Raising Rohanis

Life After a Sick Baby

There’s your typical “new parent” anxiety – where you’re suddenly faced with the fact that you’re now responsible for the survival of another human being and you aren’t sure whether or not you’re doing it right just yet.

What if they choke?

What if they fall?

What if they get sick?

Questions like that flow through your head on a near constant basis, and you know, most of the time, you’re actually doing a pretty good job and are probably overthinking things. Parental instincts really are a trip, and it’s always surprising to find out how much you actually do know about something you previously thought you knew shit-all about.

But then there is the anxiety you experience when you actually learn the answer to any of your late-night ponderings.

Our luck of the draw handed us the answer to, “What if they get sick?” And I’m not talking a cold or the flu or an ear infection. I’m talking SICK. Life-threatening sick.

Baby A contracted a late-onset Group B Strep infection that turned septic at six weeks old, which we were very surprised to find out, as I had tested negative twice during pregnancy. All that transpired from fever to diagnosis remains simultaneously a blur and ingrained in my mind for eternity.

The baby woke up crying from a nap. He cried inconsolably for nearly an hour, and we joked about the purple crying. Then we thought, “But what if it isn’t?” I took his temperature and it was 38.5°C.

I remember heading to the ER and my partner asked, “What do you think it could be?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “It could be an ear infection or a UTI. I’m sure it’s nothing serious, he was fine all day.”

We were triaged very promptly and everyone around us remained quite calm. The ER doctor came in and asked us some routine questions, and then I specifically remember him saying, “Has his skin always done this?” taking up his hand and pointing out the mottling.

“I mean yeah, that usually happens when he gets cold, but isn’t that normal? You’re the doctor.”

“I’m going to go speak with the on-call pediatrician.”

While we waited, my partner and I speculated all sorts of things it could be – none of which were particularly all that serious.

Then suddenly, three nurses came into the room followed by the pediatrician. They did not waste any time hooking him up to monitors, and then poking what seemed like a hundred holes in his little body. He wasn’t crying anymore, and his heart rate was 220bpm.

“How was he before coming in? Was he feeding okay? How is his temperament? Would you say he is a relatively well baby?”

“Well he ate fine all day, seemed to be acting normal, yeah. It’s just he woke up crying and that isn’t like him.”

“Yes, well, it’s very clear to me right now that this is not a well baby.”

I don’t know why but that phrase haunts me, even now.

I stood by in embrace of my partner as we watched the nurses work. They took blood, a urine sample, and hooked up an IV into one of the veins at the top of his head.

“I’d like to do a spinal tap. Do I think he has meningitis? I’m not noticing any stiffness in his neck at the moment, but we need to be sure and cover everything. Mums usually like to step out of the room, because it’s not nice.”

“Yeah, maybe you should go, Chels. I’ll stay here with him.”

So I left.

I paced up and down the hallway and decided I needed the washroom, and promptly threw up. What the fuck is happening to my baby?

When I returned, they did a chest X-Ray, and the pediatrician told us that he would be put on antibiotics to see what happens and will be managed by pediatrics during the night.

“Is he going to be okay?”

“Well, do I think he will survive? Yes, but to be quite clear, this is a very sick baby – actually the sickest I’ve seen in about three years so, we’ll wait out the night and once we know what is going on, we’ll figure out our next steps.”

—

By the grace of God, Baby A turned around and responded very well to the antibiotics after about 12 hours, but we had to wait 48 hours to find out what was actually wrong. We spent two weeks in hospital, but it might as well have been 100 years at that point.

We left with a healthy baby and an immense amount of trauma that follows us in perpetuity.

When you go through something like this, I’m not sure people who haven’t really understand the fallout of the experience. Their well-meaning and empathetic remarks of, “Wow that’s so scary, but he’s better now so that’s good!” just feel so dismissive and insensitive. He quite literally almost died. It wasn’t one of those situations where it’s like you narrowly avoided a car accident because of your driving skills and quick reflexes and say to yourself, “Whoa, I could have died!” This was 100% a near-death experience for our child. We didn’t have the ability to rely on skills or reflexes and we had absolutely zero control over the outcome. That is inexplicably terrifying, and going through that experience left us with a true understanding of the uncertainty and randomness of life, and to be quite honest, I think I would have preferred to stay in blissful ignorance of it all.

