Mary Willcox Smith's Tale of Four Daughters and Redefining Motherhood

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Hello, today I have with me Mary Wilcox Smith.

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Mary is the mother of four and a parenting coach.

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For the past 25 years, mary has appreciated the pleasure of experiencing the joys and, yes, the tribulations of raising four daughters born within the span of just five years.

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Her micro step method equips the overwhelmed parent with the understanding and tools to transform everyday parenting struggles into opportunities for moments of meaningful connection.

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Mary is here today to share her birth stories with us.

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Mary welcome and thank you so much for joining me.

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Thank you for having me.

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I'm really happy to be here.

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Yeah, I am so excited to hear about how you managed four children in five years.

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That sounds really intense.

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And also, we're going to be talking a little bit about your book that is officially launching and will be launched by the time.

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My listeners hear this podcast, so we'll talk about how they can have access to that and I will have all that stuff in the show notes.

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So, mary, tell me when you decided to start having kids, how did that look for you and how did it go?

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So that's a.

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It was interesting when we first talked about your podcast because we made a joke, because I thought you meant my birth story and I don't know that.

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I've sat down.

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There was a lot that happened with all these kids' births, right.

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So when I sit down and think of it as one instead of individual experiences, it's sort of interesting because you do see how much we bring to the story, to their birth story.

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I mean obviously we're there, but so much of what we're doing and how we work and how we function in our trauma is all related.

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So the way I am, I had my own trauma as a child and I grew up sort of I was the fourth of five plus a half brother and there was some significant trauma, like enough so that it didn't always feel safe in my house and I was a perfectionist.

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So I went 110 miles an hour, I succeeded in everything and looked like the model child and I sort of assumed that parenting would be the same and having children would be the same.

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And I'm pretty social, I'm, you know, I have an easy, I can talk to a tree, I'm educated, right.

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So I assumed kind of because you know, I could get along with other people and sort of I got to a point in my family was like okay, they're dysfunctional, I'm out of here, it's going to be fine for me, and it's just not the case right.

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We come to parenting with our baggage, our childhood baggage slung over one shoulder and sort of clutching what we think are a handful of tools in the other hand, and my toolbox was pretty empty when it came time where I really really needed them.

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So I didn't plan a lot for children and you know I'm very much someone who kind of does so.

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I wouldn't say we plan, I knew I would have children.

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But I sat with someone one day when I was at business school and she was like, oh yeah, I'm going to get out of business school and we worked for this many years and then I'm going to get married and then I'm going to have 2.5 children.

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And I was like, wow, you're really planned and that was really not my way.

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And so I met my husband in business school and we ultimately ended up in New York.

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We got married and we moved to Argentina and I got.

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So my first pregnancy was because we got married and literally I had a friend who said to me sort of like Mary, you're 35.

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You should start trying.

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Because we tried forever and I couldn't get pregnant, I was like, oh, that's a possibility.

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I can't get pregnant, well, it better start.

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So like, no planning.

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So and I got pregnant right away and I miscarried my first.

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I was on a skiing holiday.

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I was trying not to ski, which was really depressing for me and because I ran my own ski holiday company in the Alps.

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I've done a lot of skiing in my life.

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I was really sad it wasn't skiing but I miscarried and that was I don't know.

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That carries its own trauma, I think and then just moved on from that, went to Argentina, got pregnant very easily again and in Argentina I was sort of consulting, I was working with life and I don't know.

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My schedule was pretty easy and had a great pregnancy.

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I worked up, I, you know, I played golf till, I think, a week after I was due.

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They're a very, very friendly, child-centered culture of the Argentines and so I had a wonderful doctor and it's just oh, they're sort of child-centric, so they, it was sort of it was an easy place to be.

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So I had this amazing pregnancy and when she was born it was pretty straight forward.

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It was different than the States.

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The doctor was a chain smoker and she would be like she'd be trying to get this baby out and then they would take like a 15 minute break and she'd go out and have a smoke and come back in.

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It's sort of funny and I guess they were trying to like you know this I'm sure they would never do in any of these home births you talk about and I'm sure they don't even do it in hospitals here.

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But they were kind of trying to push the baby down to get her out and you know, I didn't know any better and so and I had all the anesthesia and everything because, again, I knew no better.

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The Argentines are also people who are like they don't want any pain, right?

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So they're going to look after themselves.

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The moms are going to look after themselves.

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That, you know, there's a lot of.

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It's a sort of a culture where there's a lot of people with maids.

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So you know the parent doesn't suffer as much.

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You're having someone who helps you all the time.

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Parent always suffers, but as a mom you have a lot of support.

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So then Marina was born, and I think it was.

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She was born at maybe 1158, but they put 1202 on the birth certificate so that I could have an extra night in the hospital.

