the baby turns one, we all turn 2022

The baby turns one next week—on New Year's Eve. I've been thinking about this as his birthday week, though, probably because I was in the hospital for so long prior to his arrival. It feels like his birthday should, at least for me, last several days. 

It's very strange to have a baby on New Year's Eve. The whole yearly retrospective gets tied up with the baby. I can't separate what happened in 2021 (most of it not so good) from the baby himself. And because I love him, it's hard to think that 2021 wasn't a good year. A good, exhausting, endless year. 

Having a baby really does induce a weird kind of brain fog. It's very hard for me to understand that the Capitol was invaded by a Trumpian mob this year—just 6 days after he was born. An attempt to steal the election very much seems like something I made up while sleep deprived and taking powerful narcotics. 

It's also very strange to me that covid has been happening for the baby's entire life—including the whole time I was pregnant. I can't even pretend to remember what I was thinking in March 2020 when I got pregnant. That seems so long ago, another lifetime on a different planet. When people talk about returning to normal I understand rationally what they mean, but it is clearly impossible. A world before covid, before the baby, before all this? What world is that? 

I've always hated New Year's Eve as a holiday. The mandate to go out and have fun or else has always repelled me—who can have fun when it's mandated? Of course I never appreciated it for what it really is, not a mandate to get drunk but the celebration of a new start. And now for the rest of my life New Year's Eve will always be about the baby, even many years from now when he's not a baby anymore and has no interest in celebrating his birthday with me. A wonderful way to fully neutralize a holiday I've never enjoyed.  

The baby himself is a delight at the moment. Crawling like a champ, working very hard to stand and take some steps. He loves so many things—the dog, the dog's toys, the swings, taking a bath, speaking gibberish, his teachers at daycare, food, going outside, his father. (Especially his father. I am of no interest currently.) He understands the word no and occasionally obeys when I tell him not to do something. And in turn he shakes his head vigorously from side to side when he doesn't want to do something. I'm sure he also understands the word yes, but we don't use that one very often. 

I'm sure he will be even more interesting (and annoying) next year. Here's to 2022. 

i just can't take it anymore

Someone I work with got covid a couple weeks ago. I don't like to write about work because, given my huge readership (hello to the four of you!), I don't want to write anything that could get me fired. But every good rule deserves to get broken now and again, right? Right. The four of you won't tell, right? Sure. 

When I learned this person had covid I wasn't too concerned—I assumed it was a breakthrough infection, which happens, and they'd be fine. This was a reasonable assumption because I work at a university where vaccination is required. And I also did not think this person was stupid enough to be unvaccinated. Alas, my faith in intelligence is clearly unwarranted, because this person is not vaccinated. Not vaccinated and not young, either. 

My coworker is fine. But I am angry. I'm not angry because I'm scared, I'm angry because it's so utterly stupid and selfish.

I just, I mean, aargh, I can't even explain how much work it takes to be unvaccinated here. You need to apply for a religious exemption that is very onerous and time-consuming. And once you have that, you actually have to risk getting covid. The work and the risk is just so much greater than the minor inconvenience of getting vaccinated that I just cannot comprehend the utter stupidity of this choice. It is so completely selfish! If you don't get sick you're a possible vector to someone immunocompromised and if you do get sick and go to the hospital you are taking up space someone else might need. 

And this is a person I work with every day! I have to listen to their opinion! They routinely insist that I follow administrative rules that are pointless and yet they couldn't be bothered to get a required vaccination against a deadly disease that has killed hundreds of thousands of people. Every time this person speaks all I can think of is how selfish and misguided they are and it's utterly exhausting. 

(To be clear, this person's religion has no prohibition against vaccination. I assume they came up with something to meet the requirements of a religious exemption but this person isn't a Christian Scientist or anything. I would wager all the money I have that they have been vaccinated for polio.)

