That was a really difficult time in my marriage because I was so frustrated with my body and Keith just wanted everything to be okay. Finally, we decided to just focus on finishing our house, getting me healthy, and adopting a baby. While on the path to getting answers about what was becoming alarming chronic fatigue, I talked to a man who knew a nutritionist that could help me. He said people swore by his methods and maybe he could restore my health. While all of that is a different story altogether, the short of it is that his methods worked and I got pregnant in 1 or 2 months of doing his diet (not to mention felt much better). So after 3 years of pregnancy tests, ovulation kits, one miscarriage, and general stress, the stick had a plus sign on it. I was so happy. I called my mother first thing and there began the story of Hudson Nathanial Fryer's coming into being.
The whole pregnancy we agonized over having a homebirth or a hospital birth or doing it at a midwives center. This was a very big decision. What we decided to do was start to explore all of our options. We got a-natural-birth-friendly OBGyn and a homebirth midwife that would act as a doula for us at a hospital if we needed her. I was very convinced I wanted a homebirth and Keith was very nervous about it, in the beginining, then towards the end I started chickening out of the homebirth and keith was completely sold on having one. It was such an amazing growth experience for us. Ultimately, we had to live with whatever decision we made. I knew several people who were born at home, or had their babies at home and it seemed that they had good outcomes. I was fully willing to go the medical route if I had an abnormal pregnancy. We left our options open. In the end, we ended up with a homebirth.
The midwife, Brenda, came to my house once a month and listened to the baby, checked my blood pressure and my pH and talked to me about birth. I started envisioning my birth everyday. I read positive birth experiences and started planning my birthing strategy. One book suggested I draw a picture of my birth so I could see what my subconscious was desiring. I was soo surprised by what came out. It was me giving birth in lowly lit area, by myself with a group of 3-4 people quite a bit away from me. I had been planning to have girlfriends with me, my mother, mother-in-law, sisters-in-law. Essentially, I was planning for a birth I wouldn't be comforttable with. Keith and I decided we wouldn't call family and friends until the baby was here. So the big day arrived.
2/25/07
Keith and I went out to dinner and of course, I had some sort of fried meat and mac-n-cheese and some other horrible concoction that caused me to gain over 60lbs with that pregnancy. I was at 40 weeks. At about 8:30 I started having contractions about 3 min apart and then they were about 1 min apart. I called Brenda at 10 pm and we were trying to figure out of my labour was real I called her again at 12am after my mucous plug came out and there was bloody show. I was really nervous and excited. Keith and I were cracking up because we didn't know what to do with ourselves. We had bought some carry out Indian food for the labour and he went to get it and I horked down Saag Paneer before going into hard labour. We had also, planned to have sex so that we could use his sperm like a natural pitocin but we couldn't. We were slap happy and cracking up. We couldn't perform like that. Boy, we were soooo naive about what was about to hit us. Brenda and Devon (the doula) arrived about 2 am. I felt like we were at camp or something. We were all sitting on our big King size bed and telling funny stories about having to poop in inappropriate places. Keith was telling way too much of my business and not enough of his. There are some things that are supposed to be sacred secrets in marriage and apparently the nasty bug I got on our Costa Rican honeymoon was not one of those secrets. hmmmm. Anyway, I was soooo incredibly comfortable with Brenda and Devon and was feeling good. I wanted to sleep a little bit so they left the room and let me lay down . I tried to for a bit but realized it wasn't going to happen. The contractions started getting more intense. I was getting more irritable and the pain was worse than I had anticipated. I told Keith I wanted to labour in the bathtub and he went to fill it for me.
