A Free Man

You’ve got to love happy endings. In what could be Dr. O’C’s final post here on A Free Man, we get just that…

At some point my attitude to motherhood started to improve.  I don’t know when that happened, but it did.  I am a better mum than I thought I would be.  For the first few months, I would tell Z that I loved him, over and over but I don’t really think I meant it.  I said it more to convince myself of that fact.  I know that I was meant to feel this unconditional love for him.  Instead I didn’t really feel anything for him.  Sure he was a cute baby and it was nice when he smiled, but it could have been any baby.

Initially we had planned that I would take 4-5 months off work, but when February loomed I couldn’t go back.  I couldn’t put this helpless individual into day care 10 hours a day.  I didn’t know how it would work.  How would I get up, walk the dog, get Z and myself dressed and out the door.  Plenty of people do it.  I just didn’t know how it would work for me.  It comes back to my fear of new things or a new way of doing things.  A fear I never knew I had before Z was born.  I walk the dog the same route every morning.  I get up, walk dog, shower, get dressed, eat breakfast, brush teeth, dry hair and leave for work. In that order, every morning.  I don’t think I ever changed it.  It was the most efficient way of starting my day.  But looking back, was I inflexible and stuck in my ways?  With Z, although it took a long time to establish, I was used to doing things a certain way and couldn’t imagine fitting work into it.  I also couldn’t imagine that I would be comfortable leaving him with anyone else.

The irony of the situation is that before I got pregnant and even during my pregnancy I worried if I was capable of taking a whole 4 months off work.  I thought that would be pushing the limits of my sanity.  I am a social person, I love to talk, interact with people and find out about them. But mostly I knew that I would go insane if I stayed at home with a baby (and I kind of did).  If Chris could have taken paternity leave, I think that we would have both jumped at the chance.   And now here I was, not wanting to go back to work because I was both afraid of the logistics of doing what millions of people do every day, getting themselves and a baby ready and out the door in the morning and I was getting attached to this little person, whom I had had very little emotional connection with so far.

Chris and I had been discussing a move to Australia for a while.  Well to be honest, Chris was ready to go, but I loved my job and had negotiated a promotion for when I returned from maternity leave.   Problem was this promotion almost certainly required me to travel internationally every month.  Not something that was going to work with a small baby.  I know my company would have worked with me and changed the job, but to be honest I was probably looking for an excuse not to go back.  An excuse to not change my finely tuned routine and put Zach in the care of strangers.  Pathetic I know.  Instead of getting into a new routine of going back to work, I embark on a trans-continental move, involving two adults, a baby and a dog.  What the hell was I thinking?

I was thinking that it would be nice to be home after 8 years spent overseas.  It would be nice that Z has family around. A Nana whom he adores and who gives him sups of tea and biscuits, who he goes crawling half way across the house to when he hears her saying ‘Nana Nana Nana’. (She is determined that they be his first words).  It would be nice to have someone to tell me how to do things.  Simple things like when it is safe to give Z a piece of bread and not choke, when he is sick enough that he needs to see a doctor.  Someone to baby sit so Chris and I could have a night out, go see a movie, have a meal.  Someone who cares and loves him as much as we do.  It would be nice to be around friends who are having babies who Zach will grow up alongside.

Don’t get me wrong, the move was incredibly stressful.  I was moving home, but Chris was moving to a place he had never visited, a place where I grew up, knew people, had extended family.  I didn’t really know what the job market was like for either of us.  I didn’t know if Chris would like it.  I felt like if it didn’t work out for us that it would be my fault, that we would have wasted the better part of $15K moving our life here and worse still, we wouldn’t be in the financial position to do anything about it.  Dealing with importation of a dog into Australia is not an easy thing, not to mention importing Chris!  It might actually have been easier in hindsight to stay in Oxford.

But things have worked out so far.  Chris has got two jobs, both in areas he wanted to explore and on Monday I started a new job, a good job doing exactly what I had hoped I could do when I came back to Adelaide.  The next few months aren’t going to be easy, getting up, walking the dog, getting myself and Z fed and dressed, and out the door.  Not to mention establishing myself in a job that is challenging and WAY out of my comfort zone.  But I have more confidence that it will be ok.  That I can do it.  That Z will adapt.