And then, on the flipside: my parents just returned from 2 weeks in Germany where you are not allowed to go anywhere—even an open air market—without wearing an N95 mask. If you are wearing a cloth mask the covid police will refuse you entry. Everywhere you go you are required to report your location through a government app. You are required to get tested for covid every time you travel to a new state or town. At one point my parents were refused entry to a hotel where they had a reservation because the number of cases in that town had increased and they shut down all the hotels. They had to travel to a different state in order to find a place to stay. 

My parents loved it. They thought it was truly wonderful to have the government track their movements, they felt so safe, they can't understand why Americans would object to being monitored in this way. And I said, really? You really can't understand it? No, they said, it's ridiculous that anyone would object to being tracked by the government at all times. Especially during a health crisis. 

I need to go back and reread Carl Schmitt, but I'm pretty sure we're so deep into the state of exception we can't even recognize it anymore. And I am just so, so, so tired. I want to move into a house in the middle of the woods with no internet or phone and never talk to anyone ever again. Goodbye, cruel covid world. 

happy mother's day!

An old friend wrote to me on Mother's Day this year, ostensibly to wish me a happy first Mother's Day but actually to tell me why she would probably never have a child. It was a long email. I believe it contained the words "happy mother's day" somewhere in there, but the meat of the message was that motherhood isn't all that important. 

I replied with qualified agreement—I don't think that motherhood is the most important thing. Having a child is not the only or necessarily the best way to contribute to the world. I did respectfully disagree, however, with the message in general: having gestated a person, very painfully birthed him, and then kept him alive for a few months, I was inclined to think that being a mother was pretty damn important, if not downright miraculous. 

I've been thinking about this a lot because there have been a number of articles lately on the growing "child-free" trend, and they all say basically the same thing: the birthrate is not just falling by circumstance, women are choosing not to have children. This is a principled choice, ostensibly not made just for their personal benefit but for the good of the planet. Humans are the world's biggest problem and so having fewer humans is a good thing. Fewer people = less climate change, less suffering, less general mayhem, etc, etc.  

For the record: I have no opinion on the procreative choices of these women! I don't care whether or not they have children. What's weird to me is that they spend way more time on this than seems healthy or useful. For many years, I myself was not interested in having children. So I did what most people who are uninterested in having children do: I learned how to avoid getting pregnant, made a plan, and then followed that plan. This did not require me to get my fallopian tubes cut, start a reproductive justice non-profit, or email my friends on Mother's Day to tell them parenthood is unimportant. I just, well...didn't have a kid. 

So I say we just let these women get on with their lives and stop spilling digital ink over their choices. Perhaps they will then stop sharing their sterilization surgeries with their 64,000 tiktok followers and we can all just live in blissful ignorance. But, you know, on second thought: I really do love a good overshare story! So maybe let's keep these articles coming. I want to hear next from someone who decides not to have houseplants on principle. (I am available to be interviewed.) 

In all seriousness, though: I do care about one thing in these stories, and that is the suggestion that the world would be a better place without human beings in it. If that's true then why just stop at childlessness? What's the case against against suicide, forced sterilization, or murder? If one less person in the world = one less polluter/oppressor, then is the next climate/social justice "solution" going to involve some selective culling of the human herd? What the hell is going on?  

More chaos

Yesterday, daycare closed because someone (unclear who) tested positive for covid. 

Today, we had packers come and put all our belongings in boxes. 

Two hours ago, the power went out. 

