My beautiful son Dereck was born on a cold day February 17, 2010. It was a day that for me would change who I am for the rest of my life in a multitude of ways. As I look back on it now I am filled with love for my son first and foremost and then a deep chasm of sadness and regret. My pregnancy with my son was extremely difficult and debilitating to say the least. It had problems from the very moment that I became pregnant and in all actuality for several years after. I suffered from a fairly serious infertility problems for about 13 years before my son was born. These infertility problems were both on my side as well as his fathers and at a point we had both accepted that we were not going to have children, so when I got pregnant with Dereck I had a serious degree of shock.
My infertility problems were due to a serious hormonal imbalances and it made staying pregnant problematic and within the first month and a half of my son in the womb I was put on progesterone by a doctor to stay pregnant. The original doctor that I started out with would not listen to me when I said that I knew there was something going wrong with my hormones. I also had one really extremely rude nurse tell me that I was being irrational and that my irrationality was endangering the life of my child and that I needed to calm down. Interestingly enough I was extremely calm when I spoke to them in the office and over the phone. Needless to say I did not appreciate being insulted and having my opinion degraded in this manner. After talking to a friends they gave me some good advice and so I decided to go find another doctor that would listen and by the next day that’s exactly what I did. The doctor actually sent my labs down immediately to be tested as we waited in her office. When the test came back my progesterone levels were bottoming out just as I had suspected. I remember the doctor saying to me that it was a good thing that I trusted my own instincts and came in because in about another week I would not have been pregnant anymore if I hadn’t made the choices I did. This was the first time that I saved my son’s life, but not the last time.
My pregnancy with my son if I can be completely honest was a nightmare from beginning to end and beyond. I had such horrific morning sickness with him that I would throw up 10 to 12 times a day and within the first three months of pregnancy I lost 35 pounds. The morning sickness was also coupled with motion sickness and it got to the point where I could not drive a car, go up and down stairs safely, or even watch movies with large amounts of movement because it would cause me to have extreme dizziness and nausea and vomiting. At a doctors visit it was discovered that I was suffering from an inner ear condition that can develop during pregnancy that can cause the mother to have extreme bouts of nausea and vomiting along with extreme dizziness and in inability to walk without falling over. Along with this I started to develop extreme back problems in my second and third trimester, which included sciatic pain and extreme numbness in my legs that made it difficult for them to function correctly.
Late in my second trimester my son started pulling at me and my floating ribs would often be displaced and my already broken gallbladder started to fail and this also increased the pain in this area. In my third trimester I was going to a chiropractor on a regular basis and at that chiropractor I contracted a viral rash that essentially covered my breasts, stomach and genitals. The viral rash came from one of her clients and is so contagious that it can be contracted through mere touch. That Christmas Eve I broke out in the first signs of this rash on my forearms and it spread in the next 2 to 3 days to the areas I mentioned. The rash made little round welts which eventually filled with water and pus, which itched just horribly. The rash has a tendency to follow the nerves through the body and while I had this rash I could not touch or be touched by people without gloves because of the risk of infection. Given the sensitive areas of the body where this rash spread to I was in absolute horrific misery and it was extremely difficult to get any useful sleep. Also in that third trimester my back got increasingly worse and I suffered from constant hip and pubic bone displacement on an every other day basis. Later I found out that this was because my son was sitting in the birth canal with his arm wrapped around his head and his elbow pointed down.
Amazingly enough even after a multitude of ultrasounds for some unknown reason my incompetent doctors were unable to see my son’s positioning and so I was left to suffer for weeks on end with excruciating and crippling pain that made it almost impossible for me to walk. So, I had in my third trimester extreme nausea, vomiting, dizziness along with a viral rash and crippling back and pelvis pain due to sciatic pain, and my pubic bone constantly popping out of position. My son also went 10 days late due to his bad positioning and when he was born he was a 9 pound baby with a large head. His birth was extremely dangerous and problematic to say the least. The hospital staff had not realized my son’s positioning with his arm and shoulder and because of this I was forced to give birth to my son’s head and his arm and shoulder partly being in the way. Doing this caused me to prolapse my vagina and rectum completely.
