A Full Heart

So to begin with, our darling little Cora has a heart disorder. The left ventricle of her heart has overdeveloped muscle mass, which prevents it from filling fully and pumping her blood as efficiently as it should. While she was in the hospital, the pediatrician noticed a heart murmur, and after two echo cardiograms, they diagnosed her with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, HCM for short. It looks like this.

While we've mostly made our peace with it now, finding out was one of the most terrifying experiences of my life. I had my seemingly perfect newborn in my arms, but people kept coming in to our hospital room and checking her, hooking her up to monitors, calling each other and talking about her, most of them without giving me very much information at all. Newborns, in my opinion, should not be doing a single thing besides cuddling with their mothers and figuring out how to eat, pee, and poop. Overall I was doing a pretty good job of keeping people out of our space before the great freak-out began. Then it was dozens of conversations with doctors and nurses, comforting little Maybe (which I was calling her at the time, since we couldn't agree on a name) while a two-hour echo cardiogram was performed, and finally dealing with the ultimate nightmare of having her transferred near midnight to Rady Children's Hospital downtown. After talking to Aaron, I very nearly refused to send her, suggesting that given her visible health, any tests that needed to be performed could be done as an outpatient in the coming weeks. But just as I had made up my mind, Aaron got the phone call from the pediatrician that I insisted on, and together they agreed to send her after all. I still felt so uneasy about the decision, but we had a friend come and give her a blessing, while Aaron gave me one as well. After all was said and done, I still think my earlier plan to do the examinations and tests as an outpatient would have worked equally well if not better, but we were on edge enough that we didn't want to put our baby at risk, and our (expensive) insurance seemed to make that the better option. Just before midnight on Tuesday night, they loaded our little Maybe into an ambulance and made Aaron and I follow along behind down to the hospital.

Rady Children's Hopsital by day

What met us there was worse than I had expected (and my expectations were low). Two days after giving birth, they assigned me to a fold-out chair next to a little plastic bassinet in a shared room in a brightly lit hospital ward teeming with beeps and buzzes and monitors of every kind. Someone gave me some folded sheets, and it was up to me to figure out how to turn the chair into a place to both feed my baby and sleep through the constant noise. I asked for darkness and quiet, but the curtain between the sides of the room gave me only a trace of either, while the sliding glass door that provided a slight noise buffer provided barely any privacy. By the next morning, I abandoned every remaining shred of dignity and stripped halfway down to try to feed my overly sleepy baby who had been hooked up to every imaginable device to measure her heart-rate, her breathing, her oxygen concentration, etc. (and believe me, each of those measuring devices had its own special beep or buzz). Eventually some kind soul must have felt some compassion for me, because someone finally showed up with the screen that I had been requesting from the moment I got there.

I couldn't bear to take any photos of Cora hooked up to the machines, but here's the spot where she spent her time, and the chair where I slept (behind the nurse).

Because Maybe had already been exposed to the outside world, they had assigned us to Acute Cardiology rather than NICU--a mixed blessing, as I was able to hold and feed my baby freely, but they were not otherwise well-equipped for newborns. In the morning, I met with a cardiologist who specializes in HCM patients, and who explained in detail the condition and what they were looking for in her examinations. Basically, HCM is reasonably common, is treatable but not curable, and is a primary cause of infant deaths and the explanation for many cases of SIDS. Later on, it is a cause of death for student athletes during the adolescent years as well. When mild, it often goes undetected until the time of death. Based on the results of the echo cardiogram, he said that Maybe's case qualified as mild to moderate, and reassured us that the primary causes for immediate concern, restricted flow into the aorta or arrhythmias, were not present in her case. He explained that the most common treatment for the disorder is use of the drug propanalol, which slows the heart-rate slightly, allowing the heart more time to fill, promoting better oxygenation of the blood, and improving circulation. Many patients with HCM live normal lifespans, particularly when cases are diagnosed and treated. On the other hand, the existence of a strong murmur so early gave reason to worry, because fewer cases present with a murmur than without, and diagnoses in infancy are rare. After asking our permission, he started her on the drug and started monitoring her for her response. A neo-natologist came over as well to check on the regular newborn stuff, feeding and pooping and the rest of the rigamarole. Though she seemed extra-sleepy and hard to wake for feedings, she otherwise seemed to be doing well.