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And the hospitals were in like hotels.

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They were so nice.

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The hospital that I was in was so nice.

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I think I had a single room.

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Anyway, it all went swimmingly.

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So that birth because we can sort of stop after the birth, right, she came out, she was perfect.

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They phoned me to ask if I wanted to shave her head and give her earrings.

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I said no, I kind of wish I had, because that's what you do in Argentina you shave their heads because they want their hair to grow in better and little girls get ear piercings.

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So you get that phone call right away, didn't the?

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hospital, because I'm not a planner.

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I hadn't even thought about whether I was going to do that, but I was like I didn't need that.

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She got no hair until she was three anyway, so we didn't even need the shave, but it was sort of all perfect.

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She came out easily.

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Yeah, I had to bottle feed her a little bit because I couldn't quite get the breastfeeding.

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I mean, had I had it, had I had it, someone teach me better.

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Sure that would have worked.

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But it was all very joyful.

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I stressed about the lack of feeding, I stressed about the sleeping, I stressed about everything.

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But I would say, if we talk about when she was born, that moment was amazing and she was perfect.

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I think a lot of people have that experience.

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I think a lot of births, I think the majority of births, kids come out healthy and it's sort of this amazing experience.

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So my second daughter was completely different and so therefore the next two are completely different too, because I went into having a child the way I'd done the rest of my life.

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I kind of do it all right and I show up.

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I'm a pretty good person.

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They can like fix something in the last five seconds if I need to, and I just assumed it would all be fine.

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So with Catalina, they did not know if I'd been in the States.

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I think they would have known there was an issue.

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There was some question that they might have known there was an issue, but you would have had to have a level two ultrasound.

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I don't know why they would have given me one.

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What are we trying to?

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catch.

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Trying to catch lung dysfunction, not normal growth, lung growth, and they do catch it.

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You catch it.

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It sort of.

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She has a bunch of different things but they call it sea scam and sea cam.

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And they would have caught it with her.

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It only would have.

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It could have made a.

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It would have made a difference Because I would have come to the States to have the Argentine medical system is amazing, but I probably would.

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I would have been in a place that had ECMO, for example, and they didn't have ECMO but she was Okay.

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So like you'd need a level four NICU, I needed a level four.

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NICU and their level four.

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I don't know if that was level four.

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Whatever they had, they did not have ECMO, they had everything else.

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Ecmo is level four.

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So I would have that's the one Brain cooling and all that stuff.

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Yeah, so that's what I would have been in level four so I'd had this amazing experience with the first one, went into the second one, thinking it would be similar.

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I exercised, I sort of was fine.

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I got pregnant right away because it was so easy and I'll went so well that she was only 15 months younger than the first and I, with her, was up the whole night before.

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I tended to organize.

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I definitely got that organizing thing when I was pregnant and, yeah, the nesting and I remember the whole night like redoing all my files, like everything and you know, putting labels on everything, and I was up the whole night because I was having contractions.

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And then I went in and I had the same doctor and we had upgraded our room because you could upgrade your room in Argentina and we had such an amazing experience were like let's just pay for a slightly nicer room and be there for two nights, like it's kind of fun.

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And so we had a single room in this with the Mendy was the name of the hospital's great hospital.

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First one was also a great hospital today, dad, they're both really good and I then phoned them early in the morning so she was sort of a nine o'clock birth.

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I mean I told you it was middle of the night.

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Second one was sort of an early morning birth and I went in and it was sort of all fine until she came out and I didn't realize it right away.

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But my husband realized right away and she wasn't.

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He just realized something was off.

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They quickly put her on me but then took her away.

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So they give you like a I don't know what they're doing, the states but they gave me like a quick hold and I took her away and then we didn't hear anything for hours.

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Oh, definitely a few hours, and that maybe not a few.

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It was a pretty long time actually, though.

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I mean, I'm sure they said that baby's here, but you know, like we knew something was wrong, baby was no right.

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So we were obviously nervous.

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And Then the doctor came and saw us, and he was a doctor who had trained in the United States as well.

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His name was doctor.

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It's very funny because his name was B Period, prudent that was an end doctor Louise Louise B prudent.

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Well, that's the kind of doctor.

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That's what you want.

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Is your neonatologist someone who is prudent?

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So he came to me and said they came to us and said you know, there's an issue, and they start to explain it and you're trying to sort of take it in right, there's something wrong with her lungs, there's there's something pushing on her lung.

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We think we need to do surgery.

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We have her on it.

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You know, I think she was already on a high frequency.

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So she was on a high frequency ventilator already, not oxygen, high frequency and so they sort of explained that.

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I mean it was a little bit meaningless to me at the time because I hadn't learned that much about it yet, but so she was definitely in the in the NICU and would stay in the NICU.

