Weekly thread, July 4-11 - Page 6

[jsh7809]

Originally Posted by rhiOrion

Jess- I just wanted to give you hugs about the itching. That was the main symptom of the cholestasis (which if you don't remember the saga was what caused me to have to be induced).

It was horrible. I honestly wanted to scratch my feet off of my body. It was waking me up at night and I was in tears. I remember digging in as hard as I could because the pain from scratching really really hard was better than the pain of the itching. Ugh.

Ugh, I thought of you today when they told me that itching during pregnancy means cholestasis (and isn't a "normal" symptom of pregnancy so therefore I shouldn't have any "normal" postpartum itching)... what a drag! I don't know what to do for myself except that whole "hurting from scratching is better than itching."... I'm going to the dr. on friday if it's not better. The concensus seems to be that it's not the Zoloft but then again, they don't know what it IS so I'm unconvinced. Sigh.

I'm typing without looking since I'm staring down at the baby on my lap who is making the cutest little noises I've ever heard and gazing at me. I'm a really good typist

[dogretro]

It's hot as blazes here, too, & we only have one window unit that we have not yet installed, so I'm the one you should feel bad for.

I find internet time in several places: When dd2 nurses, I can do that at the comp. If both kids are napping & I am not also napping If just dd2 is awake, she is content to sit on my lap whilst I surf. At night after they both go to bed. That is why I am posting at midnight instead of sleeping, WHOOPS.

LNF, my MIL is a crackhead. For real. I feel ya.

[Peace+Hope]

Dhinderliter . Are you ok?

Ugh, can't sleep.

Mean/judgemental people suck! Jenfl, I like how you qualified your request for advice in life w/ a babe. I may have to borrow that idea sometime .

[laughingfox]

I was just paging through life with a babe, and I was wondering:
Is it required to only do monthly posts over there for DDCs once this forum gets closed?
Now that is going to be a post that's hard to keep up with..

[OneWithTwo]

Originally Posted by laughingfox

I was just paging through life with a babe, and I was wondering:
Is it required to only do monthly posts over there for DDCs once this forum gets closed?
Now that is going to be a post that's hard to keep up with..

I don't know if it's required, but I do see that's what everyone does. In the tribal area for my tribe, we did monthly and WOW...they would end up being 150 pages long

[Peace+Hope]

I don't see why we couldn't start with a weekly, and move to monthly I'd we get less posty. Shouldn't be any different rules than any other kund of thread...

Since I've volunteered to start it, would you guys like a title post like the ones in the TTC forums? It takes only a little time to set up, and is easy to maintain. We could have something like username, age, children/babies, birth date of this ddc's baby, for instance.

[rhiOrion]

Originally Posted by Peace+Hope

I don't see why we couldn't start with a weekly, and move to monthly I'd we get less posty. Shouldn't be any different rules than any other kund of thread...

Since I've volunteered to start it, would you guys like a title post like the ones in the TTC forums? It takes only a little time to set up, and is easy to maintain. We could have something like username, age, children/babies, birth date of this ddc's baby, for instance.

I think a title post would be fun! It would be helpful to remember the details.

[Knitting Mama]

Forgive the dumb question, but what is a title post?

[rhiOrion]

It's the first post on the thread, which would stay basically the same from thread to thread (so from week to week or month to month).

Like what we have on our birth announcements thread.

P&H, maybe you should post a thread about this before the DDC closes down, and then the first weekly or monthly thread in LWAB won't be inundated with that info.

[OneWithTwo]

I like that idea

[Knitting Mama]

Oh! Ok, that sounds cool.

ETA: The cupcake had what I assume is a night terror last night. She hadn't been down for more than half an hour when she woke up screaming hysterically. Nursing, bouncing, shushing, swinging, etc. didn't help at all. Finally got her calmed down enough to bounce after around 20 minutes. Poor sweet baby. It was terrifying for us, since we've never had a time when we couldn't figure out a way to comfort her. She was just so beyond upset. I cried a little myself.

[loveneverfails]

Ok, I need a reality check:

Please remind me that it's not my fault that we got stuck in the NICU for 50 gazillion years. That it's not because I was not smart enough or persuasive enough, or didn't say or do the right things to get us home earlier.

