“Now my friends are wearing worried smiles, living out a dream of what they was.

Don’t you think it’s sometimes wise not to grow up?”

–Rolling Stones, 100 Years Ago

In terms of blogging years, I’m practically a geriatric and I often have to stop myself from being all “IN MY DAY, BLOGGERS WERE HONEST AND DIDN’T EXPECT…” so I can safely say things like, “normally in my New Years wrap-up posts I say something about how happy I am to kiss the year goodbye” because I’ve had enough of them to choose from.

This morning, I sat here trying to figure out what I wanted to do for my New Years post because it felt weird to not mention that today is the last day of 2009. Normally I do the only meme that I ever do, but today it just didn’t feel right. Then I thought about doing a year-in-review-through-posts and that didn’t sum it all up either because seriously? January and February alone could have each had 10 or so links to posts.

So instead, I’m going to be uncharacteristically honest about my year.

2009 was not the worst year of my life. I don’t know how a year that started by bringing my last child, my daughter Amelia Grace Sherrick Harks, into this world could possibly be a bad one. I was so proud to finally have a daughter and nearly a year later, I am still so proud to have a daughter that even as I type this, my eyes fill with tears.

She was born with an undiagnosed neural tube defect, yes, an encephalocele and I very much feared that I’d birthed her only to send her in for neurosurgery to sacrifice her on the operating table, but would I have traded those three weeks with her? No. Even if she’d passed, I wouldn’t have traded those minutes with her. She’s my daughter.

Amelia, all 8 pounds of her didn’t pass on the table and she’s gone on to beat all of the odds of her grim diagnosis and has proved to me that just because someone tells you that you shouldn’t be able to do something, doesn’t mean that you can’t. It’s a lesson we all could stand to remember now and again.

While Amelia has thrived and continued to place at or above level for every single test that she’s been given, I’ve sort of managed to tread water this year managing to keep my head mostly above water. Lately, I’ve been drinking gasoline to keep warm.

I’m not sure it’s working.

I was diagnosed with PTSD stemming from her traumatic birth and I don’t know if it’s that, or PPD or some other weird acronym, but I’m not sleeping well or eating well, and some nights I manage fight off the demons and others, I’m slain by them.

But I’m hopeful. I’ve been here before and I’ve always managed to claw my way back out of the hole and into the light again.

So I approach 2010 full of renewed hope for the future, because no matter how full of the darkness I feel, I can feel the light on my face and I know it’s all around me. Soon it will be within me.

I am hopeful.

I have hope.

Happy New Year.

You should totally read my interview with my homie Sci-Fi dad: “Thinking is Hard” here. And my Slate.com interview ran simultaneously here, on The Happiness Project, which is a really neat blog run by my friend Gretchen. She’s a thousand times cooler than me, so you should read her.

And then I need more people to interview me because I am officially done with interviews, except those that I conduct in my head. SO SOMEONE INTERVIEW ME. PLEASE.

———————

Every year when my son Ben has to write a “This Year I’m Thankful For” letter, it reads sort of like this:

Dear Mom and Dad,

I am thankful that you buy me sheets. And blankets.

This would lead you to believe that I have him chained in the basement somewhere, perhaps duct-taped to a wall, shivering, only to be tossed a blanket when I’m feeling particularly benevolent. And well that is obviously true, it’s not.

That, of course, written by the same child who recently sent home the answer to the question, “Where would you take Mom for her birthday?”

McDonald’s because it’s my favorite and we eat it every day.

I may have junk in my trunk, Internet, but I do NOT eat McDonald’s EVERY day.

So it’s clear that my son, while he’s fanciful, is also pretty full of The Awesome, because that note is SO on my fridge because I laugh every time that I see it. Not only did he not answer the question because he didn’t pick out my favorite place, he also told his teacher that we eat fast food every day.

I’m thinking we’ll watch Super Size Me for Thanksgiving. Should be very uplifting, I’m thinking. Then it will make me very hungry.

Today is the day before American Thanksgiving, though, and because no one is actually going to be reading blogs tomorrow, save for my spam bots, which are either sending me really punny jokes, insulting me, or selling me knock-off prescription drugs, I figured that today is probably the day to Be Thankful.

And since the only person in the house to regularly write stuff ABOUT being thankful is 8, I don’t exactly have a killer model to choose from unless you want to hear how much I heart q-tips (orgasm in my ear!) or bath towels (orgasm on my ass!).

So I’m going to buck Ben’s model and go out on my own here and surprise the shit out of all of you.

Your Aunt Becky is thankful for this year.

Probably one of the worst, hardest years of my life so far, (made even worse by the Eggo waffle shortage!) and if given the option to have it any other way, I’d say no.

Because even in the darkest times, when I thought that I was suffocating under the weight of what I was carrying, when my fears crushed my chest and it was all that I could do to breathe in and breathe out and the rushing in and out of air seemed to fill the whole world and I didn’t know how I was going to go on, I found myself.

I did go on.

