Do you know how many drafts of unfinished blog posts I have sitting in my wordpress dash? Three hundred fourty eleven. Truth be told, I don’t even know, but it’s a lot. I’ve had a lot to say, but as yet have been unable to say it. Therefore, a bullets post.
Dude, you have no idea how busy I’ve been, what with the show, the holidays, a crazy amount of work to finish by year’s end and all that parenting stuff. You probably do know, but you may not know what an added layer of insanity the show was. I’m talking about being up every night until 1am or so practicing my guitar through headphones so I could possibly not suck after not playing for so long. The sleep deprivation reminded me of how much I need sleep to not just be an asshole to everyone. Up until 1am is not so bad until you remember your kids are up at 7am every day, NO MATTER WHAT, unless it’s today and they’re up at 6 for no god damned reason. And I know – we are lucky that our kids sleep like this. The question is, are we stupid for playing a show when we have no time to play our guitars?
Stupid or not, here we come.
I don’t know what that means in terms of us playing future shows. Don’t read into it.
…
Do you see that picture above? Those monsters are my sons, Doot and Bing. They will be a year old on the 22nd of this month. I cringe when I think of it. They are SO BIG (\0/).
Every day I whisper quietly into their soft hair, “Can you stay my baby just a little while longer? Please?” I try not to say it audibly most of the time because I don’t want them to grow up with a complex. I don’t *really* want a 35 year old Doot and/or Bing living with me or off me. Okay, that’s a lie. I secretly dream of having my kids live with me forever and that at least one of them will get some girl pregnant in high school so I can marvel at a grandbaby while I can still walk without a cane. I’m actually not even sure if I’m kidding about that.
That’s fucked up.
Doot has 8 teeth. Bing has 2 and a half.
They eat EVERYTHING. They are great eaters. Messy as shit though.
This post is so ”eh” right now I’m going blind.
Fuck it, I’m posting it anyway.
It was nice to see you again. Thanks for reading.
Oh, and a little PS bullet, that has nothing to do with this post.
To my friend, Ms. Snarkier Than You over at Twitarded, OH MY GOD. I’m incredulously doped up on Twilight (the book). I made Alex (Mr. Wisermom) go out and buy me New Moon last night (which I haven’t seen yet, even though some innocent yet asshatish youngster told me the ending yesterday when she saw I was reading Twilight. Doh!) because I was getting too close to the end and, ugh, how can I be sagaless? As soon as I post this, I’m closing my office door and busting out New Moon. I need some “me” time.
Well, you think those dreams are dead, anyway, and then one day you discover that they are very much alive in you. And you can’t say that’s good, and you can’t say it’s bad. It just IS. Like the fact that you have green eyes or a hot temper or a certain weakness for guys doing yard work.
You thought it was over. Been there. Done that. You were Wrong. Very, very wrong.
Prosolar Mechanics, WE Fest Wilmington NC 2000
It’s not over at all. But you have no idea what that means.
And then the next thing you know, WOOSH. They’re graduating from college and you’re out your retirement fund.
I should really be calling this post a placeholder. It’s holding the place for a lot of things I need to tell you about. Like, the fact that the boys turned 9 months old. And then, about 15 minutes after we ordered their 9 month old commemorative plates and matching cup set, they turned 10 months old. And then they had their first Thanksgiving and their first bath in the big bath tub together. And then I cried because they are too adorable and too sweet to believe and I’m still not home with them every day like I should be and I know, and you know, kindergarten is right around the corner and what then? What THEN?
I know there are women out there who are okay with being working mothers. I salute them. I’m just not one of them. Meaning, I am a working mother. In fact, I am the sole provider working mother right now. But I’m not okay with it, other than the fact that it is what is and I have to be okay, in the most general of terms.
