When Mom Gets Sick After Having A Baby

I have a lot of FB friends.  In the last month several of them have had babies and, afterwards, either they, or a family member, has written Mom is not doing well since she had the baby.  Whenever I read that I immediately begin private messaging, because I also got very sick after I had my daughter.  If I had it to do over again I would have been much more aggressive seeking treatment.  That’s why I private message, and that’s why I wrote this blog today.

We oftentimes don’t think about the mother after the baby is born.  My daughter was born on Friday afternoon.  I think there were 25 people in my hospital room on Sunday partying.  There’s nothing like a party in your room while you’re lying in a hospital bed after a C-section.

We take mothers for granted in childbirth.  I’m big into genealogy.  If you look at any family tree going back 200 years you see large numbers of women dying in, or after, childbirth. 

I didn’t feel well after I had my daughter.  I was told healing from a C-section takes a while.  By two weeks out I was walking upright, but I felt terrible.  I also had some physical symptoms I was complaining about to my doctor, who was on vacation.  I was actually complaining to his partner.  My complaints were brushed off as “normal”.  I asked a couple of my girlfriends how long it was before they felt well after they had a baby.  You know what I realize now, they didn’t understand my question.  They weren’t sick after they had a baby.  I told one friend how badly I felt and I cried.  She suggested I had post-partum depression.  A lot of people thought I had post-partum depression.  I didn’t have post-partum depression.  I was sick. 

At five weeks post birth the incision on my C-section burst and it was awful, vile and putrid.  I called my doctor, but my doctor had gatekeepers.  I insisted I needed to get in right away.  The gate-keeper told me I had been complaining and complaining and there was nothing wrong with me.  She said I had an appointment in a week.  I told her I could not wait a week.   I should not have called.  I should have shown up.  She gave me an appointment for the next day.

The doctor took one look at me and said, “Oh my God, how did this happen to you?”  He gave me strong antibiotics and told me to come back in two days.  He said if I wasn’t better in two days he would have to admit me to the hospital.  Thanks be to God my body responded to the antibiotics.

I was talking to a friend today whose daughter is suffering from post-partum depression after the birth of her second child and it’s really bad.  I used to work with a lawyer who had a daughter who was also a lawyer.  His lawyer daughter was more successful than her father.  She had post-partum depression after the birth of her first child.  Then she had a second child.  She very much wanted the second child.  After the birth of her second child she went into the woods and shot herself because she was scared she was going to kill her children. 

They want my friend’s daughter not to breast-feed because that can make the post-partum depression worse.  I was unsuccessful at breast-feeding.  In hindsight, I’m sure that was because of the undiagnosed staph infection.  We got to where we were taking my daughter to the pediatrician daily, at his request, because she was losing weight so rapidly, until she was put on formula.  I told my friend that in baby culture breast-feeding is drilled into you.  You suck as a mother if you don’t breast-feed, but what if you can’t?

My friend said her daughter didn’t like being tagged with a mental illness.  I don’t blame her.  Who wants that?  If it’s a mental illness is there an insinuation you can easily fix it, if you just put your mind to it.   I’m not a doctor but I would think it’s a hormonal issue.  After you have a baby your body has weird hormone things going on.  You get cold, hot, dizzy, all kinds of weird stuff.  Lawyers don’t normally take themselves to the woods and shoot themselves so they won’t kill their children.  That action, in and of itself, showed me post-partum is real.  Treat it, even if it means no breast-feeding.  Even if it means you need medication.  It’s not a shameful thing. 

Pay attention to mothers after babies are born.  These are medically treatable illnesses that need not become life or death issues.  

Disasters, Natural and Economic

I evacuated for Hurricane Irma, along with hundreds of thousands of others, all making their way north out of Florida, at the same time.  To say the going was slow is an understatement.  To pass time I listened to songs, audio books and the radio. 

I rejoiced when I hit the Florida-Georgia border, but the traffic in Georgia was still terrible, the roads full of Florida evacuees.  The radio changed in Georgia.  Florida stations were broadcasting the storm, George was all about sports.  I don’t care about sports.  As I was moving at 7 mph on the Atlanta by-pass I found a station I thought was talking about the storm, but it wasn’t. 

A man with a beautiful radio voice was telling a story.  He said people think the Depression was caused by a run on banks, but it wasn’t.  A run on banks is a symptom, never a cause.  Banks can’t run, it’s not something they do.

The narrator explained the weather in the Mississippi valley is, and has always been, prone to disaster.  Until Europeans, this area was largely unpopulated, due to weather. 

In 1926 there was a terrible Hurricane in Florida.  The result was massive property damage, a food shortage, hundreds of deaths, tens of thousands homeless. 

In 1927 the Mississippi River flooded, 145 levees broke.  The property damage was one billion dollars which was one third of the federal budget.  Hundreds of people died.  Hundreds of thousands lost their homes.

In 1928 Florida experienced another Hurricane.  2,500 people died.  Tens of thousands were displaced.

The United States prospered during the 1920s.  One reason was it was supplying Europe with goods, particularly food, since World War I, when Europe suffered incredible damage.  Under the Federal Farm Act of 1916 the US Government guaranteed it would buy all the crops farmers produced.  Farmers got very smart and produced more crops than had ever been produced on the same land.  By 1929 Europe recovered and was feeding itself.  At the same time, US farmers produced more crops than the government could afford to buy.  Without the government buying crops the farmers were destitute.  They could not make their mortgage payments.  Farm workers no longer had jobs.  As with the natural disasters thousands were displaced.  My great-grandparents, and many of their relatives, moved from farms in the south to Detroit in search of work.

