Gillian was a happy surprise. When I found out I was pregnant, I told Matt I was moving home to New Jersey from Texas to be closer to our parents. If he’d like to join us, he’d better start looking for a job. Although I thought I was joking, there must have been a part of my subconscious that knew I’d have trouble handling more than one child. Aidan was the easiest of babies, and life with him one-on-one when Matt was at work was smooth and fairly effortless. The minute I had a positive pregnancy test in my hand, a mental health warning light lit up somewhere in the dark recesses of my brain. Having two helpless people being helpless without my help at the same time was going to be a disaster.

We always wanted two children. It was important to us to have a boy and a girl. As a matter of fact, I’d never thought that I *wouldn’t* have a baby boy and a girl as well. What I didn’t know, and couldn’t foresee, was how my psyche would react, and how a mixture of hormones and brain chemistry, mixed with past trauma, would dramatically effect my life at this point.

I’d spent my pregnancy with Aidan glowing, being active and excited. I felt high and energized, full of vitality and life. My pregnancy with Gillian was the polar opposite. I spent most of my time in bed in my parents’ house sleeping. I was depressed and moody. I had no patience -and actually felt fearful – when I had to take care of Aidan. Often left alone, I felt like a larval insectiod queen. Not knowing myself well, I’d not even recognized the depth to which I’d shut down. I was on an anti-depressant deemed safe for pregnancy, which obviously wasn’t working, but wasn’t self-aware enough to recognize this in myself.

Matt had found out that the off-colored spot on his neck was basil cell carcinoma, a type of skin cancer (This is actually known as “the good skin cancer”, if that’s not an oxymoron). . He was assured that it was benign and small, and a quick office visit would take care of it. The outpatient surgery was scheduled for the morning of the 29^th. I wasn’t aware of being very concerned, although my very first boyfriend’s father had died of Melanoma, and I think on some level my psyche was well aware of the issues of mortality this brought up.

Aidan, due to complications, had been two weeks late. I wanted to give birth to Gillian on Samhain. It was a little early, but I thought a Halloween baby would be cool. On the 27th of October, two weeks before my due date, my mother treated me to an in-house massage by a woman who specialized in pregnant women, because I was so huge and uncomfortable. She was so successful in relaxing me that I went into labor the next morning. I woke up early, shook Matt’s foot, and said, “Get up and call into work, honey.” Seven hours and three pushes later, Gillian entered the world.

Even the birth was surreal. Gillian was born with terminal meconium, which means she’d pooped in utero and was in danger of breathing in her own feces, which could cause infection and other complications. She also may have been born with her cord around her neck, I don’t recall. They all grabbed her and ran, leaving me alone with my friend who had attended me during the birth. No one told me there was a problem. One minute I was pushing, the next I was lying like a beached whale on a table, empty and alone. My girlfriend helped me to the bathroom to pee, after which I lay down and waited, disoriented and upset.

I’m not sure exactly what went on, to this day, but eventually I was brought back a beautiful baby girl. I was able to begin nursing without issue. Unlike my experience with Aidan, I found myself instantly overwhelmed, asking the nurses to walk her, and even take her in the evening so I could sleep – an act unthinkable when Aidan was born.

My friend Amy spent the night with me in the hospital, because Matt was scheduled for his quick procedure in the morning. I awoke at one point in a panic, in the middle of an anxiety attack. I didn’t wake Amy up. I wanted my husband. I remember hiding in the corner behind the big heavy door of my hospital room, repeating “What was I thinking? I can’t do this. I can’t have two kids.” When the hyperventilation threatened to bring me to the point of passing out, I went to the nurses desk, and begged for a Xanax, explaining that I was having an anxiety attack. I was told there was nothing I could take because I was breastfeeding, and I should return to my room, they’d send someone down to talk to me. Over an hour later, a psych tech arrived – not even a resident, let alone a doctor He asked me a few questions – I’m sure some sort of prefab psych eval, and left me without help. Eventually the anxiety attack passed, and I drifted back off, being woken up to nurse when Gillian demanded, as the nurses were on strict orders not to supplement with a bottle (I could be wrong, but I think I remember being told that she had been, despite my protestations).

