Unhealthy

************FAIR WARNING! THIS MAY BE THE LONGEST BLOG POST EVER******************


We spent the morning at the pediatrician's office. Nothing major, for once, just a little conjunctivitis. Nothing like pinkeye to get the daycare folks in a panic, ya know? So my goopy eyed baby now has ointment to be placed in his eye twice a day. Yeah, that goes over well.

It's sort of like a wrestling match to get anything done to him... a diaper change, a nose wiping, shoes (forget it), and now they expect me to be able to pull down his lower lid and apply a thin ribbon of ointment that burns?! Childhood illnesses are great, I tell ya.

But it's hard to complain about a simple problem like pinkeye when he's been through so much in the past. If there's a quota of medical testing a person can go through in their lifetime, my son has certainly paid his dues. Between the ultrasounds, barium contrasts, radiology, IV's, VCUG's and all the other nonsense, I can't see how there's any more testing out there to be done.

Wil is now into his 14th hour of work for today. Poor guy. I can't imagine how incredibly tiring it is for him. It's not like he sits behind a desk all day. Not knocking those folks that do, it's just that his job is so much more labor intensive. I feel bad when he comes home at night and he's so tired and sore that he falls asleep in the livingroom chair, still in his uniform. To top it all off, he's on call tonight, which means that even after he's home, he'll still get calls and have to go out, regardless of the time of night.

I go back to work tomorrow. I've really enjoyed my three and a half day weekend. Enjoyed it so much I'm seriously considering making it a permanent thing. Of course, I've dreamed about that ever since I went back last October. I know there's a way out there, I've just got to figure out how.

A lot of people criticize me for my "unhealthy" attachment to my son. I admit that I'm probably more doting than most parents are, but I don't know if it's necessarily unhealthy, or more like making up for lost time.

I've never really written about the first few weeks of his life, I don't think. What a mess they were! It's a wonder either of us survived them, and I think that has a lot to do with the closeness we now share.

Jonas was born on the eve of Hurricane Charlie, which ravaged much of the state, and heralded in the most destructive season this state, or perhaps any, has ever seen. Luckily, we sustained little to no damage from Charlie, but I think that it was some sort of omen for how things were going to go from there on out.

I was intent on breastfeeding my son, although I was uncertain of my capabilities in doing so. You know, all those pictures in the magazines make it look like the most natural thing in the world. And for some, maybe it is. I am not one of those.

Just moments after he was born, and the family was done passing him around like a little meat football, the nurses whisked him and dad away to the nursery for the standard tests, and of course, his first bath, recommending that I rest while he was gone. Yeah right, I was wired! How can they expect anyone who's just gone through delivery to just peacefully drift off to sleep? Especially when they're changing rooms on you, and then changing them again, because the Labor and Delivery ward is so damn full that people are popping babies out in the hallway?

So, by the time Wil returned to my room, sans baby, who had become hypoglycemic and had been fed formula instead of being brought to me to nurse, I had been up for well over 15 hours. By the time Jonas was able to join us that evening, he was hooked on formula, and wanted nothing to do with breastfeeding. It was too much work for him.

I requested a lactation consultant, but because of the hurricane, and the limited staff, there wasn't one available. The young CNA did her best to try and help us, but after unbuttoning my gown and placing Jonas somewhere in the vicinity of a nipple, she had no clue what to do next. Neither did I.

So my son cried incessantly throughout the night, and into the next day, nursing greedily, but unsuccessfully nearly around the clock.

Then came the visitors. Hordes of them! Do your pregnant friends a favor... leave them alone until they call you. Or just call with your congratulations. If you MUST stop by to visit, keep it short. My friends are good ones, they stayed for hours. Hours that I should have been sleeping. By the time I was discharged and sent out into the scary world of parenthood all alone, I had been awake, non-stop for nearly three days. No, I'm not exaggerating. I had not slept even ten minutes since arriving at the hospital to deliver my son.

So home we went. Or not exactly home, but to my parents. We needed all the help we could get, and with Wil having to go back to work, having my step-mom around was a blessing.

Not long, as in a matter of hours, after leaving the hospital, Jonas began developing jaundice. Not a necessarily life-threatening problem, but one that scared the hell out of his novice mother. So began the almost daily trips to the doctor's office.

The most concerning thing, besides the jaundice, was the fact that he was steadily losing weight instead of gaining. Although he nursed nearly every 45 minutes, my milk had not come in, and obviously, he was not getting enough to eat.

Then came the vomiting and the diarrhea... and he was deemed milk-intolerant. So I had to cut anything with any sort of milk in it out of my diet in order to continue breast feeding. Wanting to give him the best start possible, I did just that.

And on the fifth day with no sleep, I began hallucinating. Seriously, hallucinating... like voices talking to me in the shower and seeing things that weren't there. I slept, but only for two hours, until it was time to feed him again. I began to resent my child, who had wasted away from a nearly 8 pound baby, down to nearly 5 pounds.

