Learning to Cry (3 page)

When I awoke, it was the next morning. The nurse and doctor were informing us that the night had not gone well. They were now planning on starting the birthing process very soon. Jesus Christ, what was it with this place? Were we all insane? Wasn’t I just sound asleep with the thought of heading home this morning and everything being rosy? Couldn’t we just make up our frickin’ minds and decide one way or the other what was happening? Everyone seemed to be freaking out.

The next few hours were filled with induced labor, drugs, induced labor, and more drugs. Not the good kinds of drugs that help you handle the pain. Oh no. The nice drugs were not allowed -- something about my ex-wife’s platelets being too low. She was only allowed the drugs that helped induce labor, and while I have not taken these drugs myself, I can attest that they do not subdue pain at all. The exact opposite happened. With no hope of an epidural, and the searing discomfort mounting, there seemed to be no end in sight. I was beginning to feel tears well up each time she squeezed the mangled stub that used to be my hand. I could try writing with my left hand for the remainder of my life. People did learn how to do that, didn’t they? Damn, again that sounded selfish.

Labor moved along slowly until, at some point, one of those beeping monitors must have chirped differently. The nurse then called the doctor into the room to take a look. It is a little odd how few people are ever around while a woman is in the pre-stages of the birthing procedure. A nurse pops in now and then, but for the most part the parents are on their own. Now with the doctor in the room, and the nurse looking over her shoulder, it made us wonder if we were about to be propelled down another bad path.

The doctor piled some goo onto Cheryl’s stomach, so she could take a peek inside to see what that stubborn little kid was doing. She looked from the monitor to us, then to me, specifically, and, then, back to the monitor. Her expressionless face was suddenly contorted into a frown, and I felt my heart sinking a little. What the hell could possibly go wrong now? The doctor informed us that she had not felt the need for a sonogram this morning since she had done one just last night, when we were admitted. She had injected the standard dosage of Pitocin that morning to induce labor, but apparently the baby had flipped in the middle of the night and was now breech. A physical exam confirmed this, as well. There didn’t seem to be a head where a head was supposed to be.

The issue mounted – the preeclampsia, the low platelets, the baby being breech. All of this added up to a C-section, and it had to happen quickly. The baby was showing severe signs of stress, and the doctor was also worried the umbilical cord might be wrapped around her neck.

Jesus, this was too much. We just wanted a healthy baby. Why couldn’t we be one of those couples who get wheeled in through the door, complain a little about the food, and stroll out a day later holding a beautiful new addition to the family. Our parents weren’t even here. They were out of state thinking the damn little thing wasn’t due for a few weeks.

In the fleeting moments I had attempted to gather my thought patterns, the room filled with people. The doctor must have pushed that damn button again because we went from the four of us to no less than 10 white-coated hospital staff in less than a few seconds. When the doctor said now, she meant right the hell now. People were grabbing things, poking places, opening doors, and walls were moving. It was as if I were in the middle of a transformer and witnessing, firsthand, the massive intricacies that occur when the truck becomes a living, talking robot.

As quickly as everyone had entered the room, they dissipated, and the area was evacuated. It is an odd feeling standing in the middle of a hospital room by myself having just witnessed an emergency. It was just a few minutes before when I had first heard the word breech. Now I was left facing a closed door, alone in the room.  I couldn’t breathe again. I felt claustrophobic, isolated, and suddenly very, very alone in the world. At that moment, a nurse poked her head in and said, “We will let you know as soon as the procedure is complete.”

Procedure? What the hell was that? I didn’t even know what was happening. I stood there for a few minutes by myself and, then, tentatively pushed open the door. As I walked out, someone told me to wait in the recovery area. My eyes followed the masked woman’s bony right finger as she pointed down the hall.  I floated in that direction, having lost feeling in my body. My legs were working, back and forth, but they seemed to be moving by themselves. I felt like looking around and seeing if a puppet master were holding a remote control and asking him what he would make me do next.

Before I digested the entire situation, a nurse poked her head in, and told me to come with her. I was still dazed, not understanding completely, but apparently about 20 minutes had elapsed since the mass exodus. I followed her, as any good dog capable of basic bodily navigation but incapable of higher-level thinking would do. I moved forward to a row of beds and saw Cheryl laying in one with her head rolling around like one of those bobble-head dolls. She was obviously in another world, apparently having gone bye-bye thanks to whatever drugs they had injected into her veins. I was amazed that she was already in recovery – the operation must have been quick.

At that point the nurse handed me a little girl. I didn’t know what to say, and the memory of that moment still brings tears to my eyes. My heart exploded as I gazed into the face of this little human being with her red face and brightly lit cheeks. The nurse was saying something about her being fine and healthy and how everyone was amazed how big she was for being so early. I couldn’t see or hear much as my arms wrapped around this little person. I instantaneously loved her with my entire being.

