Three months later, I’m ready, and I have time to write a bit about giving birth and what I’ve learned from being a mom so far. Not everything in this blog post will be easy to read over lunch for everyone - there’s a lot of body stuff, birth stuff, and in general, a lot. So, go forth, if you wanna!
Maybe my being pregnant and wanting to have a baby surprised a lot of people. I’m an artist, a career woman, and I love fitness, so, having a baby doesn’t seem like the best strategy for any of that, right? I’d been married to Marc for 11 years without us having a baby, which is kind of a long time.
In 2021, it was time - I’d accomplished so many of my goals as far as art, modeling, and fitness. I very much wanted my Baby Jewell - I made a special appointment to have my IUD taken out in September. Maybe this was surprising too. In the middle of a pandemic? What?
Something that surprised me that my doctor said was that it takes 45 days after an IUD’s removal to regain fertility. So, we waited for me to have a normal cycle before trying for Baby Jewell.
This will sound absolutely nuts, but I’m very sure that Baby Jewell was conceived on our first try, on November 4 of 2021. I said to my husband “I think that was it” and I went to sleep. I was so excited to see what had happened, that I admit I tested myself way too early, and I waffled between excitement and reeling myself back to reality. I talked to my friends and said “I think I’m too excited and I’m wasting pregnancy tests on this, and that I have a phantom baby syndrome”. But, I also felt profoundly different in those first few weeks. Four weeks after saying “I think that was it”, on the night of November 24th, I did a pregnancy test and it showed ‘Pregnant’. I could hardly believe it. I had been right all along, it hadn’t been a phantom baby! I rushed to show Marc and did another test to be sure.
From Thanksgiving to Christmas, we kept Baby Jewell a secret between us. I was 35, just old enough to land myself in a risk group for my age, and I’d never been pregnant before. Finally we spilled the beans to our parents a bit after Christmas, Baby Jewell being just 8 weeks along. We called the baby “little bean” without knowing the sex of the baby then.
The first trimester was full of tests - blood tests for me and also genetic tests. Frighteningly enough, I found out that I am a carrier for a rare disease called Galactosemia, which, if Marc had the same gene, had a 25% chance of being passed down to Baby Jewell and inhibit his ability to process galactose, which I never knew existed before. Luckily, Marc was also genetically tested and is not a carrier for this disease, so Baby Jewell was not going to inherit this genetic condition.
I say all of the above in a paragraph but it was quite an anxious time. If I could have done anything differently, I wish I had genetically tested myself in my 20s so I could have known this long ago. I have this vision of myself asking potential partners, over pasta, “Are you a carrier of a rare disease called Galactosemia??” before having sex, like an absolutely crazy person, but that is how deeply this affected me. I felt a huge amount of responsibility towards doing whatever it took to manage this genetic propensity.
Giving Birth:
Baby Jewell was born at 8 pounds 8 ounces, after 5 hours of pushing. I’m told this is a fairly long time to be pushing. He finally came out seconds after the doctor finished an episiotomy, which she said was fitting since I was starting to tear on my own a bit. In retrospect, I wish we had done an episiotomy after two or three hours of pushing, but that’s ok. We both made it!
The reason why I had to push for so long was because Baby Jewell’s head was tilted a bit; instead of being straight up and down, he was rotated to an angle like one or two o’ clock - this made his head effectively wider and harder for me to birth, and it did not help him get under my pubic bone. The uterus is incredible at expanding, and so is the vagina, but unfortunately, the pubic bone can’t be moved or subverted so easily.
Near the end of the pushing, I could feel my contractions cutting through the epidural. I could have clicked a button to deliver more painkilling power to my spine, but I was in some kind of other state where I had forgotten all about the button. I pushed in a series of three as recommended by the doctor, and at the third push, I was throwing up at the end each time.
Whenever things get tough, my body’s reaction seems to be to throw up. I threw up countless times while running a race called the Collegiate Peaks Trail Run, a 25 mile stretch with 3000 feet of elevation gain, which took me 8 hours to do. There were much faster and stronger athletes out there running, who finished the 50 mile race in the time it took me to do the 25 mile race. This is a bit how I feel about pushing Baby Jewell - there are a ton of women who don’t push for 5 hours. Some even push just for a few minutes! But for me, it took longer, and it was very hard for me because of all the throwing up. I threw up countless times while giving birth. It was just water or spit, but whatever was happening, my body wanted to evacuate all fluids. Not a very good survival mechanism, but it is what it is.
I remember the moment Baby Jewell came out, and his little face and hands. His mouth was open in a cry, his eyes were closed tight, and he was purple and whitish. The doctor set him/allowed him to flop onto my chest. I was so happy I couldn’t believe it, and forever changed for the better. Even while pushing before Baby Jewell arrived, I was so happy I was crying a bit, which I found a bit strange - it would be like crying before winning a big race. So, when Baby Jewell came out, the feeling was overwhelming, unlike anything I’ve ever experienced.
Baby Jewell was washed off and rubbed a bit until he became more pink than purple, and we got a bit more time together to take the photo above.
Postpartum:
The saying ‘it takes a village’ was like a person walking in the fog towards me. It started as a hazy, barely-human outline, and every second after Baby Jewell was born, it resolved and clarified into something very real and detailed. Maybe all platitudes are like this. For the longest time, they simply don’t apply, or are as uniform and meaningless as a stone. As the person-in-the-fog got closer and closer to me, suddenly it had pores on its face, eyelashes, and it lived and breathed as deeply as any creature. No longer an abstract thing, the platitude lives and it wants to live.