WHEN DOES THIS END???

an update on the chaos

 This past month has been total chaos. A month ago we had just gotten notice that we would need to be out of our house at the end of July. In the last month I have, in summary: 

1. Scheduled (and re-scheduled) movers

2. Found and reserved an apartment in Ann Arbor

3. Hired a lawyer

4. Learned a great deal about eviction law

5. Spent three weeks at my parent's apartment in northern New Jersey (unoccupied because they are in California (good) and without any childcare help because they are in California (bad))

6. Gone on three interviews for a job at Princeton 

7. Received and accepted a job offer from Princeton

8. Found and leased an apartment near Princeton

9. Found and reserved a daycare spot in Princeton

10. Returned to Michigan to: give notice at my job, pack up the house, and move

The most stressful part of all of this has been the housing situation. Our landlords have ZERO idea what they're doing and seem genuinely surprised that they couldn't just show up on August 1 with a moving van and kick us out of our house. Our lawyer, who is possibly the mellowest person I have ever met, expressed actual amusement at their degree of ignorance. He advised us—and I shall also advise you—never to rent from landlords who think tenants are just paying guests instead of people with actual legal rights. In other words: don't rent from morons. 

The good news is that we are probably not going be evicted—by the time our landlords manage to get us to court we will have already moved out. They are very lucky we want to leave, actually, since it would likely take them many months to get rid of us if we did not. But in the meantime they are harassing us—calling my boss, showing up at our house without notice, entering the house without permission when we are away. Two possible upsides from this: 1) I have learned a great deal about housing law, and 2) we are finally convinced buying a house might be a good idea.

And in the midst of all this I got a new job! Pretty nuts. I am really happy to be going back to the East Coast so that I can be nearer to (in no particular order): family, friends, great cities, amazing ethnic food, and impatiently rude people. I am not sad to be leaving my job and I am not sad to be leaving Michigan, but I do wish it hadn't all been so rushed and fraught. Despite my eagerness to leave, we have been very happy here. Both of our beloved creatures—dog and baby—were born here. It's really a nice place to live and I'm so glad we moved here when we did. I wish the tenor of the ending could match the overall feeling I have about the place itself. 

Baby update: He turns seven months old in a couple days! He is getting super vocal and has added lots of consonants to his babbling. He has also just today sprouted a couple bottom teeth, and without making a fuss at all. Food makes a lot more sense to both me and him now, too. This morning he was eating some yogurt and after he finished I opened a banana for my own breakfast. He stared at me with open incredulity until I shared some with him. He has also eaten: shrimp, french fries, guacamole, and foie gras. Next we both need to figure out how a cup works. I have a feeling this will take a very long time. 

a break from our regularly scheduled programming

The baby turned 6 months yesterday! Unfortunately we also learned that we are being kicked out of our rental house in a month, so no one has the time or energy to mark his half birthday right now. 

I'm taking this surprise rather badly, I'll confess. Partially because it sucks to move, and it really sucks to move with an infant, but mostly because we've been talking about a longer term plan to leave Michigan and go back east. Finding a new house here means staying longer than we wanted, and it probably means I'll need to stay at my current job longer than I wanted as well. 

I'm also just depressed about how shitty people are. Our landlords told us in May they wanted to renew our lease. Then a couple days ago they tell us we need to vacate in 30 days. These are the same people who left us a baby gift when we moved in and kept checking in to see how we were doing. Being nice is really not the same thing as being kind. 

We're going to try to get more time to stay and figure out our move, of course. We've even hired a lawyer to help us. He has assured us that just getting us into eviction court would take at least an extra month after our lease ends in July. (Also: the eviction moratorium ends the same day as our lease and there is a backlog of cases.) And even if we did get to court eventually, we'd probably be given more time if we needed it. Apparently the judge in our town is not particularly a fan of inconsiderate landlords. Not that you want an eviction court judgment on your record, even a favorable one—we'd never be able to get a rental again. 

Our landlords are not in dire straights at all, by the way—they just sold their own house and now they want ours. These people have multiple properties and a huge extended family in the area. Who cares that we have a 6-month-old in daycare down the street and two full time jobs and no family within a nine hour drive. 

So we're in a mad dash to find another place to live. Typically for us, we're also considering just chucking everything, putting our stuff in storage and heading back east now. Josh can work from anywhere and I wouldn't exactly be sad to leave my job. Too bad the "east coast" is a big place and we can't seem to narrow down the options at all. 

