A better birthday, finally

Today is my 35th birthday.  Thankfully, I have a very different birthday feeling than my birthday last year. It was on my 30th birthday that I tossed out my birth control and we started this crazy ride. Five years felt like an eternity to live through, but now seem like a dark shaded area on a long timeline of my life. I wish I could have had more perspective. I wish I could have taken a few steps back to see the bigger picture, to know I would find my baby. But it's just so hard when you're drowning in the despair of the search. I tried to tell myself things would be different one day and the baby that's meant to be mine would be.  Now, looking at my little sumo piglet I believe it with all my heart. She is the baby that was meant to be mine.

I woke up this morning to her grunting. She's finding her voice and constantly has this look on her face like she owns the place. She pretty much does. She's surpassed her birth weight and doesn't yet realize day and night are two different things. We're working on it. 

I was going to take the rest of this week to write more about Momo's birth, but it's already Thursday and thinking back to the weekend of her birth seems surreal. 

We were supposed to go home on Sunday (Momo was born Friday night), but because of the complications I had, our discharge date was up in the air. On Sunday morning, Nurse Ratched stormed into our room with three pieces of information. She was the one who told us Momo had jaundice and needed to be force fed formula while she glowed in a special light blanket. Then Nurse Ratched declared that the underside of Momo's tongue needed to be cut in order for her to latch properly. Then she said we weren't going to be able to go home that night. Actually there were four things. She told me that because I had a blood transfusion, my milk would come in later than expected. She came in guns blazing and it just sent me over the edge. I cried like I've never cried before as Noah and I force fed Momo syringes full of formula and whatever droplets of colostrum we could squeeze out. I didn't want to do formula. I didn't want to spend another second in the hospital. I didn't want the IV lines in my veins to jab me when I bent my arm to try and hold my baby. But there we were. Life on IF Island had taught us how to sit with what it. How to make the best out of a scary situation. And how to remember it would all pass. 

"You're not cutting my baby's tongue," was I could think to say to the nurse. Then I hooked myself up to the breast pump and pumped until my nipples were raw.

Everything else is kind of a blur. Noah and I sang to Momo as she baked in the light therapy box in the NICU. We ate nasty hospital food in silence in the middle of the night. And we kept reminding each other that we had a baby. We finally had a baby and we get to keep her. Everything else was going to heal. 

And it does. It will. 

I hope our story continues to be a reminder that having a family when all cards are stacked against you is possible. That being open to how your baby will come to you can only help through the process. Noah and I both hope our documentary will help normalize alternative family building options and help others remember that sometimes miracles do happen. 

We have just a few more days to get closer to our fundraising goal. If you haven't checked it out, please do. 

INDIEGOGO: http://igg.me/at/onemoreshot

FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/OneMoreShotFilm

FILM WEBSITE: www.onemoreshotfilm.com

TWITTER: @onemoreshotdoc

Comments

[Lisa @ AmateurNester]

Happy birthday, Maya! May this be the start of your best year yet.

[Don't Count Your Eggs]

Thanks Devon and Annie! Devon--yes, you will get out of the trenches. I often told myself I'm not going to turn 50 and be going through infertility. As terrible and ridiculous as that sounds it kind of helped me have perspective. Thanks for commenting Annie, and for contributing! Please tweet away! Having Momo so close to my bday makes me feel like I'll never need a bday gift again-- but don't tell Noah.

[Devon]

Happy Birthday Maya! What a true time to celebrate! You have always kept me going with you honest posts and incredible writing, this post is just another reminder that in the depths of these trenches I know one day we will get out of this too, one way or the other. I am also very happy to hear you and Momo are home safe and sound. Your birth story is crazy, my sister had a similar one and it was a very scary time for our family. I look forward to hearing more and watching the documentary. xx

[Annie C-K]

Happy birthday, Maya! I gave birth to my own little miracle two weeks before my 35th birthday so it's sweet to see another mother-daughter birthday pair aligned in a similar interval. I am 38 now.

This is my first time commenting but I have actually followed your filmmaking and blog for about 6 months. Thank you and Noah for sharing your lives with us in such a rare, raw, and transparent, refreshing way. Your voices are a blessing.

I am a contributor to your campaign and am thinking of tweeting at a brainstorm of celebrities who have been open about their own fertility struggles. Just want you to know we are standing with you in support of the difficult birth, the early newborn days, feeding around the clock, the exhaustion, the everything.