House of Life
On baby puke, the trauma plant, 20 months, and the happiest of unhappy anniversaries
(Warning: the following might contain triggering elements for those who’ve had pregnancy trauma, a c-section, medical trauma, or suffered through infant mortality.)
“That would be such a waste of twenty months,” my son chuckled, his facial expression chagrined. Instead of disagreeing, I found myself halfheartedly arguing that it wouldn’t be twenty months. Then elementary math finally broke through the surface of my mind’s chaos and I realized it has been twenty months.
My brain calculated:
Kai = eleven months old.
Pregnancy = nine months.
11 months + 9 months = 20 months. My son is right!
Wait. No he isn’t. Kai was born at eight months. Or is 35 weeks seven months? Pregnancy months aren’t accurate anyway. After all, 40 weeks divided by four weeks is ten months, not nine. They’re like calendar months, with random five weeks here and there thrown in. I hate this system; it is so illogical.
Ugh, why am I so hyper-focused on this?
My Pretty Little Trauma Plant
And there, my friends, is the mind of trauma. A trauma-mind is like a flower (or maybe more aptly, a weed). Most of the time we try to pretend there is not a massive plant that has sprouted and expanded in the middle of our brains. We try to brush the leaves out of our face and continue maneuvering like normal. On good days we might explore how the leaf connects to the stem, and from there to the root. That little segment loses its plant-power and starts disintegrating. But most of the time we don’t have the ability or energy to do this. It takes a lot time, especially if your trauma is complex or buried in the past. Even if you’re proactively trying to uproot it.
While inching our way around our unwanted trauma-plant, we might suddenly find ourselves noticing a new angle of a bud, the veins on a leaf, a piece of pollen on the huge weed firmly rooted in our brains. It arrests and hijacks us with its enthrall, and even if our bodies do, we might not even know why.
Hospital
For example, yesterday I dropped Meg off at an appointment (our previous housemate who’s now just part of our family). I didn’t realize her benign appointment would take place at a HOSPITAL, big wide letters and all. On the other side of the building it read just as vociferously, EMERGENCY. It was very clear and concise. Great if your trying to figure out where to go. No so great if you’re me.
I started acting weird immediately. By the time I drove away, only moments later, I was crying. Some people have different reactions in their body, but for me randomly crying is usually a sign there is something being activated, or triggered under the surface.
Baby Puke
Kai has been throwing up a lot recently. He had a cold, and now a fever. The dripping mucus down his throat causes his stomach contents to expel. Or he will guzzle eight ounces without burping and then the eight ounces come right back up.
But the times I get anxious are when he is choking.
Like usual, I was late to get the kids from school. Pulling my sandals on, I hear Kai beginning to choke. A beat goes by. His coughing stops and his face begins to discolor. I grab him, flip him upside-down, and begin searching his mouth with my finger. I hit him forcefully on his back, as that’s pretty much the Heimlich Maneuver for babies in a nutshell. He pukes in waves, curdled milk and whatever he was choking on all over himself, the floor, and myself. I noticed it splattering on my sandals too, which I felt strangely annoyed by.
My oldest son was home, and like a team, we start cleaning up the mess enough for me to leave the house because, yes, I am late and now later. That’s when I realize Kai also stinks badly because he has had a blowout. We set him on the changing table. Its then that my oldest son states, “That would be such a waste of twenty months.”
Kai got a quick wipe down, clean clothes and was thrown in Rhonda the Honda with his bunny, a blanket, and a fresh bottle of milk. I warn him to not guzzle it all at once. But as he is eleven-months old, he looks at me wonderingly and does what he does as a zip off to collect my other kids. I keep getting whiffs of puke as I drive. I don’t think I cleaned it off my wrists. Stomach acid is probably caked under my watch and bracelet. That’s when I realize I didn’t change my t-shirt either.
It reads, “It’s okay to have Jesus and a therapist too.”
I still have Jesus today, but I wouldn’t mind talking to my therapist. But I already have once today.
Therapy at Eleven Months Postpartum
My therapist is named Alyssa. She wears glasses and feels safe. We usually talk while I sip coffee from one of the fun mugs that I collect. I balance with pillows on my sagging olive couch. The baby plays on the floor next to me. Alyssa’s face takes up most of my computer screen; she is a disembodied head. Kai usually babbles to her until it is nap time. He must think humans occasionally come without bodies.
By the time each Tuesday rolls around, I have a new list of observations, experiences and feelings to unravel. I’ve tripped on the trauma plant in my brain and am needing to be untangled. Ideally more of the roots will get uncovered. Frequently that is as far as we get—the uncovering. Then, on my own, with God I pull out the roots.
Over the past month, a common theme has come up: The anniversary of Kai’s birth.
I mentioned this to someone else recently and they responded, “do you mean Kai’s birthday?” And I thought, Oh. Yes. That is what this is normally called, isn’t it? It is a birthday.
But to me it is an anniversary. It is the peak of a roller-coaster and epicenter of an earthquake. It is a climax, and not the good type.
I had a pretty challenging time in October, the anniversary of when I was first diagnosed with lupus. October was when I first realized that either Kai or I might not make it and I had to begin counting the costs of moving forward with his pregnancy.
Leading up to that point, there were other anniversaries. Discovering I was pregnant. My body swelling so much I had to have my wedding band cut off. The initial meeting with doctors. Being sick. Then, finally, being admitted the first time to the hospital. Since then it has been anniversary after anniversary of difficult, challenging, sucky things. I remember them all. And they all climb the mountain to this point—Kai’s birth.