I pushed the doctors for as early a release as possible, both because I couldn't help thinking that being home with her family had to be better for promoting good health in a baby than being cooped up in a hospital, and also because I was a little worried about things coming apart at the seams at home with my unexpectedly prolonged absence. Aside from everything else, I had nowhere to shower. I managed to make my meagerly packed suitcase last a couple more days, and was once again grateful for the surprising respite from daily showers that this pregnancy (and the aftermath, apparently) provided--my hair, which has always required daily washing, stopped getting oily and required washings only every few days during my pregnancy. I spent the days feeding, changing, finding food (they eventually let me order meals as a breastfeeding mom), sending texts to friends for help with rides and supervision for my older kids, and reading snippets of the Mary Higgins Clark book I had taken with me to the hospital--it was a needed distraction.

Aaron came to visit that night and had a chance to talk with the doctors as well, though he came away more alarmed than I was and suggested that I should stay as long as possible. We did manage to steal away for an hour to get dinner at the Ronald McDonald house across the street, and I came to a new appreciation for these facilities that I had heard of but never experienced before. They offered showers, rooms for naps, laundry services, and meals for families who needed them. Though we fortunately ended up not needing anything more after that first day, I was shocked into an awareness of an entire process and set of families and needs that I had been blind to my entire life previously.


Things struggled along at home in my absence, helped tremendously by friends who called constantly to offer rides and services, and to take food to my family. Despite Aaron's fears and/or wishes, after 24 hours observation on the medication, we were released, and he had to rearrange his plans to come pick us up on Thursday at noon. Though we were only at the hospital for about 36 hours, it was truly the longest 36 hours of my life, and it wasn't until days later that I realized how brief our stay had actually been. The whole thing was exhausting physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, and coming home felt amazing, even if I was at work wiping down sticky counter tops and sweeping filthy floors within minutes of arriving (like I said, my release came as a bit of a surprise to Aaron, so there was no time to fake that they'd all kept everything clean in my absence!). The kids were totally surprised to come home to their baby sister, and have had their hearts completely melted by her ever since. There's a sort of domino effect to the heart-melting, because you can't imagine what happens to a parent's heart when they get to watch their often grumpy and rude teenager turn into a puddle of butter around a baby. Since getting home, things have been busy but beautiful. More on the good stuff in the next post.

Home at last!

Maybe Baby

Welcome to the world, Coretta May Mitchell!

Coretta May Mitchell, born May 31 at 11:08 pm, 7 lbs. 5 oz.

Her magnificent stink-eye

And me, ravishing after 24 hours of labor--ha!

We had a devil of a time bringing this baby into the world, and a devil of a time naming her. I've never written up a birth story before, mostly because it feels like using the bathroom with the door open or something, but all these years later, I sort of wish I remembered more details about my other kids births, so this time it's going down in black and white.

On Saturday May 23, my water broke--there was a short gush, and then nothing else. Optimistically, I waited for labor to kick in--even though it never has before, I hoped this time I would get a real live natural labor. Contractions got harder all day, peaking around 2 pm, which happened to be the start time of the school musical, Legally Blonde Jr., that Aaron had gotten us all tickets to. I waffled about going, but decided we could always leave early if necessary. Well unfortunately, during the play my contractions got progressively further apart. By the time it was over, I wasn't so certain that I was on my way to having a baby after all. We got home around 5 pm, and I decided that getting some rest would be the smartest thing to do either way.

On Sunday morning I woke to another gush of fluid. But no labor. This time, I tried to get things moving all morning, and eventually succeeded in getting some hard contractions going. Once they were 3-5 minutes apart, I drove myself to the hospital. After updating the nurses there on what was happening, they put me in a room without officially admitting me. There I sat for a couple of hours, reading a book and having contractions. They swabbed me for amniotic fluid, but said everything seemed to be fine, so I should go home. I did not want to go home--I wanted to have a baby! But, not being a huge fan of hospitals, I eventually packed up and headed home. That night I did as much exercise/heavy lifting as seemed reasonable before going to bed. On Monday morning (Memorial Day), I woke up totally ready to have a baby--the timing would work perfectly! And only a few minutes after waking up, I had another gush of amniotic fluid plus contractions--everything looked good. I decided to hit the gym again, just to move things along, and by late morning, everything seemed to be moving into gear. I went straight from the gym to the hospital, where they pre-admitted me again and set me up for observation.

