing that some of my real life friends follow this blog, but please note that this information is still not for general public consumption for my friends and family. Mostly because of potentially devastating ramifications. But in the interest of cataloging our journey, I am including it in the blog. This morning, our surrogate greeted me with balloons decorated with “Congrats” and drawings of positive pregnancy tests! I’m tempering hope because I know this is only step 1 of 1000, but this is the furthest we’ve gotten and I can’t help but let myself be super excited by the news.

I know it’s been a while. Sorry about that. Lost track with all the legal stuff then planning out with the surrogate. Etc, etc. Can’t recommend enough to get a lawyer. Seriously. Our lawyer is the bomb dot com and has been a font of knowledge and an amazing asset in this journey -- worth every penny because she’s saving us a ton in other legal fees we’re navigating around too.