Impact

A guest post from Brian

Being pregnant is obviously no picnic, but it does seem to have a few advantages, one of which is that Chris’s direct physical contact with Jack began at the instant of conception and changed gradually as Jack grew and developed. She was able to feel his movements when he was still only a pound or so, and became accustomed to them as they gradually became stronger and more frequent.

I, on the other hand, had my first direct physical contact with Jack when he wrapped his tiny hand around my finger as he screamed, while the nurses cleaned him off, wrapped him in a blanket and stuffed all 8 pounds of him into my dumbfounded arms. I was in a daze and my eyes were blurred with tears as I brought him over to Chris, casually noting but not quite registering the fact that a group of people were busy sewing her uterus back together and stuffing her intestines back inside her.

One of the medical staff took the first pictures of us as a family together – Chris was immobile and couldn’t hold Jack, so we had to settle for nuzzling his cheeks and crying all over him. Chris was then taken away to the recovery room; I accompanied Jack to the nursery to begin the first of many late night 3 hour sessions doing my best to comfort and take care of him while struggling to remain upright. When Chris had recovered and Jack was given the ok to leave the nursery, I wheeled him into our room on the Mothers and Babies’ Wing and we both got to hold him for the first time.

Jack had obviously had quite a day, and was capable of little but sleeping and staring lethargically around the room. This was just fine by us, since we had by this point gone 24 hours without sleep and 12 without food. The nurses came around and fed Chris but not me; if you’re a soon-to-be father, you should be prepared for the fact that even if you stay in the room 24 hours a day, the hospital will not give you anything other than what you can scrounge from the break room. I, the Survivorman fan, figured I could get by on the Slim Jims and candy bars I had brought for snacks. I figured wrong.

On the second day of Jack’s life, when we had officially started the every-3-hour-round-the-clock feeding schedule, I woke up for the 1AM feeding and knew I was in bad shape. I felt absolutely horrible and had barely enough energy to sit up. Chris smartly recognized that I was crashing from low blood sugar, so I downed a couple of sodas and a bunch of candy bars. Doing that gave me enough of a pick-up to get through the feedings, but I was not feeling optimistic. If I was this utterly spent on day 2, how in the world was I ever going to survive the next 3 months of round-the-clock feedings? For the first of many times, I thought “I can’t do this”. I think that thought went through my mind more times in the first week we had Jack than in the rest of my life put together.

The smart thing for me to do would have been to get out of the room, get myself three solid meals a day, and take some walks outside and get some fresh air. But I couldn’t bring myself to leave Chris and Jack, because Chris was recovering from surgery and couldn’t really get around, and Jack was utterly helpless. Of course, there were plenty of nurses around, but I felt that if I left the room for more than a bathroom or snack break, or if I took care of any of my own needs before seeing to it that Chris and Jack’s were met, I’d be failing in my role as a father. Finally, in the late morning of day 3, I had a breakdown, sobbing and apologizing to Chris that I couldn’t continue like this. I was becoming more of a burden to her than a help, and I needed to leave and take care of myself for a while, even though it made me feel like a miserable failure.

Our friend Cindy, who had come down from Winchester to be with us for Jack’s first week, came to the rescue and took me out to get a real meal and go home and get a nap. I was so shaky and nauseous that it took me an hour to gingerly pick my way through a large pork plate at Jackson’s BBQ, a meal I can normally wolf down in about 5 minutes. We left Jackson’s and went home, and when I walked through door, the smell of the house hit me like a ton of bricks and I was suddenly desperately sad to be there without Chris and Jack. I got weepy yet again, a sign of severe sleep deprivation, and immediately went to the bedroom and collapsed without so much as moving a cover.

After I woke up and took a shower, I felt like a human being again – physically, anyway. But as hard as the physical ordeal was, the hardest part was what was going on inside my head. You see, I have Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD), a chronic and episodic condition which can be triggered by major life events like (for example) having a baby. The way OCD works is that your brain is flooded with unwanted or unpleasant thoughts (“obsessions”) that are accompanied by extremely high levels of anxiety. You then feel an overpowering need to perform some action (the “compulsion”) in an attempt to rid yourself of the unwanted thoughts and feelings. In my case, I have what’s known as the “purely obsessional” form of OCD, which means that instead of engaging in the more well-known compulsive behaviors like hoarding objects or making sure the the stove is off 100 times in a row, I ruminate furiously in an endlessly futile attempt to prove to myself that the unwanted thoughts are false.

