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Since I had a c-section we were kept a couple of days longer that a typical deliver, but the plus side to this was that I was able to get the hang of breast feeding with the aid of a lactation consultant and nipple shields. As a result I actually nursed Rowan for 2/3 weeks, as opposed to one with Aidan. But ultimately my milk did not come in fast enough to satisfy his appetite and we began supplementing. He got the benefit of the colostrum, but ended up with nipple confusion and preferred the bottle because it was easier to nurse. After only a couple of months on regular formula we switched to soy because he had so much gas and we figured that was why he was colicky. It didn’t surprise us too much, Aidan had had the same problem. After the switch our house was much more peaceful.
I can’t say with a certainty just when we began to notice something was different about him. We expected it, we had prepared our selves to accept each of our children as special and unique beings. All the advice I had been given about raising multiple children said that they are all different, don’t compare them, and accept them for how god made them, and most of all … what ever worked for the first won’t work on the next.
So we spent much of the first year marveling in how Aidan & Rowan were so very night and day. I attributed everything to personality. Even as a small infant Rowan hated to be swaddled, or cuddle or be held for that matter (although Aidan had), but it didn’t strike me as a cause for concern, I just though it was different. Because Aidan had loved it as most babies do, and we swaddled him till he couldn’t stay swaddled in those little receiving blankets.
Rowan slept mostly in his swing or in a vibrating bouncer. They seemed to give him a security and comfort I couldn’t. The crib and bassinet for the most part when unused, at least till he out grew the bouncer and we were forced to move him to a safer place to sleep.
Where I left off, we had just been told we would need a c-section and I was being wheeled down to the OR.
I remember getting a local for the lower half of my body, and an IV of something else. I’m still not sure if I was suppose to have been put totally under, but I was. I remember feeling hot & cold, tingly with icy veins. The last thing I could recall was the white sheet going up and some tugging sensations at my stomach. John was at my side and they were asking me if I could feel anything and I said yes.
When I awoke there was 2 figures in masks and scrubs and I didn’t know either of them. I was so afraid something had gone wrong and asked “wheres my baby, wheres my husband?” I had no idea how much time had passed. But everything was fine, Rowan was in the nursery being bathed and weighed, and John was with him photographing and recording everything.
When I first held him I could see the mark left on his forehead from where he had been stuck against my hipbone. Apparently his head was cocked sideways as he tried to enter the birth-canal. He was a somber beautiful 9lbs 4.4 oz baby boy.
To begin this story I have to begin before Rowan was born, before he was conceived, back for the short time that we were 3.
In March of 2003 I received a job offer to be the resident manager of a 2 month old, ~300 unit 2 story storage facility in Texas City. this came a time I was fed up with where I was, and i had a little experience in the storage industry, having been an assistant manager for a while. While the location was far from friends and family, the pay and proposed benefits seemed too good to pass up. Aidan was a healthy, happy, advanced 6 month old, and John was willing to make the commute back to Clear Lake for his job. My grandmother was a blessing and agreed to drive down to us to continue to care for Aidan while we both worked. After Aidan was born I tried the Ortho patch for birth control, but I have always had problems with birth control, and ended up discontinuing it after a few months because it made me so ill. I didn’t plan to get pregnant, but I had not been taking anything to prevent it, so it was a big shock, and we were thrilled, if a little scared at the prospect of two in diapers.
I was not one of those women who thrived on being pregnant. I didn’t glow, I just grew. Considering what some women go though with morning sickness and all, you could say I had an easy pregnancy. I never had a bout of morning sickness with either child, and I always figured that was why I put on so much weight. Even so, this second pregnancy was not like the first, I felt more run down, and dental problems, and lots of sinus infections. I was bloated, and Rowan seemed to res funny in my stomach just hitting nerves that left me with this horrible numb tingled in my hands and aches in my hips.
Just as with Aidan, my due date came and when with no end in sight. At first the doctor did not want to induce because she believed he was too small, boy was she wrong. A week went by and the night before I was due to go in and scheduled to be induced, I went in to labor. January 19th at 1am we made the trek down to Clear Lake. I labored all night and much of the morning. I was having back labor, which means he was laying with his spine against my spine, which isn’t really dangerous, but it is painful. By the time it was time to do the pushing my first round of drugs had worn off and the second had not yet kicked in. Rowan it seemed to be stuck, unable to get his head down past my hips into the birth canal. The monitors started showing an erratic heart beat and we began to think that the cord might be wrapped around his neck. I was so tired, drugged and out of it that much of this was a foggy blur. They decided to do an emergency c-section.
To be continued . . .