Seconds turned to minutes turned to hours and I lived and grew in those spaces between where I thought that I was going to burst apart at the seems, the fear, the weight, the terror pressing down. The days when I hurt so badly that nothing anyone could do ever helped, and my throat felt tight and the tears were always so close, those days eventually wore away. Slowly, they drifted away.

In their wake, I stand now, a different person.

I’ve lost friends, lost respect for people, I’ve seen who will stand beside me, and who is content to stand back. I am not who I was and I am thankful.

Today, I am thankful for my daughter Amelia, who, in her 9 months on the planet, has shown me more about who I am than I have learned in the 29 years before her. My sweet cinnamon girl, my Emma Gracie, the one who lived, my only daughter, the girl with curls like a halo, for who you are and what you have taught me and the light you have shown me, I am thankful.

Today and always.

“People have stars, but they aren’t the same. For travelers, the stars are guides. For other people, they’re nothing but tiny lights. And for still others, for scholars, they’re problems. For my businessman, they were gold. But all those stars are silent stars. You, though, you’ll have stars like nobody else.”

“What do you mean?”

“When you look up at the sky at night, since I’ll be living on one of them, since I’ll be laughing on one of them, for you, it’ll be as if all the stars are laughing. You’ll have stars that can laugh!”

And he laughed again.

“And when you’re consoled (everyone is eventually consoled), you’ll be glad you’ve known me. You’ll always be my friend. You’ll feel like laughing with me. And you’ll open your windows sometimes just for the fun of it… And your friends will be amazed to see you laughing while you’re looking up at the sky. Then you’ll tell them, ‘Yes, it’s the stars. They always make me laugh!”

–The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupery

For Maddie, whose second birthday is filled with laughter and tears, who now lives in the stars and the moon, who leaves behind a wall of tears and joy, today we celebrate your birth.

Tonight, we will eat cake and play with balloons and celebrate.

Your Auntie Becky misses you dearly, sweet girl.

——————-

For you, I am going to go through all of my old baby clothes and find all of the small clothes to donate to the NICU in your (and Mimi’s) honor. Because I remember how important it was to see my daughter in normal clothes and not naked. How much that comforted me when my life had gone to shit.

I know your parents have started this non-profit to help parents in the NICU and to honor you because they are full of The Awesome:

Happy Birthday, sweet one. We all miss you.

According to the Center’s For The Disease Control’s Website (and hopefully *crosses fingers strongly* my future employer), about 1 in every 100-200 births in the United States results in a stillbirth. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 4 million stillbirths occur yearly worldwide. The numbers for neonatal and postnatal deaths run into the tens of thousands.

Those numbers seem large to me, but even after having to take a statistics class to get through nursing school I can’t say that I’m much of a numbers person. The Daver, he likes numbers, which is why he’s off saving the world, one string of code at a time, while Your Aunt Becky sits here, mouth breathing and occasionally wondering aloud, “Is the INTERNET working?”

Numbers aren’t my thing. People are my thing. 1 in 100-200 sounds like a hell of a lot bigger number when you attach faces to those numbers. Faces, stories and names. People. My friends. My nieces, my nephews, their parents. Tables forever missing one. Lives cut short. Unlived.

Still born. Born still.

My friends. Their children.

Hannah

Paige

Caleb

Baby JP

Brenna

Kalila

William

Isabel Grace

Maddy

William Henry

Aodin

Callum

Sarah

Connor

Liam

Samuel

Caden

Masyn

Olive Lucy

Seth Milton

Abigail Hlee

JoeJoe Sherman

Baby Nick

Gabriel Anton

Ryan

Jonathan

Devin Alin

Jacob and Joshua

Baby K, Gabriel Connor, Christian Elliot and Andrew

Emmerson

Baby Kuyper

Mara S.

Nathan Michael

Eva

Timothy, Taea, and Thomas

Kyle S.

John Addison

Raime, Elora & Connor

Ava and Nathaniel

Rose

Micaela, Angelica, and Frankie

Donald Angus

Baby Cline

Addison Hope

Ryne Moyer

Marcus Reeves

Julian Ulysses

Becky

Caleb

Sean Isaac

Jessica Anne

Paul James

Ashlynn Brooks

David Lee

Babies Boone

Olcott-Lueke angels

Baby A and Baby B twin girls

Baby Girl B and Baby Boy A

Becca’s Twin Siblings

Jackson

Kaitlyn Grace

Brennan

Ellery

Robert Daniel

Quinn

Josie Ree Smith

Isabel

Issac

Samuel and Amelia

Draven Fredrick

I’ll add names to this list so if you’d like me to add a name, please don’t hesitate to email me becky (at) dwink (dot) net or leave me a comment.

At 7 pm tonight, October 15th, A Day To Remember, I will burn a candle in memorium and I encourage you to do the same.

Dona nobis pacem.

(give us peace) Lord, give us peace.

Ben, fiddling with a straw, leftover from a *gasp!* sugary soda, as we walk around Target.

