We arrived at the hospital around two AM and I was checked in and assigned to a labor room. My mom got comfortable, while I changed and sat down on the bed and tried to take it all in. My doctor had been out of town and wouldn’t be able to get to the hospital until ten AM that morning. This was not how I pictured it would go down. I had assumed my doctor would be waiting at the hospital for me and that I would deliver the baby immediately.
At around four AM, I finally started having contractions. They were so intense; my head started throbbing with pain. This was not the kind of pain you could shrug off. It was engraved into my brain. I tried to rest until my doctor got there, but I wasn’t sure how much longer I could stand the pain. The contractions became unbearable. The pain took over my head. I didn’t feel it in my stomach or back or crotch or anywhere else—just in my head. It got so bad that I couldn’t stand hearing my mom’s voice anymore, or the nurses, or cell phones ringing, or people talking in the hallway—any sounds at all really.
I was so aggravated I could barely look at anyone, but it was mainly my mom’s voice that I remember driving me crazy because she kept chattering away. At one point, I snapped and I told her I couldn’t stand to hear her voice anymore and to get out. She sat quietly in the corner of the room until I got my sanity back.
By this point I was like, Okay, it’s go time. Let’s get this baby out! But the nurse told me I wasn’t ready, besides my doctor wouldn’t be there for another couple of hours. I was losing my mind. The pain was so intense. Everyone trying to sooth and calm me was only aggravating me more. Finally, the nurses suggested I have an epidural and I agreed. The epidural needle went in and for a moment the pain got worse, but then it seamlessly went away.
After that I felt much better and settled down to wait for my doctor to arrive. When he finally got to the hospital, I was ready. With the pain gone, I was able concentrate on breathing and preparing to push. Since I hadn’t taken any birthing classes, I was surprised to find that I was a natural at doing the birthing breathing.
I was praying that I didn’t have to get a C-section. That was my biggest fear. The idea of having my stomach cut open completely freaked me out and, honestly, I was also worried about my body getting back into shape, for modeling. I wanted my six-pack abs and tight butt back again. But I also knew that however the labor needed to be for my daughter, whatever the doctor recommended was best for her, that I would agree with him. I was just praying everything would go smoothly.
Thankfully it did. When it was time to push, the nurse held my left leg and I held my right leg and the doctor helped me get through the pushing. He had to let me know when to breathe because I couldn’t feel anything from the epidural. It was great to not feel pain, but the numbness made it that much harder to push. I heard my doctor say, “Push one last time,” and even though I was exhausted I took a deep breath and pushed as hard as I could.
That did it. On Feb 23rd, at 10:25 AM, my baby girl was born. My doctor said I did great and while he was sewing me up, since I had torn a little during the delivery, the nurses took Sophia to check her out and clean her up. I watched them weigh her and give her a bath. When I heard her crying, I instantly felt like a protective mom. Just a moment ago she had been in the warmth and safety of my protective womb, now she was being bathed and handled for the first time and she clearly was not happy about it. I couldn’t wait to hold her.
As soon as the nurses were done and Sophia was all swaddled and
clean, they handed her to me. I had never held a baby before. I thought I
would be clumsy and awkward, but she felt so right in my arms. She looked
up at me, all quiet and content now, and I could tell she instinctively knew that she was safe and back with her mom.
Looking down at Sophia for the first time, I instantly saw Derek—the shape of her face, the dimple on her chin, her eyes—all Derek. For the first time in so long, I was happy. I felt like he was there in some form, seeing our baby with me. I have never been so intensely happy and so deeply sad at the same time in my entire life.
My mom was by my side through the whole delivery. She even cut the umbilical cord, which is hilarious since she had always been so squeamish even just talking about the birth. She told me later about cutting the chord. There had been so much going on and I had been so exhausted, I hadn’t even noticed. Giving birth was an amazing experience, but it took everything out of me—emotionally and physically. I was just so happy and relieved that everything had turned out okay. More than okay. Sophia was perfect.
Later my dad, grandparents, and friends came to the hospital to see me and meet the baby. It was great to see everyone and they all fell in love with Sophia. I could tell that some of my friends that stopped by didn’t get it; that I had just given birth and that my baby and being a mother was more important to me now than acting cool and listening to gossip, so I kept those visits short. All I really wanted was peace and quiet—and sleep, lots and lots of sleep.
BRINGING HOME BABY
Now that I had given birth and I wasn’t actually pregnant anymore, I was completely shocked by my body. I felt skinny and weak, but with a jiggly tummy. And there was so much blood. Every time I went to the toilet and saw how much blood was coming out of me, I felt like I must be bleeding to death. Once the stitches from where the doctor had sewn me up down by my crotch started to heal, they became itchy and uncomfortable. I had thought dealing with the changes to my body from the pregnancy was hard, but this was a whole new level.
Another thing I didn’t know about until it happened was how painful it would be when my milk came in. My boobs were so sore. I thought I was having a heart attack or bad heartburn, but the nurse explained to me that this was normal when your body is getting ready to produce milk for the baby.
