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My Son
by
Jenn Van Massenhoven
I don’t know what to do with him sometimes! He’s so smart and so busy. He’s got
such a strong personality. He’s easily bored and he wants me to play with
him all the time. Not that I have a problem with that but, how the heck do I play with a 5
year old boy?
My relationship with him is strange. I never bonded well with him, I think he
knows it. He tries harder than I do, I have to admit. I just don’t know
what to do with him. I’ve thought and thought about why I have no patience with him and I
think I’ve hit upon it. I think that a small part of me blames him for the trouble I had carrying and delivering him.
Stupid eh? It happens more often than you think. I’m in the minority that doesn’t
tell their child that. Maybe it happens more than I think. It’s just that when you
hear about mothers who resent what their children did to their bodies, most often
you hear about one form of abuse or another. Ben has no idea how I feel. Not to
my knowledge anyway.
I got pregnant by surprise. I was on the pill, had forgotten a couple. I’d done that
in the past but never had a problem. I should say - never had a baby. This time around I got pregnant. Dennis and I had been together nine months. I guess
God decided that I was the one for him and he was the one for me and was determined to keep us together.
When my mother-in-law found out I was pregnant she freaked. She was determined that all the rumours at our work were true [I was sleeping
around] and that the baby wasn’t Dennis’s. I had to laugh. Actually, I got angry and really
stressed out.
So, with a stressful pregnancy, I almost left Dennis because of his mother. She
felt I was trapping him and she was making him miserable, forcing him to choose between us. I “won.” I wanted him to be happy so I nearly left. He told me that
wouldn’t make him happy at all. So I stayed.
I ate my way through the stress, I got heavier AND bigger with child. Gained 35
pounds. Then the due date came… and went. No sign of my child. Got crankier, feet swelled more. Blood pressure went waaaayyy up. My doctor got worried I
was developing some form of toxemia. He decided to induce me. Wahoo. Into the hospital I go. At 7:30 in the morning they started trying to jab an I.V. into my arm.
Three nurses later they finally got it in.
They started the pitocin and the contractions started right away. We all figured
this was going to be easy! The contractions were 2 minutes apart and hurt like a
son of a gun. However, no dice. Nothing happened. Nada. Zip. Zero. Lots of pain,
that’s it.
The little one was as stubborn as his mother. So the doctor decided, at the end of
the day, to try something else. He found a little thing that scared me to death. They put my feet up in the stirrups and for an hour tried to insert an inflatable
induction device. Can’t remember the name off-hand. It was a long rubber tube
with a balloon on the end. The balloon fit [well, on most women] into your cervix,
then they filled it with water. Cold water.
The whole idea was to start dilating the cervix and jump start the labour. They
couldn’t get it into my cervix. After poking and prodding me for an hour, two
nurses and two major fits, on the doctor’s part as well as mine, he gave up.
They shut off the IV, gave me a shot of morphine and told me to go to sleep. Ha!
Surprisingly I did. At seven the next morning they started the pitocin again. Five hours later I FINALLY went into labour! We were walking through the hospital
hallways when I felt a big release and a WHOOSH! We rushed back to the hospital room. Sure enough, I was having the baby.
Three centimeters dilated, contractions 2 minutes apart, the baby really was
coming this time. I stayed 3 centimeters for hours, and I started falling
asleep between contractions. Laugh, go ahead. The darn things were only TWO minutes
apart and here I am taking a nap for the every other minute I’m asleep.
The nurses watched this for awhile and sent for the doc. He took a look at me
and decided I needed an epidural. So in comes the anesthesiologist.
He informs me that I have a fat back and then yells at me for flinching when he swabbed my
back with the ice cold disinfectant. Nice guy. Glad I never saw him again!
I had back labour. Anyone have back labour? It hurts like nothing you’ve ever felt
before and nothing stops it. I mean nothing. So this is 3 in the afternoon now. Nothing changed for another couple of hours, except that I stayed awake.
Around 5 or 6 I was finally starting to dilate more. At 8 the doc said, this kid is
coming any time, you’re fully dilated and enfaced. My hubby said, this baby’s going to wait till groundhog day, another 4 hours away. And again we had early
evidence of a stubborn kid. By this time I’m getting even more frustrated. I mean I’ve been in labour for two days! Okay, it’s felt like labour for 2 days.
All of a sudden we had a problem. The heart beat starts disappearing, they
couldn’t pick it up on the belly monitor anymore. So he decides that they
need to put on a scalp monitor. So in the stirrups I go again. After much two handed
fiddling he gets the monitor attached.
Now I’m lying here with an IV in my arm, a blood pressure cuff on the other, a
heart monitor on my finger, a catheter, the epidural IV in my back, and the scalp monitor. I felt like a Macy’s parade balloon! I said so. Had to break the tension
somehow.
Eleven rolls around, Dennis jokes again about Groundhog Day while the doctor
and nurse shuffle off to a corner to converse. That worried me, of course. The baby’s heartbeat had come
and gone several times. He comes back and tells me
that they may have to do a c-section. We didn’t really want that to happen so we prayed the baby would come soon.
About a half hour later Ben starts moving down. Thank God! After several pushes
the boy is born. Silent. I noticed first that he was a boy, and was happy, I’d been saying it for months. The first thing Dennis noticed was that the baby was blue.
We sat there, hands gripped in a death lock and waited desperately for baby Ben
to cry. It was the longest two minutes of my life and it still makes me want to cry. If he was anywhere near me I’d hug him till he got mad. Finally we heard a strong
wail and we started to cry ourselves. They brought him over and we laughed. He looked so much like his daddy even then.
My mother-in-law came to the hospital the next day. She took one look at her
grandson and said, “He’s definitely a Van Massenhoven!” I wanted to clock her!
But we’re past that whole fight. Yup, we sure are. Uh huh, definitely.
For the next six weeks I attempted to breast feed my son. I’m surprised he grew
at all. The boy did not take to nursing at all! Why didn’t I stop you ask? Because I was guilted into it and I didn’t know any better at the time. I totally resented all
the time spent trying to attach my son to my nipple. I blamed him for it, for the
pain, the amount of time it took, the minor infections and the lack of sleep. [I did
NOT nurse my daughter!]
As a result of me being angry and grateful all at the same time we didn’t bond.
Really, how could anyone expect me to? It’s so very difficult to love someone who is continually causing you pain. Such a tiny soul, now I feel guilty that I didn’t love
him enough then.
He’s 5 now, loves me to death, in spite of everything. I love him too, but I’m still
afraid he’s going to hurt me. Always have been. I try to find things for him and I to do. Things that don’t involve him touching me. Sad isn’t it? I’m trying hard to
bond with him, I don’t want him to grow up and realize that we didn’t have a relationship. It’s hard at his age, but it would be harder with him as an adult.
I don’t have this problem with my daughter. Things were so totally different, from
the beginning. I want the same relationship with my son.
Is it possible to play with a 5 year old boy and not be physical? What the heck do I
do with him?
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