In an effort to survive the day…

I took the littles to the local fast food place for lunch.  They were well behaved, ate and drank and were generally fun to be around.  A few of the ‘big kids’ they know had come to eat too…so they were lavished with HI MIDSIZED BOY!  And HI WEE GIRLIE! many times.  Biggest boy was at his piano lesson… have I mentioned I LOVE his music teacher yet?

I’m making dough for pizza tonight.  Seeing as the husband is going out with 15 students and five parents… then they are going to the Opera.  Which means… he won’t be home until well after midnight.  Surviving the day is the goal!

yeah.

And before anyone asks how I manage when I send the Husband away in the summer to camp.  It is different.  VERY different.  No school, homework, reading, meetings etc… to juggle like today.  The summer is walking to the playground and letting them run wild until the humidex hits 40 and we retreat to the house to do crafts.  The in-laws take biggest boy for a little vacation time and this year they will take midsized boy too. No, not at the same time… they are not quite totally INSANE!  This is all up to change on a moments notice too.  The time without husband in the summer is actually quite enjoyable, once everyone is asleep at night. 

Came home from lunch and saw some sad news on my tag surfer, had a good cry and ranted a bit.  All I can say in ‘bloody freaking technology SUCKS!!!!!!’.  Sigh.   Head on over to give Sara some love and encouragement.  I know it would have been so much easier for me had I discovered vbac blogs during my own journeys with my last two children.  I’ll venture to guess that she could use some mamas who have been there and done that to give her morale a boost.  I’ll also impart my own mantra to clients and friends.  You do the best thing for you and your family… at the time, with what you have!  Even if it means some tears are spilled.

BUT… don’t give her a hug… she gets squiggy about strangers touching her wink wink!

Off to clean up the kitchen.  yes, going to  actually do that this afternoon!

Tag surfing…

Any one else on wordpress had fun with that one?

I’ve found Sara… who is not in labour quite yet, but should be in the next five to seven weeks!  waves hello!!!!!

Quite a few nice people are gracing my blogroll from tag surfing… awesome people.

Today the first tag up had me in tears before I could get to the actual post.   Another perfectly planned cesarean gone wrong.   Cripes.  How many mothers are going to die before they figure out this ‘do no harm’ thing should be taken seriously?  I’m not going to link to it.  I don’t know the whole story only that this was the her second child and she was in her 20’s… loss for words at that thought.  Just that a family in Ontario has been wrenched apart and are grieving, if you are the praying type.  Perhaps send one out there for them.   I’m sure at this point they need all the comfort they can get.

:-(

Went to the Costco this evening… to get juice boxes (fruit and veggie ones hidden in wonderful tastes) for biggest boys ‘lunch at school’ days.  Ended up with flour and an Easter present for wee girlie, as we don’t do all kinds of chocolate and candy for holidays. Just don’t let me loose in a Costco… okay?!

Any how.  I saw a mom ahead with a beautiful little girl and a car seat in her cart.  She had that look, more than just the ‘new mom tired’*.  I decided I’d try and perk up her evening by saying what beautiful children she had.  Shocked to find myself facing a friend of my husband.   I’d talked to her a few months ago, when she informed she was having an erc (elective repeat cesarean) because her first birth had ended that way.  I didn’t jump down her throat about anything other than perhaps thinking of having another doctor do the surgery, if her present physician was so afraid of his/her suturing job on her first cesarean.  She honestly hadn’t thought of it that way, she even conceded that letting herself have a bit of labour before heading in for the surgery was something she had read about being good for babe.  All I wanted to say was that if he/she was so scared of her rupturing, perhaps he/she should not be doing her second surgery.  I knew she wanted at least three children.  The more sections you have, the higher the risk of mom and babe having life threatening complications… not to mention the secondary infertility that can crop up.

I did not ask.  I chatted with her daughter and ooohed over wee babe.  She started to cry.  I gave her a hug and said that it does get easier… two is a lot of work!

It wasn’t the children.

She won’t be able to have any more children.  ‘They took my uterus!’
At that point my heart stopped.  Everything went silent.  My world just ended.

We sat in a corner of the food kiosk area… and I fed her daughter ice cream as she told me about her last birth.  It was terrifying.  It was scary.  It was absolutely horrific.  I just sat and listened.  I think I was in shock.  What killed me was this…

I wished I’d called and asked you some more about vbac.   Maybe I’d still be able to have another baby.  I never saw wee babe for five days.  melts in to tears…

I told her that may not have been the case, the chances of something happening (that .7%) during a vbac, can and are just as scary.  I’d witnessed it with my own eyes.  I was lucky to see non-catastrophic complications.  But still…

We had a good long talk.  We will do it again soon.  For as much as I rant and rave about women not taking control of their pregnancies/births, I also will not ignore or belittle the trauma that others have suffered in their own journeys.  She chose a path, that may have ended her reproductive life… and that alone makes me weep for her and her family.  I did impart a bit of lingo for her.  I told her about a midwife in New Zealand who had heard the phrase gbac.  Giving birth after cesarean.  I liked that.  I thought that was very appropriate for this mama, because for all the pain and trauma she did give birth after her cesarean… and babe was ovary twinging gorgeous!

*I’ve come to notice the shuffled hunched look most post birth cesarean mamas have.  I sadly can almost tell from photo albums too… I see it with biggest boys infancy photos.  It makes me sad.  I’ve been there.