I had a space heater in there and the hottest water I could stand. It was HOT in that bathroom. I laid in the tub and started imagining that my pelvic floor was a sandy beach and that every contraction was drawing water up onto it and the waves were opening my cervix. I don't know how long I did that. Maybe 2 hours. I didn't want anyone to be with me. I wanted to be alone. Keith came in once while the contractions were getting harder and said, "Wow, its really hot in here." I said very calmly with my eyes closed, "Please, leave." I know he was feeling so giddy and excited. I was just going inward where I needed to stay absolutley focused on every moment. If I started getting ahead of myself in the process I would have been wishing it was over instead of doing what I needed to do. At about 5 am I decided I needed to get out of the tub. I stood up and the pain of the baby coming so low brought me to my knees. ( I now knew what transition was). I crawled back to my bedroom unto a giant blue carpet remnant that Keith bought for me to give birth on.
It was really painful now. I was in transition. I felt like I needed to push and the sounds that were coming out of my mouth were unearthly. I was screaming not necessarily because of the pain but more from the urge to push. Possibly, it was a way to work out the fear I was feeling. That went on for 2 hours trying different positions to push in. It was really hard. I felt like I had just run a marathon. I remember my thighs were aching sooo badly. I didn't think I could do it anymore. Brenda checked me again and said there was a cervical lip, which was keeping the baby from coming down. She went in and pushed the lip aside. I thought I was going to literally die. It was excruciating. Keith was now sobbing he was worried. I remember telling him in the middle of one of my screams that it didn't hurt as bad as it sounded like it did. I don't think that made much difference for him. Around the 2.5 hour mark I was losing hope. I didn't believe in myself anymore. I was hearing the morning traffiic outside thinking, "I can't do this anymore." What choice did I have. NONE.
Brenda and Devon put me on my back and tried to get me to push like that for a bit to see if the baby was could move further down into the birth canal. Then she got two of my kitchen chairs and sat them facing each other. I sat with one sitz bone on each chair. I could feel the baby start moving down. She could see his hair. She wanted me to touch his hair and I did and Keith was behind me supporting me, which he did the whole time. He was sobbing. I was going inward again. I just wanted to get my baby out. I knew it was going to be soon but I needed to stay focused. At 8:07am. Hudson Nathanial Fryer was born. 8' 14 oz. I was in shock and so incredibly relieved. We delivered the placenta and I was not doing well. I lost quite a bit of blood and was feeling very woozy. I thought it was because I was tired but I think it was low bloodsugar. I hadn't eaten anything or drank anything since the saag paneer. I held Hudson to my body while we stayed connected for a few minutes while he got all of his cord blood. I tried to latch him on and he did. He was so amazing. Keith cut the cord, which was something that I thought would gross him out but he wanted to. Brenda was worried about me and wanted me to go the bathroom. So I tried to pee and I just couldn't. Devon was standing in front of me and for a few seconds I lost my ability to hear and my head bobbed forward toward Devon's stomach. They gave me orange juice and I started to feel better. I wasn't doing well. I was exhausted and we still had to tie up loose ends. I had to pee or be cathaterized which sounded excruciating after giving birth. Also, I had a tear and need to be stitched. No anesthetic. I was crying, I really didn't want to have to do that. It had to be done my bladder was full and the tear was too large to leave alone.
I laid down with Hudson, but I was stressed. I was hungry, we hadn't called anyone to tell them we were in labour and Brenda and Devon were both exhausted as well. They stayed for a while and helped us clean up the mess (ie roll up the giant bloody carpet remnant that Keith had to put in a dumpster worried someone was going to think he killed somebody). Afterwards, we laid there looking at our creation. Our child. The relief was palpable. The new life in the room was amazing. He who we wondered about for all those months was here. Then the panic hit us that we were in charge of him. We were totally freaked out. keith said, "How can anyone leave us alone with a child?" We called our friends my parents, Keith's mom and Carri. Carri brought us a First Watch breakfast. She was the first person to call me, "Mama." It was a warm fuzzy moment. We were so happy. The stress didn't end there though. After 4 days of nursing my nipples were unbelievably scabbed up. The pain was excruciating. I would nurse him and tears would be streaming down my face. We called in a lactation consultant to figure out what was going on. She discovered that his tongue was forked and the he needed his frenulum clipped. We went to Children's Hospital to see Jeannie James, a lactation expert. She clipped his frenulum and we all three cried. We were so incredibly worried about the baby. Just getting to the hospital was very hard on me. I was not doing well with walking around. I was really stressed. Jeannie showed me ways to nurse him to make it more comfortable for me and it was kind of overwhelming. I just wanted to lay down and be comfortable somewhere but the shape of his mouth was making it hard for him to latch. Nursing just wasn't comfortable.
