A Journey Begins

If I thought I had a lot of doctors appointments during my pregnancy, nothing compare to the first two weeks of Ondine’s life on earth. Or what’s to come over the first year of her life.

The first post hospital visit was a visit to Seattle Children’s Hospital craniofacial unit. This was my second visit, Collin and Ondine’s first. This appointment isn’t what were hoping for. We’re hoping for a meeting with the surgeon to discuss the trajectory of her surgery. Nope.

1st up are the nurses. They check weight, length and skin color. They have me feed her to watch and judge if she’s eating correctly. Turns out Ondine and I are pros at bottle feeding. You see, a cleft lip & pallet child can’t nurse. It’s been one of those ongoing “I’m an unfit parent” internal conflicts for me. And everyone else wants to tell me just try to breast feed. I want to scream “I can’t!” But the reality is she can’t. It’s not her fault any more than it is mine. She can latch, but because there’s a hole in the roof of her mouth and a gap in her lip she can’t get any suction.  It’s been hard for me to come to terms with but I refuse to formula feed if I can avoid it so our schedule is pump-store-feed-repeat. It’s painful and exhausting but it has to be done for her sake.
Next up is the social worker. I panicked slightly when they told me I had to meet one of those.  Luckily she turned out to be a fabulous woman whose purpose there was to make sure I had the tools I needed to care for my child. Her job is to be there to support us if we have questions, help us navigate insurance if necessary and anything else we could think of. She was the first social worker I’d ever met and trusted from minute one.

Finally the pediatrician comes in. She takes the exam even further checking reflexes, ear canals eyes and all the other standard healthy human tests. Ondine passed with flying colors. Then they were able to answer a few questions but not the main one. The answer is still 3-6 months and we won’t know until you meet the surgeon.

So we head into Easter. We have not yet met the surgeon, but we’ve met his team.

Doctors, Midwives and Doulas, Oh My!

So if you have a doctor and you love them, congratulations! You have one less headache to worry about. But if you haven’t made your selection yet for who’s going to, you know, deliver the baby… Get on that train and make a decision ASAP. You’re going to want to have a feel for this person who’s going to be a familiar face in a medically sterile environment. Did I mention they’ll also be up close and personal in your privates any day now?

I know this is weird, but I didn’t know where to start…. so I looked on Yelp for a doctor. Call me crazy, but every woman I knew who had a doctor was either a high paid attorney (who didn’t mind dropping several grand on a new purse) or my blessed family who haven’t seen a maternity doctor in, well, years.  I wanted to see what others had to say about the top rated OB/GYN’s  in my area. I found several and one in particular who worked at Swedish Medical Center, the hospital that delivers more babies than any other in my state. She had top marks from everyone and I mean everyone. That’s a rare feat in Yelp. When EVERYONE thinks you’re the bees knees, it’s probably because you are. Unfortunately with my estimated due date, they didn’t want to over schedule her so I made my number two selection and set up an appointment.

This doctor was fabulous. She was so kind, and sincere. She answered all of my questions and made me feel right at home. Of course my husband was a little unprepared for a vaginal and breast exam that happened right there in the little room. He found himself a little horrified at the vaginal exam (they do open you up with steal tongs) and justifying the breast exam because she was pretty and that made it ok for a doctor to touch me like that (I laughed the whole way home). But in general we really loved our doctor. She was a little pricey and we had this moment where we weren’t sure if we could afford to keep her so we looked at other options.

My sister was the one who turned me onto midwives. She had both of her kids before she and I were sisters (marriage is a fabulous thing). She was young enough to not know there were options beyond a sterile room and a doctor. What is a birthing center? Well she told me. It’s just like a regular doctors office, but it costs a little less and if you so choose some midwives will even deliver in the comfort of your own home. So I looked at that very same Swedish Medical Center had a Midwifery clinic in their ever so much more chill Ballard Hospital. Win.

But I still wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. I mean, switching from a Doctor to a midwife is a big deal. And I really, really liked my doctor.