I also have to tell you about the band. Oh lord, the band. That’d be my band, whose name shall not be mentioned here because I’m having interweb crossover identity issues. I went back into private practice a few months ago (I’m an LCSW therapist type for kids, yo) and I just do not want people I work with finding this blog. We’re playing in 26 days (crap pants here) and this is the first time we’ve played in 8 years, almost to the day.
Before I became a mom, and before I became a therapist, I was a musician. I was very serious about it. I never had the kind of financial or commercial success I’d hoped for, but I did make all kinds of music with all sorts of fantastic people and it made my life better. And now I’m doing it again and it feels so strange and familiar and like I’m traveling back in time but yet not. Like straddling two decades when your straddler is a little out of alignment.
And that’s just the good stuff, but that’s what I’m trying to fill my head with these days. And yours too.
I haven’t been here, but then I keep telling you that and so you must know it by now, if you’ve been here and I’ve not been. The reason I haven’t been here is because at work, they now want me to work. Can you believe this shit? And at home, well, there are kids and a dog and a man and two cats, wait. Forget the cats, they suck.
The boys just started sleeping through the night a few weeks ago, but oh my god heavenly bliss! They sleep from around 8pm until anywhere between 6 and 7am, and compared to the living hell of getting up three to four times a night, we are getting sleep. We’re averaging about 6 or 7 hours a night – IN THE SAME BED – even. That’s huge.
But what else is that I’ve gotten to be sleep greedy, so right now it’s 10pm and I have to get up at 5:30am for work tomorrow (not a typical day, but sheesh, that’s early) and I should already be in bed, but I’m not, though I will be soon. As soon as I finish typing this. By the way, I was pumping for most of that paragraph. I got good, yo.
Blogging takes a backseat to sleeping. I know that’s effed up, I do know it. But that’s the way it is.
But on to the good part of this post: Doot and Bing, in heady discourse regarding the merits of breakfast and its ranking among the things we eat. Around the 1:15 mark Doot makes a startling discovery: he has a hand. It’s right there, on the end of his arm.
Doot (on the right) said “Da da” tonight, while lovingly combing Alex’s face with his little eight month old fingers. Yes, there were tears aplenty.
Meanwhile, Bing was hurling himself backwards on hands and knees on the same futon where we all lay and tell stories and sing songs every night before bed. He’s about to launch. Real crawling, the kind that involves purposeful movement, is nigh.
And yes, finally, they are starting to sleep all night. Doot has slept from 8pm – 6:30 am three nights in a row. Bing is only waking up once a night, around 12:30am, for a small bottle, then sleeping the rest of the way. This is HUGE folks. But then, you know that.
My mom says they look like they’re ready to take on the world here. If I do my part, here’s hoping they will be.
Here’s why: When I picked up my son, Bing, because he was screaming his head off like he was in the final stages of starvation, and told him, “Don’t worry, I’m going to feed you,” and then, to soothe him, held him up in front of me and made the faces and noises he loves, and he THREW UP RIGHT INTO MY OPEN MOUTH, so that I tasted baby bile and regurgitated breast milk and it spilled all down the front of my shirt, I neither reciprocated and vomited into his mouth because the little fucker deserved it, nor did I throw him across the room and shriek in revulsion because I could not “man up” and swallow. No, my first thought was, “Shit, I forgot to burp him.” Then I imagined the scene from his perspective:
Bing’s shitty morning with the dumb giant
Okay, I’m on my back in my happy place and everything is pretty chill because I’m in a fresh diaper and wearing a clean shirt (the one with the boats on it), but something is wrong—you know that feeling? The wrong feeling? Like when someone drops your head the last inch to the mattress or you just know they’re gonna walk out of the room and leave you in the crib without your ugly doll? And then I figure out what’s causing it: the electric sun is not singing. Sing, sun, sing! I command. But there’s no response. I feel empty. I don’t cry often, but man, when the sun doesn’t sing even when you’ve got a clean diaper and a boat shirt on, you’ve run out of options. Time for the waterworks. I cry for a long, long time. Really long. Forever long. Hey, I’m crying over here? What does a guy have to do to get noticed? Service is miserable in this place. I consider crapping my pants, but that’s risky because sometimes it’s not stinky enough to create the kind of urgency I need at this juncture. Finally, my giant shows up with that obsequious smile of his—like I don’t know he was hiding out in the break room arguing politics with some douchebag on the innernuts—and transports me across the room to the comfy spot in the puffy place with the blanket. He puts the artificial boob in my mouth and I drink. Nothing like expressed breast milk to put things in perspective. I decide not to fire him. I really kind of like him. Maybe I’ll start calling him that gibberish “dadadadada” name he keeps blathering at me. Also, I’m not sure how easy giants are to come by. My other, Doot, and I have two of them, a male and a female. I know, it’s extravagant, but hey, we need them. We’ve even discussed trying to get a third. Or moving somewhere with better healthcare. I sent a letter to Nana requesting asylum in her house, but I’m afraid it may have been intercepted by one of the giants. They’re pretty wily for brutes that can’t babble properly.