I really didn’t think that having a baby would teach me anything about myself, that it would reveal numerous faults.   And in those early few months, I didn’t ever think I would get to the stage where I would look at my baby, my son and say I love you and actually mean it.

Now, about that final post thing. I can’t convince Dr. O’C of anything, not for lack of trying. But maybe you all can. I’ll leave it in your hands to persuade her to keep writing.

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Phantom Planet’s “The Guest” is available from and Amazon.

 

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Popularity: 98% [?]

Things didn’t get any immediately easier for Dr. O’C after Baby Z was born. On this weeks episode, bringing home baby…

So, I am a parent - a mum.  I spend the first couple days at home wondering when I will be relieved of my babysitting duties.  But apart from that it is happy family.  Timmins, our Siberian Husky is behaving himself.  Z sleeps 4-5 hours at a time and I start to think that the next 4 months of maternity leave are going to be a piece of cake.  I am already planning my days of leisure.

Apart from the pain I am in, which the drugs are keeping under control, life is good.  Then the jaundice that has been causing Z to sleep so much wears off and the 2 hourly feeds 24/7 start and pretty rapidly sleep deprivation hits.  Now I know why it is such an effective form of torture.  I have always loved to sleep.  I love being in bed.  I get panicky if I know I am going to get less than 8 hours sleep.  Unfortunately it will be another 9 months before Z graces me with a full nights sleep.  That, my friends, is a very long time.

Apart from the sleep deprivation, which leaves me exhausted, I am in a lot of pain and can barely move. A simple shopping expedition to the local Mothercare makes me realize that my body is going to take more than a couple of days to recover.  Getting into and out of a car takes my breath away. I walk like I have just spent a year on a horse.  I wasn’t prepared for the pain.  I mean I knew that I wasn’t about to hop straight back on a bike after giving birth, but I never thought that a simple thing like getting your baby out of a cot would inflict pain.   The combination of constant pain and sleep deprivation make me realize that the whole motherhood thing isn’t that much fun. I feel no real attachment to Z.  I feed him, dress him, change his nappies, hold him, but he doesn’t feel like mine.  All I keep thinking is “What the hell have I done?  What was I thinking? I am not cut out for this motherhood thing.”  Now don’t get me wrong, I love kids.  I have two nephews, whom I adore. I just don’t know if I want to be a mum.  I haven’t felt this gushing ‘oh I love my baby soooo much’ rush of emotions that I think I should be feeling.Because I have chosen to breastfeed, the exhaustion is never relieved.  Z takes close to an hour to get back to sleep when I feed him in the middle of the night.  Chris offers to get up with him, but he has gone back to work and is teaching to earn extra money. Honestly I feel trapped in my situation and I know I am.  When Z wakes up 3-4 times a night for a feed, I find myself crying.  I remember one night crying so violently that I wake Chris up.  I just keep saying to him ‘I can’t do this’.  He tries to comfort me, but I think that he is disappointed in me.  What I am too afraid to vocalize is that I don’t want to do this.  I want my old life back.  What new mum thinks and says this stuff?

Looking back now, I don’t think it was as straight-forward as post-natal depression.  I wasn’t ready to be a mum.  I didn’t want to give up the life I had which was easy and uncomplicated.  Where I didn’t have to think of anyone but myself.  I also realize now (although it has always been glaringly obvious to most people around me) that I am a control freak.  I like to do things well.  I thought I was adaptable and easy going.  Z quickly taught me that I was not adaptable and although I have spent my life as a scientist performing new experiments, I actually would rather do experiments that I know will work, that I have done before.  A health visitor points out that some people like to learn through trying and others like to be shown what to do and then do it.  I disappointingly fell solidly into the last category.   Z doesn’t do the same thing day after day.  I think he is in a routine, only for it to the next day.  I feel a bit paralysed, unable to make plans for fear that Z won’t fit into them.  I am only capable of focusing on what is going wrong, of what I am doing wrong.  Z isn’t an easy baby.  He has a severe case of colic.  He cries for hours every night and some mornings.  Piercing, loud, hysterical crying.  The doctors and health visitors reassure me that nothing is wrong and that hours upon hours of crying can’t physically hurt him.  Mentally though, they take their toll on me.  Chris tries to relieve some of my exhaustion by feeding Z formula from a bottle.  A bottle he promptly rejects and continues to reject for months. We have no family in Oxford, no reprieve.  I become afraid to leave the house to meet up with people for fear that he will be a screaming nightmare.  It takes a while to work out, but when I eliminate dairy from my diet things start to improve.   

