Fear and Loathing In The Diaper Pail

Do not anger the small person.

I became friends with Anise a couple of years ago when Liam and her son Christopher hit it off at pre-preschool. I didn’t know her at all, but she gave me her card and suggested a playdate. “What the hell,” I thought, and invited her, a total stranger, to our house to play. Turns out we hit it off, too, and she’s become a good friend.

In January of 2007, Adam and I started trying to get me pregnant (don’t you hate when couples refer to themselves as a couple as pregnant? I assure you, the man is NOT pregnant). I didn’t tell anyone about it, because as soon as people know you’re trying, they come up to you at every opportunity with a big smile and an expectant, “Sooooooooo?” and then when you tell them you’re not, you get the “oh-how-awkward” smile and the dismissive, “Oh, you will.”

Except I wasn’t. Not in January, not in February, not in March. Not in April or May, either. Or June. Meanwhile, everyone we knew was getting pregnant. My sister-in-law. My cousin. My girlfriend from high school. Another cousin was actively trying. And soon the people we knew who were expecting before we started trying were having their babies. I finally confided to Anise I’d been trying for so long when she announced to me in maybe April that she and her husband had begun trying. So for a couple of months, we commiserated together. While I was becoming more and more frustrated and hopeless, it was good to have someone else to complain to about it, who knew how it felt. Until late June, when for her, it worked. It’s hard not to feel like a jealous, dried-up old reproductive failure when everyone around you seems to be getting pregnant and having babies, but with her, I don’t know why, I felt truly happy for her, without the slightest twinge of envy. I was glad. And it felt good not to feel bad.

The good karma paid off for me, and a couple of weeks later in mid-July I got my own positive EPT. We were going to be pregnant together. So, instead of bitching about how we weren’t getting pregnant, we were bitching about how we were. Anise was way sicker than me, and our playdates for Christopher and Liam became infrequent, because she just couldn’t get out of the house in the mornings.

My pregnancy continued without so much as a hiccup. Completely healthy in every way. But Anise developed gestational diabetes, which she also had had with Christopher. A major problem that develops when a mother has gestational diabetes is that the baby tends to have very large shoulders, which can get stuck during delivery. But Anise worked hard to months to control her diabetes and prepare for a safe delivery. She was assigned to a high-risk OB and eventually had to pull Christopher out of his and Liam’s preschool class, because she had to go to weekly ultrasounds and non-stress tests that coincided with class.

We both discovered we were both having boys again, which made it even more fun. Her boy, to be named Cameron, was due in early- to mid-March, mine, to be named Lucas, on April 1. We began waddling around more, yelling at Liam and Christopher to help clean up so we didn’t have to scoot around on the floor on our butts to pick up toys after playdates, since we couldn’t really bend over.

Her due date came and she was induced and then I didn’t hear from her, which I didn’t think anything of, since you just get so wrapped up in the whole brand-new-baby thing, especially when you already have a little one at home. She was busy, I assumed. And I was busy too. I’d been given a date for a planned cesarean, March 24, and I had to get ready, as well as take care of Liam and get ready for Easter. She called me a few days before my hospital date and told me a story that blew my mind.

During her delivery, Cameron’s shoulder became stuck. And rather than perform an emergency cesarean, her doctor yanked the boy out with such force, his shoulder was dislocated and several nerves were damaged. His arm just hung there limply and he was screaming in pain for hours before anyone noticed there was a severe problem. Their pediatrician informed them that Cameron would probably be handicapped for life and that when he was 3 months old, they could try surgery using nerves from his legs to repair some of the damage, which may or may nor restore function in his arm and hand.

So for three months, they did physical therapy, which their insurance did not cover. Cameron had to have a brace for his shoulder, which eventually healed and his hand, to keep it from curling with atrophy. Then Cameron had his surgery, which took 10 hours, involving general anesthesia and cutting into his legs and neck. Later they learned that two of the nerves had been severed completely, and without the surgery, he would definitely never have been able to use his hand.

Cameron is 4 months old now and he’s out of a cast. His scars are already small and in time will probably be barely noticeable. But the full results of the surgery won’t be known until he is maybe 3 years old.

Meanwhile, Anise is channeling her energies into promoting awareness of this birth injury, which is more common than you would think. She’s trying to set up a support group for families who are going through the same thing and to inform mothers-to-be about working with their doctors to prevent it. She has set up a website and made a video to promote it.

Please take a few moments to view the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opoMJT3hzJE and the website at www.cameronssmile.org. Pass it on to anyone you know who may be dealing with this, and to any expecting mothers you know, especially those at risk for or diagnosed with gestational diabetes. I’ll keep the website linked to my page in the list to your left.

Thanks!

Dude. I got hit on today at the grocery store … when I was with the baby. What a loser. It was totally disturbing. He was all like, “What a cute baby!” and then he says, “I mean, I’m a man, I can’t think babies are cute.” So he says in a fake deep voice, “What a cute baby.” And then he even SLUGS ME IN THE ARM, laughing like we’re sharing this hilarious joke. Christ.

You know what sucks about being hit on when you’re married? You only get hit on by the loseriest losers. Because no decent guy goes up to a married woman with an infant in a pumpkin seat. No, the only men who will hit on you are these total asshats. Like, yeah, you with the menthols and the manpris. You’re the one I’d give it all up for. Douchebag.

Being hit on by dudes like that don’t make you feel all that appealing, either. It’s not like you walk away thinking, “You still got it, sister!” No, you walk away thinking, “THAT’S all I can get? THAT’S the guy who hits on me? Kill me now.” It’s not like you’ll ever be mulling over the Yukon Golds with the diaper bag slipping off your shoulder when the handsome 30-something chief of pediatric cardiology from your city’s most prestigious teaching hospital casually asks if, after a hard day of saving babies and walking on water, he might please buy you a drink sometime with some of his many hundreds of thousands of dollars. “Oh no,” you blush, lashes batting demurely. “I couldn’t possibly. You see, I’m married.” “Oh,” he replies, obviously crushed. “Lucky bastard.” No. That NEVER happens.

Or perhaps I’m shopping at the wrong grocery store.

Classic baby moment this morning. I feed Lucas, he spends some time watching Sesame Street with me and Liam. I put him down for a nap, I go take a shower, refill my coffee, do some dishes. He wakes up, so I go in and he’s all happy and smiley. I change him out of his pajamas into a nice little sunsuit with a dinosaur on it. “There!” I say. “All handsome!” And he spits up all over it.