While I’m in the puffy place on the blanket, I see Doot in one of the giant swings. He spots me and the artificial boob. He is pissed. It’s in the rules that we get as much boobz as we want and, to be honest, I’m worried about his consumption. He gets pretty squirrely when he doesn’t get his drink—sucks his thumb and whines. Frankly, it’s pathetic. Milkaholism affects the whole family. Anyway, Doot is thirsty. I can practically hear his tummy tiger growling. So I knows he’s scared, because the tiger might get big and eat him if he does not get his own fake boob. He screams: “WHAeAyA AgAiAvAeA AmAeA AsAoAmAeA AoAfA AtAhAaAtA AwAhAaAtA AyAoAuA’ArAeA AdArAiAnAkAiAnAgA AIA AnAeAeAdA AiAtA AbAeAfAoArAeA AmAyA AtAuAmAmAyA AdAeAcAiAdAeAsA AtAoA AeAaAtA AmAeA!”
In a blatant display of favoritism, the giant responds to Doot immediately. The artificial boob is yanked from my mouth the instant it is empty (and it was only a half booble) and I am shunted into the other giant swing while Doot is rescued and given his own fake boob. To think I was starting to like that giant. I’ll say “Mother, I love you best,” and present her with a rose and a sonnet before he gets one “dadadadadadadadada” out of me.
Then, sitting in the swing—I do some of my best thinking here—it occurs to me the giant has two hands. In fact, I’m sure I recall him holding boobles for us simultaneously. I could STILL. BE. DRINKING. I start screaming. I call the giant every bad thing I can think of: taco pits, stubble face, no boobs. I scream so loud the boob giant hears and calls up from whereever she is, probably out getting her boobs refilled, to tell the dumb one to feed me. He waits until Doot passes out (pathetic) and then comes to get me. He comes over cooing and making burbling noises, eyes wide with that goofy open mouth smile. He picks me up and it makes me so mad I get ill. So I puke into his mouth and instantly I feel better.
It was one of those Very Shitty Days when neither baby would take a significant nap, which wasn’t the worst part, the worst part being that the longer they went without napping, the more wretched their moods became. They take after me, after all.
It got so bad today I had to just put them down in their cribs, screaming, and walk away. I was actually getting pissed off. Like, at them. There’s little that I’ve experienced in the world that compares with the feeling of being pissed off at them, either. I mean come on. They’re babies. How do you get pissed off at babies? It’s not like they like being miserable and overtired. But today there was something about the persistent double whining, uhhnnn uhhhhnnnn ggggnnnuuuuhhh mmgggnnnuuuuhhh, lasting hours upon hours, a tide I could not with my best mommy tricks stem, getting louder and louder and, could it get louder? Oh yes! It could! Until it crescendoed all the way into desperate double wails of misery. And then the coughing, sputtering, choking on the cries. Jesus Maria and Jose already.