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I would be able to see her at some point.

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But they want to do this surgery and so I think then they you know they rolled me down to see her.

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We couldn't touch her anything, that or anything.

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Yet she was the biggest child in the NICU.

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She was she's like 8.2 pounds and in it or in the NICU that she was in aiming my, my close friend, who became my close friend because her child was in there and needed a trach and stuff was a preemie was, I think, four pounds.

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She was twice the size of these other, of these other babies and but she was probably the sickest one in there, so she was on high frequency.

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So you know, if you look at a picture of her, you know she's sort of lying on her back and she's got.

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You know, it's a very big apparatus that comes for and she doesn't have the energy to move, so she just lies on her back.

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It's really kind of frightening to see, makes me sad.

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So then you go what we went into I think.

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You sort of go into a mode and oftentimes the husband has a little more than the wife but you go into a mode where you're, when you have someone that's sick, where you're really watching statistics.

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You're watching the numbers, you're watching.

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You know, in her case, whatever, guess you're not watching oxygenation at that point because she's on a ventilator, but there's just all these stats that you're watching of how is she doing?

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Can she do this, can she do that?

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This is where she is.

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You know, this is how we're putting a food team feeding tube in her.

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This is her weight.

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So I can't even remember all the things.

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But because if your baby's born healthy, you're worried about are they eating, are they sleeping?

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Are they pooping, right?

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And if they're in the nique, you, you don't have those same worries, so you're focused on these other things, and so then you start having this conversation with the doctors and your level of understanding and your breadth of knowledge jumps up Significantly.

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And then she needed surgery.

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So then you're sort of praying for her to get through surgery, you know, at four days old.

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So then she gets to the surgery and then you're thrilled about her getting through surgery, and then you're doing this and then you're there were these numbers and you must know better than me but with that high frequency off, the high frequency ventilator, which I guess your listeners wouldn't know.

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But the high frequency ventilator is Basically it's a child with lung issues.

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So she was born with sort of lungs that aren't very good.

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It's.

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It's it's giving her oxygen without moving her body very much, so it's keeping her as still as possible.

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And that's why an ECMO machine turns everything off, Like turns everything off so it keeps you alive.

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So that is the one thing that he might have the doctor might have wanted.

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That they didn't have would be to put her in ECMO just to let the body rest Because she was working so hard.

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But he said and we had conversations with people in the States and stuff but he said like he didn't want to send her somewhere with to go to ECMO because he would, she would go out of his care and he wanted to have her here and I would say they did a great job.

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So she had a normal, normal thorax at birth, right?

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Oh, that's what I figured you were talking about.

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Yeah well, her, no, I'm really talking about very, very, very bad lungs.

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The pneumothorax is very fixable.

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They put a tube in and that's the wrong.

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Her lungs are Mouthformed what was the official?

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did they call it they?

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never really.

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We still haven't really called it anything.

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We've called it just class this plastic lungs because they don't have the plasticity that other lungs do.

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She doesn't have a cerebral pulse.

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I mean she had mild cerebral palsy at birth as well, that she still has a bit of, but you can't see it as much.

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That happened because of lack of oxygen exactly.

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But she her brain, Thankfully is.

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She's very, very sharp.

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She just graduated from University of Virginia.

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She's very bright, but her lungs were such that she that if you looked at them you would just think she'd be on oxygen our whole life.

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So they're sort of malformed.

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So the so the pneumothorax was important in that moment.

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But if that required a two I mean if that's all she'd add like yeah.

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I need all the other stuff yeah it's all the other stuff minor procedure.

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And not minor, no, but relative to what she had, it's relative minor and later on we were with her in the room when she had stabilized quite a bit and was on the room air and in front of her eyes.

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She hadn't pneumothorax and they sort of sent us out.

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She said she's actually too, but anyway, so they did so.

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They did a surgery on day four and that went very successfully.

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So with her lungs, what the doctors were looking for at a certain point was lung growth by the age of two.

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That was our next big step.

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And then that's way past our birth story and she didn't quite have that long.

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Both that we wanted.

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So we felt without ever since, but the birth itself Incredibly traumatic.

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So she did a course this year and had to write a poem about her birth.

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So she came to me and said what is my birth story?

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And to have her write it is really it's just amazing, because from hers we know the way she writes.

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The poem is sort of you know to it, you to have done everything.

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She started out by saying like to have done everything right Preparing for this marvelous night.

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She uses the word foresee, that I don't know, that I would.

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But she then says you know, only to foresee a fight that takes so much might is a sorrowful sight which I just thought was like clearly, have it gone through this trial?

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So yeah, so that it applies to both parents and to the child.

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If something goes wrong at birth, because you're, you're just mad.

