I remember the internal decision in my head – I’m ready to be a mom. It’s a scary thought, creating a living breathing human being that you are forever responsible for. But an exciting one at the same time. I thought I’d get pregnant the second I stopped the pill. Wrong! I dunno if was because I was over 30, if something was wrong with me, wrong with my husband…you can drive yourself crazy worrying! Once you start trying to have a baby, every single time you get your period it’s like taking a bullet. You can’t help but feel like your failing at motherhood before you’ve even begun.
For 6 long months this was my reality. Then during Christmas break I started not feeling well and couldn’t shake it. I couldn’t eat anything, nothing was appetizing, and I was exhausted. I wasn’t even late for my period yet but I was like f**k it doesn’t hurt to check. But I was terrified of feeling that feeling again. Of the disappointment and heartbreak of another negative result. Josh (my husband) was away snowmobiling with the boys up north and I needed some liquid courage, so I had a few glasses of wine and took a pregnancy test. It was super faint but that second little line was there! I had had plans for a girls night with my 3 best friends and I shit you not I bagged up that pee stick in a sandwich bag and brought it to the restaurant! Hahaha. They conquered that yes, I was in fact pregnant, and it was time to celebrate. Even so, on the way home I bought 6 more (digital this time! lol) pregnancy tests. I waited til the next morning and every single one of them was positive.
My pregnancy was a difficult one. I was sick and throwing up all day everyday for 10 months straight. I was still puking the morning of my c-section. I was an certified medical assistant in orthopedic surgery at the time and I would literally run a patient+throw up+run a patient+throw up+run a patient+throw up all day long. Not to mention all of the other lovely symptoms that come along with pregnancy. Name the symptom and I had it lol.
At our 20 week ultrasound, when we were finding out the gender and everything was supposed to be happy go lucky, is when we first found out something was wrong. The ultrasound tech spend an unusual amount of time focusing on the babies legs. She then left the room without explanation and brought in the specialty OB to do take a look. Finally I demanded to know what the issue was and they told me that my son has a clubfoot. A birth defect. My beautiful baby. For the next few weeks we went through a very long and thorough process that is detailed in the post Finding Out About Clubfoot.
I was measuring small and Harrison had been transverse breech for the majority of my 2nd and 3rd trimesters. He started to turn a little bit towards the end, but his head ended up stuck in my pelvis. His ortho doctors diagnosed him with positional clubfoot rather than true clubfoot, which basically means it was caused by growth restriction in utero instead of genetics. I’m like I told you his foot was stuck in my ribs!
My OB said they could take me into the OR and attempt to turn the baby to get him in the proper birthing position; but there was no guarantee it would work, and if it did there was a 70% chance he’d spin back to breech again. I elected to just go ahead with the scheduled c-section. So at 9 AM on September 5th 2017 I arrived at the hospital and at 11:16 AM Harrison Paul Moore made his entrance into this world. 6 pounds 10 oz 19 inches and an infinite amount of love.
And just like that my whole world changed.
He was on the small side when born and we had a very traumatic breastfeeding experience. He was latching fine I was simply not producing enough. I tried pumping, nipple shields, self expression, etc. At one point I even had a lactation consultant on either side of me attempting to express whatever they could and then feeding Harrison with a syringe. I asked repeatedly for formula. His weight was dropping by the day and he lost a whole pound in 5 days. They canceled our discharge and kept us in the hospital due to their concerns over his weight. And yet they still wouldn’t give me formula because “breast is best”. Finally, at like 2 AM one night, I had a nervous breakdown and was sobbing while holding a screaming newborn without the faintest clue about what to do. And this like 900 year old L&D nurse was like “Honey, you want some formula for the kid or what?”. Once I gave it to him he practically never cried again. He takes after his mama and get’s pretty hangry what can I say hahaha.
Mama Bear Inc 