When I felt that anger well up inside of me I had to just walk away. Had to. Because for a second there I got desperate myself, and in that second I could glimpse into the world of a child abuser, no lie.
It scared me.
(And many thanks to those of you out there on Twitter who provided me much needed back-up in the midst of my angst; this means you @Jells, @averygoodyear, @mommyisrocknrol.)
To compound matters, their father is escaping this weekend again to work on his MFA thesis, which is due 8/3. He’s panicking about getting it all perfect, of course, while I’m panicking about being left alone with my sons for 48 hours. I feel no small amount of pathetic for that, either. Which leads me to the truth about twins.
Twins are really, really, really, really hard.
A friend of mine is the father of 22 year old boy twins and when I was pregnant he warned me that having twins would kick my ass. Ha ha, I’m sure, I said.
A few months ago I told him, I know you said it would kick my ass, but shit, this is really kicking my ass hard. I’ve been around, done a lot of things. I’ve worked in psych hospitals, crisis centers, juvenile detention, toured in a rock band. Did a lot of hardcore stuff, you know? This doesn’t come close to any of that.
He said, My dear, I was in COMBAT in Viet fucking Nam. Having twins? Harder.
Today WM presents three videos. I’m calling this triptych “To pea, or not to pea: The birth of an aesthetic sensibility.”
Above is Doot’s introduction to sweet peas. Yes, they’re organic. No, we didn’t grow them; they’re handy single-serving packs from the big baby food conglomerate and, yeah, they’re about $0.70 a serving, pretty danged expensive when you’re on a frayed shoestring budget. However, they are very convenient, and to New Jerseyans, convenience is everything. (Cue the DKs reference “Give me convenience or give me death.” Yes, I understand the irony.) The other justification I have for my laziness is that while we’re trying out solid foods, I’m not going to buy a bunch of stuff and have it rot in the fridge when they only eat a little bit of it. Their parents already have that problem with the produce intended for adult consumption. I have utopian visions that eventually when all four of us eat the same produce we will eat our way through large heads of leafy green lettuce and buckets of succulent cucumbers. It may be on pizza with lotsa mozzarella, but a boy can dream.
Up to this point, the boys have taken to solids like wombats to sedgegrass. Other than an unfortunate episode with prunes (expelled from both ends in force), they eat rice cereal, sweet potatoes, oatmeal, and bananas. Based on facial expressions and enthusiasm, sweet potatoes and bananas are the favorites. Hello sweet teeth.
Doot is not into peas. Check out his expression. He had downed a bottle not all that long before when he was introduced to them, so we thought perhaps he just wasn’t that hungry. So I tried them again yesterday. He may be a sweet pea, but Doot is not into them.
The development of facial expressions and nonverbal communication at five months is impressive. You can really tell the difference, when, just a couple of minutes later I offer him some sweet potatoes. Yep, the kid is hungry, all right. Ixnay on the legumes, hello beta carotene.
A note of caution: If you are currently pregnant, this story is one you may want to wait and read after you’ve delivered. By reading further you agree that neither the author nor Wiser Mom nor anyone connected with the blog may be held liable for contact PTSD symptoms, nightmares, hysteria or other undesirable effects incurred from reading the following account.