Sigh. At least we're taking this opportunity to get rid of a bunch of shitty furniture we don't want anymore. My rotting bookshelves (definitely a safety hazard) are going to the dump! The ugly dining room table and chairs Josh got at an estate sale before we were married are going to the local resale place! Where will the books go, you ask? And where will we eat dinner? We have no idea. 

month five

The baby was 5 months old yesterday, a fact I reported to Josh only for us to have an insane conversation about how age is counted—Josh insisted he should be 6 months old, not 5, since he is beginning his 6th month of life. He's not wrong, per se, hence the title of this post. But he's not correct, either. I don't know, Dear Reader. I guess we just need to leave the house more often. 

Anyway, however old he is, the baby is growing fast! Already busting out of his 6 month clothes, and somewhere around 18 pounds. It's helpful that he now grips onto my shirt when I'm carrying him because he's getting heavy to cart around. Sometimes as he sliiiiides down my front while we're walking around the house he gives this little squeak that I find very adorable. I also carry him sideways a lot because I find it funny, and he holds himself straight as a board—he's got great core muscles! Carrying him sideways also helps keep the droll on the floor rather than on me. 

Big things that happened this month: we took a trip! A 9 hour car ride (18 hours round trip) to the east coast. I was more than a little stressed beforehand because he had never been in the car for more than an hour at a time, but he did really great. Slept a lot, was happy to eat in a moving car, did not scream much at all. There was one major diaper blowout that resulted in me having to throw out a very cute onesie in a Sheetz bathroom in rural Pennsylvania. I am still sad about this—the onesie had a sloth on it and I love sloths! But as I carried him back out to the car in only his diaper the very country lady in the next car gave me a look and said, "I been there, Mama." I love when people say stuff like that to me—it makes my day. 

So we survived the trip and the baby got to spend a lot of quality time with his grandparents, which made them very happy. It was particularly fun for me to see my Mom and Dad with the baby. My Dad, who is Very Serious, was constantly on the floor making funny noises and trying to get the baby to roll over. And my Mom, who is somewhat neurotic, insisted on boiling the water for his formula because their house might have lead pipes. I didn't have the heart to tell her that boiling water does not remove lead. I think I gained a lot of insight into my childhood. 

Other things: the baby has been eating solid food for a couple weeks now. I find this process entirely mystifying, mostly because he has NO interest in eating solid food. Like, I put some in his mouth, he makes a face, and then he spits most of it out. And we do that for 5 minutes until he starts to fuss and I give up because we're both covered in baby food. At this rate he might be eating pizza by his 18th birthday?? Also I gave him some pureed sweet potato, which is the only food so far that he actually seemed to enjoy, but it definitely upset his stomach. At what point does this solid food thing begin to pay off, exactly?? 

In general the baby is just more this month: he coos more, he moves more, he smiles more, he plays with his toys more, etc, etc. He did not seem to care at all that we left him with his grandparents for a couple days but he's so easy-going it's hard to tell. Josh thinks we may have done the unthinkable and spawned an extrovert. I am sure it's too soon to tell but I guess anything is possible. 

month four

I've stopped understanding how to record the baby's age—should I count the weeks or the months? They no longer match up: he's 17.5 weeks old but just passed 4 months. I'm quite certain it doesn't matter, except that now I pay for daycare weekly so I'm more inclined to keep track of the weeks.

Sending him to daycare has been great—way better than I imagined. He had a bit of a tough time transitioning to it, particularly figuring out how to nap in a new environment, but now that he's mostly got the hang of it he seems to be enjoying himself. I also had a bit of a tough time with the transition—I definitely cried a few times dropping him off that first week—but now we're both mostly acclimated. He seems to enjoy hanging out with other babies and I definitely enjoy being able to get some actual work done during the day. 

