Before Biggie & I went to Michigan I asked him a favor. I asked him to not reveal our birth plan to his family. I asked this because we are planning a homebirth vbac, I don't think that they would understand, & I don't want them to be worried. I have also been trying to figure out if I wanted to put this out there on this here blog, because I was afraid of the comments I would get. I'm not scared anymore. I know what we are planning is the right thing. I thought that maybe if I put this out there I might help one more woman trust her intuition & that is worth whatever comments anyone could throw at me.

I was induced at 37 weeks with MiniMe. My OB had told me that if I had started dialating she would 'strip my membranes'. I didn't ask what that was, because I thought she knew what she was doing & if it was risky, she wouldn't be doing it. I had been in the office for a routine non-stress test when she did it. Biggie was sitting right next to me. When she pulled her arm back out of my body, with my blood dripping off her gloved hand, Biggie gave me a look that I'll never forget. The look said, "Just say the word & she'll be out cold". I couldn't speak, I felt so violated. I was reeling, thinking I couldn't trust this lady, & I didn't know what to do. The next thing I remember was Biggie telling her that I was out of breath all the time. She asked me what my pulmonologist had said at my last appointment with him, & I told her my blood oxygen was 96%. She practically leaped from the room, coming back to tell me to go immediately to the hospital. She was afraid the baby wasn't getting enough oxygen & I was going to be induced.

I remember in the car, a moment where Biggie & I questioned what we were doing. We didn't get why we were doing what we were, but we were doing it anyway. I ended up with 3 12-hour doses of cervadil, a suppository that is used to soften the cervix. I laid on my left side for the majority of 21 hours because I was terrified that our baby wasn't getting enough oxygen. I writhed in pain for most of this time, to which nurses responded with little empathy, only believing that I was legitimately in pain when they held the sides of my body when I was given an epidural.

After the epidural, which only worked on one side of my body, the next doctor on call broke my water & started me on pictocin. In my records, it says that I was given the option to stop everything, sleep, & start the pictocin in the morning. I don't remember this, but when I think about it, this seems crazy. There is no way I could have slept before the epidural. My lower back felt like someone had beat it repeatedly with baseball bats & the contractions were mind-numbing. Once the pictocin was started, I went from being dialated at 3 to 6 within an hour. I was excited; I was making progress. I remember the doctor wanted to put an internal monitor in. I didn't know why. She explained that I had been in labor for a long time & they were worried that the baby wouldn't be able to handle much more. She didn't explain that this meant they were screwing a wire into her scalp. Handy little welcome to the world, eh?

Suddenly, people were looking at the paper coming out of the monitor with concern. Shaking heads, making marks, leaving to get other people to come in & do the same. The doctor told me that that MiniMe's heart was a little too high & not coming down. She said if it didn't start coming down, we would need to consider a cesarean. It seemed like as soon as she left the room she was racing back in. Apparently MiniMe's heart rate did go back down, but so far down they were panicked. The pictocin was turned off completely. I was told that I would be getting a cesarean immediately, that it wasn't a choice, that MiniMe was dying. When they rushed me into the operating room I thought that once they got me settled they would let Biggie come in. They roughly shaved my lower belly with a cheap single blade disposable, nicking me several times. They tried to get some sort of medicine in my iv, but it wasn't working. On a good day my blood pressure is low, but after laying in a bed for a whole day, it was at a crawl. They had my arms strapped down like Christ on the cross while they poked me with needles & panic at the same time. It hurt. I cried. I asked for Biggie. They told me that there wasn't time & they were going to have to "put me out". They said if they couldn't get this one last iv to flow they would have to put in a central line. They didn't say this to me, but to each other, as if I were already "put out". A central line, in my jugular vein. So, not only would I have a scar on my belly, but on my neck, too. I pumped my fists & let myself weep. My heart rate went up & the iv flowed. I was unconscious.

MiniMe was born two days before my birthday. On my birthday I was still in the hospital, but to celebrate Biggie agreed to watch Funny Girl with me on the laptop. We ended up fighting because MiniMe was having trouble nursing & he was afraid she was starving. After he left to go home, because I asked him to, I ended up dripping little drops of clostrum into her mouth with a medicine cup, weeping because I was terrified that I wasn't doing the right thing.