There is a huge backstory leading up to this, some of it was documented in real time on this blog. But for those of you who need a refresher or are new to the story, this post drops into it when Myg was exactly 35 weeks pregnant. She had been in the hospital for a week with mild preeclampsia after a third trimester filled with ER visits and two other hospital stays—one overnight and one five days long. Unexpectedly—we had been told a few hours earlier that it would be another week—the OBGYN team decided on the morning of week 34 and 6 days that it would be best to induce labor immediately and not let Myg’s condition deteriorate. The babies were healthy in utero and would most likely be fine after delivery, whereas Myg would only get sicker and not begin to recover until afterward. We catch up with our protagonists at 4 a.m., January 22, 2009:
Myg is being rolled into the operating room for delivery and I am right behind her in disposable scrubs and surgical mask. Twins are considered high risk, so all twin deliveries are done in the OR, just in case. A Pitocin drip to induce labor was started about nine hours earlier, and she was given an epidural at 11:30 p.m. that worked just as you’d want—she has gone through transition smoothly with not too much discomfort and is now 9 cm dilated. She has also been given magnesium sulfate—known in the medical parlance as “mag”—to control her preeclampsia symptoms. Mag will keep her blood pressure, already high and spiky, from getting out of control. It also has a host of nasty side effects, including the possibility of hot flashes that some recipients have said feel as if you’re burning from the insides and your eyeballs are melting. The other effect is that it is a powerful muscle relaxant. Exactly what you don’t want when you’re about to deliver a couple of babies.
The last belly pic
My previous experience with operating rooms is that they are cold. But as Myg is wheeled into the OR to deliver our twins, I don’t notice the temperature. I notice the table. The scene is like something out of David Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers, which should put a chill into anyone who has seen the film and anyone who doesn’t get the reference should be thankful they don’t. The operating/delivery table has padded swivel legs and stirrups that my memory says are stainless steel, but that sounds unnecessarily cruel, maybe they were just worn leather. Like the straps you’d find on an electric chair in Texas. Overhead, a large array of klieg lights dangle at the end of an articulated arm looking oddly like a female mantis with the severed head of her lover held in the caress of her deadly mandibles. A wall made of monitors and other machines that go bing! stacked about twelve-high is teetering dangerously close to the table. The only man in the 11-person delivery team sits next to them in oversized glasses holding a clipboard or notebook or tablet computer. He is unmistakably Hell’s bookkeeper. Other odd apparatus are arranged about the room but my attention is focused on Myg as she is helped onto the table, still strapped in, and her feet are arranged in the stirrups and a flimsy sheet is arranged over her.
Once again, Myg explains to the doctor and the nurses that we’ve had no birthing classes, no Lamaze, nothing, because she’s been on bedrest since week 26 and no one at the hospital could find any resources that would come to the house, other than the midwife/dula team we can’t afford because I’m in grad school and Myg’s on disability and frankly, we’re as poor as we’ve ever been and thought that it was the best time to have twins because we plan everything and it always works out—just not how we plan it, or we would have gone to birth classes in the second trimester when Myg felt well enough to go on vacation—therefore, we’ve only read about delivery. Yes, in a book. Oh, and online, too. (This works for me, give me a book with instructions and I’m golden, not so much for Myg, and she’s the one that has to do it, so I’m nervous but keeping a good attitude.) No, Myg hasn’t watched A Baby Story, because she’s terrified. (Five months after delivery she still can’t bring herself to watch it.) We need some coaching, please. The staff says not to worry and explains that when she feels a contraction she needs to take a deep breath and hold it and when they tell her to push she needs to push like she’s shitting a watermelon and keep pushing as long as she can—they’ll count to ten—and then she can relax until she feels the next contraction or like she wants to push.
And that’s it. Ready for your skydive/bungee jump/moon launch? Good, me too.
I sit at my wife’s head, looking down at the part in her hair. I want to kiss it, but my mouth is covered by the mask. The delivery team sees a contraction begin on the monitors and they all say in disjointed unison like a girls’ rugby scrum: take a deep breath, now PUSH, hold it keep pushing don’t let it out one … two… three… four… don’t let it out keep pushing and Myg lets it out and stops pushing around seven.
She looks at me with a holy shit expression that says this is not fun I do not want to do this but I have no choice oh fuck…
I whisper sweetly into her ear and she tries to relax for the brief couple of minutes before the next contraction. I try to say encouraging things. I hold her hand. I feed her ice chips. And it goes on and on and on. Myg gets tireder and tireder but continues to labor. Labor. The word in its most radical form. She labors.
