Tell us about an event that changed your life forever.
Submitted by Miss Scotch.
Well, most events do, really. When you get down to it, even the tiniest event pushes you inexorably on to one of two or more forks in the road, and you can't ever really go back. But I assume the author of this question does not want to know that I have just recently decided to drink a glass of water instead of another cup of tea, so I'll try to find something more illuminating.
There have been several, I suppose, of the earth-shattering sorts of events:
- Going to the stupid college in Texas.
- The arrest.
- The first marriage (and then divorce).
- The move to Japan.
- Meeting my current husband.
- The miscarriage.
- The birth of my son.
The highlighted ones have already been covered elsewhere. The decision to go to the stupid college in Texas changed my life significantly but was not particularly interesting in and of itself. I suppose the only interesting thing about that decision is that I conspicuously wanted to stop being poor. I had started to hate being poor, and so I chose to make myself stand out as being extra, extra conspicuously poor by going (on scholarship) to a very rich college. Bloody hell, I was miserable there. No offense to my teachers, some of whom were really excellent (Dan Swensen, I salute you!).
Ah, the arrest. That was also in Texas, because Texas sucks. Except Austin. Austin is like a little piece of Canada, if Canada was hot and humid, in the middle of Macholand. I hate Texas. Anyway, the arrest. Let's make a long story short: I got set up by a narc (narcs, incidentally, have a special circle of hell reserved just for them, and it resembles Texas a great deal). If it wasn't a drug case, it would have been a pretty clear case of entrapment. But, um, in Texas, there are no such things as civil rights, so "entrapment" doesn't matter. My crime: I drove to San Antonio (an hour away) to pick up a package for a friend of a friend (who had, unbeknownst to my friend, been busted a short time ago and turned narc). The package had, according to the narc on the night of the delivery, an ounce-and-a-half of marijuana in it; it was supposed to have, according to the narc, two ounces, and he accused me of stealing some of it. I had not stolen any of it. I was more partial, truth to be told, to strong hallucinogenics--Mary Jane can suck it. Anyway, he later kept calling me and asking me to hook him up with some acid and whatnot, but I'm not quite that stupid. Not quite. So, I got arrested for "delivery of marijuana" (in the amount of one ounce--?? I think I know what happened to the other half-ounce, and the Texas coppers must have been curious why it took $200 to buy an ounce of MJ). That, my friends, is a third-degree felony. And, thus, my lifelong dream of being the female John Marshall was, in one fell swoop, denied. Ah, sweet justice. Because you know you would never want someone like me on the Supreme Court. We felons will just let all hell break loose. Whatever. The upside: I lost my scholarship and had to find a different university, one that ended up suiting me a lot better. I also wrote about the narc here.
The first marriage: This is going to sound crazy, but I can hardly remember it. It's like I left him and just washed my hands of it, as if it had never happened. It did, of course, and it has left me with a paranoia of men who like jazz just a little too much. The divorce, of course, left me free for moving to Japan, though.
Moving to Japan was only half my idea. I was in a bad situation. I had lost the motivation to finish my thesis. I had no money--I mean, really, none. I was living in my car and trying to finish my MA, but I just didn't care anymore, and anyway, it's hard to care when you're freezing your ass off in a Festiva every night. There was Akifumi in Japan, but he still had his girlfriend. I was getting more and more interested in Japan and my Japanese students, and I had several good friends living in Japan (all former students). But the main thing was that I just had no good future here in the States. The hole was too big to get out of here, especially because my only job was working as a cook/dishwasher/all-around slave in a Vietnamese restaurant, run by an affable-yet-dictatorial Chinese lady (she had been married to a Vietnamese man, who died at some point, and she made the best Vietnamese food I have yet tasted--and I've been to Vietnam). I didn't make much money at all, not nearly enough to pull myself out of my hole. So, a friend started encouraging me to go to Japan. Finally I applied for some jobs on Ohayo Sensei, found one in a dream location, right at the foot of Mt. Fuji (oh, Fujisan! How I miss you! Everyday I long for you!), and put in my two weeks at the Vietnamese place. I missed the Chinese-Vietnamese family a lot, but I finally had some money and a sense of tangible freedom. I have written more about my first year here and here. Perhaps I will write more about that sense of freedom later on.