And just a few days ago he started sleeping through the night, hallelujah. By "through the night" I mean that he goes to bed at 6pm and sleeps until 6am. (I'd prefer 8 to 8 but I guess we won't get there for a few years.) I imagine there will be a regression at some point but knowing he can do it for a few days in a row gives me hope. Though I'm now so used to getting up at 3am that I've been waking up in the middle of the night even if the baby isn't crying. Now I just have to retrain myself to sleep through the night. 

Other changes: he loves to put everything in his mouth, most especially his own thumb. He started by sucking on his whole fist and then as he got a bit more dextrous he figured out how to just get his thumb in there. He sucks his thumb anytime he's hungry or tired and I'm kind of amazed how much he does it considering he never had much interest in pacifiers. If you give him a toy now he will grab it and immediately put it in his mouth. 

Eating is now a full body experience: arms flailing, feet kicking, lots of grunting. Every time he has a bottle he needs to have a death grip on at least one of your fingers—if you don't give him a finger to grip then he will grab his clothes or his other hand or the bottle. He really wants to be able to hold the bottle himself but can't quite manage it yet. 

He can hold his head up pretty well now but doesn't appear to be at all interested in rolling over. He drools constantly and I hope that doesn't mean his teeth are coming in soon because I would prefer not to have to deal with teething just yet. He also smiles and laughs all the time, and will very intently watch me and Josh as we talk or walk around the room. He loves to watch Josh wrestle with the dog. He also really likes TV—I put Sesame Street on the other day when he was very fussy and I have never seen him so enthralled. Josh looked after him for a few hours yesterday and reported that a Chuck Norris film provoked a similar response. 

And I will at some point write something that is not baby related, I promise! It's just that nothing of non-baby interest is happening these days. I did get my second vaccine shot yesterday, though, and I'm looking forward to seeing other humans again soon! 

month three

The baby—I guess I should start referring to him by name?—is 12 weeks old tomorrow. Hard to imagine that 12 weeks ago I was in the hospital, slowly losing my mind. But here we are! All still alive (hooray) and mostly sane. 

This month he has been all about smiling, cooing, and crying. He smiles all the time now and loves kisses and belly rubs. It's amazing how much easier it is to enjoy his company now that he smiles at me! He also cries a great deal, which is no change from last month, except it's now more than just yelling: there are sometimes tears, too. I guess that's the tradeoff—with smiles come tears. 

His cooing is constant, and there are different types of coos with different sounds: one kind of coo when he's excited, another when he's hungry, another when he's trying to get my attention. He's much more interested in faces now, too. 

He's turned out to be a really good napper, often sleeping 4-5 hours a day, which has been extremely nice for me, especially since I'm back at work part-time. He's still up a couple times a night for food, but it's mostly manageable and I don't (always) feel like a zombie anymore. He also continues to be a big boy, he grew out of his first set of clothes a couple weeks ago when his toes started busting out of his onesies. 

He starts daycare next week, which I am mostly happy about. My coworkers get a kick of seeing him on work calls, but I am over it: trying to speak on a conference call while holding a screaming baby is not at all fun. Typing one-handed while holding a screaming baby is also not fun. I have made a lot of small mistakes at work this week.

I'm sad I won't be able to see him as much, though, which honestly kind of surprises me. He goes bed about an hour after I'll pick him up from daycare, so he'll be sleeping most of the time he's home. I guess this means I like him? I mean, I obviously love him, but I didn't realize I enjoyed his company until recently. 

Entrusting him to strangers also makes me vaguely uneasy, which seems entirely unremarkable—I assume everyone feels this way? It must be biologically innate. Reading about all the daycare protocols, though, I realize that they will probably care for him better than I do. At least, they won't be constantly holding him with one hand while trying to type out emails with the other. 

month two

In a couple days the baby will be 8 weeks old. I assume some day I will stop thinking about his age in weeks? It might be a while. 