Up to that point, I had held very few babies. Parents would ask if I wanted to hold their babies, and I always declined. They had always seemed too little to me. Too fragile. Something that could easily break. I was too nervous to be responsible for something somebody held so preciously in their hearts.

When I held my daughter in my arms for the first time I couldn’t help but think how perfect she was. How I would never let anything bad happen to her. I would give my life to protect her, hold her, and cuddle her. I now understood what it meant to love somebody completely and totally. You get married, you have sisters and brothers, you live your life with friends and family, but holding your child in your arms for the first time is a gut-wrenching reality check on the very definition of love.

I, personally, feel there are no words that adequately describe my feelings. I could spend years attempting to help you understand what I felt that day but I would continually fall short. I imagine most parents feel the same, but I would like to think that I held something special that moment. I held my daughter, and she was the most incredible thing I had ever laid eyes on. June 5, 1994.

The rest of our stay was a little more routine. Cheryl’s C-section kept us in the hospital a few more days.  It takes a little boosting to get the body back into the full swing of things. We had procrastinated getting the essential items, banking that we’d have more time before Melissa arrived. I ran out and bought a car seat, little shoes, little pajamas, formula, bottles, etc. We literally had very little prepared. Thank God we at least had a crib. Little did we know Melissa wouldn’t be sleeping there, or in her bedroom, for several months.

Cheryl’s parents arrived the next day. They came in the hospital room, crying and sad to have missed Melissa’s birth. I think they felt a little guilty, but how could anyone have known? We made our way home after the third day, and our driveway was filled with balloons. The house was open, waiting for its newest occupant. I still remember how windy it was that day. The balloons attempted to launch themselves, frantically waving back and forth. Their bright red and pink colors proudly announced that we had a girl in our midst.

I now wonder, in retrospect, if how you enter the world has any reflection on how you navigate life. I wonder if there has ever been a study done with the pairing of tumultuous births compared to the lives those children lead. I didn’t care about any of that at the time. My daughter was home, and I was happier than I had ever been, imagined I ever could be, or thought I ever would be again.

Father

The first few months after Melissa arrived were not quite what I had anticipated. I actually can’t say I had any idea what to expect, but the end result was not a normal routine. Not that I am complaining. Recovery time from a C-section takes a while. I guess somebody taking a knife and slicing through your stomach muscles takes a toll on your physical well being. The doctors told Cheryl to stay in bed and avoid picking up our baby during her recovery. Holding Melissa was fine, but we tried to keep Cheryl from carrying her.

This meant I was on baby duty from the time I came home from work and 24-hours-a-day on the weekend. My in-laws stayed with us for a few months, and her mother was wonderful around the house -- preparing meals, doing laundry, picking up, and watching the baby during the day. Her father was helpful, as well, but in other ways. He tended to need assistance as often as he dolled it out, though. I think it came from her mother spoiling him for several years. But he was a wonder with projects. Damn, he could fix things and was always running errands to get things we had to have at the time.

My parents made the obligatory visit, but taking care of children is not really their bailiwick. They are more the working types, and family was not always the highest priority. Most people often comment upon meeting them how they are not as affectionate as the majority of families. It doesn’t matter to whom they’re being compared. I don’t come from a family of huggers, I guess. Not sure where I got my genes, but I sure did love hugging Melissa.

I connected with her in the initial weeks and months. I got up to feed her or bring her to her mother to be bottle fed. Breastfeeding had not been an option even considered, so we were on bottle duty around the clock.

Cheryl enjoyed feeding Melissa, but in the beginning it was difficult for her to move. Looking back on those first few weeks, it was a special time for me. I have always felt that Cheryl held substantial regret surrounding her lack of involvement. She talks about missing out in the beginning and blames that period in time on why my oldest daughter and I are so connected. That connection has led us down both a good and a bad path, I should note. I wouldn’t change anything about our time together in the beginning, but I do wonder what the first few months of a child’s entrance into the world means long term.

I will not say that Melissa was perfect in the first few years of her life, but she was pretty damn close. I still remember walking in Wal-Mart one day as the three of us were shopping for some household products. There was a woman who had a little baby screaming at the top of her lungs in her cart. I stood watching, wondering how she could be such a bad parent. What was she doing so wrong that she couldn’t keep her baby appeased enough to stop the tantrum? Melissa never acted up in public.