Horrible, Awful Mother, “Hey Ben, here’s a garbage can. Please throw that away.”

Ben scowls in her direction and makes no move toward the garbage can.

Aunt Becky: “Ben, now. I don’t need any more weird garbage-y crap to clean up around the house.”

Ben, if looks could kill, she’d be dead and buried.

Dave, “Benjamin MAXWELL, NOW.”

Becky snickers into her palm at the usage of the Middle Name Treatment.

Ben flounces dramatically to the garbage can and makes a huge production of throwing out the straw. Then, he pivots to face his parents.

“FINE, I’ll throw it AWAY” he stamps his feet. “Since you HATE MOTHER EARTH.”

Apparently, our son was brainwashed.

——————–

“Dat a Pumpkin, Mama?”

“Right, Alex, that’s a pumpkin.”

“Dat’s notta pumpkin. Dat’s a GOURD.”

“Okay, it’s a gourd.”

“It’s not a gourd. It’s a pumpkin.”

*headdesk*

For the record: it was a jack-o-lantern.

——————–

(Cacophony of dogs barking after someone knocks on the door)

“Who was at the door?” I barely looked up from my computer to ask Dave. My ass was tired from a strenuous day of sitting on it.

“Some high school kid selling magazines.”

Knowing my husband is a sucker for anyone selling anything, I sighed, wondering if he’d renewed our (never read) subscription to Golf Digest.

“What did you get us?”

“Nothing.”

Shocked, I was silent for a second.

“Wait, did the kid offer a subscription Playboy? Because I TOTALLY would have subscribed to that.”

“BECKY.”

————————

And then incongruently there is this:

Which leaves me alternately so full of joy and so full of survivor’s guilt that I can barely talk about it. I know it doesn’t make sense, survivors guilt makes no sense, but I don’t understand any of this.

How did we dodge this bullet? I don’t understand any of it. I just don’t understand.

21% with her type of encephalocele are born alive.

55% of those born alive are expected to survive.

75% of those who survive have some degree of mental defect.

She is a miracle. My sweet daughter, a miracle.

I sit here with tears streaming down my face, crying because she made it and crying because I know so many didn’t and crying because I am so grateful that she is so, so blessed to have so many people who have prayed for her and love her.

Thank you. Every day, I am grateful for you. All of you.

—————–

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have something in my eye that requires my immediate attention.

(The Daver was cunning in his ruthless choice of wedding dates. While my birthday falls smack dab in the middle of nothing (but IS, my French Friends, the day AFTER Bastille Day), Dave’s birthday is the kickoff of Dave’s Days. With the notable exception of the 9th, it’s a three-day Lovestock with my husband as the central star. Can you blame him?)

When I was a kid, I never imagined myself as a bride. Always one for sparkles, diamonds, flowing rivers of pink taffeta, as an adult, this shocks me that I didn’t have–or petition for–a mini-bridal dress. Although, now that I’m thinking about it, my mother may have banned that as she banned Barbies and guns*.

My parents are still happily married (or gently resigned to each other) so I wasn’t jaded by the stress of divorce, marriage and Being A Bride wasn’t on my radar. Being a ninja was, but not a bride.

After Ben was born, although I’d been briefly engaged to his father, I still never thought that I would get married. I figured that I was slotted walk the world as a single mother, and while I frequently wondered where I was going to get the male perspective to teach my son how to Be A Dude, finding a husband wasn’t something I thought I would do.

Until I met The Daver.

You know that annoying thing that married people say to single people where they’re all, “I knew it when I found him?” It’s bloody irritating to hear when you’re single because not only is it entirely cliched, it’s self-serving and obnoxious (hey, kind of like me!).

I knew it when I found him. Dave was The One. Like it or not, we were going to be together for a long, long, unbearably long time. Some day, I will write up Our Story, and The Internet can barf at it, because I totally would.

6 years we’ve been together, 4 of them married. It feels like 60.

I look back at pictures of when we were first married, before Alex was born and nearly destroyed me. Before Amelia was here. And we look so young. Happy and young.

It’s been a hell of a couple of years and I’m not sure I’m saying that with a smile or just as fact: it’s been a hell of a couple years. But somehow in the chaos and the uncertainty, in all of that, we’re still here and we’re still happy. Not as young as we were, but happy.

For our forth anniversary of wedded bliss, I got a power washer. And an orchid. I know this because I bought them myself. Because after 4 years, I’ve learned my lesson. I’d buy myself a card if that wasn’t just kind of weird and pointless. I mean, would I sign it myself, too?

(answer: probably)

I used to think that the measure of a good relationship would be wanting to be a better person because of that person. I don’t believe that anymore. Now, I know that the measure of a good relationship is being a better person because of it. And I am.

The Daver, he makes me a better person.

We’re like Bert and Ernie. Cheese and Macaroni. Peanut Butter and Jelly. Mr. Wilson and Dennis the Menace (I will let you GUESS who I am).

Happy 4th, The Daver.

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

–ee cummings, “somewhere i have never traveled”

(anyone else humming “Jungle Fever” now?)

