Hey Jude, Don't Make It Bad
- Vanessa Walker
- Jul 25, 2021
- 10 min read
Content warning—this post will discuss birth trauma and NICU trauma
Let me make one thing clear--pregnancy is like a glimpse of Purgatory for me. It's this seemingly endless series of one torture after another on top of questioning all of my life choices. I mean getting to that point was fun but everything else is awful. I've never been one of those happy glowing pregnant people either. I spent my first trimester with Aine throwing up every day at 4 o'clock sharp. Somehow I managed to do yoga nearly every day and I worked as a substitute teacher. During that pregnancy, I worried about the usual things that plague all first-time moms: breastfeeding, sleep, was I gaining too much weight, would I be a good mother? I distinctly remember thinking I was too short to be a mom. I’m 5’0”, and I thought there was no way I was tall enough to hold my baby girl.
My labor was far from perfect. My water broke just as Chris was getting ready for work. I turned over to pet my cat and I knew it was happening. I had been in early labor for three days and I told Chris to get me to the hospital. I labored a grand total of eighteen hours (and pushed for four) before we finally decided on forceps. At the time I felt like I was in competition with a friend (who was also pregnant) and I didn’t want a c-section. I realized years later that had I not asked for forceps, something could have gone horribly wrong with Aine.
After a scare with her blood sugar, someone put Aine in my arms and that was it. I was in love. That’s one thing no one tells you about becoming a mother—you fall in love with your children. To this day I’m in love with my beautiful six-year-old with big hazel eyes and wavy brown hair.
Postpartum was another story. I realized I had postpartum depression (aside from my normal depression) when I felt like the smiles I gave Aine were skin deep. Even with my mom’s help, I felt overwhelmed with breastfeeding, pumping, and the millions of other things I had to do. No one told me about the infamous fourth trimester or the fact that newborns basically need to breastfeed all the time. My house was a mess; my sex drive was nonexistent; my clothes didn’t fit; the weight wasn’t coming off. All of these things told me that I was a failure.
I even lost my then-best friend. The reason? I could breastfeed and she couldn’t. One day she posted that piercing a baby’s ears (which is a big deal in Mexican culture) was child abuse. I felt alone but made friends with moms from Kerrville Folk Fest who nurtured and comforted me in person and online. Plus, there was always Trish. Trish became my lifeline and we became the new moms with babies at the Bernie Sanders meetings.
I'm not sure when I decided that I never wanted to get pregnant again. It may have started after Chris said he felt too old to go through it again. I also think it may have had to do that it broke my heart to send Aine to daycare when I had to go back to work in August of 2016. I told my students that they were my collective second child and I was incredibly happy with that decision.
Fast-forward to when Aine was nearly four years old. One day she stopped asking for a puppy and started asking for something more life-changing--a baby sister. At first, I said, "No, absolutely not!" I wasn't going to go through another difficult pregnancy again and I had JUST STOPPED BREASTFEEDING. I breastfed for three years and I wasn't ready to give up my bodily autonomy again. Secretly, I didn't want to have a baby and then have to leave them in daycare while I went back to work teaching other people's kids. I had so much guilt about my lack of time with Aine that I didn't want to go through it again. There were a million reasons for me to dig my heels in and say no, but seeing all the pregnant women and babies at my parish made me envious. I didn't want to be one of those Mexican Catholic moms with nine kids and a gigantic SUV, but I wanted just one more baby. One more little baby to breastfeed and snuggle while my first baby was growing up way too fast.
