Escape to Malibu- Part 8

Adelaide had arrived. I bled profusely after her birth. At my six week post-partum check my doctor, a board certified gynecologist/obstetrician inserted a Copper Seven intrauterine device. I had stopped bleeding for a total of four days. The insertion of the IUD started me bleeding again. It was cold & dreary outside, early December, & my East coast family from Chapel Hill, NC to New Hampshire wanted to see my darling precious daughter.

So we began to prepare for another epic journey, proving a Viking Queen can travel around the world, return to her homeland, birth another child, & move on without missing a single step. How foolish I was! How driven by the expectations of my own Viking family & Bernie the Bluebeard of the North.

I baked Swedish limpa & chose gifts for friends & family we were to visit on the way. In between nursing my infant & running after my adorable toddler son I squeezed in some part-time nursing hours. In attempting to please everyone I lost track of my own needs. I became more & more debilitated, yet less & less able to ask for help myself. I let my family's needs wash over me like a huge wave. I nearly drowned.

The "show the babies" tour was extremely demanding. In typical Viking fashion my family celebrated Christmas with the extended clan gathering for the first time in history in Darien, Connecticut. We enjoyed the groaning board or Smorgasbord the women of the clan prepared ritually each year, along with the Christmas ale, the Aquavit, the Cognac & cigars. As we grew through the sixties & seventies the younger generations would split from the elders for a walk & a joint so all indulgences were fully & excessively partaken of.

This year we had accomodations up the road with good friends in Greenwich for Christmas eve night. Bernie drank & smoked so much he turned green & had to wrap himself around my Aunt's toilet. He was so ill I feared I would have to rush him to the emergency room.

I felt humiliated. I had not been drinking to excess as the children demanded my full attention & their father had opted out of all responsibility including driving & even walking. We were stalled & not invited Christmas eve in my Aunt & Uncle's home with two babies. It was dreadful.

Christmas was barely better. My friends were gracious as Bernie nursed his hangover all day & I felt very uncomfortable. I managed the children & watched our host family open gifts most notably of good-smelling things for the grandma who wondered out loud whether she was so stinky she needed so many perfumed toiletres.

We returned home after visiting DC. relatives there & Gettysburg relatives via car. I was utterly, utterly exhausted.

The holidays were over, Bernie back at work found me home in our tiny abode caring for my wee ones & still bleeding from the Copper 7. I felt terrible. My strength was gone. I had no stamina. My normally cheerful disposition wasn't. I had cabin fever & felt like a dreary, cold misty afternoon.

There was no adventure or romance in my life anymore, just dull winter days & endless dirty dishes & clothes & perpetually hungry mouths to feed & bodies to guard from running out into the busy street. Adelaide couldn't run but she could FUSS & Joshua was everywhere at once it seemed. He had a case of sibling jealousy too, making this plain at a visit to my parent's farm in New Hampshire by throwing a raw potato at her head.

Had my body been fit & regained its integrity, & my baby doctor listened to ME as a person instead of treating only symptoms, what transpired that dreadful spring of '80 never would have.

To this day I swear to this.

I went to Baby Doc after the holidays & asked him to remove the IUD. He refused, & asked me instead to try a course of iron tablets to help combat the fatigue. I did. They did not help. He then presented me with a course of antibiotics for the "pelvic inflammatory disease" HE had created by inserting the cursed instrument, still not honoring my request to remove it. The bleeding continued.

I became progressively exhausted, not only from the internal assault to my bodily integrity, but the external demands of my young ones & husband. I was sleeping an average of 3 hours a night. Bernie wanted me to work part-time as well. I had no domestic help whatsoever in the daytime. All the family members surrounding me were taking, but had become so used to my being the perpetual caregiver that they could not adjust to giving to me in my vulnerable time of need.

Baby Doc gave me Provera, a hormone used in menopausal women to "arrest the bleeding" & this was the pharmaceutical straw that broke the camel's back. Twenty minutes afer taking it I felt my blood literally burning in my veins. We were up at the farm visiting my folks when I took the second pill & feeling this awful, pill-induced hot flush I took the lot & flushed them down the toilet.

My mother in particular took offense to this. Her oldest sister is married to a psychiatrist in Maryland who is a big mucky-muck in the American Psychiatric Association & who survived the great trek across Japan during the war as a prisoner of war so she thinks doctors are gods & never to be disputed. Of course, she never worked with any of them professionally, her awe of them is in a purely social context.

(Note from the past:) STAY TUNED... Part 9 is on its way! And to all you sophisticated gentlemen out there who have nothing better to do than be sarcastic, I hope you will grow out of it. This is supposed to be an international linkage of university-related intelligences. We can collaborate to heal the planet in the twinkling of an eye. Beat your swords into plowshares & enjoy the universal harvest.