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It's like a birthday party gone wrong, because 90% whatever you know the number better than me, but I hear an enormous percent of the time with people living in the middle of nowhere with no medical care Babies come out fine, yeah, and so it's just so Unanticipated.

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And then I mean also for the little thing that's born, because it's just supposed to be kind of easy.

00:16:15.470 --> 00:16:21.860
You're supposed to come out and be able to breathe and be able to eat, like it's this, you know, it's really sort of it is marvelous and incredible.

00:16:21.860 --> 00:16:34.562
So what I was gonna say, though that really doesn't take away from any trauma that someone has just breastfeeding, because it's only relative right, because our natural instinct is to want the best for your child.

00:16:35.211 --> 00:16:41.136
You just want the best and you expect the best, and what it goes wrong, it's just surprising and traumatic.

00:16:41.136 --> 00:16:45.850
So following that was you know that your year was hard and child was tube fed.

00:16:45.850 --> 00:17:04.259
She went to room air at three weeks of age, you know, probably go, you know, just because of where she was, had way more maybe x-rays and she would have had in the states they would have known some of that a little bit better, but the medical facilities were very good but ended up being tube fed for years, going back into the hospital for a long time because she wasn't gaining weight.

00:17:04.259 --> 00:17:06.929
So just a lot of, a lot of trauma.

00:17:06.949 --> 00:17:18.721
And so I at that point was 36 and, I think, the third breast always kind of funny because, to be honest, I'm not sure there was a lot happening to create children.

00:17:18.721 --> 00:17:31.560
I'm not sure who's listening to the podcast, but there was not a lot happening with my husband and I that whole year because life was just so busy and she was in and out of the hospital Constantly and in the hospital for three months here and three months there.

00:17:31.560 --> 00:17:38.339
So it was very busy and so, literally like at New Year's, I got pregnant, you know, which arguably might have been the first time we had sex, like any year.

00:17:39.053 --> 00:17:51.250
I mean I'm exaggerating, but you know it wasn't a conscious attempt not a conscious joint, and also I think I'd been breastfeeding, so there was an assumption that I wouldn't, get pregnant, and I stopped breastfeeding when she went into the hospital at nine months of age.

00:17:51.791 --> 00:17:54.623
And then because it's trying to be tube fed because she just wasn't gaining enough weight.

00:17:54.623 --> 00:18:01.545
And now I was pregnant with a third and With her, like that, pregnancy went pretty well, I think I got.

00:18:01.545 --> 00:18:09.656
Life was busier, right, so I wasn't exercising maybe as much, how he wasn't sleeping as much, so I had more swelling.

00:18:09.656 --> 00:18:12.265
I felt some of that coming on gained a little extra weight.

00:18:12.265 --> 00:18:13.910
In Argentina they like you to gain 20 pounds.

00:18:13.910 --> 00:18:15.233
It's all about the woman looking good.

00:18:15.233 --> 00:18:17.280
It's just so different than the states.

00:18:17.280 --> 00:18:23.015
But all is all about like that you would gain too much weight and the doctor be like oh yeah, I shouldn't be getting that much weight.

00:18:23.015 --> 00:18:24.740
In the states it's very different.

00:18:24.740 --> 00:18:26.207
So, I'm sorry, gained more weight to.

00:18:26.207 --> 00:18:28.657
Towards the end I had, you know, some swelling.

00:18:28.678 --> 00:18:35.401
I remember not liking, but with her I I literally was like driving my kid to ballet practice.

00:18:35.401 --> 00:18:39.492
I can't be right, because she was born only two years later and she went a bit young.

00:18:39.492 --> 00:18:40.015
Oh no, they.

00:18:40.015 --> 00:18:45.276
They wanted to schedule her because the guy was going golfing or something right, so he didn't want to have it.

00:18:45.276 --> 00:18:45.637
It wasn't.

00:18:45.637 --> 00:18:49.698
It wasn't that it needed to be scheduled right, it wasn't a medical reason, it was not.

00:18:49.698 --> 00:18:54.236
And I was like I'm not scheduling a birth for my child Like this is ridiculous.

00:18:54.236 --> 00:18:55.200
You can send in whatever.

00:18:55.480 --> 00:19:00.920
So she came fairly close, pretty much close to the date that she was supposed to, catalina.

00:19:00.920 --> 00:19:04.150
The second one was 41 weeks, really close.

00:19:04.150 --> 00:19:05.569
Marina was a little bit later.

00:19:05.569 --> 00:19:08.221
She came the you know the classic kind of two weeks later.

00:19:08.221 --> 00:19:15.426
The first, this one came pretty close to the date but I literally was dropping someone somewhere and, you know, had contractions and had to kind of rush to the hospital.