Kai’s Birth
Kai’s birth was beautiful as he was born. And in classic dialectic style, it was beautiful and scary. The quick-cycle of traumas and emergencies around his birth were severe, painful, and frightening.
For example, if you zoom out on the above picture, you’d see two surgeons and multiple nurses either removing things from my body—placenta, tubes, sponges—or sewing my body back together, layer over layer. When I see this picture, I remember the strong tugging sensations in my abdomen and the bright lights illuminating the splattered blood on the curtain’s plastic window that hung a mere two feet above me. I hear the hum of medical conversations interspersed with beeps. I remember, only minutes earlier, being strapped lightly to a table, starkly naked from my breasts down, feeling powerless and scared in a room of tall unfamiliar men, my swelling abdomen clinically pulled aside and taped to my body to make it taut.
The full scene adds a different dimension to this precious image, doesn’t it?
I am on a gurney in the picture above because Kai’s heart-rate kept dropping. I was admitted. Then during our feeble attempts at labor, it kept dropping. So we went into surgery. I talk with other people about their c-sections and so often their experience seemed positive, or at least neutral. But the that isn’t how I felt about my c-section.
I love this picture; it is beautiful. But in reality, Kai was skin-to-skin with my face for only moments before I started gagging, shivering and feeling like I was suffocating. That was followed by the bleeding, my blood pressure sky rocketing, and the excruciating “uterus massages” from the weird nurse who kept alternating between yelling and encouraging me about having lupus as I went in and out of consciousness in the recovery room. I was eventually placed in women’s acute care while Kai went to the NICU. Then, a couple days later, my digestive track shut down in an ileus, which felt like a never-ending labor. Then, less than 48 hours after I returned home, I was admitted again for postpartum preeclampsia.
I’ll stop there even though it doesn’t end there. That’s enough for now.
Maybe this is why I view Kai’s birth more as an anniversary than a birthday.
Camping in Malibu
Last Veteran’s Day, we went camping at the lovely Malibu Creek State Park. I was excited to be well enough to go. The kids were so patient with me as I walked a mile with them, stopping to rest on a fold-out stool every five minutes. At night, it got much colder than expected—down to 36 degrees. Seven-month old Kai slept better than he ever had, probably conserving every ounce of energy to stay warm.
The first night, I was convinced Kai had died when I woke up to check on him. He was buried under layers of clothing, sleep sacks, blankets and jackets—he pretty much couldn’t move, he was so stiff with clothing. Despite my efforts, it seemed hypothermia had set in and his little body couldn’t handle the cold. In the dim light of the tent, the small part of his face that remained uncovered was gray. It was cold to the touch. I couldn’t see or hear breath. I couldn’t wake him. He was a corpse. I could already see the flashing lights of the emergency vehicles and the pronouncement of his death.
House of Life
I thought, Go figure, that Kai would die after all this. He dying would be an apropos end of the story. Getting this far only to have him die? It would be such a waste.
Obviously, Kai didn’t die and I could breathe again once he finally stirred. But that camping trip uncovered somethings I darkly believe under the surface, even if they aren’t true.
They aren’t true because I know I would live everything trauma over again just to have a few months with Kai. It was all worth living—for him, for me, for my family, for all whom our story touches. And life, not death is actually an appropriate end of our story.
We are not a House of Death, as many times as we’ve skirted it. This is our attitude, our choice, the culture of our existence—so we pick life. We will be a House of Life in the midst of suffering—and if it had to come to it, even in death we will still be a House of Life. Life is our decision.
I’ve tried to unpack these falsehoods a few times with God and Alyssa and I still don’t have them resolved. I still think as though we are on the verge of death, even though the cliff is gone. Usually I find myself more triggered and undone by my own medical trauma and the threats to my own safety. Maybe there is a process to this I don’t understand—that I’ll need to work through my own scary and near death experiences first, and then I work through my experience as a parent. Yet it isn’t so linear. For Kai’s life was at risk the whole time too. It was never one or the other. It was both of us and it affects all of us.
Even so, I speak this forth:
We are now a House of Life.
Kai’s 1st Birthday
That all being said, how in the world do I approach the crest of this roller coaster that was the last twenty-ish months? I need a plan to be a House of Life in the next couple weeks, especially on Kai’s first birthday on March fifteenth.
I don’t think I can emotionally deal with a big party, and it’s too late to plan that anyway. I am about to climb right into the center of the trauma plant and that seems stupid, unavoidable as it is.
How can I process but not drown?
What markers can I use to grieve? To celebrate?
How can I keep this about both of us, honoring both Kai’s birthday and myself?
I am sure some of you have lived through your own grief and traumas. What has helped you get through those anniversaries? Can you share with me your ideas in the comments? Thank you!
I am also grateful that you read this long script from my soul. I recognize that for some of you it was hard, maybe even triggering to read. I hold space for you. And for others, it was just long. Either way I feel honored for any of you who stuck through to the end. Thank you.
-E
P.S. For those wondering, no, I have never used the word “vociferously” in my real life. But if I can figure out how to pronounce it someday I will.
Follow me on Instagram here @AuthenticallyElisa.
Read the other posts related to this from the Lupus, Pregnancy, and Autoimmune Illness series at AverageAdvocate.com.
Read Washing Hands, Do Your Job Well, or the Mini Series for more of the story.