We knew friends of ours that had stopped going to restaurants when they had their first child. Their social lives seemed to abruptly cease. We, on the other hand, took Melissa with us everywhere. At the time she was born they had just come out with the newest car seat that would sit directly into a little stroller frame. You just had to unbuckle the seat from the car, drop it in the frame, and walk away. Melissa loved not having to be moved, and her seat was so comfortable. She would sit for hours at a restaurant, looking around, taking in the surroundings.

People would constantly come over and tell us what a good baby we had. She seemed to never act up for any lengthy period. When she began crawling and walking, we had a few episodes that were relatively mild. She drew on a wall with some magic markers one day. We explained to her this was wrong and she, after the third time, finally ended up in trouble. She didn’t do it after that. She was just testing the boundaries which, again, seemed natural.

She did have an issue with stairs, though. We had a flight of stairs in our house and a landing two steps up from the bottom. She tumbled down the stairs at least three times. We would hear this loud thumping sound as she flopped from one stair to the next, bouncing back and forth between the railing and the wall. The slow motion affect remained the same each time as both Cheryl and I would jump up, only to reach the designated landing spot as Melissa came to rest. There was always that delayed reaction as she rocked to a stopping point before she began wailing at the top of her lungs.

I have to give her that one, though. I assume if I rolled down a flight of stairs I might be a little worse for wear, as well. Damn, at my age, I am not even sure I would get up and start walking ever again. My bones are brittle for an old man, and I am not even that old, yet. I might joke about 43 being old, but in reality I still hope to have a lot of life yet, even if it is a life of misery. At the time Melissa was born I was only 27. It seems so young now to think I had a child then. Who would have ever thought?

Once, while sitting at the kitchen table, I remember seeing water begin to flow in a slow trickle form our ceiling fan. It built up momentum and turned into a steady flowing stream within seconds. I rushed upstairs to find Melissa standing over the toilet with two inches of water engulfing her feet, consuming the bathroom floor. Apparently, she had stuffed a full roll of toilet paper into the toilet to see what might happen. As luck would have it, the stopper was also broken, so the water simply kept running.

Despite the water damage, I couldn’t muster the energy for ripping out the drywall on the ceiling and fixing it the right way. I dabbed drywall mud on it periodically, attempting to patch the hole the accident caused, but it was so soft and spongy it never set correctly. When we sold the house that was the first thing people asked about. I told the story over and over again to my realtor, the buyer’s realtor, family members, friends, etc. It became quite the topic of discussion because it was so noticeable. I guess I should have taken the time to fix it, but it always seemed like such a cute reminder of “the flooding incident.” My guess is most families have a similar story.

That same ceiling fan was also the nucleus of my anxiety. Like most fathers, I enjoyed throwing Melissa up in the air and catching her in my arms. It was a game we used to play, and she loved it from the first time she could hold her head up. One time I was playing with her, she was giggling, and we were all consumed with each other. I picked her up, tossed her in the air, forgetting where I stood. Her head flew right in the middle of the ceiling fan, missing it by less than an inch. My heart jumped into my throat, and it was everything I could do not to panic. From that point on I was extremely careful to look up before we ever played the game again.

The most exciting event in Melissa’s first three years came right before she had her third birthday. Her little sister was born on March 4, 1997. All I can say about Amelia’s birth was how completely standard the entire process was. For all the emotional upheaval we went through with Melissa, Amelia was the exact opposite. Vaginal births after C-sections were not a common occurrence, but our doctor at the time saw no reason not to try it. Medical opinion still varies on this, but Cheryl was excited at the thought of having a vaginal birth, so we went for it. . Amelia went full term, came in on time with her due date, didn’t cause any issues, and we were in and out of the hospital with no bumps or bruises.

The second child is an interesting concept. It doesn’t hold the uncertainty the first child does. You have a little experience under your belt, and you are not surprised quite as often. The biggest difference with Amelia was discovering we were not the perfect parents we once thought we were. The lady in Wal-Mart a couple of years back quickly became our role model. As easy as Amelia was coming into this world, she proved difficult from day one. She cried and screamed, couldn’t decide whether she wanted to be held and so on and so on.

Our calm days at the restaurants were a thing of the past, and we now fully understood what it meant to be tied down to the house. Not that we were complaining, mind you. It was incredible to have another girl in our quickly growing family. No matter how much I complained about Amelia in the beginning, she was still a girl. Having girls was so much easier than taking care of a boy. Our friends would bring boys over to our house, and I just didn’t get it. Are all boys insanely energetic?

How the hell can you let your sons run, jump, throw, move non-stop? Do boys just not like coloring? Do they not enjoy sitting and playing dolls? What happened to the game of serving tea and biscuits? My daughters might not be perfect, but they are still girls and, as such, were so much calmer to have around the house. It was amazing. Everyone at the time gave me the same warning. Those experienced parents who had lasted longer than a few years and knew the full spectrum of what I had in store all said the same thing. Boys might be more difficult in the beginning, but girls will make you pay when they get older. Just wait.