When the baby is born, the set of pregnancy hormones shuts down like a steel door, and the nursing hormones start up. This was a smooth transition with Aidan. With Gillian, I think it added to my already unstable mental state. I did feel for my baby, but there’s no question that untreated depression preceded the birth, and untreated post-partum depression followed.

To add to all of this, Matt returned home from hours at the skin doctor the day we got home from the hospital, a large stitched-up slack across his skin. The very small patch of skin cancer on his upper chest was like an iceberg, and was spread deep and wide under his skin. I couldn’t even register it. I don’t recall feeling anything but overwhelmedness and depression.

When Gillian was four days old, we closed on our home. The buildup to this was stressful, as we were dealing with a psychotic owner. Gillian nursed through the closing. Matt moved us into our new home.

My performance as a parent was very different with Gillian. Although we reared her utilizing the ideology of Attachment Parenting, I was handing the children off to family members as much as possible – more Aidan than Gillian. Once again, a huge paradigm shift had occurred in the hospital. I went in with a baby boy of 2 ½ years, and returned home to a big brother. I believe that Aidan felt some level of rejection from me – he’d gone from being the center of my universe to my sweet big boy who was much more independent than the helpless infant I now had. I gave him as much as I had, which I don’t feel was enough.

At eighteen months, Gillian was still nursing, but my depression hadn’t lifted Matt and my mom held an intervention with me, and insisted I change my anti-depressants. I did, and Gillian’s demeanor changed overnight. She went from a happy, sweet baby to a non-stop screamer. It took me around a few days before the light went off and I realized that she could be reacting to the new meds. I called the doctor, who confirmed my suspicions, and Gillian was weaned overnight. It wasn’t that big of a deal, as she was eating regular food, and just being supplemented by breast milk. It doesn’t appear that her short exposure did any harm.

After Aidan was born, and we’d figured out how to breast feed a baby from a breast bigger than his head while lying on my side with a broken tailbone, we began to settle into our new roles as parents.

It’s funny, parents always tell people “You walk into the hospital (or orphanage, etc) with life being about you, or you and your husband, and you leave the hospital with life being about someone else. This isn’t something that can be intellectualized. It’s a huge paradigm shift. It’s scary as hell. It’s overwhelming. And it’s wonderful.

I had planned on going back to work after around three months – I figured I’d pump breast milk at work – and I tried, I really did. But I *needed* to be at home with him. I needed him as much as – if not more than – he needed me. Matt would go to work, and it was Aidan and I against the world until Daddy got back home. Every moment was spent doing something educational. Even if he was in his ‘jumpy seat’ so I could go to the bathroom, an Eyewitness series on Planets or the like would be on. “Panets,” he would say.

Aidan soaked up everything. He learned, and learned, and I fed him knowledge while watching him take it all in. He was my constant companion. Matt and I slept with him between us, and when he’d wake in the nighttime to nurse, I’d roll over and stick a boob in his mouth, and we’d fall back asleep.  I worried and fussed over him, all my anxiety and energy  – and joy – funnelled into one focal point. It took our friend Amy telling me that I could trust Matt to rock him to sleep in his arms without me showing him how that I realized how intensely my every moment was wrapped up in Aidan.

Aside from the anxiety of worrying about him, I was the most mentally healthy (I think) I’d ever been. Matt and I loved and played with him, took him places, swam with him…he was a joy. We’d even have friends over to play card-based role-playing games, and he’d be with us and coo. We had a group of friends from Rice University, and we were one of the few married couples, and the only ones with children. The Rice crowd was very artsy, and Aidan lived a very cool ‘Auntie Mame’ existence for his first two years.

He never cried unless he was hungry or dirty unless we were having a picnic outside and tried to put his bare feet on the grass. THEN he’d cry. He was a happy baby. He turned us from a happy couple to a happy family.

Then I got pregnant with Gillian, and something changed inside of me. I think that it was largely psychological, and part hormonal, but I withdrew.