Then the standardized testing started.

What the Halo?!

I understand there are some basic questions that you will be asked when getting to know your doctor so that they can also get to know your medical history to give you the best possible care available based on your personal biology. When was the first day of your last period? Have you ever used elicit drugs? Do you look both ways when crossing the road….?

But some of the tests are rather scary and can really put things in perspective for you. Some of these tests are there for standard medical preparation. Others are there for the comfort of the family, i.e. if you want to have as close to a perfect baby and ONLY if it’s a perfect baby, there’s a test for that. The only problem is that if you’re uncomfortable with the tests in any way, the pressure to take them can make pregnancy a burden and not the joyous time it’s supposed to be.

As I mentioned in my blog about perfect children, the choice is up to you. I still don’t entirely know what a doula is, but I’m betting you have a new age friend who can explain it to you better than I can with a Google search. Suffice it to say we chose a Midwife and haven’t looked back. They have been wonderful at Swedish Midwifery and Women’s Health.

When I compare the two, I liked my doctor, but I love my midwives (yes plural, there’s a team of them!) and I’m glad that I live in an age when choice is the staple of our time.

The All Seeing Cupcake

If you’re a first time parent with less than “traditional” parents yourself, you probably are asking a lot of questions. And you should. Lord knows I didn’t know ½ of the stuff I know now when I started. In fact when I first found out I was pregnant, I was pretty excited… about the idea of pregnancy and childbirth. I had no idea what that meant.

Among the doctors appointments, medical treatments and steps to get your body prepared to grow a parestite- er baby…. (I know mama, you hate that joke).. there’s a lot of other things to think about to. Like do we find out if it’s a boy or a girl? When and where do you ask for help preparing for things? Is is ok to register for gifts? Do I have to have a baby shower or can I just pop the kid out and call it good? I make light, but these are actually all vital steps in your mental preparation for baby.

Number one, thinking about what type of toys you want for baby can be a big statement about what kind of parent you’re hoping to be. What kind of diapers (my faves are Honest), bottles, strollers… Each of these things are essential to cultivating a young body and mind into a young person- and with any luck a responsible adult with enough humility to not brag about how awesome they are, but rather what a rad parent you were (hey, one can dream right?). So aside from knowing I was going to have a baby shower,  the next question and more immediate one that I get asked is “Do you know if it’s a boy or girl yet?”

For some, this is so they can buy pink or blue. For others, this is so they can relate to you about their experience. For me, it was just a confirmation of if we went more Pirate or more fairy with our Neverland theme.

My mother in law is the goddess of parties. We have not yet had to have an unspoken rivalry about who throws a better party, mostly because I enjoy going to hers. She also knows more about female tradition and trends than I could ever imagine. When she first told me about a baby reveal, I pictured a baby on a silver platter with a “voila!” moment. That apparently is just my active imagination.

Baby Reveal parties are the latest trend that allow expecting parents to celebrate their new bundle of joy with a party of their closest friends and family. Some people choose to have a box filled with colored balloons, pink for girl and blue for boy, others use cupcakes where the couple is the first to bite into a specialty order. I’ve since heard of specialty cocktails which I’ve decided is a really big tease and therefore NOT an option. We went with cupcakes from Seattle favorite, Cupcake Royale.

Now the Neal’s are an Irish clan. We tend to be the black sheep of the family, rarely to do things in a straight line, we opted for a party at our absolute favorite Irish Pub, the Owl n’ Thistle. Baby was after all expected to arrive on March 17^th. You don’t get more officially Irish than being born on St. Patrick’s day. So continuing to celebrate our Irish roots, we also chose Irish flag cupcakes and Green for boy and Orange for girl. My husband wore his kilt and I wore a green sweater over an orange tank with the Blackwatch Tartan (because I’m the Scottish kid in the group) wrapped over my jeans.