*if queasy or wary of losing respect for me by reading things entirely too personal in nature, please skip to the next paragraph* My nurse tested the pad that I'd been wearing to catch leaking fluid, and it came up positive. Then she swabbed me for amniotic fluid on my body, and came up negative. I thought it was strange that she'd even bother with that, but she said they needed a positive test on my body. Whatever. She sat me half-naked on a gross pad thing and told me to cough and otherwise induce additional leaking of fluid. So I did that and she tested the fluid and it was positive, but she still couldn't get a sample on my actual body--something that made perfect sense to me since my cervix was fully lowered and there was not actually anywhere for fluid to pool inside my body. *end of too personal section*

Ultimately, she never could get the exact test results that she wanted, plus she kept leaving for long periods because they were short-staffed because of the holiday, and I finally just picked myself up and went home, annoyed at everyone and everything. The next few days were a mess of emotion and annoyance. My doctor refused to induce me because they had put a new regulation into place that required doctors to wait until 39 weeks before elective inductions and the baby still looked reasonably healthy and my fluid levels were acceptable. I was very uncomfortable, continued to leak amniotic fluid at unexpected moments, but was also feeling pretty humiliated about my apparent inability to produce the proper amount of fluid at the correct time to get them to admit me and do an induction, which I had at that point decided was the only way my body intended to expel the baby--after all, it's how I had all four of my other babies.

 I went to see my doctor, but she was no help--something that didn't especially surprise me. Despite having seen four obstetricians already in the pregnancy (due to insurance changes), I never did make my way to a doctor I liked, but ultimately decided that at baby number five, I was probably the best person to call the shots anyway. If only they had let me! On Thursday I started taking blue and black cohosh to induce labor (they tasted awful), and on Friday I resorted to castor oil, despite hearing all manner of bad things about it. It didn't actually affect me too negatively, and gave me lots of good hard contractions, but nothing fool-proof enough to drag myself back to the hospital again--I felt too humiliated about my previous experiences there already. I talked to my doctor a few more times, and finally she agreed to induce me on Sunday May 31--great timing, since Aaron was putting on his final concert of the year on that day. She wouldn't budge by a single day, no matter what. I was getting pretty freaked out about some kind of infection might happen, besides which, our schedule for the coming week was not at all attractive, with end-of-year events coming up at schools, Aaron dealing with end-of-year logistics at his jobs, etc.

We went in at midnight to get Pitocin started, hoping to have a baby by 7 or 8 am--an average labor for me. However, the nurse started the Pitocin at the minimal levels and would only raise it every 15-30 minutes or so (and since Aaron and I kept falling asleep, we failed to keep her on schedule), so by morning, no real labor had even started. We got a new nurse then, and she started cranking it up, plus my doctor finally came in and broke my water, so by about noon I was in real labor. Unfortunately, Aaron had to leave at 2, and we felt like we were cutting it too close. So we decided to bring down the Pitocin levels for a bit so Aaron could go downtown to take care of pre-concert prep and conduct his 5 pm concert.

Everyone ready for the concert (while I'm laboring away at the hospital)

After that it was just the nurses and me. Luckily I had a great nurse through that period, and she really let me call the shots. At about 3 got an epidural and I told my nurse to crank it back up. The contractions slowly started back up, but they seemed less powerful--probably because I had already worn my uterus out. Aaron got back to the hospital at around 8, just as we were hitting full-throttle. Things were still going, just slower than in my other labors, probably due to both uterine exhaustion and the long gap between pregnancies. Still, by about 10:30 I was fully dilated and ready to push. My epidural was wearing off, however, particularly on one side. I decided to let it go, partly because I had the strange desire to have a more natural childbirth experience, pain and all, this time around--the contractions were never too terrible, and I was curious about how delivery felt. At 11:08, I got to find out. Delivery is horrible! It didn't take me long to push her out, but those few minutes were the worst ever! She stalled with her face half-out, and the cord was wrapped around her neck, and then there were the shoulders and the rest of the body and then the placenta after that--each complete with a full package of horrific pain.