Chris, fearful that I am at serious risk of sliding into a depression, goes to great lengths to force me out of the house.  He emails my antenatal group on my behalf arranging meet ups.  He insists I visit him at work during the week.  He searches the internet for things for me to do.  I resisted initially.  I didn’t want to meet up with a bunch of people and just talk about sore tits, baby shit and vomiting.  I have a PhD dammit, I am a career women.  I have nothing else in common with them apart from having the same hippy lady tell us all about birthing.  In the end though, they were saviours.  Sure we talked about tits, shit and vomit, but so what, for the next couple of months (I thought at the time) that would be my life.  I slowly, very slowly, learn that Z is adaptable. 

I take him grocery shopping, and instead of him screaming his way around the supermarket he is fascinated until the rows and rows of tinned goods sent him to sleep.  We take him to our favorite Asian restaurant and he falls asleep in his pram staring out the window.  I think I had become afraid of Z.  Afraid of his tolerance for sitting in a pram, afraid to test him out, to see if he would actually be happy sitting and staring out a window.  I became afraid to let him whinge or cry.  When tested he passes with flying colours.      

What Dr. O’C is too humble to say is that she does as well.

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This week’s accompanying track is the Mates of State’s cover of Phantom Planet’s ”O.C.” theme. I first heard this on “This American Life” and found this version over at Agnes‘ site. I’ve no idea where she found it, but The Mates of State’s new record “Re-arrange Us” is available from .

 

 Mates of State - "California" [2:32m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Popularity: 76% [?]

I know that I’m about as far from objective as I am from my homeland, but this week’s installment of Dr. O’C’s recounting of pregnancy and childbirth struck me to the quick. I’m not one to be quoting poetry, but her post this week made me think of a Robert Frost poem that I must have read in college:

I craved strong sweets, but those
Seemed strong when I was young;
The petal of the rose
It was that stung.Now no joy but lacks salt,
That is not dashed with pain…

The green light to push. SHIT! Now comes the hard and painful part right?  Not so much.  I can’t feel anything with the epidural and am completely reliant on the midwife to tell me when I am in the middle of a contraction and when to push.  So I push for a bit, rest, push etc. I remember doing the breathing thing like they teach you in antenatal class and Chris doing it in my ear with me.  So far so good.  All very calm.  But then in come the doctors, they chat with the midwife over in the corner.  I (naively) assume that they are talking about someone else.  A doctor had been in previously to examine me.  But then they explain that because I had been in labour so long the baby’s heart rate wasn’t recovering at the end of every contraction.  They said it very calmly.  Explained that they were just going to help out a bit with a plunger! (Proper term is a Ventouse).  Turn the babies head or something and hopefully that would do it.  Chris started to get a bit panicky and so did I when I saw the size of the toilet plunger that was about to enter me.  Chris assured me later it wasn’t really THAT big, but at the time it looked bloody enormous.  Then things got a bit scary.  It is all a bit of a blur now, but I remember the panic in Chris’s face when a pediatrician came in pushing an elaborate life support cart.  I tried to reassure him, but was a bit frightened myself.  We later found out this was completely normal procedure.  A few more pushes and out came the baby, it was a boy - Z.  He was whipped onto my stomach for some skin-to-skin contact and then whisked away to the cart for some tests.  He was fine, but I wasn’t.

