Primigravida

“Persevere and You Will Conquer”

by Josie Glausiusz

In the autumn of 2010, when I was pregnant with twins, my dear husband Larry bought me a copy of “Breastfeeding Your Baby,” by Sheila Kitzinger. The book, originally published in 1989, is filled with pictures of half-dressed, Earth Mothery women with long flowing hair, large bosoms and serene expressions, peacefully nursing one baby, or twins together, or a young baby and an older child at the same time.  I’m not sure why, but I just couldn’t read that book. I was scared that I wouldn’t be able to breastfeed even one baby, let alone twins. A friend of mine had told me that her baby on her breast had felt “like a piranha latched onto her chest,” and somehow the image stuck in my head.

My twin babies are now one year old, and I’m still breastfeeding both of them together in the mornings, one on each breast. It’s one of the most nurturing and comforting feelings I have ever known.

That I was able to succeed in nursing these two babies is a testament to perseverance, because when they were born, eight weeks early, they weren’t even able to suck. I was in my thirtieth week of pregnancy when I developed preeclampsia, perilously high blood pressure that occurs more commonly in older mothers with twin pregnancies. I spent a week in New York’s Roosevelt Hospital before going into labor early on Boxing Day, the day after Christmas, and giving birth by emergency Caesarian to two tiny babies, a girl and a boy, at 31-and-a-half weeks’ gestation. I had but a moment to register their arrival before they were whisked away to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). I spent the next 26 hours in the recovery room, doped up on pain drugs and anti-seizure medication, and it wasn’t until the following evening that I saw my babies again.

When I looked at my little daughter Rena in her incubator, I cried. She was so small and thin—just two pounds seven ounces—that she had no cheeks. But she was strong, breathing without assistance, with a powerful set of lungs. My son Aryeh was bigger at 3 pounds 12 ounces, but neither of them had developed their sucking reflex. They were fed intravenously at first, through a catheter in the umbilical cord, and also with tiny quantities of pumped breast milk delivered directly into their stomachs with a clear plastic flexible “gavage” feeding tube inserted into their nose or mouth. Read more…

Shiny, happy people

The other day, we arrived at a celebratory gathering apparently looking spiffy: husband, toddler, bump and me. A single female friend shook her head and acknowledged some disbelief at our cheery appearance. “Is this really possible?” she asked. “I mean, I don’t know if things are really as great as they look, but you guys make it look really easy.”

Suddenly I felt icky, like I’d been fooling everybody. Apparently, by showing up for social events and looking like shiny happy people, I’d been giving friends and acquaintances who are childless or child-free the erroneous impression that this was easy. Or that even when it’s hard, we’re managing to do a great job.

I’m not so sure.

This friend hasn’t seen me on a weekday, especially on one of those weekdays when my husband is out working late and play-time, dinner-time, bath-time and bed-time are all mine…or should I say, all Eli’s, all the time. On one of these recent late afternoons, I was flagging and dying for the nap that is the God-given right of any woman late in her pregnancy. I thought I would lay down on the couch to rest for five or ten minutes while I let Eli play with his toys, which he generally finds riveting. After all, I’ve seen hubby manage to do it so many times.

Eli begged to differ. He came over with a board book and clopped me on the bridge of my nose, narrowly missing my eye. It wasn’t the first time he’d hit me with a toy or book, but it was one of the more painful. “No!” I yelled, which prompted a peal of laughter in response. I scooped him up, deposited him in his play area with a firmer grip than usual, and went into the bathroom. And cried.

In minutes I felt better. When I went back to him he didn’t seem to be remotely aware that I’d been angry with him, and gave me his usually sweet, delicious smile and a juicy kiss – his latest discovery. Of course I know that my son is at the age where he doesn’t get that he’s causing hurt when he bangs you with an object. And it’s his God-given right to throw food on the floor, to refuse to eat something he loved until last week, to be cranky for no apparent reason, to poop in the bathtub if the spirit moves him, and naturally, to make the house look like a cyclone hit it. (And all these years I’d been thinking that people whose homes looked like this were lazy!)

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