It was October 28, 2018, when we decided that we would try to have another baby. Chris and I left Aine with my mom for a few days and we had three hours before we got home to Austin. We passed the time by thinking of baby names. Being good Catholics, we had to make sure each child had a saint name. We went through girl names first (assuming that it was going to be a girl because it was Chris's age) and eventually settled on Molly Rose. Boy's names were more difficult. After teaching for two years and having several bad relationships (platonic and not), I knew names that I would absolutely not want to name boys:
Nicholas
Ethan
Alexander
Elijah
James
Charlie
Jeffrey
Stewart
Ken (and all its permutations)
Bradley
Jeremy
Skyler
Michael
The list goes on and also included a variety of serial killer names as well as the names of his first two sons which was a bummer because I love the name "Augustine." Somewhere I have the notebook where I wrote down the names we considered. Somehow Simon came up. I liked Simon; it was delightfully English and worked well with our daughter's VERY Gaelic name. The middle name was more difficult. We went through several saint names, but none really fit with Simon. Eventually, we thought of Beckett (as in St. Thomas A Beckett) which sounded the most okay. I took a few minutes to think and then it hit me "Simon Jude." It had a great ring to it and as an added bonus, one my my favorite songs was "Hey Jude." Before we decided, we thought we'd look up the Saint of the Day and it felt like a sign from God:
OCTOBER 28--The Feasts of Saints Simon the Zealot and Saint Jude.
I'm not shy about the fact that I believe in fate and the fact that God is incredibly interested in my life, so this felt like a sign. I wanted to wait until after my 30th birthday party and our trip to New Orleans to stop using NFP (my conception journey is a different story for a different day), but I was determined to have a child.
There's never a good time to have a child and a pandemic may be the worst time. Then I lost Harry on May 24, 2020, and his funeral was May 27. That weekend I went on an absolute bender but had to sober up by Sunday. I was reading from the Old Testament at Mass and my knees buckled when I said "Neither Greek nor Jew." I got back to my pew and was hyperventilating in my mask. When I bolted to the bathroom to vomit, I decided that it was grief that had made me vomit. In hindsight, I know that was the moment when I was officially pregnant. It was one week to the day that Harry died by suicide and I had my first pregnancy symptoms. I don't believe in reincarnation, but I do think that our spirits can pass each other in the hallway between life and death.
I spent the next three days vomiting around four o'clock and peeing between every single class. With Aine, the symptoms seemed to come on gradually and I was five days late before I tested. This time around I was two days late and knew something was up. After my last class on that Wednesday, I loaded Aine in the car and we headed to Target. My friend Kim told me it was better to know sooner rather than later and it was all the validation I needed. Target was still at limited capacity then, so Aine and I waited in the heat before I ran to the appropriate aisle and took the test.
There was no waiting involved. Almost instantly I saw the familiar lines appear and I called Chris immediately. I’m impulsive about good news and I had completely forgotten that Aine was there in the bathroom with me. By pure coincidence, Harry’s mom received the bereavement card I sent her and texted me right as I was processing the news. I feel like our contact with one another could have ended right there, but I get the urge to tell her “You’re never going to believe this” Right as I sent her the photo. Again, I don’t believe it was a coincidence that I found out a week to the day after I went to Harry’s funeral. This child came into my life during a pandemic and the loss of a person who was my Kindred spirit and I felt that I couldn’t lose this baby. In addition to praying for a healthy baby, I prayed to God to give me a son. I wanted a little dark-haired boy, not to replace the child I lost, but to remember the deep connection between the two.
Everything happened so quickly after that. By August, we bought a home in Georgetown and I left my job to be a full-time mother. I was sick beyond all belief and knew that something was wrong. First came nearly constant fainting spells. I taught Aine to call Chris and 911 if I fainted and hit my head. I KNEW THIS WASN’T NORMAL.