I've just been bashing myself upside the head, thinking over and over again about what I could have done differently to have gotten out as soon as possible, even though I cognitively know that doctors shouldn't be idiotic tyrants even if you aren't the most wonderfully articulate or highly intelligent person in the world. I just keep thinking that it's my fault that I couldn't get her home sooner because I didn't do a good enough job advocating for us.

I need a reminder that I did a good enough job, but that when people are jerks, there isn't anything anyone can do to change that. I know that I'm being unfair to myself, but it's very difficult not to be when doctors are *supposed* to be trustworthy and not keeping you in the hospital longer than necessary.

[jenfl]

lnf -- It was totally not your fault. You didn't have access to the important information. Even if you did, you were immediately post-partum, dealing with the stress of nearly losing Mercy and being in the NICU, being told she was very sick. We expect to be able to trust doctors and nurses -- what else can we do?

My husband is a nurse. A very, very good nurse. He works in the same hospital system as where we were in the NICU -- directly across the street, actually. And we, also, got stuck in the NICU. We trusted. What else could we do? Even when we started to lose faith, we couldn't think straight, couldn't think fast enough.

Hang on. DD running for the potty. Back soon.

[GreenTeaGinger61]

Originally Posted by loveneverfails

Ok, I need a reality check:
Please remind me that it's not my fault that we got stuck in the NICU for 50 gazillion years. That it's not because I was not smart enough or persuasive enough, or didn't say or do the right things to get us home earlier.

Reality check: Not your fault!!! Too many Drs. pull off crap that makes us feel vulnerable. You were in a hard situation and a scary one. You did the best you could. Heck, I know you did better than I would have. I am such a wimp with Drs. I always have dh go to the serious appointments because he's a lot more assertive than I am.

The blame for this rests on Drs. who withheld information from you and were rude and condesending when you asked for information.

[jenfl]

You made the best decisions you could with the information you had. We all want our kids to be safe and healthy, and for all you knew, Mercy had to be in the hospital for that.

Even once we realized that Sprout was healthy and was stuck in the NICU for stupid reasons, we couldn't leave. If we left AMA, the spectre of owing out of pocket for his NICU stay hung over our head (some insurances don't cover it if you leave against medical advice). It wasn't until months later that DH realized that he could have just CALLED them and ASKED. It just goes to show how completely out of it we were that we didn't think of such a small thing.

It's no wonder you couldn't think straight. The stress of giving birth and such a terrible and intense labor, the stress of nearly losing Mercy, the crash of post-partum hormones, sleep deprivation, being away from home, being away from your other kids... NO ONE is anywhere near a normal level of functioning at that point. I could barely chose and order food, I was such a mess -- and my experience wasn't nearly as hard or long as yours.

I couldn't sleep last night, thinking of my NICU time. Images and pieces pop into mind at the craziest time. And as soon as I see them, I can feel the pit of my stomach drop out and the emotions come flooding back and I start to get lost. I seriously felt like they were trying to take my baby. My life wasn't my own. I am so lucky that we were only worried for Sprout's health for a short part of his stay, but even so, the whole thing has left me screwed up.

Last night I sat down and wrote out those pieces of memories that flood to mind, hoping to diffuse them. It was hard. I don't know yet if it helped. But no one really wants to talk about it, so I had to get it out somehow.

Please, PM me if you need someone to talk to. Heck, send me your phone number and I'll call you if you want.

[jenfl]

You know what's really hard? When DD brings up the NICU stay. I tucked her into bed that night, a new big sister, and she woke up in the morning to me and DH and Sprout gone (my mom slept over). She hasn't had her chickenpox vaccination, so she couldn't come into the NICU. I saw her once during those 3 days, for about an hour. We ate watermelon and Doritos, and I tried to read her a book through my tears.

She still remembers the shirt I was wearing the day I came home from the NICU.

I can only imagine how much better the experience would have been if she'd been able to come up with us, if being in the NICU didn't mean being so cut off from my daughter. And poor DH had to run back and forth, trying to figure out how to split his time between us. He would spend the day with DD, take her to my parents' at dinner to sleep there, sleep for a few hours himself, then come to the NICU around midnight so that he could hold Sprout while I tried --but failed -- to sleep. He'd go back in the morning to be there when DD woke up.