After a week at the parents, things started to become a little more stable. Jonas was eating better, I had adapted to my new dairy free diet, I could occasionally nap, so home we went. And in comes the family from Tennessee. God bless them, they meant well. They just wanted to come and be a help to me, but instead they were a burden. Having to "entertain" out of town guests while trying to settle into a brand new life with a brand new, and high maintenance baby. They stayed two weeks. Two long weeks...

And the day after their departure, so left too. One word to the wise: Don't ever consider evacuating for a hurricane with a three week old sick infant and a dog in the car. We spent 14 hours in non-stop gridlock, just to make it to north central florida. We then shacked up in a one room suite at the hotel- all seven of us.

I think this is where I finally broke. I remember standing in the shower one morning, letting the dangerously hot water sizzle red lines down my back, listening to my step-mom and husband talk in hushed whispers about me. I can't remember the exact words, but at that moment, I knew I was a complete failure as a mom. Poor Jonas was suffering simply because I was too damn stubborn to admit that breastfeeding wasn't working.

Wil left the hotel and came back with a can of formula. Oh halleluja! I drank a beer and laid uncomfortably across our fold-out bed, feeling the useless milk fill in my breasts. What a waste of a mother.

My son thrived as far as his weight went, and the better he got, the worse I got. It's funny how you don't realize how severely depressed you are until it's nearly too late.

Hurricane Frances over, we make the long journey back home, not really sure what we're going home to, or if we even still have a home. Back in town, we find that Wil's parents house already has electricity restored while ours, further out in the boonies, will likely be powerless for another two weeks as crews start restoring important power first. Luckily, Wil's parent's house is on a grid with a school that is a special needs shelter. We move into the empty house, live on bare essentials for the next two weeks. We sleep on the floor because there is no furniture, we eat saltines and peanutbutter because that's all there is. We get our water from the FEMA lines that we have to stand in for hours.

Jonas eats, but he constantly vomits. The doctor has ordered tests, and we've taken them, but they're coming back inconclusive for anything other than GERD, the doctor's diagnosis for "Hell if I know!"

Just a week after finally restoring power to our house, and getting everything back in order, here comes Jeanne, barreling straight for us. Fuck this hurricane. We're not leaving this time. We just can't do it.

We stay at Wil's parent's house again, knowing that's it's the safer of our two choices, being a newly built cinder-block structure. The wind howls and rages, it is dark and hot and scary and I stay up all night crying and wishing in some sick way that the roof really would collapse and just kill us all. No more worries.

That doesn't happen of course. We just spend another two weeks without power, eating the scraps that we can find, drinking the water we can get. While Wil is at work, it is my job to go stand in lines.

One of those lines is the food stamp line. We’re earning less than $1000 a month right now. We can’t even pay the bills, much less eat. The government people think I’m bluffing about our income, until I show the documents. The lady looked at me and my baby, sleeping nestled against my chest, and nearly cried. That’s when you know it’s bad… when some government employee is actually hurt by your situation.

We also stand in the health department line and get assistance for Jonas. Now we can actually afford to buy the special formula he has to drink which is $25 per 8oz can. Things are a bit easier for us.

After another 11 days without power, our house is finally restored, and home we go to begin the life that we should have started months ago. Only now, it’s too late for me. I’m gone-over the edge- a few fries short of a happy meal.

I guess between the sick baby, my failure at breastfeeding, which in my mind equated with terrible parent, and the three hurricanes and just sheer survival, I lost any shred of sanity I had.

Jonas was doing better, but still cried incessantly, had to be held constantly. If I got one shower a week, it was an accomplishment. He slept in 30 minute spells throughout the day and night, never really settling into a “normail” sleeping pattern.

One night Wil found me, curled up it the corner of the shower crying. It’s all I could do. I couldn’t bathe, I couldn’t even think about looking at my son. I couldn’t talk. I was lost and couldn’t go another moment.

The next morning he took me to the doctor, who I was sure was going to lock me away, put my picture on the front of the paper with a headline “Worst Mom EVER!” He didn’t. Instead he let me sit there and cry and feel sorry and tell him how terrible it was trying to take care of my son, my house, my everything. And he prescribed me drugs to get me through.

I only had to take them for a few weeks. Just until the world started seeming rational to me again. I’m not a believer in medicating yourself when things get rough, but I have to admit, without those pills, I probably would have been one of those people that kills their kids, then the rest of their families, and then sits there in shock over what they’ve done. I really was that bad.

So now that I’m normal again, I’m trying to make up for all the lost time. Trying, I guess, to make up for all the things I didn’t do, should have done right from the beginning. Maybe it is an unhealthy attachment I have, but dammit, it sure beats the alternative.