The only thing he really cares about is food, so that's no change from last month. A big, big change is that he no longer sleeps during the day unless I force him to by putting him in his crib and swaddling him. Until about midway through week 6 he slept most of the day anywhere I put him—his swing, the stroller, his pack and play, my arms—but now he will stay awake indefinitely until he ends up screaming bloody murder. And it turns out, if babies don't sleep during the day they don't sleep at night, either. It took a couple days for me to figure out he had stopped napping, and then it took a couple days for him to figure out how to nap, and that week was pretty brutal. Very little sleep was had by all. 

During this week I broke down and bought a couple advice books on babies and sleeping—I thought that a nap schedule would emerge organically when he was like 3 months old, I didn't realize that he would suddenly go on a sleep strike at six weeks and make himself (and me) inconsolable. I read these books, and on the margins they were helpful. (It would never have occurred to me to put the baby down for a nap an hour or so after he woke up, or to put him to bed at 5:30pm, for example.) On the whole, though, I read 300+ pages and all the useful useful stuff could have been relayed to me in about 10. 

We're doing somewhat better now with the napping, but my position on advice remains unchanged: I don't like it. I particularly dislike advice books. The authors are all so certain and they contradict each other constantly. And they all go too far—instead of just validating the problem (that yes, you are not crazy, babies don't sleep automatically during the day and you have to help them) and giving you a few tips on what to do, they all promise you a solution. To a woman who is very sleep deprived, it is cruel to promise that your baby will sleep for 8 hours at a stretch if you just follow this specific program in minute, painstaking detail. Life is not that simple. And you will not be able to follow any specific program in detail because every baby (and perhaps more importantly, every parent) is different. Ultimately, you're really just going to have to use your best judgment. 

But no one would pay money for a book that just told you to use your best judgment, so here we are. I've been thinking a lot about Agnes Callard through this experience, because she writes all the time about how much she hates advice. I couldn't find the specific article but I'm pretty sure that somewhere she says she finds unsolicited advice to be a kind of aggression. I wouldn't go quite that far, since sometimes people really do know more than you and can help. My philosophy is better summed up by this quote: I don't think anyone can, or should want, to be told how to live. I have previously succumbed to the desire to be told how to live and I have deeply regretted it every single time. 

Someone giving you advice on how to get a baby to sleep is hardly advice on how to live, of course, but I do think that once you start organizing your life according to someone else's experience you're on a slippery slope. Being totally inflexible when someone is trying to help you is also no good, of course. It's a fine line. And I guess I'll have lots of chances to practice walking this line, since there is endless advice on parenting and I know nothing about being a parent. I will probably break down once again and buy more advice books when we reach the next stage of inconsolable crying, but until then I'll try and remember to just use my best judgment. It's free, at least. 

month one

The baby is nearly one month old, which seems like a milestone worth celebrating. Mostly for us, not him—we've made it this far and everyone is still alive and sane, hooray. 

I've never been a baby person, so it's hardly a surprise to me that this stage of parenthood is pretty boring. He's cute, of course, but most of the time—when he's not sleeping—he's either really annoying or very gross, often both at the same time. He's definitely more alert than he was a couple weeks ago, which makes him seem more like a person and less like a feeding/pooping machine, but he's still pretty blob-like at this point. 

So far, he likes anything with lots of motion: his swing on the highest setting; a very bumpy stroller ride over ice and snow; a trip in the car. He also likes food, his number one request. He loathes diaper changes with a vociferous passion. He doesn't mind taking a bath, but really hates getting out of it. He has shown no understanding that the dog is a dog, but he doesn't seem to mind having his face, hands, and feet licked by her. Pooping and farting are by far the two hardest parts of his day. 

Overall what I'm most amazed by is that every single person currently living on the planet was born so helpless and needy. Just think about it: every single human spent years having their poopy butt wiped by annoyed adults! None of us gets to skip this stage, either: I bet even Jesus had the occasional gross diaper. I knew this intellectually, of course, before I had an infant, but the reality of it has only just hit home. I'm really enjoying imagining random people as helpless babies. Baby Mitch McConnell, for example, with a massive poop diaper, crying for his milk at 2am. How delicious. 