Over the next few weeks my nipples healed and I was nursing Hudson all to the time. . I mean like 20 hours a day. He was always hungry. We started to worry that he wasn't putting on enough weight. He was losing weight. We called in yet another lactation consultant, Dee Keith. She had nursed 10 babies herself (one set of twins). She came in a very jovial woman and I was of course worried but not as worried as i was going to be. Luckily, my two best friends, Amanda and Sarah were in-town to help me for a few days the day Dee came. She was the person to notice that Hudson had an alarmingly, large lump on his neck. She said, "I am worried about his not gaining weight but I'm more worried about this lump." Hudson wasn't really sleeping. He was crying all the time. I was absolutely exhausted. This was week 6. I had been going to my parents and everyone thought he might be hungry. I was resistant to giving him a bottle because I thought it would keep him from breast feeding. I was totally frightened that my baby would have cancer or something. Dee told me that I wasn't producing enough breastmilk that day. Not even close. I knew it was true and we went straight out and got formula. He drank so much formula that day, like a starved animal...
I tried very hard for the next 8 months to get my body to produce enough breast milk. I would nurse him on both sides for 10 minutes each, pump from each breast and then give him formula. I took fenugreek until my armpits smelled like a meditteranean restaurant. I absolutely did not want to give him formula because it seemed to give him so much gas pain. One night in the middle of the night after I was pumped out the meager 2 oz I could get out of my breast. I knocked over the breast milk and Keith, in all of his cuteness said, " No use crying over spilled milk." I started to cry. I think I hit my wall. I was soooooo pissed. It was really a tough time. We laugh about it now but in that moment I thought he was the most insensitive S.O.B. I ever knew.
So as for the lump, we found out the next day after Dee was at our house that Hudson had something called torticollis. Basically, from the amount of time he spent in the birth canal the 11th cranial nerve got pinched by the bony plates in his skull which are extremely pliable. (And if you would have seen how coned his head was after birth you'd know) A main stream doctor recommended physical therapy which I was not game for. They were going to stretch his neck back into position and it was going to be painful. His sternocleido matoid muscle was like steel rod. My alternative doctore recommended cranial osteopathy. We took him to an accupressurist, whom had been working with our whole family for years. Accupressure was very gentle and we could visibly see the reduction in the size of the muscle after the first visit. Then we took him to a cranial osteopathic doctor in Versailles, KY, Dr. Moore. He said that Hudson skull bones were pinching the 11th cranial nerve and that if he gently worked on the plates he could get it unpinched. We took him there for about a year or more of treatments. After the first treatment, however, Hudson slept through the night for the first time and he stopped screaming. We now believe he was in pain. What a horrible feeling. We did work with an exceptional Occupational Therapist who specializes in children and she helped me to see the effects of the torticollis in all of Hudson's movements. It was amazing. I,as an Alexander teacher, knew that the head/neck relationship effects the entire body but to see it in a 9month old was incredible. If we had not dealt with it the way we did, it would have effected all of his movements for the rest of his life and caused him back pain.
Below are some pics from around the time Huddy was born.
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| The room Huddy was born in...
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| Hudson at 9 months. You can see the residule effects of the torticollis. His head is pulled to the left. |
Dated Journal Entries:
July 24, 2006 Week 7Things that were normally never in my diet were there: Root beer, Skyline chili, fried chicken and mashed potatoes. I was a little nauseous but not horrible. But my cravings were out of control for high fat, salty food. I would pay for this dearly by the end of that pregnancy.
8/11/2006 Week 9
Started feeling better got our quilting stuff and made started making a baby quilt for me and my friend Katie.
