Womb Talk, Part 3

When Max was two, we decided to have another child.  It didn't take longer than a few months for me to get pregnant.  We liked the potential spacing of three years between kids.

This pregnancy became problematic .  I had been taking dance classes with April Saas in her home studio.  One day, she informed us that her daughter had contracted German measles.  I got very scared, as this disease can cause some nasty birth defects in a developing fetus. We kept on, hoping that I hadn't been close enough to be exposed.  But then, just before Christmas 1977, my obstetrician could not detect a heartbeat.  I was four months along, late for a miscarriage, but it became clear that that was what was happening.  I did not spontaneously abort and so I was sent to Stanford to get a D&C.  Things went badly from the get-go; the resident in the ER assigned to put in an IV could not get it placed and repeatedly poked me until he finally had to call for someone else to do it.

 

I was conscious for the procedure, getting a local anesthetic.  It did not do what it was supposed to do, and I was in excruciating pain.  Don Creevy, my doctor. kept offering me Demerol, but I remembered how badly that went when I was in labor with Max, and so I kept refusing.  Finally, in desperation, I had to agree, and thankfully, this time it worked for me.  Don felt so bad about the whole thing that he stayed with me the entire time I was in recovery.

 

That was a hard Christmas.  The physical pain I had suffered was nothing compared to the emotional pain.  I'd failed once again. People kept saying that it probably happened because something was wrong with the baby, and it was better to lose it now.  Maybe they were right, but that was not comforting.  I looked for books to read about miscarriage, but I found very little.  My mother and sister wanted to be supportive, but one had lost a baby closer to term, and the other had given birth to a baby that only lived a day or two.  My experience wasn't "as bad" as theirs.  That didn't help, either.

 

I went to Wilbur Hot Springs with friends over new year's to work on healing myself. Wilbur has always been a healing place for me, and going there was a good decision.  It was there that I realized that I wanted to work with a psychic teacher some of my friends had been seeing.  My loss and grief led me to a teacher that I needed in my life.

 

**********

 

It took me some time to heal from the miscarriage and feel ready to try again.  When Max was four, we decided that it was time.  This pregnancy went smoothly.  I didn't love being pregnant the way I had the first time.  Of course, I was nervous about carrying it to term, and I had a young, active child. I was also now over 30.  I felt the difference in my body, being five years older.

 

One traumatic event did occur during my pregnancy.  I was picking Max up at daycare when he climbed up on a bench and suddenly leaped off, expecting me to catch him.  Instinctively, I covered my belly with both arms to protect the baby, and Max fell hard, breaking his leg.  I felt so terrible!  I didn't decide to prioritize the baby over Max; I just spontaneously acted.  Poor kid.

Pregnant me and Max with a broken leg

 

We were working with Dr. Don Creevy again, but now a birth center had opened.  I believe he was the only MD who agreed to work there, and we were one of the first families to use it.  Unfortunately, the center didn't last for more than a few years, but it was wonderful for us.  I couldn't have tried a home birth again, but this was a great alternative.  The Birth Place was housed in a residential home in Menlo Park.

 

I went into labor in earnest on a Sunday night.  Don was out of town for the weekend and had told me earlier to drink some alcohol to slow things down when I suspected I was going in labor. He fortunately made it back, and I think I was in hard labor for about 12 hours altogether.  I remember when the contractions came fast and furious that I told the nurse, "I can't do this."  Her response?  "You don't have a choice."

 

Max was there with our friend Janis.  Towards the end, he got scared by the noises I was making, and Janis took him into the living room, so they missed the birth.  Alex was perfect.  We only stayed for a short time in order to avoid there needing to be a shift change.  Our friend Richard took pictures.  We have one that I love of Don sitting in a rocking chair, calmly drinking tea and reading The Bhagavad Gita.

 

Having a normal birth experience and a healthy baby helped assuage my guilt over Max's birth, but it didn't completely heal it.  At least, I did feel less like a failure.  We hadn't made any stupid decisions and we had a doctor we trusted.

Womb Talk, Part 2

I got my period for the first time soon after my 13th birthday.  We were in the throes of preparing to move from Baltimore to Miami due to my father taking a new job. I was so eager to begin menstruating; my best friend had gotten her period early.  Not that when girls got their periods was a competition, but it did smack of one. It was akin to attaining a badge of honor; you were now a woman. 