Of all the things I am in relationship to Myg, at this moment I am nothing but an ice machine.
I am an ice machine.
I am the best ice machine.
That is all.
The iceman. I’m good with a Styrofoam cup and chips of ice. See? I can get them out of the cup and put them into your mouth where they melt and soothe and if I knew where the crushed ice machine was I could refill the cup all by myself. And when you stop to think about it, what else does one need in life but some ice chips? All your needs can be met with a foam cup full of ice.
With every contraction the routine is the same. It goes on and on. The mag has made it next to impossible. Myg gets tired. I just want to sleep, she says. Can someone else take over for a bit? She tries not to think about the fact that this is Baby A, nicknamed “Doot” in utero, and that after she gets this done she has to do it all over again for Baby B, “Bing.” She’s ready to be a mother. Or, she really wants to be done with pregnancy and wants these kids out of her, at least.
The team all cheer her on with every contraction and it’s annoying. If it’s annoying to me, I know it has to be irritating her. Myg, amazingly diplomatic, says, okay, I only want one of you to count. She points to the resident. You. You get to count. Everyone else has to be quiet.
I know inside she is thinking along the lines of: Shut up, you dumb fucks, I know the routine now. It’s not complicated. I hold my breath, I push for an eternity, the kid doesn’t budge. I do it again. You had to go to med school for this? If you have any suggestions besides “push” and demonstrating that you watched enough Sesame Street to count to ten as a group, then please enlighten me. Otherwise, I’m coming off this table and there will be carnage that will require a SWAT team and weeks of forensic analysis.
The diplomatic tack works for about two more contractions. But now it’s clear that Doot is moving, they can see his head, everyone is more excited and seems certain that he is about to come out on the next push. Everyone but the bookkeeper starts shouting “encouragement” again. Myg looks at me and says, we’re done with this. I nod and agree. If we want more children, adoption, as we have often discussed, will be the way to go. We’re finished with the biological imperative. The Team tells me to come around to look from their angle. Doot is nearly here.
I walk around and look up between my wife’s legs at the mystery of mysteries, the holy of holies, the place I like to think is my playground and not anything that involves spectators. I’m a guy, I love sex. But I’m also a pretty waspy guy who was brought up right and went to church as a kid. Sex works best in the bedroom. Without a team of specialists with instruments and years of expensive training. And I know, I know, this is not sex—this is the end result of sex when all the pieces of the biological Rube Goldberg contraption fall into place. And we’re in a hospital. Everything is sterile and clinical and has nothing to do with my sex life with my wife and OHMYGODWHATTHEFUCKISTHATTHING? An angry red maw of engorged flesh has replaced Myg’s lady parts, and it’s being stretched wide by a red playground ball with wet black hair that I can just see a crescent of—no way is that thing coming out of that hole. It’s not happening. Meanwhile, the Team is grinning at me like they’ve just shown me the fountain of youth.
I admit, the miracle of life and childbirth are beautiful things, perhaps the essence of beauty—but it’s this as a concept, as an abstract. All the great and mysterious things about the universe, they are summed up by these moments but only metaphorically. In reality, it’s a gruesome visceral experience. It’s difficult, painful, and fraught with a lot of danger that modern hygiene and medical technology have mitigated but not eliminated. Sure, I love the primality. Put someone else’s spouse there and I’ll come in with a camera crew and wax eloquent like David Attenborough and win the Palme d’Or. But when it’s my beloved and my immanent offspring, I’d take no pain, no blood, and no risk if it were offered. Something antiseptic and external—stork delivery, even. I back away from the Team trying to appear nonchalant and not like I’m retreating from the mob at Bedlam.
Back around at Myg’s head, I smile and hold her hand. I lie. Just a couple of more pushes, babe. He’s almost here.