Because now, I really don’t feel like I can enjoy anything without that looming over me.

I can’t sit with a fussy infant anymore and just take him as he is – fussing for the sake of being fussy, uncomfortable, hungry, you know, the normal things. I see my baby cry now and I automatically think he is sick and dying again. I check his temperature twice a day. I don’t want to leave the house without him. I obsess over how much or little he eats at each feeding for no reason. I have a panic attack when he seems a little extra sleepy, and I know my partner is the same. Both of us take turns playing the cool and detached one to keep the other from spiraling, but I know we both go back there every time Baby A isn’t anything other than high energy and smiling.

It shouldn’t be like this, but it is. And the worst part is there is nothing we can do to assuage those fears because even the doctors told us there isn’t a guarantee that he won’t get the same infection again, and we also can’t guarantee that something worse isn’t going to happen in the future. Previously, I would look at statistics to make myself feel better when I found myself with an irrational fear, but even that isn’t helpful anymore. I tested negative for Group B and yet he still became infected so statistics effectively mean fuck-all to me now.

We live in waiting for the next horrible event, it feels like. A state of constant anticipation and hyper-vigilance. The most common feedback I hear is, “You can’t let that fear rule your life,” and that would be all well and good if it were just about me and my life, but to me it seems like the only way to ensure that I don’t let it stress me out in relation to Baby A is if I just truly accept that at any point, he might die, and I’m really not sure I’ll ever be able to do that.

I will be mindful to not deprive him of the ability to experience life the way that he wants to, but that is the extent to which I can currently commit to not letting the fear control my life right now.

I would imagine any parent that has gone through something similar will always be afraid, however.

I at least know that I will.

“Are You Nursing?”

This is a question that stirs within me so much anxiety. I fight back tears and fake a polite smile as I respond, “We do a combination of both,” as if it’s any of their business.

When baby A was born, we had trouble getting him to latch at first. He was such a tiny little nugget with an itty bitty mouth. With help from a lactation consultant, however, I was shown how to encourage a deep one by holding him like a football.

Good. Great.

I was assured that my body would produce everything he needed as long as I kept him on the breast.

We were back in hospital one week later because of dehydration.

“Have you felt your milk come in, yet?”

Yes? I don’t know.

“Your milk should have come in by now.”

Again with the checking of the latch, but this time it was coupled with the grabbing and squeezing of my breasts without warning. Contorting me into positions I couldn’t even get myself into without help. One hundred pillows, it seemed like. More squeezing.

“How often does he feed?”

Pretty much every hour.

“He needs to eat every 3 hours, and no longer than 15 minutes per side. Then you should pump for 15 minutes after every feed.”

Okay.

“How are you doing with the pump?”

“You really should be producing more.”

“If you don’t get enough sleep, you won’t produce milk.”

“Keep the baby on the breast.”

“You need to eat.”

“Have you gotten a shower yet?”

More squeezing. The baby and I are crying while my partner watches in horror. The baby still isn’t peeing.

“You need to eat.”

“Keep the baby on the breast.”

“You really should be producing more.”

“We want to see at least 30 grams a day weight gain before we feel comfortable letting him go home.”

Grab. Squeeze. Change position. Pump on strongest setting.

Only drops.

This went on for an entire week. Everyone in the pediatrics ward saw me in my most humiliating state. They would come in without knocking every ten minutes it seemed. I’m greasy because I haven’t had time to shower. I’m shirtless, sobbing and trying to feed my baby the way nature had intended. My lunch gets cold. I can’t eat until the baby settles because I have at least three sets of eyes burning into me, waiting for me to make the “right” decision – but he doesn’t because he’s hungry.

So we make the decision to supplement with formula, and the baby thrives because his belly is finally full. We get to go home.

When we leave the hospital, we take all of their advice and go get all the supplies.

The best pump, nipple shields, a good nursing pillow.

I pump after every feed and have to set my baby down to play independently even though he just wants to snuggle, and I only get drops.

I power pump while he sleeps.

Only drops.

Beast compressions. Hand expression. I am either attached to a baby or a machine for the entirety of my day, it feels like. Repeat for a month.

Only drops.