The Neal’s are a masculine clan. I don’t know the specifics of other Neal’s, O’Neils and any other version of the name, but the Neal’s I married into have boys. I the last 14 babies and three generations starting at Grandpa Neal (not counting a divorce and remarry to a non-Neal) there was exactly one girl. One girl in over 50 years. So the deck favored another boy.

That was my bet. That was the bet of all of the cousins. That was the bet of our little nephew, my sister in law and Mama Neal. My husband had said from the moment he met me his first child would be a girl. Twin girls, to be exact. I laughed and told him to place an order with God, see how that worked out for him. Having known him now for 4 years, I’ve watched him in the face of extraordinary odds make predictions like this before- and come out right. So my faith in the Neal history was a little shaky. But he had been wrong about the twins part, so maybe he wasn’t as infallible as I thought.

Bets were laid. We designed a game based on a similar game done with champagne, blueberries and raspberries. We’re Irish, this family doesn’t do champagne, they do whiskey or ale. We asked the kitchen to give us a small side of Lemons and Limes so we could at least stick with our theme and people could declare their bet on the rim of their preferred beverage. hubby had his whiskey, I had a cranberry sprite. Le sigh.

Now Collin had cheated. After receiving some very disheartening news not three days prior he had needed a confidence booster and peeked at the little card before he took it to the bakery. So he remained silent and took a slice of each fruit. And we waited for the allotted time.

Thanks to modern technology, we were able to connect with family from far away via Google Hangouts (we take a good 20 minutes to get to the reveal, but you get the idea). My mom, my dad and stepfather connected with us from Rosalia, WA and Los Angeles, CA. My step-brother couldn’t get it to work in Chicago and my best friend couldn’t figure it out in NY but that’s alright, we posted it on YouTube on accident and decided to leave it there for them. The time had come.

We put the lap top at the far end of the table. All our friends and family that could come gathered round, cupcakes were passed out and we dramatically waited, people holding their glasses out with their predictions on the rims. I bit into my cup cake. I forgot to remove the wrapper. I looked for the filling and couldn’t see it. Then I looked again, that wasn’t Irish frosting, that was orange filling.

We have a little girl.

A beautiful, strong, fiery Irish girl ready to make her debut this coming March and I can’t wait!

The Only Gift I Have, For Mother's Day

Because I’m a starving artist, I don’t often have the means to treat my family to the wonderful things they deserve. And when holidays like Mother’s Day come up, I don’t know how to give without going even more broke.

This year an opportunity came up to write an essay with the grand prize being a day package to Olympus Day Spa.
Here is the essay I wrote. (ps. I WON! pps: You want to win with the wife/girlfriend Get her a package here)
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My mother has always and ever been a fighter, and a lover. A fighter because she has an iron will to accomplish the impossible. A lover, because no amount of hardship or mountains she had to cross would ever dampen her spirit of generosity.

When I was a little girl, I lived in a fantasy world. Most children do, but mine was filled with Tigers, and Elephants and magic. My mother was a dresser for a stage show at the MGM Grand in Reno, NV. I was the stage brat running around under dancers feet and weaving in and out of the catacombs of a theater that was very much a little Neverland.

I never knew how poor we truly were.

I remember one Christmas distinctly. We had a huge roast turkey and all of the trimmings. There were presents under the tree and a fire in the hearth. She took my hand and led me and my younger brother into a homeless shelter where we spend the morning serving others. For me it was a game. And when we came home I won the prize of a wishbone. What I didn’t know that my mother had barely been able to afford the turkey, let alone any presents. We were at the bottom of the bottom for income, surviving on table scraps while she worked full time to support myself and my younger brother. But to us, it was ever an adventure. Rain or shine, she loved life and made sure we did too.

Years later I would finally understand it. How she would go without so that we could have. How she would smile so that we would know that everything was ok. I remember living in a dream world because my mother made it so. She allowed us to be kids. She allowed me to be a young girl who discovered the world on my own terms. She held me when I hurt, taught me when I was wrong, and led me to be the best person I can be.

My mother taught me to be a woman who loves first, questions second and commits to the ones I love with an undying devotion.