00:19:15.426 --> 00:19:21.869
But I went in and they immediately gave me painkillers and I you know I'm not again I didn't really thought it through.

00:19:21.869 --> 00:19:32.869
I was in a hospital with a level four because my whole focus for my third child really was none of the fun stuff, it was really just I want to be in a place where I know that they have a nicole.

00:19:32.869 --> 00:19:37.673
So it changes the experience significantly.

00:19:38.715 --> 00:19:42.926
Yeah because I know people talk about being nervous about birth.

00:19:43.635 --> 00:19:54.019
But it's very different from being nervous about having a child who really has very, very significant issues, and you know the lead-up doesn't didn't.

00:19:54.480 --> 00:20:07.713
I mean I was excited, absolutely, but the lead-up is just different because your focus is very different and you know to the extent that and I and I know you you have an interesting group out there that.

00:20:07.875 --> 00:20:16.708
So I have nothing against home births, but they make you know and I think that's why you say you have to you have to pass certain criteria to have it at home.

00:20:16.708 --> 00:20:29.488
Because After I had my child and then I came back to the States where there was sort of more of a push for sort of you know, in the natural world and it was like there's no way I am not gonna be in hospital.

00:20:29.488 --> 00:20:49.615
So for those, I guess I want to say to anybody who's thinking I should, I want to do it in hospital, but I'm feeling this pressure to be natural, like there is no harm to saying I want to be in a hospital and you can have a birth and it can be beautiful and you can push the whole way and decide not to have pain killers and you just have a backup there, and I know that there are backups with home births too.

00:20:49.775 --> 00:20:54.308
But yeah, I have a backup there and you can feel very, can feel very, very good about that.

00:20:54.655 --> 00:20:56.945
I think it's empowering to know that you have options too.

00:20:56.945 --> 00:20:58.994
Yeah and not to feel bad.

00:20:59.134 --> 00:21:09.195
I guess it's just not to feel badly, yeah right, because it is a stronger push for people who like, oh well, you should really breastfeed till you this age, or ooh, you know you wouldn't do it naturally like ooh, do you?

00:21:09.195 --> 00:21:12.586
I mean this because they are more in a mind or their thoughts there.

00:21:13.455 --> 00:21:17.185
Well, I guess I said, because those thoughts have come from a place of real passion.

00:21:17.185 --> 00:21:22.567
So the push is harder with those of us like me, or like on this girl hospital, because that's what they told me to do.

00:21:22.567 --> 00:21:33.865
Right, I don't, I'm not out there advocating that, yeah, and so I guess I just want to say that, right, there is nothing wrong with choosing, and right, you should feel good about that, and that's okay.

00:21:33.865 --> 00:21:37.238
And if you choose that you want to have it on a certain date, that's okay.

00:21:38.019 --> 00:21:59.642
Yeah, right, picked my son's birthday and you picked your son's birthday and so you could, and the most important thing really is to enjoy the moments that are good, because you don't really know what's around the corner, and so just enjoy every if, the if the piece of enjoyment is the five minutes that you've gotten a spinal and it doesn't hurt, enjoy that right yeah, and.

00:21:59.742 --> 00:22:00.423
I with this one.

00:22:00.423 --> 00:22:11.565
I went in and my husband and I was sitting in this room and They'd given me a spinal because I was in so much pain when I went in and I didn't really ask for it, but I didn't release again my focus was no either.

00:22:11.565 --> 00:22:16.988
Well, my focus wasn't having a whole natural birth right, because that's not where I was.

00:22:17.536 --> 00:22:22.688
So they immediately gave me a spinal and I felt the sort of I kind of regretted it in a way because I wanted right.

00:22:22.688 --> 00:22:25.541
But then we were laying there and I felt sorry.

00:22:25.541 --> 00:22:28.087
I literally I was like why don't you get me some M&M's?

00:22:28.087 --> 00:22:30.301
So if you had got some M&M's.

00:22:30.301 --> 00:22:31.606
Or the guy, the doctor came in, like what?

00:22:31.606 --> 00:22:35.192
The nurse came in, like what is joint eating, you don't have to eat, that's funny.

00:22:35.192 --> 00:22:38.803
And so so her birth she came out.

00:22:38.803 --> 00:22:41.307
She was big nine pounds, nine ounces.

00:22:41.307 --> 00:22:49.095
So what I remember about her is just in our Regina they pushed them out and in this case they didn't, but she definitely came out hard.

00:22:49.095 --> 00:22:52.319
She came out bruised and and jaundiced.

00:22:52.319 --> 00:22:55.337
And Everyone came in like all your babies beautiful?

00:22:55.337 --> 00:22:57.634
And we were like, oh no, we've had beautiful babies.