When Aidan was born, Matt and I were living in Texas. I worked for a major airline who had a hub in Houston and another in Newark, smack dab between my parents’ house (in NJ) and Matts’(in NY).

Matt and I had been married for around two years, and decided that maybe we’d start thinking about having a baby. I stopped taking the pill and two days – *two days* after I stopped the pill, I was pregnant.

We knew it when it happened. There are three basic human drives; sleep, food, and sex. They’ve always stacked up for me exactly in that order. I don’t like having sex in the morning when I first wake up, and if you try to wake me up to have sex, you might find yourself sleeping on the couch.

We woke up in the middle of making love. It was slow, and sleepy, and there was a light mist in the room (Matt, tell them, they’re not going to believe me). There was a presence there, a light, unobtrusive and undeniable awareness that we weren’t alone. When we had finished, we fell right back asleep in each other’s arms. We woke up in the morning, blinked at each other, and asked one another if we’d had the same experience. We had. We knew then, at that moment, that I was pregnant.

I loved being pregnant. Because I’m so short, I got big fast. I’m short-waisted, so Aidan spent his last few unborn months folded in half with his tush by my belly button. We used to watch his butt-cheeks move across my belly. It was disconcerting. People would stop me in the street, and ask me how many babies I was carrying. When I told them “only one”, they’d actually tell me I was wrong. I was huge.

Then came the baby shower. We’d been assured, after several ultrasounds, that we were having a girl. Everything was pink. The flowers, the cake, the gifts. We wouldn’t have known that he was a boy if my dad hadn’t taped over the sonogram video, and paid for another one, in which a penis magically appeared. Thank you, Dad.

The midwives would do check-ups often close to the end, and their measurements told them he was much bigger than he actually was. Just looking at my pendulous belly gave us no cause to doubt them, and they watched over us carefully.

I had scar tissue on my cervix, but I didn’t know it, and despite my height (4′11″), my cervix must have been pretty hard to see, because no one knew about the scar tissue. No one would have, if I hadn’t gotten pregnant and had a vaginal birth. I started having contractions at around 38 weeks, but labor wouldn’t start. I went in for Pitocin 8 times.  Each time the contractions would begin, but I wouldn’t dilate. The pain was terrible. At 42 weeks, the contractions began coming regularly at home, and I vomited with each one. I was carted off to the hospital.

After around 12 hours, the back pain from intense back labor and constant heaving were wearing me down. I couldn’t even take in ice chips. I wasn’t dilating. A nurse with preternaturally long fingers appeared and reached up inside of me. After pushing and feeling around, she said “You have scar tissue on your cervix. Hold on, I’m going to rip it.” Before I had the chance to say “Is this going to hurt?” she ripped. It hurt. A lot. A whole lot. I never saw her again.  I began to dilate, but the back labor and nausea didn’t ease up. At some point a nurse came in, and said “Honey, if you can’t handle this, there’s no way you’re going to have natural childbirth.” I never saw her again either. I cursed her for years, until I realized that she was the angel that saved me, because she scared me out of my body. I went away, allowing my body to do what it had to do without constant pain and anxiety.  

The whole labor lasted fifty-two hours. That’s 52. I’d come in and out during the third stage of labor to push, but for the most part I was somewhere else. I came back when I felt something snap inside me. “Was that my coccyx breaking?” I asked the midwife. I was assured it was. The unstoppable force had hit the immovable object, so the immovable object broke. At some point I asked for a very small amount of intravenous painkiller, which I was given, but that was it. Hours, and hours of perineal massage kept me from ripping very much, which  was a miracle. Matt, who was given the task of being videographer, had around 8 hours of a close-up of my vagina doing very little before the battery died, around five minutes before he crowned. What ever happened to that tape?

Aidan was born blue with his cord wrapped around his neck. Before cutting the cord, they honored my wish and put him on my belly for two seconds before they whisked him off to make him breathe.  He was more than a third as tall as I am when he was born – 21 3/4 inches, I’m 60 inches tall. (I’d married a guy who was 6′2″ to inject some height genes into the gene pool, but I hadn’t though through the ramifications). I was left on the table feeling the endorphins wear off, and realizing how much pain I was in. I don’t know what my vagina looked like, but it felt like I had testicles, because I was so swollen.  After more than a day of not urinating while in labor, I tried and tried to pee, but all the swelling had blocked off my urethra.  I ended up begging to be catheterized (something I never thought would happen), and the nurse had to get a second ‘hat’, because I’d filled the first and it was overflowing.