Damn, if I would only have listened I might have been a little more prepared.

Within 18 months of Amelia’s birth, we decided to uproot our blossoming family and head out to California. My sister-in-law lived there, and we fell in love with the area during our many vacations there.  Cheryl had gotten a job, and they had offered to pay the moving expenses. Surprisingly, my company at the time had decided to transfer me to the Bay Area office, as well. It was all working out perfectly. Cheryl left early for California and found us a little townhouse to rent. We easily sold our house in Illinois, and I gathered up the girls and our cat and headed to the airport.

 I now wonder if my trip to the West Coast was any indication of what our new life had in store. I had a friend drop me off. With a 4-year-old, a 1-year-old, a cat and tons of luggage, I attempted to navigate my way to our boarding gate. I remember thinking how lucky I was to have made it inside before a big storm hit. . I didn’t think the plane could be delayed. We sat on the floor for hours as the airline announced repeated delays until finally they canceled the flight altogether.

I, then, had to stand in line, get the cat from storage, and get transported to our hotel for the evening. Amelia ran around the hotel lobby as we checked in, wearing a diaper that weighed more than she did. It was so saturated that liquid was seeping out all over her clothes. Picking her up, with bodily discharge oozing from all sides of her bottom, gave the illusion that I’d been caught in the rainstorm.  I hadn’t brought enough diapers in the bag to get me through eight hours of waiting time.

After we got in the room, found everyone a change of clothes and new diapers, we fell asleep quickly. We headed out early the next morning and thank God, United had actually bumped us up to first class. I still wish I could thank the airline employee who helped us the night before. I think she must have seen the tears welling up as I attempted to coral my children and animals and carry everything all at the same time. Thank God I was so young. I am not sure I could now handle that stress at my age.

We moved into our tiny little townhouse and spent weekends and evenings looking around for a home to buy. As always, Melissa and I watched movies together, with Anaconda being one of my favorites. Despite warnings, I allowed Melissa to watch scary movies with me, letting her judge what she could handle and what was too much. In the middle of Anaconda, right after the snake ate a man whole, she turned to me and said, “Daddy, this movie might be a little much for me.” With that, she got up from the couch and headed upstairs. Who was this little girl?

We found a house over on the coast in the little town of El Granada within a few short months. It was just up the road from Half Moon Bay where my sister-in-law lived with her family. The house was an interesting design as most houses are in the Bay Area. It is a far cry from the planned subdivisions built all over the corn fields surrounding Chicago. People build houses on any piece of land they can find and figure out a way to make the house fit. Stairs are plentiful, so you are forced to get used to them.  The house was on the side of a hill and had no real yard but it did have a lower level that was partially finished. To the kids’ amusement, there was a huge stage built right in.

If there is anything girls enjoy doing, it is performing. The stage was a big selling point, and even though the house had only three bedrooms, it was still about 2,200 square feet. It fit us perfectly. At the time we purchased the house, the plan was to live there until we retired and, then, move on.  The stairs alone would kill an old man, and with my history, it wouldn’t take me long to feel the pain from my military days. I was in the Army National Guard for several years, strolling up and down hills carrying an 80-pound back pack. It takes its toll.

As the next few years passed, I noticed friction growing between Cheryl and me that escalated beyond our normal everyday routine. We had never been a calm household due to her forceful demeanor and my refusal to compromise. It was not an easy mix. I still don’t know whether we passed this along to our daughters, but Melissa and Amelia never did bond in quite the way I had imagined sisters would. There were more confrontational episodes than I would have hoped. On a day-to-day basis, they were constantly competing versus lending a helping hand.

With both of us getting older, the discussion of a third child came into play, and before you knew it we were pregnant again. Seeing as how our house was not conveniently set up for a five-member family we looked around and discovered an opportunity only a few blocks away that was within our price range. The kids were willing to make the jump because it had one of the few in-ground swimming pools in the area. What kid doesn’t like to swim?

Melissa was still a little reluctant, even with the promise of swimming pool birthday parties. In retrospect, that should have thrown up a red flag. I now realize that stability for her is paramount. She has an appearance of outward strength, but inwardly she is more vulnerable than you might imagine. As with most kids, she really didn’t have a choice, and on Nov. 5 we moved into our new house, and on Nov. 8, Cassandra was born. Daughter number three. I was either going to be the best taken care of father in the world or my life would be more tumultuous than I could ever possibly imagine. I wondered which would be the case.