I go meet with another lactation consultant. His latch is great. Nothing is wrong.

I get another opinion from a specialized doctor. His latch is great. Nothing is wrong.

But still, only drops.

So, we keep supplementing with formula, but he starts to fight that, too.

I don’t know why my milk supply remains consistently low. Something is probably wrong with me.

I get prescribed a special medication to encourage lactation. One ounce per pump session! My baby needs at least 4 each meal.

I probably didn’t try hard enough. I should have tried harder. Even the can the formula comes in tells you that you’re failing.

“Are you nursing?”

I’m not sure why I feel obligated to even answer this question. Maybe it’s because deep down, I want people to know that I’m at least trying.

“We do a combination of both,” sounds much better than, “After a lot of trauma and borderline sexual assault, we actually discovered that I am not enough for my baby like everyone told me I would be,” even though that’s how I really feel. Nobody wants to hear how I really feel, though. Not when there’s a cute new baby. Babies are happy and feeling defective isn’t. They don’t want to hear that feeding isn’t a beautiful bonding experience for us, and that instead it is one of immense trauma, anxiety and impatience for me and struggle for the baby and I don’t know how to correct it. Mind-over-matter doesn’t seem to work for us. My baby hates eating, it seems, and that’s just how it is.

So I smile and say, “We do a combination of both,” and they leave me alone.

Baby Blues

When you have your baby, they try to prepare you for what they call “baby blues,” or better known as “postpartum depression.” They remind you to pay attention to how long you’re experiencing this sadness, and mention to you not-so-discretely that there are drugs you can take to help you cope, should you find your moods unmanageable.

“These feelings are quite common after you have a baby,”

“Many people experience the same thing,”

“You are not alone.”

Studies do, in fact, show us that there is a significant surge of hormones in the body post-birth which are branded as the culprits of these melancholic feelings, but in my opinion, I think it’s actually quite patronizing and dismissive to the experience of a woman post-birth to chalk down their emotional response to extreme amounts of sleep deprivation and stress as hormonal and leave it at that. These studies completely remove all aspects of personhood from the equation, only to regard us as no more than a pituitary gland.

And quite frankly, I think it’s bullshit.

I feel forgotten about as a person most of the time, and studies like that sort of reinforce the notion that forgetting about the women who give birth is okay because they’re just hormonal and their emotional instability will either resolve on its own, or they can be drugged into normalcy if it doesn’t.

They don’t take into account that you only get 4 or 5 hours of interrupted sleep during the night, or that your nipples are cracked and bleeding and chafe up against your shirt every time you move, or that your insides for the first six weeks literally feel like they’re going to fall out of you at any second.

They don’t take into account that your baby needs to eat every 3 hours while everyone in the world is asking you when you’re going to lose the baby weight, or that eye contact is important but the baby only likes being held at a 37° angle and your neck is aching on a constant basis and now you have a migraine.

They don’t take into account that baby really only wants you when they have a problem. They really try to sell that by saying things like, “Mama knows best,” or calling it “mother’s intuition,” when the reality is that you were as clueless as they were in the beginning, it’s just that you’re the only one who could be assed to spend more than ten minutes (let’s be real: it was actually hours in the middle of a sleepless night) of trial and error to figure out what they like.

We don’t get the privilege of handing off a fussy baby and saying, “They only want you,” and going off to make a hot meal and actually getting to enjoy it with both hands. Our most basic needs like eating, showering, putting on real people clothes and getting exercise are now labeled “self care,” a luxury, when for everyone else it’s just part of the monotony of every day life. They offer to help until the baby is alert and needs to be occupied, then it’s either back to mama immediately, or, if they are brave enough to endure, it’s, “That was hard, I understand now,”…and then back to mama.

Postpartum depression isn’t just hormones.

It’s being repeatedly punched in the face by an overtired tiny human at 3:00AM with your breasts out.

It’s having your hair pulled and tangled in between little baby fingers during every burp.

It’s hours of, “Put me down, no, pick me back up again.”

It’s looking at the same mess day-in and day-out and saying, “I’ll get to that when the baby naps,” but then they never do, unless it’s on top of you.

It’s having to make the decision between getting to poop, or quickly shoving a sandwich in your face.

It’s days where “doing your best” means surviving on the same cold cup of coffee and a bowl of soggy Golden Grahams.