After two nights in the hospital we were ready to go home. Before Sophia and I could be released I had to watch a movie about going home with a new baby for the first time and postpartum depression. I also had to learn how to buckle Sophia into her baby car seat. It was a process, but I finally got it.
When my grandpa finally drove Sophia and I home, I was relieved but terrified. In the hospital, the nurses were there to help me take care of Sophia. If anything went wrong, experts who knew what to do surrounded me. It was scary to be going home, knowing that kind of support wasn’t going to be there anymore.
My mom and my dad tried to be helpful, but Sophia was very much my responsibility. It was hard getting her to sleep. She wasn’t eating, and when she did she would instantly puke it back up. A week went by with no sleep. Sophia started losing weight, and I was so worried about her.
My mom didn’t get it. She was convinced I had postpartum depression. She kept making comments that I was crying and being emotional for no reason. She couldn’t understand that I was emotional because I was worried about my child not eating and that I was exhausted from not getting enough sleep. I was freaking out because I didn’t want my child to die on me—the way her father had. I wanted to say, If I am depressed about anything, it’s about Derek being dead, and that I feel like my baby might die on me right now. But I kept my mouth shut and hoped she would eventually just leave me alone.
To help Sophia keep her food down and start putting on weight, the doctor suggested we switch to a formula that would be easier for her to digest. I also decided to try breastfeeding. When I was pregnant I was convinced that I wasn’t going to breastfeed. It had seemed so weird to me and people (like my mother) made it sound like it would ruin my boobs. Now it felt like breastfeeding was a matter of life and death. Nothing was more important to me than Sophia’s health, so I gave it a shot.
Sophia really took to the breastfeeding, and as long as she was happy I was okay, but I couldn’t see myself doing it for too long. To me it seemed like extra work—wearing special clothes, having milk leaking all over my shirts. It wasn’t for me. I liked that my boobs were bigger, but that was really it for me.
I told my mom that Sophia and I need
ed to sleep downstairs with her so she could help me out at night. I needed some sort of help badly, but it didn’t work out as I had hoped. My mom was beginning to crack from the stress of helping me and when I went to feed Sophia in the middle of the night she would start arguing with me about random things; driving me to school, my work schedule, things she was mad at my dad about, her bills getting more expensive.
At three o’clock in the morning, I couldn’t handle so many argumentative topics, so I would just block her out, but when I didn’t answer her she would just get angrier. I couldn’t handle it. She was driving me nuts and I wasn’t getting any extra sleep, so Sophia and I moved back upstairs into my room.
When I stopped nursing Sophia, my boobs began hurting again. They would get so painfully engorged that even showers became a painful experience. The water made my boobs get really hard and my muscles would tense up. That lasted until my milk finally dried up.
It was so overwhelming how my body was changing, how my life had changed, how my relationship with my parents had changed. I just wanted to get back some control over my life.
PARTY GIRL
Two and a half weeks after Sophia was born, I went back to work at Applebee’s. Diapers and baby formula were expensive, and I knew after a while my parents would get fed up with having to pay for everything.
I needed the money, but I also needed to get out of the house. I wanted my independence back and to be out there in the world again. I went back to school and started working more and more. I wanted to save up for a car and not have to put up with all the complaining from my parents.
After two months, I finally got my own car and that helped a lot. I think that took a little of the stress off my parents, too. Now I could take Sophia out and we could have our own time together. I would take her to the park and show her the places that her dad and I had gone together.
By the time Sophia was three months old, my life was starting to settle into a relatively normal routine. I decided to try dating again. It had been so long since I had gone on a date. I was lonely and I thought that if I started going out a little bit, maybe I it would help me move on and get over Derek.
But as soon as I started dating again I felt horrible, like I was a bad mom for going out. My parents got on my case, which made me feel worse. Any time I told them that I was going on a date or just out with friends, they would make me feel guilty for not staying home with Sophia and accuse me of taking advantage of their help.
On top of that, I got a little insecure about my body, literally everything from my face to my tummy, to my legs. I was always second-guessing: do I look good enough? Even relatively innocent comments made me feel insecure. One night, I went out on a group date with some friends. When I got up to go to the bathroom, one of the guys said, “Look at that booty.” I was still in my post-pregnancy “fat jeans” at that point and I thought, Oh God, my butt is out of control.
I wasn’t comfortable with myself, so I dated random guys but I didn’t pay much attention to them because I was working, going to school, trying to spend as much time as possible with Sophia, dealing with the stress of living with my parents, and taking on the role of a single mom.
I was partying too much; going out to just drink, mingle, and escape the stress of my life. It quickly became an issue. I would tell my parents that I was going out with friends to hang out, because I wasn’t old enough to drink, but they knew that I was lying because I was coming home at two or three AM every weekend. There was no getting around the truth that I had gone out to party.
My parents saw it as a problem, which I understand now, but at the time I couldn’t stand being around them. I hated them hovering over me, criticizing me and trying to control how I was parenting Sophia and how much I worked and went out. I felt like they were always in my business. I needed an escape and at the time I felt like a couple of hours out with my friends on the weekend was what I needed and deserved.