00:22:57.634 --> 00:23:00.586
This is not a beautiful baby, this one is pretty beat up.

00:23:00.586 --> 00:23:03.104
What is pretty beat up?

00:23:03.104 --> 00:23:05.795
So that to me was sort of uneventful.

00:23:05.795 --> 00:23:11.428
I mean, she was, she came out healthy, she had jaundice, I know, you know, I remember that with all that bruising.

00:23:11.474 --> 00:23:16.244
That's to be expected, because that's the breakdown of blood cells that causes jaundice.

00:23:16.244 --> 00:23:17.548
Oh, so there you go.

00:23:17.674 --> 00:23:32.123
So she was probably a higher risk but you know she was healthy and so the joy of that in and of itself was great, and so I just remember laying her in bean bags so that she would get the sun and having to take her to have her poor little Heel poked right.

00:23:32.123 --> 00:23:36.028
Which is no fun having her heel poke, but compared to what I've been through is really like.

00:23:36.028 --> 00:23:37.315
So I heal poke.

00:23:37.315 --> 00:23:39.990
I'm like probably bought tears to my eyes because it does.

00:23:40.292 --> 00:23:46.760
But yeah, well, that's not to negate the trauma of all the little things too, because I remember I mean I'm a nurse, I poke babies heels.

00:23:46.760 --> 00:23:57.378
But when my son's heels were getting poked that was a different story, yeah, and I know I see the stuff that can happen, but it's different when it's your own kid.

00:23:57.420 --> 00:24:07.015
So being able to validate that experience for everyone, Especially since you've been through all of it, and to be able to validate every experience for yourself as well.

00:24:07.015 --> 00:24:12.039
I think that's important, because everybody's trauma and everybody's hardships are valid.

00:24:12.039 --> 00:24:15.887
Just because somebody else went through something bigger doesn't invalidate your experience.

00:24:16.336 --> 00:24:22.494
No, not at all, and so and I'm sure I did have tears I get you hate when your baby gets poked and they cry.

00:24:22.494 --> 00:24:24.662
It's like this feels so mean.

00:24:24.662 --> 00:24:26.066
But yeah.

00:24:27.036 --> 00:24:32.367
But the fact that I could just hold her and walk around the house, like that was just robbed.

00:24:32.367 --> 00:24:34.721
The first child, like it was it.

00:24:34.721 --> 00:24:43.527
I mean she went to bed with gloves on her hands and tubes in her nose, and like it was hard and I had to put tubes into her, so that and I wrote it.

00:24:43.694 --> 00:24:58.193
I have an article in the Huffington Post coming out soon and I was writing something about special needs kids and it was my introductory paragraph was sort of you know, the joys of having children is, you know, there's so many moments of just unheralded joy.

00:24:58.193 --> 00:25:20.078
And I remember when she first took her bite of food at six months, the third child, and she just took this bite and swallowed it and and I cried, and it wasn't tears of joy, it was tears of my other child who was Hellish and she's, you know, still this mischief, right, but to getting her to eat because she've been tube fed, it just was so hard.

00:25:20.078 --> 00:25:27.299
And so there's these moments that are just such gifts that we don't always realize, right, because so much happens.

00:25:27.299 --> 00:25:30.288
You know, kids are so, they're just so capable and they do so much on their own.

00:25:30.288 --> 00:25:32.095
And then, so then to the fourth one.

00:25:32.095 --> 00:25:43.162
So then I was nearing 40 and, and now I've had three kids in four years or something, and I can't even imagine I'm stressed out for you.

00:25:44.397 --> 00:25:45.441
And life was crazy.

00:25:45.441 --> 00:25:52.143
Because I have a child who's tube fed, who's in and out of the hospital, I'm quarantining my kids because she can't get sick.

00:25:52.143 --> 00:26:00.128
So nobody's going to school, we don't have play dates in the winter, we don't do anything because you know, you know now, people have their best friends.

00:26:00.128 --> 00:26:03.519
Are these people that they go hang out with when their kids were young?

00:26:03.519 --> 00:26:10.246
And I wouldn't do it because, number one, I One child couldn't just eat, so I had to be home for to feeding.

00:26:10.246 --> 00:26:12.063
But I didn't want them to get sick.

00:26:12.063 --> 00:26:17.755
So from September till March I wouldn't want to be anywhere and, yeah, it was like my own little COVID.

00:26:17.755 --> 00:26:34.105
But then I, to be honest, I was a little afraid, because the real fear that this child, the second child, might not make it, like the doctor gave her a 50-50 chance when she was little, and so somewhere in my head I was like, wow, they don't have two children.

00:26:34.105 --> 00:26:42.424
Like it was somewhat subconscious because I didn't really want to think about it, but I sort of did and I was like, if I'm going to get pregnant, I have to do it now, because I'm almost 40.