I made them leave him in the room with me that night, and slept with my hand in his little container. They tried to show me how to nurse, and I guess they thought they’d succeeded, because they sent us home with him.

We had two issues. First, my breast was bigger than his head. Really. So getting my nipple in his mouth and getting him to latch on was a problem. Secondly, I had a broken tailbone, so I couldn’t sit up and nurse like a normal person. My milk came in, and I *thought* he was getting milk, but after the second day of him screaming and my mother begging me to call a lactation consultant, I acquiesced. The woman came over, and within an hour Aidan had latched on correctly, had a full tummy, and slept. And slept. I tried to wake him up to nurse after four hours, but I couldn’t rouse him. Eight hours. I began to get afraid. We could not wake him up. My mother the sadist suggested we put a little ice on his testicles. After a moment of contemplating this possibility with horror, we did. He woke up.

When people ask me how I got so lucky to have a son like Aidan, I always tell them that I paid for him with his birth. We got all the pain and angst out of the way before he breathed his first breath.

Matt and I started out on the adventure of raising kids using the basic ideology of Attachment Parenting. We’d read a book by Sears and Sears that talked about natural childbirth, co-sleeping, carrying the baby in a sling instead of a stroller, extended breastfeeding, *not* letting the baby “cry it out”…

We were warned and advised against this parenting style by people waiving “What to Expect When You’re Expecting” (which is a great book for people wanting to parent the way they recommend), with people telling us horror stories about the impending troubles we were bound to face as parents raising the kids this way, as well as the ramifications we’d have to deal with. “You want to give birth without drugs or an epidural?? Are you crazy??” ”Picking the kids up every time they cry will just teach them to cry for attention”, “You will roll over onto your baby and suffocate him”, You’ll never get the kids to sleep in their own rooms”, and my favorite, “You’ll end up with spoiled children”.

Attachment Parenting is about living the experience of bringing your child into this world to the fullest (they don’t call it “labor” for nothing”, bonding with your child by almost constant touch, letting them know they’re safe, and that their needs are being met, all the time.  Breastfeeding my children (Aidan weaned himself at 11 months, Gillian at 18 months) was no problem, because when they woke up hungry I didn’t have to get up…I’d just roll on my side and stick a breast in their mouth:) Neither of my children will fall asleep in our bed anymore…they gravitated toward independence as they were ready to, as they felt safe. They were wonderful toddlers – neither of them have ever had a temper tantrum, and could be reasoned with, always. They loved falling asleep in our arms, having their hair stroked and their backs tickled for years, but Gillian decided she wanted to fall asleep in her own room at around age five. After being cuddled to sleep for a while, she now waves good night and heads off to bed. Aidan can no longer fall asleep in our bed, but because of his anxiety, he needs Matt in his room until he drifts off. We’re working on this with his psychologist.

Now that they’re tweens, they don’t whine, they’re independent and psychologically healthy (except for the genetically-passed down gene for anxiety disorder, which we’re teaching Aidan how to deal with).  I think that most families end up here, where we are with our children, and with kids like ours, regardless of what style they used to rear them. But one of the things that I’ll always treasure is the level of bonding we had with them when they were babies and toddlers.

I know that this style of birthing and parenting isn’t for everyone. My sister-in-law called her epidural her “happy-dural” and had no interest in dealing with the labor of labor.  Many people have multiples, which can take away the option of a vaginal birth and can make co-parenting difficult, and many, many women don’t have the luxury of staying home with their babies because they have to return to work. Some mothers can’t wait to return to work, needing a break from the non-stop drain of parenting. I place no judgement on any of these things, because we all have different needs as people and as parents. For Matt and I, though, as parents, finding people like Dr. Sears was a gift – mentors to guide us through the most alien of experiences – being a new parent.

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