The long labour took its toll and I was (to put it bluntly) torn to bits.  I lost a litre of blood and knew that things weren’t great when several doctors spent time arguing about whether or not we could get access to an operating theatre.  All that kept going through my head was ‘But the baby is born, why would I need to be in an operating theatre?’  The lovely Irish obstetrician spent the next 55 minutes stitching me up.  I knew how long it took because I could see the clock ticking by.  I remember talking about Ireland, about my Nana who played camogie for Ireland (the OB played as well) and about other mundane things.  I remember Chris asking if I wanted to hold Z.  I mentally couldn’t.  This wasn’t the happy but exhausted holding the baby scenario I had imagined it would be after he was born.  Mostly I remember the OB telling me that it would only take 20 or so minutes and getting scared when it went much longer.  I remember all the bloody gauze that she seemed to be going through.  I tried to stay calm but 45 minutes into this ordeal I couldn’t.  I started to cry. She finished up, I begged Chris to get me a private room (which you could pay for if available).  Finally I was able to hold Z, but to be honest I don’t even remember it now.  I don’t remember the first time I held my baby.

A lovely midwifery assistant brought me toast and yoghurt and washed me down and got me into some PJs.  She helped me feed Z, which was a very strange sensation.  I was wheeled upstairs to a private room thankfully and we just sat and stared at Z.  I could barely move, Chris had to go home and here I was left with a baby who was big and swollen and surprisingly clean.

Chris came in the next morning with bundles of blue clothes.  Clearly excited and besotted and a little better rested than I.  Nurses, Doctors and Physiotherapists came by and checked up on us both.  They garbled a bunch of instructions at me but I was too exhausted to take much in.  We went off to the pediatrician to have him checked over and he peed on the intern.  We registered his birth and I begged to be let go home.  I didn’t want to stay in the hospital any longer than I needed.  In retrospect I probably should have.  I was weak, battered and probably in a bit of shock from the trauma of the birth.  I thought if I went home everything would be normal.  I finally convinced them and left with a bag of drugs to take over the coming weeks, and a kid!  I also left with explicit instructions not to lift anything heavier than the baby for 6 weeks.  I think in retrospect they should have told me to consider my wound as serious as a c-section because then maybe I wouldn’t have been so blasé about the whole thing and maybe it wouldn’t have gotten worse.

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Phantom Planet’s “The Guest” is available from and Amazon.

 

 Phantom Planet - "California" [3:14m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Popularity: 78% [?]

With Dr. O’C returning to the ranks of the employed in a few weeks, this feature is likely short-lived. Maybe if we talk real nice to her she’ll continue - or at least get Baby Z born…

September 10, 2007

Chris and I had convinced ourselves that the baby was going to be late, so when my waters broke a week before my due date, I had to keep smelling my skirt to make sure that it wasn’t just a collapsed bladder.  I walked back to the house, leaking as I went, in a bit of shock, giggling almost hysterically.  When I get nervous I have a tendency to laugh.  I think the reality was finally setting in.  Poor Chris has to harass me to call the hospital to find out what to do next.  We call our friends to pick up the dog, load up the car, call some family and head to the hospital.  They confirm that my waters have broken (no shit, Sherlock) and offer us the option of either staying put and being induced or going home to see if things happen naturally overnight.  Two things go racing through my head at this point - 1) There is no way I am ready for this baby to come now and 2) I don’t want my baby to born on September 11th.  So, I convince Chris that we should go home and take the natural approach of wait and see.

We wake bright and early, after a surprisingly good nights sleep (for me anyway).  I call the hospital to see when we can come in but they are busy so we wait.  I have some email conversations with friends and we laugh and things are a bit surreal.  Contractions haven’t started, I am in no pain but I know that we are going to have a kid, like, soon.

We eventually get the go ahead to go to the hospital and get sent to a ward to start the IV antibiotics. Chris and I waste away the afternoon playing scrabble with Chris nervously checking his watch every 10 mins. His patience was wearing thin when we had been waiting nearly 6 hours before they would take us to a delivery room. For me, I would have been happy to wait as long as they wanted!

The next 54 hours are like an out of body experience.

I hate needles, yet I have them sticking out of both arms until I leave.  I hate pain and yet I know that labour was not going to be pain free.  In the words of one of my wise friends “There is only one way out now”.  I am a private person and yet I know that all types of people are going to be poking and prodding me and at some point it is going to get really messy.  I have drips coming out of both arms, a contraction monitor and a fetal monitor strapped to my belly.  Chris unplugs vital equipment to plug in his iPod stereo.  He had been working on the playlist for months!  I explain to the midwife my birth plan, which in one short word is DRUGS.  I further explain that red heads are scientifically proven to be more sensitive to pain and when she had a minute she should line up the epidural.  A natural birth was NEVER EVER an option.  Personally I don’t see the point.  The kid ain’t going to remember or care.