I don’t know if you know what a prolapse is, but it’s basically when everything inside of you comes to the outside of you and it does this because all the tendons and muscles within your body that hold these things in place are torn away and ripped apart. I understood at one point laying there trying to push out my son that if I didn’t push with everything I had that he was not going to come out alive. I was very calm in this moment when I realize that it might be necessary for me to die so that my son could live and in that moment I made the choice to push as hard as I could regardless of what it would do to me. It was for me the single most bravest moment of my life and the second time that I saved my son’s life. As I pushed him out I pushed out everything inside of me and blood was pouring from me along with every other bodily fluid imaginable. I literally allowed my insides to be torn out to save his life and after that on a physical, mental and emotional level I have never been the same and I never will be.
After giving birth to my son I heavily bled for three months and I also suffered from a horrific and debilitating hemorrhoids as well as serious damage to my back and the nerves surrounding that entire area. I came to find out that as my son twisted through the birth canal and his elbow left a large spiral tear that forced me to get 17 stitches in a place where you really don’t want stitches. All totaled it took me over seven months to heal and the first time I tried to have sex it was torturous and excruciating and traumatizing. The worst thing about this entire situation wasn’t all of the things that I mentioned above in truth it was the reaction that I got from my now ex-husband and that reaction included resentment and anger, which eventually turned into hatred. I found out that he resented seeing any of it or as he put it being traumatized by it and he chose to blame me because of what he saw. His resentment eventually turned into hate and that hate unfortunately got expressed on a family pet, but that is another story.
The truth is that I allowed his actions toward me to take away from me something that I was truly proud of within myself. Now we are divorced and we share our son’s custody 50-50, and on my son’s birthday when I don’t get to see him it can be extremely hard for me. Yet, something occurred to me on this last birthday… That I was there on the first day he was born and I was the person who brought him into the world and the reality is no one can take that from me or from him. After having this realization I find that it no longer matters to me what birthdays I miss because of custody arrangements. What matters to me now is the truth and that truth is that I and no one else brought him into this world on the first day of his life and from the moment I knew I was pregnant with him I was the one who cared for him. I am the one who nursed him and fed him and clean him and cared for him when he was sick or well and I did this faithfully for many years and still do.
My ex tried to use the whole bullshit tactic that most narcissist try to use in a divorce, which is to accuse the mother of child abuse. Of course that never went anywhere because I have years of pictures and videos not to mention a live witness that was around for like 13 years who saw how it all went down. The reality is I don’t claim to be perfect and as a mother I believe that there is always room for improvement within myself. Yet after my ex domestically abused me and I fled that environment I managed to provide for my son with almost nothing. I found a home for him, food and clothing, toys and a bed and I also got him into see a counselor and doctor. Somehow I found the strength within myself even suffering from severe PTSD to take care of my son and provide for him all of his needs and some of his wants. I will admit there are times where I wish he was with me when he is not and I become very depressed. After all I took care of him every single day for the first four years of his life before he went into 4K. Then after that I was still his primary care giver every single day until the custody situation took him away for me 50% of the time.
I miss him so much sometimes and I admit that sometimes I go numb in order to cope, because I really don’t know what else to do. Even though the custody arrangement has been in place for a while now I still can’t seem to get used to it. He was like my other half and how are you supposed to get used to missing your other half all the time. I know that eventually kids grow away from their parents and into the rest the world, but I thought I would have more time before all of this happened to this degree. I look back now and I realize that I needed his love as much as he needed mine. That day after day living through all the pain that I did after his birth was only possible because of his sweet presence. It was my son that kept me alive especially after my ex’s actions that help promote my postpartum depression. I may hate pregnancy and all the doctors that should’ve done their jobs and didn’t, but not for one minute did I hate my son nor did I blame innocent people for actions they couldn’t control.
As I said before I am the one who has his first day and no one can take that from me. I will always be his mother and nothing anyone says or does will ever change that fact. I will always be the person that cares enough about him to get him to do the things that he hates. Like teaching him how to read, or do math, or clean his room, or do chores. I will always be the person that ensures that my son can and will function in this world and hopefully be able to survive whatever it throws at him. This is not a guarantee that anyone else has the determination to make except for me, because I was there and I was the one who pushed him out by the sheer force of my will into existence. He lives and breaths because of me, not because of anyone else, and I will not give this accomplishment and it’s credit to anyone else, but myself from now on.
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