00:26:42.424 --> 00:26:44.339
And so I made this decision.

00:26:44.339 --> 00:26:47.055
You could pregnant and I got pregnant and I was so embarrassed.

00:26:47.055 --> 00:26:49.624
I was like how can I tell anybody I'm pregnant?

00:26:49.624 --> 00:26:51.161
My life is so hard.

00:26:51.161 --> 00:26:59.300
You know, I was like it felt like one of those people that already had eight kids and having a ninth, although those people are usually totally laid back and they leave it all to their kids and they're totally relaxed, right.

00:26:59.300 --> 00:27:08.442
I'm a total type A nervous, trying to control everything, and I really like I remember calling my friend and being like I am really don't want to tell people that I'm pregnant.

00:27:08.442 --> 00:27:10.221
I'm literally embarrassed.

00:27:11.615 --> 00:27:13.260
And then my whole family got sick.

00:27:13.260 --> 00:27:14.144
Everybody had the flu.

00:27:14.144 --> 00:27:18.624
I had some babysitter who was sick as well, and the one who gets sick it goes straight to her lungs.

00:27:18.624 --> 00:27:20.622
She has to be nebulized every four hours.

00:27:20.622 --> 00:27:23.703
She has a special machine that hits her lungs.

00:27:23.703 --> 00:27:25.843
Like it's really hard when she's sick.

00:27:25.843 --> 00:27:26.901
You have to go to her doctor.

00:27:26.901 --> 00:27:36.838
Like if I call the doctor, the doctor gets on the phone for her and I had run out of my thyroid medication and you need thyroid medication, especially if you're pregnant, especially if you're pregnant.

00:27:36.838 --> 00:27:37.817
And I was trying to.

00:27:37.817 --> 00:27:46.720
I was in the middle of maybe switching doctors, so I was trying to and it'd been more than three months and I was trying to phone the doctor and just get a prescription, and no one would just give me the prescription without an appointment.

00:27:46.720 --> 00:27:51.326
But for some reason maybe my insurance wasn't taking that doctor anymore, so I just switched to doctor.

00:27:51.454 --> 00:28:00.402
I should have just gone to the pharmacy and asked for the medication and then paid for it and then I figured it out, but I didn't even know that was an option, right?

00:28:00.682 --> 00:28:01.124
I didn't either.

00:28:01.615 --> 00:28:08.102
I thought you had to have a prescription for it, or like it wasn't going to happen you know what, and maybe I would have, but she might have given me three days' worth Like who knows, right.

00:28:08.102 --> 00:28:22.221
Yeah, I mean, some of my best memories are when my daughter was sick, and I mean she was really sick, and I was feeding her like these awful like lipid protein fats through her tube to try to get her to gain enough at two ounces, so she didn't have to be hospitalized.

00:28:22.221 --> 00:28:33.481
When she was six months old and trying to feed this stuff or give it to her here, she wasn't even tube fed yet, so I don't know how I was trying to give it to her, but I was trying to get it down her and I couldn't get the stuff on time.

00:28:33.481 --> 00:28:35.075
So I called Johnson and Johnson.

00:28:35.075 --> 00:28:36.340
I'm like you're supposed to order this stuff.

00:28:36.340 --> 00:28:44.902
I don't even know where I'm supposed to, and you know that I would have had that panic in my voice and the woman like overnighted me a case of it and never charged me.

00:28:44.902 --> 00:28:51.363
And it was like those moments happen where you know that someone just hears how like it, how scared you are.

00:28:51.363 --> 00:29:00.959
It was one of the sweetest things that I never even said thanks to the woman, except if she was, but you know they hear it in your voice, right and whatever.

00:29:00.979 --> 00:29:03.676
Whoever I was talking to my thyroid-ready medicine, I was not getting it across.

00:29:03.676 --> 00:29:13.060
So I literally go to the doctor's appointment with my kids and the nebulizing machine because I don't know how long it's going to be, and at that point I only had big ones.

00:29:13.060 --> 00:29:14.557
I didn't even know I think I have a.

00:29:14.557 --> 00:29:20.162
I'm carrying a feeding tube because she's eating 24 hours a day and I'm petrified to stop it and I follow all the rules.

00:29:20.162 --> 00:29:26.701
And, like I have a nebulizer going, because you go to a doctor's office and you don't know how long you're going to be there, she has to be nebulized every three hours, right?

00:29:27.295 --> 00:29:33.047
That doctor saw me and just thought to herself who does this woman think she is being pregnant?

00:29:33.047 --> 00:29:42.284
And she said something like to me like you've missed your thyroid medicine and your kid has a chance of being born mentally retarded, wow.