While the first week that we were home was one of my favorite times in our marriage, Biggie only had one week off & after he went back to work things were not okay. I did not have post-pardom depression; I was very closely bonded to MiniMe before she even came out of me. I couldn't take my painkillers because I was alone most of the time, was afraid I would fall asleep & not wake up when she needed me. My incision became infected & Biggie had to clean it out with peroxide for me twice a day. I drove 45 minutes each way to see a lactation consultant twice a week. MiniMe couldn't go for more than 4 hours without eating for the first 3 months of her life, & this was only to be once a day. The rest of the time she had to eat every 2 hours. So for the first 3 months of her life I never got more than 4 hours of sleep at a time.

I went back to work, full time, when MiniMe was just 9 weeks old. My marriage suffered terribly. We bought a new house to be closer to our work & MiniMe's school. I think if had been thinking more clearly at the time I would have just stayed in our old house & quit working. It didn't occur to me.

It took me nearly two years to figure out that my reaction to MiniMe's birth was not normal. I sought therapy & was told I had indicators of post traumatic stress disorder. Throughout the therapy I had nightmares that were largely flashbacks. I realized that I was terrified of having another child because I didn't want to go through what I had again. My therapist recommended a new movie tht had just comeout on video, "The Business of Being Born". I watched it with Biggie & that was one of the handful of times I have seen him cry. He was furious. It was exactly what had been done to me.

So I've been investigating what our options are for the last two years. & this is what we've come to. I'm excited, not scared. I just wish we could decide on a fricken name.

My other pre-existing condition...

Although I haven't written very much on her yet, you must know that MiniMe is by far the greatest gift I have ever been given. I think I haven't written much on her yet because I have so much to say, I wouldn't know where to start. I also have so much to say about current events I want to get some of that off my chest, first. However, in regards to current events, there is an intersection between my choice for president & how MiniMe got here.

As a Reader's Digest version, I was induced at 37 weeks. My doctor decided to induce me because she was concerned MiniMe wasn't getting enough oxygen. I could go into at least 3 more paragraphs on this, but just know that I have good reason to believe she planned to induce me all along. I have gotten third & fourth opinions, one even from the doctor who induced me's former partner, that there was absolutely no evidence that MiniMe was not getting sufficent oxygen. Induction by any means greatly increases the likelihood that a cesarean will be necessary. My doctor never told me this. I spent 21 hours in labor. I was eventually given an epidural, which only took on one side of my body, but I was still relieved. I was given pictocin & my doctor broke my water. I was making great progress when MiniMe's heart rate first was very high without coming back down, then fell dangerously low. I was rushed into emergency surgery & was put out completely. I do not remember the first time I met our daughter. I did not get to see my husband or my mother meet her for the first time.

In Florida, the rates that doctors have to pay for their malprcatice insurance are three times the national average. Because of these high rates, many OB/Gyns have stopped delivering babies. The doctors that do deliver babies average an over 30% rate of delivering by cesarean. Most doctors do not deliver babies vaginaly after a woman has had a previous cesarean. In fact, there is only one in the four counties nearest us that even presents that he would let a paitent attempt to do this. Insurance companies, as they have created this situation, are very aware that if I were to become pregnant again it is most likely that I would again be delivered by cesarean. Since I had MiniMe, our insurance premium tripled. We currently pay over $1000/month for our family's insurance.

If & when Biggie changes dealerships, we will have to pay Cobra to keep me insured or I risk being denied coverage under a new plan. If at anytime I become uninsured, it is highly likely that I will be denied under any other group plan because between the cesarean & sarcoidosis, I am considered to have two pre-existing conditions.

This is one of the major reasons I am voting for Barack Obama. Under McCain's plan, the dealership Rick works for would no longer be able to afford to cover me under their insurance plan, nor would they be required to. When I would go out on our own to find our own policy, as I have those pre-existing conditions, insurance companies would be able to either charge me ridiculously high rates, or refuse me coverage altogether. Under Obama's plan I would have much more appealing options. I would be able to stay on the plan that we are on now with no increases in cost, perhaps decreases. If we wanted to, we could change our coverage to the federal plan that McCain has enjoyed, at tax payers expense, his whole life. & if the day ever came where we actually get to move away from here, under Obama's plan, no insurance company would be able to deny me coverage due to my two pre-existing conditions. How could my decision be anything other than Obama?

