Gross- Part 1

Isn’t it amazing just how much can change in a year’s time?

12 months of unforeseeable happenings.

365 days of unpredictability.

525,949 minutes of new memories.

The blink of an eye.

In the beginning of 2009 I was finishing up my last quarter at the University of Washington, and by the start of 2010, I was living in Barcelona, working as an English teacher, and gallivanting around Spain with the amazing, thoughtful man who would later become my husband. I never could’ve imagined that that’s where I would be in my life when I woke up on the morning (or maybe afternoon) of January 1, 2009...

Likewise, in January of 2013 I was deeply entrenched in a bilingual elementary education teaching credentialing program (say that 10 times fast) at San Francisco State University when, a mere twelve days into the year, my future was altered with the appearance of an oh-so-faint pink line. Now, here I sit, nearly one year later, in our Berkeley apartment, contemplating and reflecting on these very significant, permanent, petrifying, miraculous changes that have happened in my life.

The obvious I’ll state first. I am now a mother. A mother of twins. I have two children. Holy shit. How in the world is that allowed to happen so quickly?!

The orca whale carries its offspring for nearly double the time of humans.

Elephants remain pregnant for nearly two years before giving birth.

Not that I am not grateful at the fact that my daughters grew very healthy within the 37.5 weeks inside of me. But, if “the wait” were proportionate to the incredible responsibility and great reverence I have for motherhood in-and-of itself, these girls would still be baking.

On a daily basis I am both mesmerized by how incredibly fortunate I am and mesmerized by the fact that I don’t topple over from deep, pure, utter exhaustion. But, that’s beside the point of this post.

Something that I was completely side-swiped by was, simply put, the physical pain of motherhood. And, not so much that, but where and when the pain struck. Let me explain.

When I was student teaching in my 5th grade classroom last year, I conducted a mini-lesson for writers’ workshop on different ways that, for the students’ final writing projects, they could brainstorm their specific, self-assigned topics and produce rich, juicy vocabulary to enhance their assignments.  As a class we created a simple graphic organizer in which we connected words that related to the topic at hand. This would be a way to explore vocabulary as well as exemplify how to delve deeper into a specific topic in a manageable, less anxiety-producing way. Anyway, being that I was about 6 months pregnant, I chose to explore the topic of “motherhood,” as it was something that my students had been fascinated with since the moment that I announced I was having the girls. I was also interested to see the varied responses they would come up. Many of the students had babies in their homes, so I knew they might have some insights I could glean (ulterior motives mixed into lessons are okay, right?). So, I wrote the word “motherhood” in the center of the graphic organizer, encircled it, drew a line connecting it to another circle, and asked for raised hands to start articulating the plethora of glorious, wondrous words they associated with motherhood.

Three hands up:

“love!”

“child!”

“happiness!”

Couple more hands:

“baby... no, babies!” (chuckles)

“birth...”

With the utterance of this term several hands shot up

“Awesome!” I thought, “we’re on a roll!”

“pain!”

“hormones!” (this was one they particularly liked)

“gross!”

“horrible!”

“torture!”

Oh. My. God. What was happening? As if my anxiety about the birth was not high enough!

At home I reflected on what my expectations were for that lesson and what, as usual, the completely different lesson I took from it was. I was anxious for the birth (at that point still planning on a vaginal delivery) and, other than the health of the girls, my main concern was that I would be entering the unknown; a world of (physical) pain that I had never experienced and very well may never experience again. The lesson made me realize that, even to 10 and 11-year-olds, pain was such a dominant factor in the birth of a human being. Perhaps I should have questioned them deeper. Did they, in fact, mean the pain of birth or the pain of motherhood itself?

To know then what I know now.

Back in 2008, Barack Obama did an interview with Rolling Stone magazine about his victorious presidential campaign. In response to the question “What have you learned about yourself during the campaign?,” Obama said, “... the older I get, the less important feeding my vanity becomes.” These words captivated me. I longed to truly, truly know what it feels like to say that and mean it.

At this moment in my life, I have never comprehended this more.

The birth of Ruby and Vera was through caesarean section. It was extremely uncomfortable. In many ways I would compare it to what I imagine an alien abduction might feel like. But, pain-wise, for me, nothing about the birth compared to what a natural, vaginal delivery has always been touted to be in my mind, nor the experiences that I have heard first-hand. The real physical pain that I experienced, and continue to experience, came after the day we officially welcomed Ru and Vee to our family. A few things in particular made me say to myself, “this, THIS must be what (mostly) mothers are talking about when they refer to the ‘stuff people just don’t talk about’ during pregnancy and early motherhood.”

Well, guess what? I want to share these painful, somewhat gruesome experiences with you. Partially to help come to terms with what is happening to my (new) body, but also to be very explicit in my opinion that these are the types of experiences that should be shared amongst expectant or new parents.

I’ll temper the shock by sharing these one post at a time.

This is the real deal, painful, gross, hormonal, torturous, horrible truth:

The first thing that happened to me (which is all I will share in this post, as it may take a bit of digesting) was what is called, “ Pruritic Urticarial Papules and Plaques of Pregnancy,” or PUPPP. When I first read these terms I thought to myself how polar opposite they seem, the first is a very clinical and precise condition that happens during pregnancy, while PUPPP conjures up visions of a cute little dog (I would say rabid bitch would be more accurate). In any case, both of these terms were misnomers. About three days after the girls were born I, understandably so, was experiencing a lot of breastfeeding anxieties which manifested themselves into high blood pressure. While being seen by the nurses I noticed an uncontrollable itch around my knees. Little bumps had formed as I scratched voraciously. I didn’t really concern myself with them.  I’m sure in another space and time I would have panicked, but all I cared about was breast feeding my daughters and lowering my blood pressure, just so we could finally leave the confines of that damn maternity ward.

We left at noon the next day.

The bumps did not go down. But, the girls were latching well, gaining weight and sleeping (relatively) well. I was content. Enough.

A couple days later the bumps were not only not going down but they were morphing from tiny, itchy red bumps to large, fluid-filled polyps (beware: photo included). Now I was getting anxious. I called the hospital and the nurse who answered told me, not exactly reassuredly, “Oh wow! I haven’t seen a case of postpartum PUPPP in all of my 20 years of working as a nurse. But, yep, that sounds like what you have.” Awesome. After researching it a bit more I found that, although uncomfortable and unsightly (2ND WARNING), there was no long-term risk to my babies (eating from me) or myself.  

I dealt with the extreme pain for several weeks. The swelling that accompanied my pregnancy was nothing compared to this. I can only describe it as fluid trying so intently to get out of me that it forced it’s way through the last fortress of my body: my skin. Working as a barista for several years of my life, I imagined my skin as a cup filled to the brim with a silky, beautiful latte (only a Seattleite would say that) poured perfectly to where the surface tension keeps it in just the the point in which the overpriced beverage can be set before its owner, slurped, and capped.

After many, many homeopathic pastes and solutions --no medication as I was petrified by anything that may interfere with breast feeding-- and many, many weeks filled with itchy, burning, oozing legs, I now have scars to show for those very painful days. Scars that illuminate the most amazing, dream-like, magical days of my entire life. Without a doubt, the very best days of my life. And they just continue to get better.

Would I like to have known that I would experience PUPPP right after giving birth? Sure! But, I know all-too-well that year-by-year, day-by-day, life is simply unpredictable. This may have been my first experience of severe physical pain in motherhood, but it is a blip on the radar of the joyous, miraculous, wondrous journey motherhood has been thus far.

It’s still gross though. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.