*I am not kidding.

——————

Be sure to cast your vote for your favorite entry in “Aunt Becky Travels The World And Does Stuff.”

One of the pathetic stipulations I had for a college besides:

1) not advertised on television

2) offers stuff-n-things OTHER THAN A degree promised to allow me a career in an exciting technical field

was that I could access it by train.

See, for all the awesomeness that is St. Charles, it’s fucking impossible to get to or from. It’s not by any convenient highways or byways, but it’s not quiiittee far enough away from anything that whining loudly that ‘it’s too faaaarrr‘ will get you anywhere. Besides a hefty roll of the old eyeballs. The benefits from a cost/benefit analysis show that without a doubt, this is The Best Thing For Us All, so we deal with these minor annoyances.

Obviously using the haunting good grace that I am known to handle everything else with (read: no grace whatsoever).

But back then I also lived it St. Charles, only un-hipply (not un-hippIE because that would be weird) with my parents and my one-year-old son, The Benner. And I was in dire need of figuring out What To Do With My Life. After some teeth-gnashing and a good hard look at my future, I chose to get my undergrad in nursing at a college about 40 minutes away.

Also (and most importantly) it was on the train line. I’m not positive that if I’d been promised truckloads of cash driven to my front door by pursuing my undergraduate degree in underwater basket weaving, I’d have done so if I’d had to commute by car.

So, train it was! Hooray!! Bonus! Win-Win!!! Hooray!! Everyone wins!!! Yay!!!!

(note the flagrant use of exclamation points to really drive the point home. THAT’S how you know I’m serious.)

Except, hahaha, not so much. Turns out that wasn’t what I was going to do with the rest of my life. Because I’m still waiting to find out what I’m going to do with the rest of my life. I’m not sure if this–like my ability to single-handedly lose my wallet 47 times an hour–is something to be proud of of.

I did ride the train every day, to and from school, and while I was initially irritated by that mandatory time stuck doing jack squat, I learned to love that part of my day. There’s something kind of romantic about being on a train. I guess it’s partially a throw back to The Olden Days–and let me assure you that most of the train cars in service today really are from those days–and partially just, I don’t know. I sort of feeling like I’m Really Traveling if I’m on a train.

And as time passed, I made a number of friends who rode the train with me. We’d study, or shoot the shit, or just be blessedly still for half an hour. These included some of the people in my classes and even a couple of my science professors. I’d gone from feeling like a total Failure At Life to having an identity of my own.

I was an over-achieving student, top of my ever-loving class. I became. TA for the upper level sciences. I had friends. I had something I could now identify myself as and be proud of.

I look back on that time and smile. A genuine smile, not an ironic or bitter one.

I took the train into the city on Wednesday at the ass crack of 6PM after I hadn’t been on one in at least three years. I can assure you that nothing, NOTHING has changed. Same strawberry-urine scented urinal cake smell, same entitled passengers*, same sweat-stained windows.

(*Back when I took the train 5 days a week, I was always sure to pick up a copy of their monthly newsletter. While I flagrantly ignored the boring stuff about safety and other stuff that I wouldn’t know what it was because I never read it, I always giddily ran for a copy when the new ones came out.

Because on the back of this, was a page of pure gems. The company would reprint some of the Letters To Someone Who Pretends To Give A Shit and they were comedy gold. Honestly. They really should come up with a book of these sorts of letters because seriously, they were that good.

Amidst the people complaining about delays and ice and those horrible rude people with suitcases who take! up! 2! seats! (this person, in her letter, referred to those people as “Piggy People.” Because how DARE someone need to use a SUITCASE!), was nestled my personal favorite. I will try to paraphrase it for you.

Dear So-And-So,

Here’s what makes me REALLY mad!!!! Those people who leave behind the newspapers after they’ve read them, so that other people can read them!!! That’s nice and all, but you know what? I am SO MAD when I see that they’ve completed the crossword puzzle!!!!!!

Signed,

I Am The Most Entitledest Person Ever!!!!!!

I mean, the NERVE of someone who spent THEIR money on a paper to actually put INK to the paper! They obviously should have graciously left it blank for you, oh person who is too cheap to buy their own paper.

Bwahahahahaha! *wipes tears from eyes* Bwahahahahaha!

You just can’t make this shit up.)

Well, The Internet, it turns out you CAN go home again.

After I wrenched myself away from a screaming Alex, and hauled my bag up those stairs again, it was like stepping into my old life. I half expected to see my grody red suitcase (note to self: buy cooler suitcase) turn into an Organic Chem book, my iPod to gain 3 pounds, and the spare tire in my gut to melt away.

But there I was. Seeing myself back 6 years ago. When my son was my only baby. When I wasn’t married. When I had a job, a waistline, and a completely different life. I’d never heard of a blog. Never considered that I might actually house a wanna-be writer in my wanna-be scientist body.