 

That was the feeling before I began to menstruate.  Afterwards, there were the debilitating cramps and the mess of it to contend with.  And, for sure, when a girl had her period, she was obligated to hide it from everyone, as if it was something to be ashamed of.  The ultimate humiliation was to have to run to the nurse's office at school with a blood stain blooming on the back of your skirt. 

 

When I bled this first time, my mother sat next to me on my bed and slapped my face.  I was stunned.  I knew I hadn't done anything wrong! She explained that in the old days, girls were not told about menstruation, and so the first time was so distressing that they could go into shock.  Mothers would slap their faces to bring them out of it.  Why this tradition continued to be passed down was a mystery to me, as we now knew all about periods.  If I had had a daughter, she certainly wouldn't have received the slap.  What my granddaughter got was a big hug.

 

With my sister being 6 1/2 years older, we had supplies on hand.  In those days, we used a white elastic belt that had attachments hanging down in the front and back to clip to a pad.  It was awkward and uncomfortable. Of course, many things women had to wear in those days were not made for comfort - like girdles and garter belts to hold up stockings.  Pads with adhesive didn't exist, nor did pantyhose. I wasn't told about tampons until years later.  They weren't seen to be appropriate for young girls.

 

My mother was actually very happy to see me get my period.  She had an aunt who had never menstruated; her female organs never developed properly, and the family was worried that this might be a genetic trait that could get passed down.  My sister was the oldest of the cousins, and I imagine the women in the extended family all held their breath until she menstruated.  But all turned out well; all the female cousins matured normally.

 

My periods were irregular for a while, which was not uncommon. But throughout my teenage years, I suffered with extremely painful cramps.  I remember times that I could only lie down on the bathroom floor because it hurt so much.  I became a regular consumer of Midol, the advertised pain relief for menstrual cramps.  It didn't help a huge amount.  People told me that things would get better once I had children.  That proved to be true to an extent, but not entirely.

 

Pregnant me, 1974

 

I had just turned 26 when I got pregnant with Max.  We had lived for a short time with some friends who had a baby, and I fell in love with her. And so, baby lust kicked in. 

 

Fortunately, it did not take long for me to get pregnant, and once past the fatigue and vague nausea of the first trimester, I loved being pregnant.  We found some local midwives and planned a home birth.  Unfortunately, when my waters broke, I didn't go into labor.  I should have gone to the hospital after a day or two of waiting, but my midwives were inexperienced and didn't send me.  I was also so committed to having my baby at home that I didn't want to consider it.  When I finally went into labor after about four days, it didn't progress much.  The midwives finally thought I was fully dilated, but I wasn't, and it wasn’t even close.  They had me pushing all night.  It became clear that I needed to go to the hospital.  The doctors freaked out, sure that the baby was in trouble.  They jacked me up on Pitocin to speed things up, and in my pain and exhaustion, I accepted a shot of Demerol to ease the pain.  It didn't work as expected, but instead made me woozy and less able to cope with everything.  I then got an epidural, which was a relief.  They pulled Max out with forceps and whisked him off to the intensive care nursery.  I was an exhausted mess.  I had to be ferried across the hospital every few hours to see and nurse him.  He was so lucky to not have gotten an infection, but they kept him on antibiotics for several days.  When my milk came in, I ran a fever.  I was later told this was not uncommon.  But they wouldn't let me see Max, and I spent one whole day crying.  Finally, he was released, and we got to take him home.  

 

Writing this, forty-nine years later, I still feel sad and sorry.  All the painful memories flood back in, and along with them, the realization of how we, I, jeopardized his life.  We were young and stupid, dedicated to the "natural" way of doing things.  When that didn't work out, we didn't easily let go of what we thought was right.  As much as I have issues with our allopathic medical system, I admit that it has saved my life more than once.  This was the first time - my life and Max’s, too.

 

I carried a lot of guilt about Max's birth for a long time.  Maybe I still do.  I felt like a failure because I did not have a natural birth, that I should have refused pain meds.  I'm just thankful that, in the end, despite our bad decisions and rigidity, despite all the pain and grief, my beautiful son was fine.

Womb Talk: Introduction

 This is the beginning of a short autobiographical piece that I will post in sections.

We see two direct images of speaking here, one from the center 

(think of the expression 'gut knowledge'), the other from the womb.

