sebastianarch

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August 14, 2006: Sebastian now sits up quite well, is in the 25th percentile for weight, height, and head, although everyone who sees him thinks he's a "big baby." We're waiting anxiously for the first tooth to arrive, and if the poor kid's past few sleepless nights are any indication, we think it must be coming soon. Foods tried: peas, greenbeans, oatmeal, rice cereal, carrots, banana, Cheerios.

May 16,2006: 4:04 p.m., Sebastian rolls from his belly to his back for the first time since February. This time he did it three times in a row, so we know it's more skill than chance.

March 29,2006: Sebastian laughs out loud these days and makes all sorts of sounds. One of his favorite games is to start babbling until someone repeats him. He could do it for hours. Coincidentally, one of Joshua's favorite games is to repeat everything his parents say. I keep trying to get them together, but apparently, a parent is required for these games.

February 11, 2006: Sebastian, annoyed that "tummy time" has gone on too long, rolls from his stomach to his back while the rest of the family talks about the snow. Nobody saw it happen, but one moment he was on his belly, the next, on his back. It must be true what they say about not putting the baby in the middle of the bed.

February 10, 2006: A first: Sebastian spits up on his mother's clothes. A nice way to celebrate his four-week birthday. Can you believe it? Four weeks already.

January 21, 2006: Sebastian breaks his own record and sleeps from 4 a.m. until 8:30 a.m. Maybe the cord fairy came and cast a sleep spell.

January 20, 2006: Alert the cord fairy: the last vestiges of Sebastian's umbilical cord came off. Now he's completely part of this world. Innie? Outie? A little bit of both, but it's looking like it'll be innie.

January 13, 2006: Sebastian Michael Laughlin Ferry is born at Virginia Hospital Center in Arlington, VA. Not as early as it seems since it turns out his mother had his due date off by almost a week.

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The Story of Sebastian's Birth

I've been avoiding writing this because I hesitate to tell a story that contains the phrase "moldy placenta," but I'll try to keep things palatable for general audiences. After all, if you scrolled to the bottom of the page, you've already seen his umbilical cord.

It all started on Friday, January 13, when we got up at 6:00 a.m. to drive the forty-five minutes to Arlington for my routine prenatal visit with Dr. Tchabo (see above). Why so far, you ask? Because most of the medical professionals I talked to were skeptical of my finding a doctor who would let me try for a VBAC (a, let's call it traditional birth after cesarean).

So we get there, and all is going well. The weight's good. The blood pressure's good. Then the doctor asks me if the baby's still moving around, and I say, "Yeah, but not as much as before," figuring he'll say that it's normal to feel less movement because there's so much less room to move around. But no, Dr. Tchabo looks at me for a long moment and tells me he wants to order a nonstress test (basically, they monitor the baby's heartbeat for forty-five minutes) and an amniotic fluid test.

Jim and Joshua are with me, so we go to labor and delivery where they do these things. The monitoring seems like it's fine, at least the tech thinks so, but the woman doing the sonogram seems a bit reserved. It turns out that there's like, no amniotic fluid in Sebastian's watery home. A bad sign.

We're told to stick around while they call Dr. Tchabo because he'll probably want to admit me. It's both sweet and alarming the way everyone, when they're talking to us, says something like, "So I understand your fluid's a little low," but when they're talking to each other, they say stuff like, "her fluid's really low." I can almost hear the unspoken, "I can't believe she's not shriveling up like a prune." I know they're not supposed to talk that way by the way they keep catching themselves and correcting their terms to something more neutral. But really, when they're absolutely certain the doctor will want to admit you, you kind of know that you're not going into the medical textbooks as the example of the typical, uncomplicated birth.

Before we could be admitted, though, they had to find a room for us, so we sat in a waiting room and watched the new Dora the Explorer spinoff in which Dora's cousin Diego has to save a baby whale that's beached itself. Jim and I sat there watching this cartoon baby flailing around because it didn't have enough water to get back to sea, and then we exchanged glances.

Fortunately, Josh was oblivious. We may have told him that the baby was a little sick, but I think the only thing he really grasped was that the baby was going finally coming and that he was going to stay overnight at his friend Thalia's house. Thalia's dad, Thy (approximately pronounced Tea), works with Jim. He and his wife Louisa were incredibly generous to us and wonderful though the whole thing.

Our nurse, Po, told us that I'd probably be induced, and we talked about the safety of that for a VBAC. She was incredibly reassuring. I kept thinking of the phrase "angel of mercy" with new understanding. Then we were admitted, and Dr. Tchabo came in and said a C-section was the safest thing to do because there were indications that the poor little guy was already under stress and might not tolerate labor too well.

I got weepy for about 20 minutes, worrying about the baby and thinking about all the work we did on hypnobirthing, preparing for a calm, quiet, drug-free labor. Josh's birth was kind of traumatic, and I was bummed that we were going the surgical route again. But I was so relieved that the decision was made for us, and excited to finally meet this kid.

So Jim drove Josh to the Trans' house and went back home to try and gather some things like toothpaste and a camera. I hadn't finished packing a bag yet, thinking we still had three weeks til my due date. The operation was scheduled for 4 p.m. and then pushed back to 5, which was a good thing, since Jim didn't get back til then. (They had promised to wait for him anyway.)

Then they took me into the scary operating room, where my blood pressure spiked, and I told everyone to stop, I didn't think it was a good idea. Jim wasn't allowed in the room until I was prepped, but Po let me put my head on her shoulder while the electrical shock that was the epidural raced up my spine.

Then Jim came in, and I felt better. The surgery itself was uneventful, until Sebastian was born. Then I didn't pay any attention. It was so nice to be awake and aware enough to really see and appreciate him. I even got to hold him while the doctors were doing the finish work behind the drape.

After they took Sebastian away, the sewing up part was kind of tedious until one of the residents asked, "What's that pink carpety-looking thing?" I thought they were disparaging my uterus, so I gave them a hard time. "Oh, we anthropomorphize everything here," said the senior doctor, which made me think that maybe they weren't supposed to have been saying anything about the carpety-looking thing.

I later found out that the placenta was moldy. So gross. How did he survive in there? I still cringe thinking about it. But it's so weird, I just had to mention it. In fact, I did a google search for placenta and mold and nothing came up that related to humans. A lot of stuff about cattle feed, for some reason...

I asked Dr. Tchabo how that could possibly be, and he couldn't say. He listed a whole bunch of things that might explain it if any of them pertained to me. But neither of us likes to think of what would have happened if we hadn't checked on the little guy when we did.

So that Friday was pretty much the most dramatic day of Sebastian's life so far. Hard to top, really. Mostly I spend the days since then bleary-eyed, mindfully enjoying the three men in my life, and thanking whatever lucky stars I might have for Sebastian's successful arrival in this world.