And look at where I ended up. Never thought I’d be where I am, never in a zillion years. I’m not sure I’d have believed it if you told me. No, I take that back. I am absolutely CERTAIN I would have laughed in your face had you told me where I’d end up.

I stay home. I write. I have three fucking kids. I write. I fantasize about sleeping and about wearing pants without elastic bands. Although, I should add, I do not fantasize about sleeping WITH pants without elastic bands. I drive a mini-van. An UGLY GOLD mini-van.

Everything is different and somehow nothing has changed.

Et tu, Internet?

I spent mere moments yesterday, in between ordering The Daver to shave my legs and to feed me grapes while fanning me with a ficus branch (read: shoving my gaping maw with cupcakes and reading trashy books while getting my arms gnawed on my a certain baby of mine), working on the next installment of Proof That Aunt Becky Has Feelings, and I was going to put it up today. It’s done, after all, and it’s just sitting there in my draft folder, edited and reedited (a rarity, I’m sure. You may want to mark on a calendar that I wrote a post AND EDITED IT this one time).

But I’m leaving it there, all alone in my drafts, for now. Not because it’s not good or not powerful, but because I don’t feel like being depressing today. The story ends happily, we all know this–although we’re not sure how neurologically Amelia will be affected yet; nor do we care–and I’ve told you the worst of what happened. I’ll probably throw it up tomorrow or the next day, then I’ll make a separate page or something to put the story together, because you know what? I gain nothing by keeping silent. My dignity (for once) is not on the line here.

No, today I wanted to something even more rare than talking about being afraid and scared and all that good boo-yang, today I wanted to publicly tell The Internet how much my life fracking rules.

See, I know it’s not in vogue to shriek it from the rafters that I’m the luckiest bitch I know. I should, instead, complain about summer vacation and how it’s crimping my Big Pimpin’ lifestyle, or maybe whine about Alex’s sleep schedule and that Amelia would kind of like it if I surgically attached her somehow to my body. Or maybe I could bitch about how Daver can’t seem to manage putting his dirty dishes INTO the dishwasher, instead, he assumes the magical fairies will sprinkle their sparkly dust around and the plates will magically float into the dishwasher.

But yesterday, as I sat with my big butt wearing a groove into my couch cushions, my daughter perched on my lap swaddled like a caterpillar in her pink camo swaddler, intently watching her brothers, who were chasing each other about the house, screaming ebulliently and (no joke) throwing these large beach balls at each other. It was some sort of game they were playing, Amelia wriggled this way and that, expressing her joy through her pumping extremities and the occasional squawk of pure ecstasy (no, not The Good Drug. No illegal drugs until she’s AT LEAST 12)(this is a joke)(put down the phone to DCFS, people).

The screams bore into my head like a drill bit, and although listening to them was making my headache so bad that my eyes began to water, I was so happy. This is my life. THIS. All this: the chaos, the dog pee on the (white. WHITE!) carpet, the toys strewn about the floor, bruising the bottoms of my feet. The pure joy that only kids can express so easily. The messiness, the imperfections, the sleeplessness and the bliss. All of it. It’s mine.

Never in a million billion years the place I ever saw myself. Not even close to the swinging swinger lifestyle, dripping with diamonds and distain, sex on the kitchen table and perfectly arranged coffee table books. Shit, I can’t even go to the store on a whim right now, let alone jet off to France for the weekend or even promise to make it to a local party.

But it doesn’t matter. I don’t care. It’s not where I’d ever have guessed I’d be, and Aunt Becky circa 1998 would have rolled her eyes dramatically and threatened to run off with the Peace Corp if you’d told her where she’d end up. But, in the immortal words of The Bearded God Garcia, “Once in awhile you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right.”

Because this is exactly where I belong: raising kids, writing a crappy blog and a couple of books, making good friends and the requisite handful of enemies. And it’s why I might maybe have gotten a bit misty-eyed when I saw all your birthday wishes here, on Twitter and on Facebook (we should be BFF! Your updates are hysterical on there). Maybe. Or maybe it’s just allergies.

And then I see this brilliance one of my friends put together, after I tell Twitter (jokingly) that I’m going to make and wear shirts that say “I’m Friends With Aunt Becky.” Then my OTHER friend tells me she’s going to make a shirt that says “Aunt Becky is my Gnomie,” and my face would be on a gnome’s body. And then I full on cried, I was laughing so hard.

And then maybe I said, “I love you man, to The Internet” and told them to keep this talk of feelings and shit between us.

What follows is not a birth story. What follows is what came after that.

And my warning to you, o! Internet, my Internet is this: what follows will probably be kind of boring. It may be self-indulgent and whiny. At times it may make no sense to you why I felt a certain way or why I still feel this way. What follows is probably never going to win me any blog awards or any new friends and I am okay with this.

Like anything else I’ve ever written–even the most banal of blog posts–I am writing it because I can’t not.

It must be told.