The birth of my son. That's really the one, isn't it? The earth-shattering one. I look back on my life before that, and I barely even recognize it anymore. It didn't just change the course of my life; it changed me, fundamentally.
The birth itself was memorable for being so awful and yet so wonderful. Rarely have I been happier to suffer so much. I don't mean the kind of suffering you're thinking of. I didn't actually find labor all that bad....except for the fucking baby monitors. Let me first say that, of course, the health and wellbeing of my child was first and foremost in my mind at all times. Let me also add that I had studied childbirth the way I study everything in my life: Methodically. I had read enough to know that I wanted no drugs if it could be helped, that I wanted to be in control of the situation (actually, your body is in control, but I wanted to be able to consciously respond to my body), and I did all this yoga to help prepare me for it. I knew the force of gravity could help. I knew how to change positions to aid in the labor. Blah blah blah.
If you get squeamish about parts of girly anatomy, stop reading now. Words like "cervix" appear below.
What you know and what you want is NOTHING in the face of being told by a doctor and a hospital staff that X is what you must do for your child. NOTHING.
It started badly. I was overdue by a day or so, and they palpated me and thought my son was about 8 pounds or a little more (he was 8 pounds 9 ounces at birth, so they were right). They thought that was big enough. My cervix was dilated 2 cm. They wanted to induce labor.
I didn't want that at all. I figured, "Hey, 2 cm! He'll come when he's ready." But they were pretty adamant, and I felt overwhelmed. So, I went into the hospital. I had a midwife and an attending OB/GYN. I entered the hospital in the evening and things were alright. They gave me the crap to induce the labor and told me I probably wouldn't get a lot of contractions, so I could sleep. Sounded good.
Turns out the contractions weren't the problem. The baby monitors were. Because they were inducing, they needed to monitor his heartbeat, so they hooked me up to this machine. Basically, this machine read his pulse tones via a strap around my middle. But it turned out he was in an odd position, so they couldn't get the readings easily. I had to get in this weird, supine, semi-fetal position for the readings to show up on the strip. They said they would only do it for 20 minutes every 4 hours or so. Completely untrue. They left me like that for hours, and I had no idea if it was OK to turn over or go pee or anything. I had no serious contractions, and yet it was the most uncomfortable night of my life. My husband slept like a rock on the daybed next to me. I got not a wink. Not a wink.
Next morning: Doctor and midwife came in, making a lot of concerned shuffling. They thought I look tired. Doctor commented that it's not good to be tired already, so early in the game. I agreed. They strapped me up to the monitors again and left me. Again.
Now, if you've ever been in a lot of pain, you might know that changing position can be quite helpful. For some types of pain, walking around is soothing. I found that walking around was extremely helpful in easing the discomfort of the contractions, yet I was denied this simple thing for about 80% of my labor. Finally, my mom called them in and told them they just had to stop it.
By that time, though, the game was already up. I had had no sleep. I had been forced to lie in increasingly uncomfortable positions for long, long hours. I had no relief from the pain of the contractions, and they were growing insistent. I was becoming distraught. Because they wouldn't let me up out of bed, gravity could not help and my yoga couldn't help either; the baby was refusing to descend. The midwife said, "Well, you're 10 cm dilated, but the baby's still in Denver." I was in no mood for her clever jokes. I wanted to hit all of them, run away from the hospital, walk around, breathe, and let gravity and my body do what they were supposed to do. And yet I could not.
Finally, after 36 hours of basically being in bed (since the time they induced) and no sleep and not even a bit of comfort, with contractions coming strong and fast (and still unable to change position!), they gave me some...I don't know...heroin or something. Felt like heroin. Made me seriously dopey and completely out of touch with and out of control of my body. Sure, I didn't hurt anymore, but I was just more tired and equally unable to move around. And I thought I was failing. I was failing my child. I didn't want him to come into the world high on heroin! That wasn't how it was supposed to go at all. Although, I guess if you're going to bring a child into this world, might as well get him started on the H right away.