They start pouring the oxytocin into me. Contractions finally start and I cope well for a while.  They wire me up to a TENS machine which does nothing but distract me from the pain because it is inflicting another more annoying type of pain.  Some crazy substitute midwife (whilst the normal one was on a break) offers me a lavender footbath to relieve my increasing pain and I nearly tell her to fuck off, but restrain myself.  I start calling for an epidural but it was a few hours before they would let me have that and when they do the relief is immediate.  I love modern medicine- the whole keep-still-whilst-I am-shoving-this-needle-into-your-spine is a bit scary, especially when the contractions are coming hard and fast every minute or so.  But damn that needle is a godsend.

The next few hours are a blur - a mix of sleep, epidural top-ups and internal examinations.  But over forty hours after my waters break I am finally given the green light to push. Now there really is only one way out.

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Phantom Planet’s “The Guest” is available from and Amazon.

 

 Phantom Planet - "California" [3:14m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Popularity: 48% [?]

The normally reserved Dr. O’C speaks. This week, pregnancy…

So I am pregnant.  Without wanting to be.  I spend the next two weeks traveling around the U.S. for work.  I get back on a Wednesday, am expected in London for a meeting first thing Thursday, get out of bed, throw up, miss the train, go back to bed and spend the next 10 weeks feeling sick morning, noon and night.  This does nothing for my attitude towards impending motherhood.

My brain is programmed to eat when I feel nauseous. I don’t know why but it is. I found myself eating constantly. I would wake at 4 a.m., feel sick and go eat a banana or a biscuit. I called my sister, mother of two fabulous boys, told her my news (she was excited to be an aunt) and asked for her cure for morning sickness. The bitch (is that a bit harsh?) never suffered morning sickness.

I am still in shock.  I haven’t even been to see a doctor at this point.  It would somehow make it real.  When I finally do go she is a bit shocked I haven’t been to see her earlier.  Scans are booked and the pregnancy progresses.  My family is very excited by the news.  Some are shocked - one cousin said noone else getting pregnant would have shocked her more.  I am assuming she is excluding all male acquaintances and those well under child-bearing age.  We laugh and joke about this, and still the pregnancy doesn’t feel real.  We have the ultrasounds, see the heart beat, the hands, feet, head.  A little person on the screen.  The tears role down my cheek, but it isn’t joy, it is fear, a little bit of disbelief and realization that the pregnancy test wasn’t a false positive.

The next few months go by and I get bigger (at one point Chris uses the word huge, not something he will ever do again!).  I don’t really acknowledge the pregnancy.  Chris has started his blog by now and my friends contact him surprised at the news of my pregnancy.  It’s not that I didn’t want them to know, I just knew telling them would make the whole thing more real.  I continue to get up at 6:15 a.m. to walk/waddle the dog for 45 minutes.  I bike into town and back up the huge hill to our house whilst 6 months pregnant and nearly pass out as my blood pressure skyrocketed with the exertion. I work long hours and it becomes a struggle to fit my expanding waist line behind a microscope or a desk. Chris has to draw the line at me going on a work trip to Guatemala.  My mum flies in from Ireland to drag me shopping for the baby essentials. Apart from the pram, which cost more than my first car, I have no interest in pottering around baby stores and getting things like a cot or a car seat.

Chris dragged me to antenatal classes, and would bollock me on the way home for questioning the spaced out hippy who was conducting the classes in a ‘snarky’ way. When I made a ‘stork is going to bring me my baby’ joke, she didn’t even smile!I continue to push myself way too hard, ignore the fact that I am pregnant. Chris thinks I am trying to be a hero, one of those women who try to do everything just to show how hard they are.  I am not hard. I am in denial.  I continue to be in denial when my waters break walking the dog, 45 minutes after getting home from work, 9 days before my due date. Not sure how much longer this denial can last.

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Phantom Planet’s “The Guest” is available from and Amazon.

Popularity: 30% [?]