————–

My pregnancy with Amelia was not exactly a planned one. It wasn’t unplanned though, it just was. I hadn’t been back on birth control since Alex was born in March of 2007 and by May of 2008 I was pregnant for the third month in a row. The previous months had been marked by the hormonal roller coaster of back-to-back miscarriages, so when that pink line popped up for the third month in a row, it was almost by rote that I called Dave at work, told him the news and warned him not to get too excited.

Instead of immediately miscarrying, the pregnancy seemed to stick. Until about Week 6, when I began to spot. Having never seen a drop of blood with either of the boys, I immediately assumed the worst and prepared for the next miscarriage by calling the OB for another shot of Rho-gam.

(let me whine pointlessly for a moment and say this: I am pretty certain that they inject Rho-gam with a straw from McDonald’s. I have had 3 babies–one sans working epidural–and I swear, that stupid shot is always the worst part)

My heart was pretty heavy as we made our way to the OB’s the following morning and to add insult to injury, I was still nauseous as hell and bawling like an annoying small child. I’m sure the entire waiting room appreciated my sniffling and hiccuping. Alas, it was my turn to go back, and after giving about 4 gallons of blood (rough estimate) and determining that the bleeding had stopped and my cervix was tightly shut, I was sent for an ultrasound at another office.

The minute the tech inserted the camera up my pooter–after insisting The Daver stay in the waiting room, which, hello awkward–I saw it. She cast her pixilated, gummy bear heart on me and I was in love. I breathed a huge sigh of relief, went home and gorged on some Flavor-Ice. The following morning, the OB grimly called to inform me that my progesterone was somewhere in the single digits. This is, apparently, very bad.

So for the next twelve weeks, I was instructed to unceremoniously shove bullet shaped suppositories up the old lady bits twice a day, which trust me, as they melt, is like sitting in a pile of waxy spooge all day long. What I’m trying to say is that it was very, very pleasant.

But whatever, a little leaky vagina I could handle. The spotting continued on and off until I realized that perhaps I didn’t need to scratch the surface of my poor cervix with the suppository, and then it stopped for good. Everything was calm. Well, as calm as living with a monkey wearing a toddler suit can be, while your spouse is off fighting financial battles all day (and night) long during a huge crash in the markets.

(Lengthy boring aside #1: did I mention that The Daver is in finance? And that he had just accepted a position to become a manager when I fell knocked-up? Because yeah. The timing was awesome.)

(Lengthy boring aside #2: I feel I also must add here to give some additional information to those who haven’t been anxiously reading and rereading my (boring) archives and committing every one of my trite posts to memory. I don’t do pregnancy well. I get awful, crippling anxiety and mind-numbing depression while I cook my babies. It’s called prepartum depression. It’s very serious and it’s very real.)

But life trucked on for us all, the markets slowly sinking and Nat (my eldest’s biological father) coming by to predict the end of days every week or two. He’d take some time off in between to chastise my choice of, well, anything: car, house, lawnmower, you name it, he’d judge it loudly. Is it any wonder my trolls don’t bug me much?)

Anyhow. Moving along.

My 18 week ultrasound revealed not much at all. Baby looked like it might maybe kind of have a vagina of her own, but I was chastised by pretty much the entire office staff for “coming in too early.” I had a repeat US at 22 weeks which revealed that my daughter indeed had a vagina, a perfect heart and a perfect brain.

Obviously. She is my daughter after all.

Internet, I am telling you that when the tech told me that I was having a daughter of my own, I shed real tears. Despite my rocky relationship with my mother, I’d wanted a daughter so badly that I could taste it, but I just knew I was destined to be a mother of boys. Forever The Queen of the Sausages. I never thought I could possibly be lucky enough to have a daughter.

And yet, there she was, a blobby mess that I could ascertain very little from, although I was quickly pointed out the 3 lines (a.k.a. “the cheeseburger”) which signified that she was without penis. I couldn’t have been happier.

My very own daughter.

I was lucky enough to have a daughter.

Amelia.

My daughter.

Words cannot possibly describe the joy I still feel when I say that.

I have a daughter.

Part I.

The rest of my pregnancy went as smoothly as a pregnancy can for me. I reveled in my daughter rolling this way and that, I shopped for any number of teeny frilly dresses–while trying desperately to avoid the hootchie momma stuff–and began to stimulate the economy one pink thing at a time. I was as happy as I can be during pregnancy, my appointments showed me gaining my standard metric fuck-ton of weight.

Somewhere around week 37, I noticed after we’d come home from a lovely day of shopping–sans small children (this is what made it extra special)–that my entire lower half had ballooned into Michelin Man territory. My upper-half remained as fat as it was beforehand, but my lower half was bordering on ridiculous. It was Sunday and I was marginally alarmed by the sudden gain of at least 20 lbs, so I called my OB. They were shockingly unconcerned.

I looked like I was wearing exactly one half of a fat suit.

The following day, I noticed that the swelling was now bordering on Stay-Puft marshmallow status (replete with pasty whiteness. This was January in the Midwest), and the OB was now concerned. Off to the hospital, we trudged, for a NST and unnamed other tests.