It’s feeling like an inconvenience because you and your partner can’t go out to dinner anymore, or they have to post-pone that thing they really wanted to do so you can leave the house for two hours without a baby attached to you. It’s feeling endlessly guilty about even taking those two hours because they already work so hard to give you everything and you can barely manage to get the dishes done most days. It’s knowing those two hours would be better spent catching up on all of the other shit you need to do, but you’ve been instructed to leave and enjoy your time away. Except you can’t because…well…all that other shit is still waiting for you when you come back.

“How long are you going to be?”

“Are you on the way home yet?”

And you get it. You really do. Your heart bleeds for them in a way you can’t adequately put into words. So instead, you just rush back, even if you really could have used an extra 30 minutes.

It’s having to pretend to your doctor that you’re fine and happy when you have to mention that something is wrong with your baby or your milk supply or your body because there is a fine line between valid concern and new mother paranoia, but it still takes months of mentioning the same issue over and over again for anyone to even half-believe you, and then they still don’t actually do anything about it.

It’s having to defend your parenting choices or your baby’s preferences to the endless mob of unsolicited advice givers.

“Have you tried swaddling him?” No, Karen. It’s been 3 months and I haven’t tried that, holy shit wow you’re a genius.

“You should let him sleep on his tummy.” Okay, are you volunteering to supervise him while he screams like a banshee until he chokes on his own spit or…?

“Gas drops saved us!” Fuck off.

It’s watching everyone with their smiley, well-slept babies and wondering if your baby will ever be happy because he has been miserable for all but seven minutes of his entire life.

Am I doing something wrong?

Does my baby hate me?

Am I just not meant to be a mother?

While I’m sure the hormones exacerbate the initial emotional responses to the everyday stressors of life with a fresh baby, I really wish we didn’t dismiss the everyday stressors of life with a fresh baby.

I really wish we could say, “I am feeling a bit overwhelmed by everything that is going on and all of the things I can’t seem to get done,” without someone suggesting we have an illness that needs to be medicated.

I really wish we could say, “I am anxious about being responsible for someone who can’t tell me what’s wrong and all of the things I’ve read about SIDS,” without a pill being shoved in our face.

I wish it were acceptable to say, “Actually, it’s really annoying that my baby fights sleep and kicks and punches me when I’m trying to settle him,” because apparently the moment you talk any shit about your baby, it means you hate them or want to hurt them.

It is so completely isolating to be living with perfectly valid thoughts and feelings, only to be told you’re mentally ill because somewhere down the line as a society we have manufactured wanting to be a mother and giving birth into some sort of magical fantasy where nothing ever goes wrong and you love every second of your life because you have a baby now. And if something does go wrong or you find yourself thinking, “Hmmm, wow this part sucks,” you aren’t a real mother because a real mother wouldn’t be like that!

A REAL mother would consider herself blessed and devote every millisecond of her life to meeting the needs of her child, the home and her partner without complaint. She would adore looking like a crack whore unless she somehow manages to put on a full face of makeup because her sleepless nights meant that she fed her baby. She would love that she only manages to consume a little less than 1000 calories a day and is still fat because who knows why, since her body did this amazing thing and wow isn’t that so great? She would love her permanently clenched jaw, the weird discharge, the hair loss, the nightmares, the body odour, the dry skin, and getting the leftovers of the day because that’s what mothers are supposed to love, right? They have a baby and that’s all that should matter, right? And if she doesn’t love all of that, it couldn’t possibly be that her upset is purely situational and sometimes shit is really just shitty…no. It HAS to be that her hormones are out of whack and she needs drugs.

BOO to that.

Mama, I see you. You aren’t hormonal. You aren’t crazy. There isn’t anything wrong with you. At first, life with a new baby is pretty whack, and that’s the truth.

But it does get better, I swear. It might take months, but one day you’ll wake up and your baby will smile at you. He’ll only cry for two hours instead of five. And then he’ll only cry when he’s hungry or tired. And he’ll sleep! Maybe not for long, at first, but he’ll sleep, and you’ll rejoice. He’ll become predictable and you’ll wonder why you didn’t figure this out sooner, but at the end of the day, it won’t really matter.

And everything will actually be okay.