Myg pushes again. She has stopped paying attention to the cheering section. They’re doing it wrong. She has figured out that when she lets her breath out during the contractions and pushes not just with her stomach and bowel muscles, but even with her chest and neck, that they scream more encouragement and the baby moves better.
And I am also happily wrong. In just a few pushes, Doot arrives at 6:52 a.m. and gives a little cry as they hold him up and I look at my son—a weird red lizard dripping stringy white mucous, with what appears to be a version of Winston Churchill’s head run through a Play-Doh Fun Factory. They put him on the heat table and begin wiping him off and sticking his feet onto ink pads and making footprints. They put him in Myg’s arms for just a second and she is overjoyed and I’m choked up and she cries a little and then they take him back to the table where they swaddle him up and at the same time the doc is telling Myg she needs to get ready for round two.
Doot chilling on the warming table, 30 minutes old
They break Bing’s water and ask Myg to give a push just to get him down into position. Myg is in a daze. She has successfully delivered a baby. She knows she can do it again, how about in 18 months? It’s about 7 a.m. The doc has her hand inside Myg, a contraction comes and Myg pushes and I see a slight look of surprise on the doctor’s face. I felt the cord, she says. She looks up at the monitor and says, okay, Myg just give me one more push, and I’m going to see if I can get his head into position. Myg pushes. No, I feel the cord. The doctor shakes her head and she gives some unseen unheard command.
The operating room, already burgeoning with attention to Doot’s birth, blossoms. The 11-person team moves in complex synchronous harmony about twice as fast as they had been. What’s going on? Myg asks. The anesthesiologist begins turning dials and jams a mask over her face. Are we doing a C? There is worry in her voice and I realize something has happened, something with Bing and they’re going to do an emergency C-section.
A nurse flags my attention calling me “Dad” and it seems strange but I know it’s me. Follow me, Dad. She leads me out into the hallway with some rehearsed reason for why I can no longer stay in the room with Myg. You might faint, she says. Wait here. She points to a spot on the carpet in front of the delivery OR doors and leaves me there. I do as I’m told. After five minutes I begin pacing. I am worried but have faith in the Team that the C-section will go smoothly. I call my mother and tell her about the arrival of her grandson and let her know that the second is on his way. The doors slide apart and someone notices me as he moves past carrying arcane medical devices. The second baby is out, he says. I am relieved. He doesn’t say anything about Bing’s condition. I assume everything is fine. A manx cat appears pushing a small cart bearing Doot. The cat speaks. Do you want to come with me to the nursery? Apparently, it’s a nurse.
It’s not until hours later that I understand that when Myg pushed and the doctor felt Bing’s umbilical cord that it was a fairly rare and serious situation known as a prolapsed cord. The monitors showed his heart rate had dramatically dropped to 80 bpm when Myg had pushed. He would not have survived a vaginal delivery. Now I go cold when I write those words. On that day, I was supremely confident and ecstatic.
What they did not tell me and part of the reason I was in the hall during the emergency C-section is that because Bing’s heartrate was dropping they had to open Myg up immediately. As in before the anesthesia was in full effect. Myg apologized later to the surgical team for all the screaming. I didn’t hear a thing two sets of doors away in the hallway. Are you numb? The doc asked. You’re numb enough. Myg says the cut wasn’t painful, but that having her guts moved out of the way in a hurry was like having a wild animal pawing at her insides. The doctor knew she’d survive that trauma okay—the important thing was to get the baby out.
Bing joins his brother in the nursery after escaping the womb via a window
Both of our sons arrived healthy and whole. Neither required any time in the NICU. They even made it through the bilirubin spike without needing light table treatment. As of this writing, they’ve quadrupled their birth weights. They smile and laugh and roll over. They grab hold of fingers and toys and eat solid-er food. They’re delighted to see me every time I enter the room. Because of my wonderful sons, these five sleepless months full of diaper changes and spit up and two babies crying in tandem at a 4 a.m. that lasts forever have been the greatest five months of my life.