- Rachel Pollack,

The Shining Tribe Tarot,

Speaker of Stones card

 

 

For three and a half years, they called it a cyst.  I knew it was adjacent to my uterus and left ovary, but it just sat there, and so it was not a concern.  Cancer was the concern, my diagnosis of and treatment for retroperitoneal leiomyosarcoma.  A mouthful, that, and equally large as a life threat - aggressive, fast-growing, and likely to spread and recur, even after being removed by chemo and surgery.  This stable cyst raised no alarm bells.  My surgeon paid no attention to it, although now I wish he had.

 

It began growing last year, around the time of my first recurrence and my 4th cancerversary.  They biopsied it, a painful and horrible experience, and then kept us waiting several weeks for the results (which they'd said we 'd have in a few days).  After all of that, the results were vague and inconclusive. It did not appear to be the same kind of sarcoma. In fact, they didn't describe it as cancer, but I didn't trust the report.  Along with my doctors, I made the decision to remove it, no matter what it turns out to be. My surgeon at Stanford referred me to his colleague, an OB-GYN oncological surgeon, due to the tumor's location.  The new doc and I were on the same page - let's take out the ovaries and uterus, too, as the tumor now appears to be growing into the uterus.  I want it all out, even if it's only to deprive cancer of another place in which to grow.

 

This surgeon spent a good amount of time with us when we met, and I liked and had confidence in him right away.  It turns out that he is the same age as my son Max, which we found out when I kidded him about how young he looks.  He didn't trust the biopsy, either.  The big surprise was that he will try do the surgery laparoscopically.  I didn't even know that this was an option. If he can, it will of course make recovery much easier than abdominal surgery would.

 

So, now I am waiting for the procedure.  Dr. Karam's staff had advised me that it would probably happen in three to four weeks.  After a day or two of not hearing from the scheduler, I called her.  Five and a half weeks was the soonest.  He's a busy guy.  As fast as this bugger is growing, I was not thrilled at the wait.  He sent reassurance that the timing is not a problem.  Not only is

the delay longer than I'd hoped, it also will mean we will miss going to Mt. Shasta for a Rumi's Caravan performance.  Disappointing.

 

But between this and a myriad of other medical appointments, including tests on other places in my body that have lit up on scans, and infusions of immunotherapy for my recurrence, I knew that I needed some project or focus so that my whole attention is not obsessively focused on health issues.  I decided to consult the Tarot, and one line in the text leaped out at me about the Speaker of Stones card, which sat in the place of the reading called "the crossing card", or what needs to be integrated.  The line calls for letting the gut and the womb speak.  The gut and womb are the two places in my body that are plaguing me. 

Rachel Pollack, Shining Tribe Tarot

I realized that in my eagerness to get this tumor out, I had not considered the grief I might feel at losing my uterus. Of course, I am long past child-bearing years and hardly alone in having to have a hysterectomy. But this is the seat of fertility in my body, the home place for my two sons' beginnings. i don't know if I will experience grief, or how much, but the possibility has led me to this writing project. Womb Talk. I knew I wanted to begin with the history (or herstory) of my womb, so here we are. Maybe she will then speak to me. Maybe poems will come. We shall see.

A New Poem: The Opening of the Day

One morning last week when the sun was out (a rare occurrence these days), I was sitting on the deck in a small patch of sun, and this is what I was looking at:

That's my little pomegranate tree. Earlier that morning, this poem arrived:

The Opening of the Day

 

 

In the first bleary-eyed, early morning moments,

before my feet even touch the floor,

my thoughts frequently drop directly into a pit

of harsh realities, dragging my heart along with them.

But this was a different sort of morning.

I surprisingly did not have to struggle to haul myself up

into some semblance of acceptance.

Little things came blessedly to the forefront:

         - the way the sun came up over the eastern hills,

                     its first rays streaming down the avenue below;

         - the white star-like blossoms on the vine surrounding the deck;

           - the tiny red leaves springing from the thin limbs of the young

                        pomegranate tree, and the green ones on the Japanese maple                                                     

         - the streaks of pink across the dawn sky;

         - the spider hanging from its thread by the window;

         - the flickering candle;

         - the way the fountain pen, gifted by a dear friend, fits my hand.

This morning, in the time of year the granddaughters call Baby Spring,

these heart-opening ordinary things inspired feelings of peace.

In other words, this morning I slipped into appreciation rather than dread,

         - despite the illnesses and ailments of the aging body,

         - despite the state of the world,

         - despite the fears of what is to come.

And so, I am grateful for the gratitude that replaced

my more customary responses to the opening of the day.