Zen's birth - looking back
I love this photo. To me, it is both vulnerable and strong, sad and happy. Zen is 6 days old here, and it was one of the first times I was allowed to have skin-to-skin contact with him. You wouldn't know it from looking at the photo, but he had come a long way here. The tube going into his nose is how we fed him - it goes all the way into his stomach, with the other end hooked to a syringe where we would push my pumped breastmilk. I can still hear and see him baby-sneezing (all cute, yet surprisingly strong... he's had his father's sneeze from day one) constantly in an effort to get it out - sometimes he actually succeeded in pulling it out, only to have the nurses put it back in.
In the beginning I didn't want to share this part of Zen's story with the "world". I didn't want anyone feeling sorry for him, or us. I didn't want to have the conversations, the questions, the judgemental thoughts. I had an incredible pregnancy - for the most part I ate healthy, walked, exercised, did yoga and meditation. I had no nausea or food issues at all throughout. We went with midwives, had planned a home birth, and practiced hypnobirthing and massage techniques. I wanted to experience what so many women had experienced since the beginning of time - the way it was meant to, the way my body was designed to. Since week 20, the midwives had assured me his head was down. But at 37 weeks, we had an ultrasound to check on him, and learned that he was actually in a compromised breech position, and they would have to do an emergency cesarean. I wasn't even scheduled to start on mat leave for another week.
When he was born, we saw he was actually in frank breech position, and with his legs pressed against his body for that many weeks, his lungs weren't able to develop properly. So for the first five days he was hooked up to machines and wires everywhere. Jeff and I didn't even know what he looked like until a day or two later when we saw them lift his oxygen mask a little bit to readjust something. He ended up being in NICU for 10 days, and for the longest time I felt like I had failed him in some way... that I had done something wrong, somewhere, along my pregnancy. And I was a mess. For nearly two solid weeks I was crying. My eyes were always so red, and my face so swollen from the tears that the nurses didn't even recognize me when we went back to NICU to visit a few months later. It didn't help that we weren't getting any sleep. I was discharged from the hospital after 2 nights, so for a few days after, Jeff and I would make the countless trips to and from the hospital, in the coldest, snowiest month that winter season, to be with our son. We worked our butts off to be at every feed and change session the nurses did, which was every 4 hours. We probably irritated them like crazy - asking countless questions, countering their methodologies (we gave into pacifiers and bottles - which we have since phased him out of completely, but stood our ground on no formula-feeding whatsoever). Eventually, when they gave in to our pleas and deemed him strong enough to try breastfeeding a week later (right around the time this photo was taken), I paid to stay in a room with other mothers so I could be on call to feed him when he needed it. There was no room for fathers, so Jeff continued to drive back and forth from home.
Now that Zen is nearly 10 months old, I've learned that there wasn't anything I could have done. That there was nothing wrong with my body, and that the situation just happened to be. I learned that in the end, we were so lucky to have discovered his precarious situation when we did, and not while I was trying to push out a frank breech baby at home - one that would have needed medical attention right away. I've also seen and heard of many other birth stories that put ours into perspective and made me feel ashamed that I felt so sorry for Zen, and for us during that time. Because look at him now. Look at us now.
So, I have come to terms that I will never have my perfect birth scenario. And that's okay. I have my perfect little boy. And his smile lights up my life.