As for me: I am tired, which is obviously due to lack of sleep but may also have something to do with boredom. Having a baby in January in Michigan means you don't get out much; having a baby in January in Michigan during a pandemic means you really don't get out much. I'm trying to embrace this hibernation season. 

My one daily activity not directly related to keeping myself or the baby alive is taking long walks along the Huron river. I've started going every day, snow or shine, dog and baby in tow. It seemed only fitting that I should finally read Pilgrim at Tinker Creek while doing this—and it's a good book to read while caring for an infant, since there is no plot and you can pick it up from anywhere. It's always interesting to finally start reading a book that has been described to you many times by many different people: I'm always surprised at what people fail to mention. Everyone told me that Pilgrim at Tinker Creek was about nature, which of course it is, but no one told me it's really about God. It's not at all what I expected. 

Induction & birth

I feel compelled to write about this now, before my brain very wisely erases these memories. And I'm sure the memories will fade, because if they didn't we would all be only children. To be clear: this post is really just for me, so that I don't forget what happened. I can't imagine anyone else would be interested in all of these details. 

At 39 weeks pregnant, my doctor recommended scheduling an induction for the next week, if I hadn't already gone into labor on my own by then. Going to 41 weeks, she said, could be dangerous for the baby. I was fine with this, and very tired of being pregnant, so we scheduled the induction. I also asked her in that appointment if she had a sense how big the baby would be, and she said she could guess but it would really just be a guess and therefore not very useful. I had a feeling that she dodged the question.

I was hoping to go into labor on my own, but besides increasing discomfort, fatigue, and the inability walk farther than a block, nothing happened. So when we arrived at the hospital for the induction a few days after Christmas I was very ready to have the baby, though definitely apprehensive about what would happen. 

As it turns out, very little happened for the first two days. When I got to the hospital they hooked me up to two monitors: one for the baby, one for contractions. The baby was fine, and I was having some small but regular contractions already. The doctors seemed surprised that I wasn't able to feel them, but not concerned. They proceeded to give me a few different drugs to trigger labor and inserted a Foley bulb to dilate my cervix (which I won't describe here in detail, but I can assure you was extremely unpleasant).  At the end of about 40 hours, I had had multiple rounds of drugs and was 5 centimeters dilated, but I appeared to be no closer to having a baby. I was still having contractions but I couldn't feel them at all. 

I definitely started out knowing that an induction can take a lot of time—two days is not uncommon. But as we approached the end of two days I was extremely frustrated. It's the only time in my life that I've wanted to be in pain. I had spent two days hanging out in a hospital room, hooked up to an IV, pumped full of drugs, monitored constantly, letting dozens of strangers stick their fingers in me, and nothing was happening. It began to feel like they would keep doing this indefinitely—like we could stay in this loop for a week and I would get no closer to actually being in labor. 

In the hospital, you see your nurse regularly but the doctors only stop by on occasion—and usually it's a resident, the attending physician will only come by if some procedure needs to happen. I had seen an attending physician only once, when she came by to insert the Foley tube. When we reached the point where nothing seemed to be working anymore, I asked my nurse if I could see the attending again to get her opinion on what to do next. When she came, she did an exam and my water broke. 

This is when things finally (finally!) started to get painful—turns out amniotic fluid does a lot to cushion the feeling of having a baby's head in your pelvis. But pain, as it turned out, didn't mean that anything productive was happening. At midnight on Wednesday, about 10 hours after my water broke and over 48 hours since I had been admitted, I was still having regular contractions but I wasn't able to feel them. I also still hadn't dilated beyond 5 centimeters. 

