My blood pressure has always been consistently low to normal. During the time I was pregnant for the girls, the nurses always commented how my blood pressure was always normal. However when I was pregnant for Tayshaun, EVERYTHING was different from the get go.
When I went for my first ultrasound, I didn’t anticipate that the technician would be able to predict the fetus’ sex. When I was pregnant for the girls, ultrasounds were performed only if there appeared to be problems. By 1988, ultrasounds were becoming a little more routine. So when I was pregnant for Madison, an ultrasound was performed to evaluate how many weeks I was into my pregnancy. When performing the ultrasound, I asked the technician not to tell me the fetus’ sex unless he was 90% sure. I’d heard of many mis-guesses and I didn’t want to anticipate a girl/boy and then get the opposite. So the technician didn’t give me a guess.
With Tayshaun’s ultrasound, I gave the same speech to the technician performing the procedure. As you know, ultrasounds aren’t necessarily like looking into a peephole at your little bundle of joy sucking his/her thumb or watching him/her smile. The shadowy, milky, form is kinda blurry and like looking at a fuzzy television picture. But as soon as Tayshaun came on the screen, there IT was. He was a dangler. I’m no expert ultrasound reader but it was pretty obvious to me that I was looking at a penis.
Tayshaun was early. He was supposed to arrive in late October. But my blood pressure was always high. She warned me that I might get pregnancy diabetes. I’d never been so uncomfortable when pregnant with the girls. But I attributed my discomfort to the stress I was under.
I was unemployed. I’d been laid off from a job I’d worked for 12 years. Shalyse was still having some complications from her kidney transplant, possibly rejection. I was wondering how I was going to continue to keep up the mortgage payment to a brand new house I’d just acquired. I was raising a junior in high school who I didn’t want to feel the affects of my depleted income. I wanted to make sure she went to her proms; that she had a vehicle to drive to school/work; and that she’d be given the opportunity to earn an Associate degree while a senior in high school. Turns out I was also raising another teenager who happened to my husband. Of course, he was in his 30s and not REALLY under 20 but the issues that were occurring in that part of my life was consistent with my 16 year old daughter living downstairs.
So early afternoon September 7th, I was feeling so horrible I decided that I should go the hospital to have my blood pressured checked. And while there, they decided to admit me because of the low reading. Shortly, they decided that Tayshaun should be induced. Before going to sleep, I was given medication that was supposed to get things started.
Bright and early the next morning, things got started. I’d progressed enough that the OBs monitoring me predicted I would deliver a little boy that day. This was the day of my very own birthday. I really wasn’t thinking about that because I was so uncomfortable. My mother called me before going into work to see how I was progressing. When she found out that I was close, she decided to slip by the hospital and arrived in time for Tayshaun’s birth. He laid on my stomach for a while before he was whisked away to be bathed and incubated. He was a premie and would have to be in the hospital for several weeks.
I remembered looking at him and thinking how beautiful this baby was. He looked so much different than I thought he would. But I felt the same way about each of my girls too. “Who’s baby is this?” I guess I expected that I’d have instant recognition to this baby I’d been carrying for 9 months. But it was never that way.
I didn’t see Tayshaun until late that day. He was incubated and they wouldn’t bring him to me. He was so small he had to drink his formula through a tube in his nose. I nursed the girls when they were born and they always stayed in the hospital room with me. And we were released within 12 hours. But being that Tayshaun was a premie, he would be staying after I was released. Being in the hospital, I couldn’t bond to this new baby like I had with the girls. He was constantly under the lights, he had the feeding tube, he was wired to a heart monitor. I’d been a mother three times but yet I just felt so disjointed.
I decided to nurse Tayshaun to try to get some weight on him quickly but it didn’t go so well. Where I was a pro- with the girls, I felt like a failure with Tayshaun. It was so instinctive for the girls to nurse but Tayshaun didn’t seem to do so well. I eventually gave up after six weeks because I was afraid he wasn’t getting enough milk. He wasn’t putting on weight very quickly. With a bottle, I felt I could monitor his intake better.
Tayshaun came home three weeks after his birth. It was perfect. I’d decided to put aside all the worries and troubles to enjoy this little boy. He would be my last. I’d been working at a new workplace for four weeks before delivering Tayshaun and was “let go” while in the hospital because the project I was working on couldn’t be delivered on time because I went into labor earlier than expected. So there I was unemployed and paying a $550 monthly COBRA medical expense but “Thank God” I had insurance. Premies and three weeks in the hospital is no small expense.
I knew I wouldn’t be staying in the new house for very long. I knew that my financial history would now be a shambles. I knew that my other problems were there and weren’t going away anytime soon. BUT I had this wonderful baby that I would indulge in. Tayshaun was finally in my life. I vowed to relish every moment. The girls had grown up so quickly and I’d somehow missed some of the precious moments when I should have been there. I took for granted that my daughters would me “my little girls” FOREVER. I was so wrong.
So I’m all yours Tayshaun. You’re stuck with me, Mister! And I’m loving, ok I won’t lie, MOST, every minute of it.
Happy Birthday my precious boy!