Immediately after she was born, they set her on my chest (even though I had asked them to wait), but I could hardly look at her--I was still birthing a placenta complete with an extra lobe, thank you very much! Aaron was amazing, and fell in love with her instantly as they cleaned her up and got her ready for me. Once I was ready, a few minutes later, they brought her to me, and I could hardly believe how beautiful and real she was--somehow I do not  fully equate the awfulness of pregnancy with an actual adorable little baby, so getting her in my arms was just thrilling. She cracked me up right off the bat as I brought her in to breast-feed--she gave me the worst stink-eye imaginable, as if to say "you want me to eat that???" Still, she caught on reasonably quickly, and aside from the usual annoyances of hospital life, we got off to a good start, enjoying a blissful couple of days just relaxing and enjoying each other.

There was, however, additional trouble to come, about which I will write an entirely separate post.

What matters most is that our Maybe Baby, the one that we talked about off and on for years without ever really planning for, is here. She's not Thilda May Swenson Mitchell, as I had planned to name her, or Clara Mae Mitchell, as Aaron made a super-strong pitch for--even ganging up with the kids on me; she's Coretta May Mitchell, and we all love, love, love her to pieces.

Asher's Birthday Interview, age 14

What is your favorite color?
 -Blue
What is your favorite food?
 -In-n-Out hamburgers
What is your favorite thing to wear?
 -Um, clothes
 What is your favorite thing to do?
 -Skateboard and go to the beach
If you could buy anything in the whole world you wanted, what would it be?
 -A skateboard
What are you good at?
 -Basketball
What job would you like when you grow up?
 -Architect
Where are you going to live when you grow up?
 -Southern California
What games do you like to play?
 -Basketball and soccer
What was your favorite thing about being 13?
 -Learning to skate
What is your favorite thing about being 14?
 -High school is better than middle school, getting better at talking to people

And Now We Wait . . .

Though most of my month of May was spent sitting around wishing to be un-pregnant, there were some other people around here who managed to have a nice time. Okay, maybe less "nice" than just "not terrible." I will confess that I was not especially enjoyable to be around (after the baby was born, each of the kids individually let me know that not only were they happy to have a little sister, they were also happy to have me not-pregnant). Since there were probably more incidents that are better left unremembered than otherwise, this should be a pretty short post!

Mother's Day! I needed a boost, and I got it from my awesome kids and husband.

All the kids sang The Star-Spangled Banner with Aaron at a Padres game! How cool is that? And we scored awesome Padres hoodies as a gate-gift besides!

Sera got to take her dad with her to LEGOLAND for a field trip, and had a great time sharing him with her friends.

Addy got to sing Carmina Burana with the San Diego Symphony with Kurt-David Masur conducting! She did a great job, and we all enjoyed getting to watch the concert (the children's choir portion was treble only, so Asher wasn't able to sing). The San Diego Union Tribune printed a great review, including the following paragraph: "Masur was aided in no small measure by the orchestra’s best efforts, including a career evening for timpanist Ryan J. Dilisi, who was the motor in music’s most supercharged moments; an alert, consistent showing by the San Diego Master Chorale; a well-trained San Diego Children’s Choir that was as fearless as Masur; and a communicative solo trio of baritone Tyler Duncan, tenor Ryan Belongie and soprano Celena Shafer." You can read the rest of the review here.

Asher and Emerson were able to attend a Fathers and Sons campout that featured, among other things, a zip-line. It was Aaron's first chance to test-run the new 3-room tent he recently got for our family, and it was apparently a great success and the envy of all the other campers.

The kids were stuck at home kind of a lot, so they made their friends come to them.

And finally, there was an absolutely amazing baby shower held for me--I can't even express how grateful I am for the wonderful friends who planned and executed it, nor the wonderful people who attended and made it one of the most memorable evenings of my life. It was themed "Oh the Places You'll Go!" and included the most gorgeous array of international foods and decorations. I have honestly never even been involved in such a lovely event, let alone been at the center of it.

 And now we await the final event!