There is a whole bunch of other posts to come on the story of my cesarean. I have done weeks upon months of research on my options in regards to another birth. For now, I'm just moving forward & will deal with those choices if & when they arrise. For now, MiniMe & I are kneading bread, working in the garden, reading about mermaids. We're waiting out to see if our friends & family actually like us enough to like us enough that they vote to keep us around.

How I breathe (not so much)

The lung disease I have is called Pulmonary Sarcoidosis. Basically, even my immune system is so Type A it has nothing better to do than attack my lungs. It causes a cellular condition called granulomas, which remind me of fish eggs, but don't function so well as lung cells are supposed to.

The first sign that something was wrong in early 2003 was that my ankles & feet swelled so bad that I took my shoes off at work & couldn't get them back on. When I went to the ER, they did a chest x-ray to make sure I wasn't retaining water in my chest. They told me I had pneumonia. After 3 weeks of antibiotics, my ankles were still swollen. I spent the next 3 months going to every kind of specialist there is, until I finally ended up at a pulmonologist.

Dr. Siegel told me the day after I bought my wedding dress that I either had Sarcoidosis or Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma. I had to wait 2 weeks for him to perform a bronchoscopy on me to make the official diagnosis. Bronchoscopy is code for outpatient procedure where they give you VALIUM AND ONLY VALIUM, well, with some throat numbing spray, where they stick a tube down your nose, into your lungs, put a camera down there, snip a piece of your lung, & then pull it out. I laid there with tears streaming down my face for the whole thing, terrified. Dr. Siegel told me I was the best bronchoscopy patient he'd ever had. I told him it felt like I swallowed a Lego. The good news was I didn't have Lymphoma.

Aside from the swelling, the disease causes me to tire easily, have achy joints, yawn a lot (often at very inappropriate moments) because I'm not getting enough oxygen, & make my chest hurt. When I was first diagnosed the pain was more in my ribs. This summer it's been higher; like it's between my boobs & collarbones.

The treatment for Sarcoid is prednisone. It is a steroid that suppresses the immune system. It also causes hardening of the arteries, osteoporosis, aggressiveness, & possibly Cushing's Syndrome, which results in a condition called "moon face". Exactly the image a soon-to-be-bride wants to be used to describe her. It is notorious for giving people voracious appetites. Most people that I have met that are on this drug are on around 10mg a day. I was on 40 mg for over a year. Not only did I manage to lose 30 pounds on the drug, I planned our wedding 1200 miles away. I basically walked around feeling like a scared cat the whole time. You know, arched back, wild eyes, claws out. Biggie was a little bit scared of me. I was a little high strung.

I was declared to be in remission in March of 2004. I got pregnant in October. I was fine through most of my pregnancy until about April, when I got REALLY puffy again, but my chest didn't hurt. More on the pregnancy another time.

In the winter I am pretty much okay. My ankles still piss me off. They look gross. The only time they have looked normal is when were in MI, last year to bury my dad & the Easter before that. When we were in OR this summer it was hard to tell because we did spend over 8 hours on a plane to get there, which tends to make me swell even more. I did manage to be a highly active pedestrian in Portland, which made me all kinds of smiley.

In the summer, here in FL, I am housebound. As is MiniMe. I HATE it. Starting usually the first week of March there is an algae bloom here known as red tide. It causes respiratory distress in most people. In me, I get all of my symptoms cubed. As this is the tropics, we get massive amounts of rain during the summer. The rain combined with merciless heat makes for an ideal climate for mold. You can smell & occasionally taste it outside. It's gross. My lungs think so, too. The biggest things that sucks about this damn disease is that it keeps me from being the kind of mother I want to be. When I lived in Ypsilanti, Ann Arbor, Plymouth, MI, I used to take little Casey Jones for 6 mile hikes every Sunday out by the minimum security prison in Chelsea. I always looked forward to the time when I would have a little papoose strapped to my back. I've never gotten to do that. I have tears in my eyes, just so you know. This disease has changed who I am. I feel like my husband can barely remember that girl, now & our daughter doesn't know at all.

This is a picture my dad took of Casey & I hiking one time when he came to visit us:



This is MiniMe & I in 2007, outside of Asheville, NC, picking wild blueberries. If we got to do this more often, I wouldn't have six chins when I lay down in soft grass.