I owe him so much for holding the family together.

[loveneverfails]

That's exactly what I'm up against.

And the sleep deprivation was horrible, but it was so danged necessary too. I mean, Mercy was born at 3:15 in the morning, up all that day. Up 3 times during the night to pump. At the hospital the whole next day, checked into the Ronald McDonald house, but stayed in NICU until literally 3 or 4 in the morning because Mercy needed me there with her so that she would sleep deeply enough and slow her breathing down. I spent hours singing "Simple Gifts" to her softly because the rhythm gives a good respiratory rate, and she was breathing in rhthm to my singing. I got 3 hours of sleep and was back at the hospital after that. I got somewhat more sleep the night before because they let me stay in the rooming in room that night, waking up to nurse every 3 hours.

Then we transfered to the Hospital from Hell with all the stupid mind games and manipulation, sitting in a room by myself with Mercy, with no TV, no internet, no hospital cafeteria on site open for more than lunch on weekdays for a full 7 days. It just doesn't feel like I did a good enough job because I couldn't bring her home, away from people who didn't love her and who were looking out for their liability concerns and to pad their admissions numbers on the NICU billing stuff.

I am absolutely not being able to sleep at night, and my husband told me that he's sad that I'm not happy ever. I mean, my attitude is good and I am consciouly focusing on the good things in my life. I just can't ever relax, and I don't have an emotional response of happiness to really anything. I'm constantly in a state of vigilance and it almost rises to the level of PTSD. It's just such a bizarre combination, because I'm simultaneously proud of how engaged and tenacious I was as Mercy's mom, but I'm embarrassed and feel like none of that matters because we were still subject to the doctors and what they wanted, not having any meaningful control over our lives. That level of powerlessness makes it difficult to relax enough to be happy. I feel mostly stunned still. I haven't even written out Mercy's birth story.

I will absolutely PM you when I'm in a place to say more. I'm just starting to get a feel for how dramatically this has impacted me. I just started figuring out yesterday that I was internalizing things on the order of I wasn't smart enough and therefore earned my daughter 10 days in a hospital because I couldn't talk our ways out of it. Surveying the damage is not something I'm really looking forward to. And thank you so much for offering to talk, Jen. It's horrible that you know what this is like too, but it's comforting to know that other people who have been through this kind of nightmare feel similar ways.

[loveneverfails]

And yeah, my 5 year old talks about when Mercy was sick and in the hospital, and she was crying because she missed him. And he still talks about Nicholas, Mercy's twin and how he had been in my tummy but got sick and couldn't grow anymore. The combination of those two is just really bad.

And thank God for good husbands. Mine was excellent too, holding down the fort with our oldest 4 so that I could spend all of my time with Mercy. The day Mercy was born, when we figured out we'd probably be in NICU for a good chunk of time, Steve went back home to get the kids to our friend's house and he picked things up for me to stay at the hospital with Mercy. He packed exactly the books for me that I would have wanted to keep me occupied sitting bedside every waking moment. He went to the grocery store to get snacks for me so that I was having something to eat because the 2nd hospital had no real food there, so I just left the hospital once a day to have one real meal a day.

When I write it all out, I can look at it and say "how the hell are you still walking!?" but it doesn't feel that way. I'm stuck on "bad thing happened from people who should be trustworthy, therefore I must have done something wrong to have this happen."

[sew_crafty_girl]

We got our first laughs today! Also, today marks 1 yr with no period!

[laughingfox]

lnf andf jen, my heart goes out to you. I don't know how much good it really does, but I'm sending you loads of s.

You can't fault yourself for not knowing the very information that was deliberately withheld from you. You can't fault yourself for doing what a supposed expert said was the only way to keep your baby alive.
On top of everything you were going through, you had just given birth! Your body was on about the strongest hormonal rollercoaster it ever gets naturally, and then you had all of this added stress, panic, fear, insult, separation, and disruption to deal with on top of it.
You did everything you knew to be best according to the information you were given. Who could do more than that?
You didn't fail, you fought the whole time, and I'm amazed that you still had the strength to do that.

The fact that you were lied to deliberately (and illegally) is no fault of yours.