On my drive to work I pass massive housing construction in downtown Fort Lauderdale while the price of some existing condos in downtown Fort Lauderdale is going down.  That’s not just me saying it.  I’ve seen the property appraiser’s new assessments.  I have a downtown condo owned by parties in litigation.  I called my favorite realtor to ask its value.  He said there are 50 condos for sale in that building.  How marketable do you think that condo is?  Maybe you can find a tenant.  Thousands of new units are being built that will block existing views.  The cost to live in these condos is always high because they have a lot of amenities, lavish swimming pools, gyms, community rooms, elevators, parking garages, security, sometimes even spas and restaurants.

While in the past two months we have had three hurricanes, the President of the United States spends his days attacking myriad, diverse people and ideas.  Today he came for the Puerto Ricans contradicting what he sent his Vice President to tell them a week ago.  No surprise, it is in keeping with his behavior.  He is also attacking, the First Amendment, which I predict will survive, the Iran Deal, the ACHA and the GOP.  The GOP made a deal with the devil when they got behind him, and now Bannon wants to recreate the GOP in his own imagine. 

You might think a person who favors the other party’s policies would be happy to watch this destruction, I’m not.  Trump, like the run on banks, is not the cause.  He is a symptom.  The majority of his voters chose him because he touched a place in their heart that told them they were not getting the recognition they deserved.  They are better than that.  He will lift them up and make them great again, as great as they think they are, should and want to be.  This does not include his wealthy voters who chose him because they believed he would make their passive income rise.  I know many, many Trump voters receiving all manner of assistance that would not exist but for government, Medicaid, Medicare, the ACHA, social security, social security disability, food stamps, workers compensation, and Section 8 Housing, but for some reason they don’t view this as public assistance, like it’s been around so long it’s their right.  They want their right.  They want to keep it from the unworthy who are currently Mexicans, Muslims and transgenders.

It’s such a heady feeling to live with a man who says you deserve to live better, he’ll get you what you deserve and make you feel great, while he manipulates you to get what he wants, to make himself feel great again. 

For those of us who are not loving deaf, dumb and blindly, the runaway train is gaining momentum.  Protect yourself.  May God bless us, everyone.  

Tribute to a Friend

            I’m not using real names unless I am directed otherwise.

            My first law office was in an executive suite.  Ryan was my next-door office neighbor.  He was not a lawyer.  Ryan and I were both quiet workers.  Ryan’s wife, Tori, was gregarious and fun.  They had three children, two boys close together, and a girl some years later.  I had three step-children.  Oftentimes, in the summer, I would take a day or half day off and Tori and I would take the children somewhere to play, the beach, the pool, the lake or an arcade. 

            Tori told me Ryan didn’t like most of the people in our building, “Except Marian.”  That made me smile.  As my pregnancy advanced Tori asked Ryan, “Is Marian showing much, getting big?”  Ryan told her, “You can’t even tell she is pregnant with the clothes she wears.”  Tori called and told me that, asked if I was okay.  I was fine.  I’m a litigator, being pregnant is a liability in litigation.  There are lots of people I don’t want to know I’m pregnant. 

            Ryan and I both outgrew that building.  Ryan’s business prospered.  I don’t know that I ever saw Ryan and Tori again until Ryan threw a 50^th birthday party for Tori.  I’m 53.  I’ve been to a lot of 50^th birthday parties in the past few years.  This was the most elaborate I have attended, it was like a wedding.  Ryan and I were talking at that party.  He proudly told me with the kids grown Tori was doing sales for their family business.  She excelled at it.  He was so proud of her. 

            Tori decided she had to have a birthday party for Ryan that year, so a few months later she threw a less elaborate, but still very, very fun party for Ryan at their home.  Except Ryan did not attend.  He stayed upstairs.  He had a bad case of the flu. 

            Less than a month later Ryan fell in a store.  The fall was bad enough he was taken to the hospital by ambulance.  Tori got to the hospital.  She followed as Ryan was being wheeled down a hospital hallway.  They passed a room that said “MRI.”  Tori called out, “You know who needs an MRI?  This guy.  Give this guy an MRI.”  Ryan told Tori he did not need an MRI.  He knew what was wrong.  A year earlier he was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s Disease.  He kept this to himself.  I don’t blame him.  He gave himself and his family a happy year, where everyone was not staring at him looking for deficits.  When Tori called and told me it was like being punched in the gut and brought tears to my eyes.  I cannot imagine what it did to her.

            Their oldest son already worked for the family business.  Tori told her youngest son to quit his job.  They needed him at the family business.  He did.  Their daughter was going to college up north.  She came home.  Her parents both told her they did not want, nor were they asking, her to give up her college life.  She wanted to be there for her Dad. 

            Ryan passed away, about a year and three months after that fall.  He had a new grandchild in 2017.  He was so sad he would not get to watch his grandchildren grow.  We see through a glass darkly, and ours is not to reason why.  Ryan loved his wife, children and his job.  He was a blessing to his family and they were a blessing to him.  Life doesn’t get better than that.  I hope the next time I see him, he smiles and tells me he was wrong, He has been right there with his family every day.  He is so proud of them.