What followed was a brilliant comedy of errors which involved busy doctors, dropping platelets, consults with specialists, living in a broom closet for three days and eventually an amniocentesis. I’m saving you from the most tedious story ever, but let me tell you that this was fucking Providence if I’ve seen it.

After our awful experience there we vowed to have our daughter at the OTHER local hospital. Where we’d had Alex, but not where we’d planned to expel Amelia. An excellent move we never could have expected.

Providence, Serendipity (wait, wasn’t that some shit-balls movie?), Fate, whatever you call it had a hand in things right there.

A week or so after I ripped the IV tubing from my arm and waddled indignantly through the L & D lobby on my way home, I had to go back to the doctor. The swelling–even in January–was so bad that I could only fit into this absurdly large pair of Daver’s slippers I’d been meaning to toss. I’d been meaning to toss them, you see Internet, because they reeked. They were also crusty and awful, but it’s all I could stuff my poor feet into, so off we went.

Two days later, on Wednesday January 28, my daughter was scheduled to make her debut with the aide of some a long hook and an IV drip of Pitocin. All of my babies have been induced, and while I’d been sort of looking forward to going into labor naturally, with the other two kids at home and the fact that I now felt like death AND was spilling some proteins, I figured safety for both of us was paramount. I could always watch a romantic comedy if I wanted to relive what “going into labor” was like.

You know they never lie in the movies, right? Or on The Internet? EVERYTHING on The Internet is true.

We had one full day to prepare all that we needed to bring another baby home, because somehow when you’ve reached number three and have run out of bedrooms with which to put said child, nursery preparation is pretty minimal. Besides, Alex had just grown out of most of what I really needed and so it wasn’t a stretch to pull it all back out.

My daughter would sleep in our bedroom with us until the boys could move in together, so there was no shopping for coordinated basket covers for the nursery, nor were we trying to match the knobs from the dresser we didn’t have to the light switch cover. It was sort of anti-climactic, but after having done it twice before, I was pretty pleased to just wash the scads of tiny pink clothes.

(Pointless aside #1: I keep mixing up my underwear with Amelia’s clothes in the wash. That feels kind of wrong, although not because I dress her in leather, lace crotchless panties, but because my own undies are–for the moment–large, pink and could probably double as a sail for a boat in a pinch)

Wednesday January 28th, we awoke at some ungodly hour (like 5:00 AM! Which is a time I should never, ever be awake because I am 100% allergic to mornings) and it was still dark out. Inky dark. And snowing. I remember waddling to the car after blowing kisses sadly to Alex’s door–he was still asleep–and finding the thick flakes of snow swirling about to be a Good Omen. I’d heard somewhere that rain on the day of something important was supposedly a good thing, and it being nearly February in Chicago, rain was more apt to be snow.

We drove to the hospital in silence just as we had before. While having #3 isn’t nearly as scary as having #1 or even #2, I’m not sure what pleasant conversation is when you’re both acutely aware that once you leave the hospital, nothing is ever going to be the same again. In the face of this, what is there to say?

Really.

Each of us were lost in our thoughts as we stopped for gas–and breakfast for Daver as I was too afraid I’d never eat at Dunkin’ Donuts should I see it coming back out a little later in a slightly *ahem* different form–the snow and the blackness and the wind seemed to make it a magical, magical morning. I can’t describe it well enough to do it justice. The radio was, for once, playing perfect music, the big fat flakes would make a satisfying splat against the windows, and in the dark then, it looked as though we were flying through that old screen saver.

Certainly if I know what that screen saver is, you must too. (no, not the flying toaster one).

After managing to hit not one but two trains, my stomach clenching and unclenching in knots as I tried to remember just what labor feels like and how scared I should be about the pain. I’m not hugely averse to pain (don’t get me wrong, it doesn’t turn me on or anything) (unless maybe it’s to someone I hate) (and that’s just a maybe) but even within 20 months, I had completely forgotten how it felt.

I barely remember pulling up the valet and handing off the keys as I was too busy peeling myself off the car seat and waddling into the hospital. We were checked into a room immediately and met one of the most cheerful nurses on the planet, which was a huge bonus as Dave and I were both terrified. And when we are both nervous or scared, our initial reaction is to open our mouths and talk. We flappity-flap-flap-jaw about nothing, anything, everything.

I guess it’s better than crapping your pants or explosively farting. That would make other people MUCH more uncomfortable, because how can you ignore THAT white elephant?

Soon I was instructed to change into a gown and nothing else as the nurse clucked over my poor legs which burned and ached from the addition of all those extra pounds of water. The tissues within screamed and cried as I tried to pull off my socks in vain. Dave eventually had to pull them off for me.

I settled into the bed, ate a couple crackers and then we were off. The IV ran slowly, dripping saline into that chamber, the line patent and waiting for the doctor to order the bags of Pitocin from the pharmacy. I considered Twittering, maybe I actually did, just to do something that felt normal and took my mind off of what was about to happen.