I lost count of the number of nurses who helped me, Marc, and Baby Jewell during the first 48 hours after birth but the number was probably two dozen. Ten or so nurses were in the room when he was born, and at least six had helped me through dilation. Several more stopped by to see us in the maternity ward, where I fired off a strangely-worded email to my boss and my HR person at work to say that I wasn’t coming in on Monday as I had given birth a bit early. It’s very funny to try to write any email after giving birth and after an epidural. I sent a few text messages back to people who texted me, and those probably made little sense, too!
I was lucky to heal up fast, both in terms of the episiotomy and giving birth overall. I didn’t have a lot of pain, though I was very weak. Though I gave birth at age 36 and there is no shortage of scary warnings about giving birth after 35, I was in the best shape of my life at 35, and this is what probably helped me recover so quickly.
The first few months
I never played with baby dolls as a kid. The closest I got was American Girl dolls, and I preferred hours of playing out epic story scenarios with Littlest Pet Shop figurines, My Little Ponies, and the Ninja Turtles my brother had. I had friends who loved baby dolls and seemed to care for them in a way, but it wasn’t for me. My Little Ponies were infinitely more fun for me than a baby doll.
So, not being self-identified as a ‘baby-person,’ maybe I surprised myself with how much I adore my baby. I pick out outfits for him, take photos of him, get him cute shoes, and carry him everywhere. I love his smell.
A helixing conundrum appears where, if I had known my baby was going to be so delightful, so spirited, cute, and funny, I would have had a baby long ago, but I wouldn’t have been financially ready and my ovary would have released a totally different egg, and we would not gotten this particular baby. Maybe all my eggs are lovely, but doesn’t that seem a bit presumptive? Baby Jewell came at the perfect time.
There was a challenge in the first few weeks because my baby had a tongue tie. I have one, too. We were able to get his tongue tie laserbeamed and after that, his weight gain took off as he was able to drink more milk more quickly. Before the laserbeam, I’d been feeding Baby Jewell pretty much 24 hours around the clock, because his tongue tie kept him from being able to eat efficiently. He *would eat, but he only could eat very slowly. There were a few moments where I nearly collapsed from exhaustion while feeding him - something I’ve only experienced before during lengthy travel, that thing where your head flops forward, and you’re about to faceplant-sleep into the seat in front of you on a transatlantic flight. If I could have done the first few weeks differently, I would have asked the hospital staff to get rid of the tongue tie before even going home. We got it done a few weeks after birth, which wasn’t too late, but it wasn’t early, either.
As far as the unfun stuff about parenting, I don’t think it’s as terrible as some make it out to be. Diapers, in my opinion, are not that bad. I’ve also gotten used to our sleep schedule: getting up at 1 am, 3 am, whenever - like training for a big running race, I’m used to it. I can’t even call what I do sleep deprivation, because I do sleep eventually, just not for 8 hours straight. As far as what the body is capable of, if I can run 15 miles on a Saturday for fun, getting up in the dead of night to feed my baby is quite doable. Breastfeeding isn’t easy but it is so very special. I didn’t think anything in the world could be so very touching. I’m also blessed to have an involved partner and two grandmas nearby and I’m able to go on a date night with my husband every now and then. I can go running when someone watches Baby Jewell and it’s great that there are so many people willing to do so.
Running?
I’m back at it! When I can ask someone to watch my baby, I’m able to crank out a run here and there. The longest I’ve gone since giving birth is 6 miles. Usually I run about 2 miles per run. It’s nothing like what I was doing in 2021, but I am very happy about this.
Something I’ve also noticed about my running is that some of my splits or segments in Strava are a bit faster than they used to be. This is a little strange and I haven’t figured out why this has happened, but I think it’s a sign that moms are tough as hell, and also, I don’t have as much time to run as I used to have. So, what’s happened is I’ve started running faster to make the most use of my time.
I gained 45 pounds during my pregnancy, going up from 130 lbs to 175. I’m back down to 143 or so, and I lost something like 25 pounds almost immediately after giving birth. I feel very healthy at this weight and very strong.
My Art and Work Now
I’m back at work now, and after a couple weeks of getting back in the saddle at my company, I don’t believe there is such a thing as “mom brain” as a kind of disability. If anything, becoming a mom has made me more resourceful, more creative, and more honed in at ascertaining that my time has an impact. I now understand other parents much better, too.
Being a mom has also galvanized my wish to share and my wish to learn. The phenomenon of ‘mommy bloggers’ makes perfect sense to me now. Sharing even the smallest bit of information might be helpful to someone, and if it isn’t helpful to anyone, it is at least helpful to me, the mom, because I am recording my experiences, committing them to memory, and resolving to learn from them.
As far as art, my free time is a bit more crunched than it used to be, so I must make as much art in the free time that I do have. What I’ve been up to lately is mostly animal collages as it is easy enough to cut and paste while watching Baby Jewell play with a mobile.
In short, the art is the same, and the backdrop is different. I’ve been fortunate to make art in all the different places I’ve lived, so I am used to backdrops changing and resolutely soldiering forward with my projects. Eventually, I do think my art will be different now that I am a mom, but I probably wont be able to notice it.
Mom Art Online - I made all of these after becoming a mom
I took Baby Jewell on a couple plein air art walks near Wonderland Lake in Boulder. Such excursions are masterworks of planning - I have to have everything - diapers, wipes, burp cloths, and also all my art supplies.
Ultimately, making art while having a baby has been very do-able, because I am lucky to have such an expansive village and people who are willing to take care of my baby while I paste collages together. He’s also a very good baby in his carrier, so I can carry him around and make paintings too.
What’s Next
I guess we will find out! What I’m looking forward to most is taking Baby Jewell to places like the zoo and art museum. He’s a very funny and smiley little baby, so I can’t wait to see how his personality develops. Who knows, I’m so excited by Baby Jewell that there might be Baby Jewell Two one of these days!