As you might suspect, my unwanted thoughts and feelings centered on Jack: whether I could take care of him, whether I loved him enough, or, worst, whether I even wanted him at all. The rational part of me could see quite clearly that there was absolutely no reason to worry about these things, that it was patently obvious that I loved and wanted Jack, and that I would learn to take care of him in due time with the help of friends and family. But the OCD-influenced part of me could not dismiss these thoughts, and I was utterly unable to stop myself from getting worked up into a frenzy about them. I was coping with it reasonably well while we were in the hospital, but when we brought Jack home my anxiety levels skyrocketed. I spent much of Jack’s first night at home dry heaving into the sink from anxiety-induced nausea.

The unfortunate thing is, I was largely to blame for my own suffering. I had identified and gotten treatment for my OCD quite some time ago, and was on Lexapro, which is a typical long-term medication for OCD patients. But I’d gone a few years without having any OCD-related problems, and became quite lax in my Lexapro usage, which, I’ve now learned, is no better than not taking it at all. I’d gotten cocky and was now paying for it. Worse, Chris and Jack were also paying for it through my inability to be available to them when they needed me, and that added guilt and self-recrimination to the anxiety.

On Jack’s first morning at home with us, after a night of almost no sleep, I was getting seriously worried. I was still exhausted and undernourished, but my anxiety levels were so high that I couldn’t eat or sleep. This, of course, just made me even more anxious, and the vicious cycle continued until by late that afternoon it had spun up into a panic attack of dire proportions. I’ve never experienced such utter terror in my life, and I hope I never do again – it was by far the worst thing I’ve ever gone through. Desperate, I called our friend Debbie, who is a great voice of calm support during a crisis. She was able to help me talk through some of what I was feeling anxious about and get me breathing more deeply and slowly. I started to feel a little better – for about 5 minutes, then the panic attack came back with a vengeance. I was completely incapable of functioning, and Debbie and I agreed that I should seek medical attention.

I was adamant that Chris not be left alone while this was going on, so Cindy stayed home with her while our friend Scott raced over to our house and took me to Urgent Care. It took a shot of Phenergan and 1mg of Xanax to get me to the point where I could eat or sleep. Scott drove me home, where I ate a bowl of beef bouillon broth and then collapsed and slept unmoving for 6 straight hours, the worst of the ordeal behind me.

Since then, under the guidance of a psychiatrist, I’ve gotten back on the Lexapro religiously, started tapering slowly off the Xanax (you don’t want to be on it for very long, and people have died from quitting it cold turkey), and dusted off the cognitive-behavioral skills I learned for coping with OCD. When my unwanted thoughts and feelings arise, I simply acknowledge them, let them be there, take some deep breaths, and then go back to concentrating on whatever I was doing, and the anxiety fades quickly. I wish I could do it without having to take the medication, but this experience has led me to the difficult realization that I can’t. Between all of those things, I’ve come a long way on the path of recovery. It’s going to be a lifelong struggle, but I have the upper hand and I don’t plan on losing it again.

As difficult as the anxiety has been, the most powerful thing I’ve experienced since Jack’s birth is not anxiety but love. All the parents tell you that you will love your child more than you’ve ever loved anything in your life; they are seriously understating it. I had no idea about the depth of love that is possible in this world until Jack looked me in the eye for the first time. It was the most intense thing I’ve ever felt, and made all of my life up to that point seem trivial by comparison. I know that sounds hyperbolic, but I promise you it’s not.

And I can’t imagine a more worthy recipient of all that love than Jack. He is the sweetest thing I’ve ever encountered on this planet, bar none. I can already see a playful, gentle, happy personality coming out in him that makes me really like him, not just love him. It’s been so fun and rewarding to watch him grow and develop, and he becomes more animated and skilled every day. I never thought I’d be wildly excited because a baby successfully grabbed a toy ring, but the first time Jack did it I was. Since Jack came into our lives, Chris and I have laughed together more, enjoyed each other more, and loved each other far more than we ever did before.

I knew going in that becoming a parent would be the most difficult thing I would ever do, physically, mentally, or emotionally. Man, did I underestimate it. But Jack, you’re worth it. You’re 1000 times worth it. I would go through all of it again just to have you grab my fingers with your tiny hands, fall asleep on my shoulder, or to see that little smile light up your face, and I can’t wait to see what you do next.

Welcome to the world, little buddy. I love you.