One night, I finally realized that being a party girl wasn’t who I really was. I had met up with my weekend friends and we went downtown to some bars and clubs. I drank too much and did some coke. I had been partying a lot, but this was a whole new level for me. I couldn’t handle the effect of the alcohol and drugs. I started crying about Derek to some guy I was kind of into, and everything I had been holding down for months came spewing out of me like vomit.
To make matters worse, after being an emotional basket case and telling this poor guy about how I was still in love with my dead ex-boyfriend, I suddenly got angry and started yelling at him about how he wasn’t like Derek. The next morning I woke up looking and feeling like a mess, and my nose hurt from the coke. I’m not proud of this episode, but it was a good wake up call for me. From that night on I quit partying. I can look back at it now as something to learn and grow from.
But the complaining from my parents continued. They told me I was sleeping too much, that I wasn’t communicating with them about my schedule. I sank into a depression. I started crying a lot at night and just wanted to be left alone. I was dating, but I didn’t really care about the guys. I wanted to be in a relationship so that I didn’t feel alone. But everything was wrong.
THE BREAKING POINT
There were days when it felt like I was taking on the role of six different people. I was a mother, a daughter, a girlfriend, a student, an employee, and a teenager all rolled up in one exhausted and confused package. Then at night I would think about Derek and become just a lonely girl with a broken heart.
Often, though, the hardest part for me was just being a daughter. I resented my parents for having caused so much stress between me and Derek.
I resented them for telling me I couldn’t see him any more. At the time I blamed them for a lot of the problems Derek and I had experienced, but now I can see that I was directing a lot of anger at them because I had nowhere else to put it. The fact that I was living with them and completely dependent on them made it all the more stressful.
I definitely had some hate towards my parents in those days, especially when they started having issues and talking every day about getting a divorce. I didn’t want to hear it. This had been going on my whole life and I was sick of it. It seemed like they would fight and my dad would move out and then they would make up and he would move back in again. They were always on and off, always traveling and not spending much time together.
I felt like they should have gotten a divorce when I was way younger. They had major fights and issues, but they didn’t want to go to counseling. I now suspect that the only reason they stayed together as long as they did was for me, because as soon as I turned eighteen and was out of the house they got divorced.
I think their rocky marriage has a lot to do with why I always believed Derek and I would eventually get back together. To me the cycle of fighting, breaking up, and getting back together was normal in a relationship. It never occurred to me then that these were serious signs that a relationship is not going to work.
Having the baby in the house brought my parents together for a little while, but by the time Sophia was almost a year old, it seemed like they were arguing all the time again. I was already over it the day their fighting started up again. Just like they had told me to quit talking to Derek, I felt like telling them to quit talking to each other, but I knew it wasn’t my place. I just didn’t want to be around it anymore or hear about it anymore and when they fought around Sophia I really couldn’t handle it.
One afternoon, when it was gray and cold outside, my parents began fighting in the car. My dad and I wanted to go get groceries, but Sophia was sleeping and I didn’t want to wake her up. We asked my mom to watch Sophia, but she didn’t want to because she wanted to study for her executive MBA program. She got angry, got out of the car in the driveway and went into the house and locked the door. I took Sophia out of the car and my dad left.
I unlocked the door and went inside. My mom was in the kitchen, talking loudly. I said, “Sophia is sleeping,” meaning, Shut up bef
ore you wake her up. My mom kept talking and trying to get at me, so I left the room. As I was walking upstairs, I saw that she was going through my mail. I got pissed. I had told her many times not to go through my mail. I didn’t have anything to hide; it just felt like an invasion. It represented everything about living with my parents that was driving me crazy, how they never gave me space or stayed out of my business.
I snapped, “Get out of my mail!” and she got mad and threw a shirt that I had gotten in the mail at me. I was holding Sophia in my arms and the shirt hit her and frightened her. I sat Sophia down in the other room, because I felt a fight coming on with my mom and I didn’t want Sophia to be around it.
I went back to the kitchen to get the rest of my mail, but she refused to give it to me. It got physical, punches were thrown, hair was jerked, and threats were made. I had my mom to the point where I was holding her and she was saying “Ow” and “Let go.” I knew at this point I was way too angry, so I grabbed Sophia and went upstairs. I laid her down and that’s when I looked in the mirror and saw my face. My lip was busted and bloody, and I thought,
I don’t want this around my child.
My mom had always had these damn selfish fits with my sister and I. Now it had escalated to punching, and Sophia had been caught in the middle of it. Enough was enough. I wanted to send my mother a message that I wasn’t going to take her overbearing, controlling selfishness anymore, so I called the police.
After I made the call, I waited upstairs in my room. Maybe five minutes went by and then I heard a knock on the front door. I walked out of my room and down the front staircase. My room was right by the front door, but my mom had rushed to the door so fast that she beat me there. I was still walking down the stairs, when I heard the click and swish of the front door being unlocked and opened.
My Teenage Dream Ended Page 14