In the end, of course, they had to do a C-section. See, after all the miracles of modern medicine they had already used on me, birth still could not occur. My baby was still in Denver and refusing to head south. I was so out of it from lack of sleep and heroin (yes, I know it wasn't heroin, but just let me tell it) and pain and rampaging hormones, that I couldn't have made an informed decision at that point. Not at all.
But at least it was promising an end to the torture. The chance to someday get out of bed was dangled in front of me, and I grabbed at it.
An hour or so later, I had a stunning (and loud!) baby boy and a severe case of hypothermia. They kept bringing the warmed blankets, and I kept shivering. And so for my entire first night of motherhood, I again could not sleep, because I was either shivering too hard or being interrupted just as I dozed off to have my blood pressure and temp checked yet again. The second night I was in the hospital, I again could not sleep because I was in severe pain and, again, being constantly interrupted by helpful nurses. The third night, I got minimal sleep because the baby, my gorgeous son, decided to scream for the duration.
That was probably because he was slowly dehydrating to death. This hospital was populated by pro-breastfeeding nurses, which is nice. I sincerely wanted to breastfeed, yet my son did not. He made his anti-breastfeeding opinions clear from day 1. I would hold him to my breast, and he would stiffen like an 8-pound torpedo, his lips hard and metallic. They would not latch. The breastfeeding mentor or whatever the hell she was called--who had mildewy breath, by the way--would poke and prod at my breasts and put my nipple between his torpedo lips, and yet he would not suck.
The pediatrician came in daily, and on the third day, he said: Your son is dying from dehydration. He has to get some milk. He has lost too much weight; he is jaundiced. I will talk to the nurses. This boy needs some formula. (He also said that I should not feel bad about it, that some kids just don't breastfeed. Tell that to the tyrannical nurses!)
The fucking insane nurses wanted me to feed him, my starving boy, formula from a syringe (sans needle) to prevent the dreaded "nipple confusion." I wanted to hit them very hard. Do you know how long it takes to get 2 ounces of formula into a starving, crying baby from a syringe? Hours. Hours that the two of you could be sleeping if someone would just wise up and give you a bottle. But I did it. And then I tried pumping to stimulate lactation. I fed him the little drips and drops of milk I pumped, also from a syringe.
I got marked as a potential candidate for post-partum depression because a nurse walked in after one feeding session and found me sobbing. I was sobbing because my son was very ill. I was sobbing because I was in a great deal of pain and more tired than I had ever thought possible. I was sobbing because my hormones were still awry. I was sobbing because, more than anything, I felt like I was failing him over and over again in my basic inability to feed him. He needed so little, and I was not doing a good job at giving him the one thing he needed most right then. I was not depressed. I was tired and frustrated and terrified.
Finally, he rebounded, and we were allowed out of our prison. I have never been so happy as the day I finally left the hospital with my son, healthy and sound. He never did take to the breast well, and shortly after we left the hospital, I was found to have a rather serious infection. I kept telling everyone I was infected, and they didn't believe me because the outer incision looked fine. Never mind that I was draining gallons of fluid from it. Someone did, at last, think to check the internal incision and found a thriving colony of intelligent life forms there, of at least two different species. I was put on massive antibiotics. I could no longer breastfeed. (And one of the most angering moments of my maternal career was when a woman I had just met asked me, "Why didn't you pump it and dump it out all that time? Then maybe he could have breastfed again." Um, because, I was very ill. I needed to sleep at some point, and already most of my day was taken up with feeding him. If I had pumped as well, my day would have been pretty much a never-ending saga of dairy production.) He did actually breastfeed a little more once the antibiotics were out of my system; once he was getting enough nutrition and fluids elsewhere, he relaxed about breastfeeding substantially. But my son came out hungry, and he is now tall and strong and robustly healthy.
Mmmm. My son. That certainly did change my life. All for the better.
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