It's also important to note that I hadn't really slept since I arrived—even though I wasn't in any pain initially and I wasn't close to going into labor, in the hospital someone is in your room every couple hours around the clock. If they're not giving you meds they're adjusting the fetal monitor or checking your vitals. The labor and delivery beds are also spectacularly uncomfortable—they are meant to be for giving birth, not for sleeping on when 9 months pregnant. 

So by midnight on Wednesday I was sleep deprived, in a lot of pain, and not even really in labor yet. The doctors decided two things at this point: 1) the baby was large and in a very strange position, and 2) it was possible all the contractions I had been having were too minor to be "productive."

For the first problem, they suggested I contort myself into a bunch of different positions to try and move the baby around—these were varying degrees of painful and didn't seem to do much. For the second problem, they decided to insert a monitor into my uterus to measure the strength of my contractions. If my contractions were as unproductive as they seemed, they would increase the amount of drugs they were giving me. 

That monitor, an intrauterine pressure catheter, is ultimately what broke me. It was excruciatingly painful when it was inserted, and they had to do it twice because there was some issue with placement the first time. And then they told me it would need to stay in until I delivered. And of course, no one seemed to think I was going to deliver anytime soon. 

I basically had a panic attack after that. I don't know if it was an actual panic attack, but it's definitely the closest to one I've ever been. Josh wisely decided at this point that this whole plan was no longer working, and called the nurse back in to insist that we needed to consider other options because even if the baby was still doing ok at this point I, clearly, was not. The baby had to come out, and soon. 

To their credit, during all my days and nights in the hospital all the doctors and nurses who I saw were great, and the team that night was no exception. They were not trying to torture me, even though it felt like it. Everyone was extremely understanding and in no way made me feel bad for losing my shit. They all came back in and very kindly talked me through my options, including explaining in detail the steps that they would take to ensure that I did not, in fact, spend the rest of my life in the hospital trying to go into labor. 

So we struck a deal: I would get a epidural, which I needed for a c-section anyway, and they would get 5 hours to monitor my contractions with the torture device. By morning we'd have a better sense of how to proceed. 

The epidural was amazing, and in my next life I want to be an anesthesiologist. I felt a lot better after that and managed to get some rest, which made me feel more like I was still a human being and not just a pregnant animal. In the morning, the doctors returned to deliver news I was not at all surprised by: nothing had changed. My contractions were not very strong, I was still 5 centimeters dilated, and the baby was still in his strange contorted position. The only new development was that the baby's heart rate was starting to dip slightly, which gave them some concern. So they gave me the option of continuing with the meds and seeing if anything changed, or doing a c-section. I chose the c-section. 

Even with an amazing epidural, the c-section was so, so, so painful. I do NOT understand how all those people on instagram pictures of themselves smiling with the baby while they're still on the operating table. I was writhing in pain the entire time, so much that they had to hold my legs down to stop me from moving. I actually begged the anesthesiologist to give me more morphine at the end, which she unfortunately declined to do. The only good part was that when they took the baby out, the doctors told me I made the right decision: not only was he really big, but he had a very cone-shaped head and a 5 centimeter edema on the end of it (I had been 5 centimeters dilated, remember). He had not enjoyed the induction process either. 

Josh got to hold him while I endured the unbelievable pain of being sewed back up, and it was a joy to see him. More joy became possible as I moved into the recovery room and back into my hospital room, where they got rid of the torturous labor and delivery bed and gave me very comfy post-surgical recovery bed. The baby was healthy, I was recovering well, and 48 hours later, we were finally allowed to leave. 

Despite truly excellent medical care and a great team of doctors and nurses, I'm not sure I'll ever recover from the trauma of this experience. Were I to have another kid (doubtful at this point) I would never, ever, EVER consent to an induction. I'm also not sure I could do another c-section: just thinking about the pain makes me tear up. And there's no guarantee that waiting a few extra weeks to go into labor naturally would have helped either: the baby would have been even bigger by then, and he still would have been in his weird contorted position.  

My unimaginative conclusion: childbirth is pretty awful.