Dave flitted about the room, nervous as a bird, putting away this or that, arranging and rearranging the various things we’d brought while I lay there in bed, nervously watching the minutes tick past one after an ever-loving other. The doctor ambled in, broke my bag of waters–which, I have to say, is a REALLY discomfiting feeling–and pronounced it beautiful and clear. No meconium. The baby wasn’t in distress. The pit was added to the IV and we were off!

I had hoped to actually move about the room before the contractions got too terrible so that I could urge the baby out and use gravity on my side, rather than lay flat on one side of my back. But Amelia wasn’t really ready to be hatched, her head still pretty high in my body and not engaged into my pelvis. The risk of cord prolapse was great enough (broken bag of waters + floating baby) that I opted to lay there, willing my daughter out with my will of steel.

Labor? Hurts. It hurts a lot. I lasted a couple of hours, breathing through them, tears coursing down my face, although I wasn’t actually crying them. They were just plopping out of my eyes, and I only noticed because Dave occasionally wiped them away. I’d planned to Twitter, if for no other reason than I wanted to feel like I was connected to something outside of that room, but I was petrified. Even through the pain, I was so, so scared.

Maybe 4 hours into my labor, I got my epidural. It’s just like any other one I’ve gotten (I got a bonus 3! different! ones! with Ben, so I can handle it.), feels weird, not entirely pleasant, like your body knows something is going where it’s not supposed to, and then, WHOMP! Your legs are gone. Lifeless and tingly at the same time. It’s not a pleasant feeling by any means.

For an hour or so, I laid there, trying to watch TV but completely unable to focus on what was playing, so afraid. Just overcome with fear. I’m not one to talk about “my feelings” very often, and I don’t even know that Dave knew that I was so full of fear and dread that I could barely breathe.

And wait, what was THAT? It was…a contraction? Okay, yeah, the monitor says I’m having one OUCH! *pant, pant, pant* WEIRD. And wait, ANOTHER ONE? *pant, pant, pant* okay, wait, I thought I had an epidural.

I did have an epidural, I knew, because my legs were like two life-sized facsimiles of legs, as dead as tree-stumps, and yet still there, warm and heavy. I couldn’t shift easily from side to side as my hips were similarly numb, but that was it. It hadn’t taken past my hips.

I know I always like to use the “make God laugh; tell him your plans” quote when I talk about kids, especially when talking to parents-to-be, not because I’m being unkind in any way (I know. A shock), but because for all the planning, all the carefully executed plans, things just never go that way. I don’t mean to sound pessimistic or unnecessarily cruel, just honest.

I’d planned for as many narcotics as possible as soon as possible and here I was, 5 cm dilated and 100% effaced, half numb, a sort of centaur of pain. So be it. I could have had them replace the epidural, but I just didn’t care. I could handle it. I’d done it before.

(Pointless rambly aside: when laboring with Ben, the doctor turned off the epidural completely when I had to push. It was like going from 0 to 11 in a couple minutes. He was a nice man, eh?)

The transition from 5 cm to 10 took about 15 minutes, and after demonstrating my excellent ability to push for the nurse, she turned white and called the doctor immediately. Oh yeah, I’m a rock-tastic pusher.

I staved off the urge to push, and the fear I’d been feeling before amplified just like I was an ant in the sun who had wandered into the path of a large magnifying glass. I was petrified to the core, my cells screaming in fear. I cried and I cried and I cried like a little bitch to poor The Daver, “I’m so scared. I’m so scared. What if there’s something wrong with the baby? I’m so scared.”

Over and over and over, like an awful broken record. I couldn’t stop myself. Couldn’t be rational. I’d say it was the effects of being in transitional labor (the last time, I’d tried to order Dave to go home as he’d spent my labor on the couch in the room, sleeping off a migraine and I.was.pissed.) and maybe that’s all it was, but I was a wreck going into this phase of labor.

The doctor came scurrying in, gowned up quickly, and raised the bed up so far off the ground I felt like a circus performer with my crotch as the main attraction in the spotlight. Normally, I’d have cracked a joke, but I was shaking with fear, cowering and weeping openly.

On the doctor’s orders, I began to push. I knew the baby was positioned badly–for the life of me I cannot recall how–and as I pushed, the doctor wrangled my poor crotch everywhichway. I was thankful the epidural was on as I saw my hips shimmying and shaking with each push. Ben had been a forceps baby, Alex slid out with a couple pushes, and it looked like my last was as stuck as my first.

I didn’t have a lot of time to think about it, as they had me pushing every time I caught a breath. I always hear those ladies on A Baby Story screaming as they give birth, and I don’t get it. I’ve never screamed. And trust me, I’m a loud-ass bitch, so I’d imagine that if anyone would scream, it’d be me.

I opened my eyes from squinching them tightly shut through my pushing and what I saw alarmed me, my normally pasty husband was ashen, the doctor looked concerned and the nurse looked alarmed. Not exactly encouraging.

“Becky,” my doctor said, her voice squeaking with either effort or emotion, “there’s something wrong with your baby’s head.”