I'm no stranger to the fact that women and People Assigned Female at Birth (AFAB) have their pain taken less seriously by medical professionals. I've had firsthand experience with this both with my chronic knee pain and hemorrhagic ovarian cysts. Hell, I felt it when Wanda Sykes told John Oliver that after a double-mastectomy she was sent home with "Ibu-mother-fuckin-profen". I wasn't familiar with people telling me that I was too early in my pregnancy to be experiencing symptoms. Then came spotting at 22 weeks and false labor at 32.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/04/210406164124.htm
I've always been a fairly active person, but I found myself winded after unpacking one or two boxes or spending five minutes in the heat. On one hand, my women and AFAB friends and family told me to rest but on the other hand, came the societal pressure to have a clean house and be up and active on top of homeschooling my then five-year-old. Then came the nerve pain. It started with what felt like sciatica and then one Friday night I was screaming in pain because I couldn't move. It felt like my legs were on fire and I couldn't convey the level of pain to my doctor. I couldn't help paint the nursery or build the crib because I was constantly exhausted. To the untrained eye, I was lazy and doing nothing all day. Even now it hurts to think that I was merely an observer in my family because of my pain and fatigue. That doesn't even take into consideration the fact that all of the normal pregnancy things were closed because of COVID. There were no childbirth classes, prenatal yoga, hospital tours, or breastfeeding refreshers. There was even talk that I would have to give birth alone if the virus couldn't be contained. When the anxiety got too bad, I'd curl up in bed while Sadie laid on my belly and purred.
In the midst of all of the madness came the beautiful moments, like the day I got my blood test results and found out (that despite hoping for a little sister) Aine would be getting a little brother. She was pissed, but I felt that my prayers had been answered. I was even more emphatic that I had to do everything to take care of myself and this little boy, despite the optics. On one side it was "YOU NEED REST" and on the other was "YOU'RE NOT DOING ENOUGH." I kept telling myself that I had Iost one boy and I didn't want to lose another one. I've never conflated Jude with Harry, but the sentiment was there.
Then came Halloween.
Then Thanksgiving with blistering migraines
My birthday came with a drive-by baby shower. I knew something was wrong on the 20th...I was nauseous and dizzy. When I came home to see if my blood pressure was low, I saw it was high. I laid down for a bit but felt guilty about resting when there was nothing wrong with me. There was so much to do--so much to clean. Christmas was five days away but I needed to do more, more, and more. I kept telling anyone who would listen that Jude would be coming sooner than his induction date.
Soon it was Aine's birthday and then Chris's. Aine and I made a lemon meringue pie for Chris's birthday and I joked that it would be a really bad day to go into labor...Little did I know that at that moment, Jude was preparing to make his grand entrance.
Aine and I read in my bed that night and I could barely string a sentence together. Sadie curled up on my belly and purred at me as if she was telling me it would be okay. I started timing my contractions and they were three minutes apart so I called the doctor. Chris didn't think it was time yet, but Sadie did. I did my best not to scare Aine, but if you've been through labor, you know that you can only control your screaming so much. I think I may have even screamed at the charge nurse who told me to go to the hospital. I thought I was having a panic attack until a blistering headache began and I began to projectile vomit. It was freezing outside, but I hung my head out of the window and vomited for half an hour.
That's when everything gets fuzzy for me. I was in triage when my doctor told me that not only was I in labor but that it was preeclampsia. For those of you who aren't versed in the joys of preeclampsia, it's more than just high blood pressure. According to the Preeclampsia Foundation:
Preeclampsia can cause your blood pressure to rise and put you at risk of brain injury. It can impair kidney and liver function, and cause blood clotting problems, pulmonary edema (fluid on the lungs), seizures and, in severe forms or left untreated, maternal and infant death.
If they didn't get Jude out soon, my blood pressure could get so high that I could have a stroke or a seizure. My head was killing me and I couldn't stop vomiting, but I couldn't help but think like a mother. "Give me a c-section," I told my doctor. I didn't care that I would be alone in the operating room I just needed my baby to come out. If something happened to me I would leave two children motherless and I couldn't take the chance. Sometime after 11 PM, I was wheeled into the OR holding my nurse's hand. "I'll be here the whole time," She told me.
C-sections are completely surreal. I've had surgery before, but I've never been awake for it. I couldn't feel the incision, but I felt pulling and tugging. "Saint Oscar Romero, St. Elizabeth, St. Jude pray for me." Then at 11:39, I heard his voice for the first time. At that moment I didn't know about the NICU or the helmet--all I cared about was holding my boy.
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