00:29:42.284 --> 00:30:04.682
So now I take that on and I think also I'd had an x-ray for something and they'd had or probably Catalina had an x-ray and I probably stood behind something, and so I was also worried that I'd been, that the x-ray had done something to me, because I'd heard something then afterwards and I didn't mention it to anybody, because I was too.

00:30:04.682 --> 00:30:14.644
I was ashamed, I was scared, you know, and so thinking, okay, so now how I'm going to have a child, all those two issues.

00:30:14.986 --> 00:30:18.544
Yeah, she wasn't born until September and that was probably March or April.

00:30:18.544 --> 00:30:38.854
So I just sat on it, which is probably also not good for your fetus, and I was petrified and I might not have told anyone until after she was born because, but I think my husband took me and literally like we were in traffic and it was like I'm going to have this baby and we're like I remember yelling out the window would you let us by?

00:30:39.135 --> 00:30:42.563
Like I've got to get to the hospital and my husband was like oh, my God.

00:30:42.615 --> 00:30:43.803
Can we put into your belly?

00:30:43.803 --> 00:30:45.575
He is totally right.

00:30:45.575 --> 00:30:47.601
I'm going to do this on the side of the road if you don't move.

00:30:48.522 --> 00:30:48.984
Totally.

00:30:48.984 --> 00:30:56.659
And we got to the hospital and that had the same doctor that had delivered the previous one, and this time he was on some.

00:30:56.659 --> 00:30:57.362
Maybe that was the one.

00:30:57.362 --> 00:30:59.020
I think he wanted to schedule that one too.

00:30:59.020 --> 00:31:02.096
Anyways, he was on his golf holiday and so we went.

00:31:02.096 --> 00:31:05.184
My husband parked the car legal, you know in the wrong spot.

00:31:05.184 --> 00:31:13.480
We went in and I went pretty quickly into the birthing room and again I got it.

00:31:13.480 --> 00:31:20.074
I think I didn't really want one and couldn't get that out, and whenever but it.

00:31:20.074 --> 00:31:25.142
But there was so much pain at that point it wasn't like stopping it, or maybe I said don't give me much or something.

00:31:25.142 --> 00:31:28.825
You know what I mean I was like, but I could have absolutely done a natural.

00:31:28.825 --> 00:31:31.281
I mean, at that point I was already basically having birth, right.

00:31:31.923 --> 00:31:32.125
Right.

00:31:32.125 --> 00:31:38.058
Well, when you're that far, the epidural won't cover pressure necessarily, especially if it's like with pain control.

00:31:38.058 --> 00:31:42.307
You have to get it under control before it's out of control, otherwise you're not going to get back.

00:31:42.535 --> 00:31:46.207
So I think they did something that made no difference and I was kind of like irritated that they'd done it right.

00:31:46.207 --> 00:31:54.163
But again, I just didn't take the time to plan it and I think, probably with my own trauma, I just I don't know.

00:31:54.163 --> 00:31:56.082
I didn't want to think about the births.

00:31:56.082 --> 00:31:57.400
I didn't like you know what I mean.

00:31:57.400 --> 00:32:01.332
It was sort of crossing my fingers and helping for the best type of thing, even though I should have.

00:32:01.332 --> 00:32:01.934
You know what I mean.

00:32:01.934 --> 00:32:03.582
It was sort of just my way of dealing with it.

00:32:03.582 --> 00:32:09.704
So then I get in there and my husband's, like I got to go move the car, can you hold on?

00:32:10.685 --> 00:32:12.409
Right, so Please don't have this baby right now.

00:32:12.409 --> 00:32:13.558
Okay, that's not a baby.

00:32:13.974 --> 00:32:21.703
So the doctor comes in, who I don't know, he goes to get the car and the next thing I know they like want to break the water to get the baby coming.

00:32:21.703 --> 00:32:25.211
So the doctor sort of coming at me with this, you know.

00:32:25.288 --> 00:32:32.038
I'm making a signal of something in my hand that looks like a long knitting needle, right yeah, and the nurse says no, you know.

00:32:32.038 --> 00:32:33.483
And I say can we waste my husband?

00:32:33.483 --> 00:32:35.561
And he keeps coming and the nurse is like can we wait?

00:32:35.561 --> 00:32:38.382
And then it's like can we wait five minutes?

00:32:38.382 --> 00:32:40.999
Because the husband's like, of course, the guy's got one eye.

00:32:41.876 --> 00:32:42.178
Oh my gosh.

00:32:43.336 --> 00:32:54.546
But what was interesting for all those moms out there, had it been a first, had it that been my first child, I would have panicked and thought like who's done this to me?

00:32:54.546 --> 00:32:54.926
Right?

00:32:54.926 --> 00:32:59.545
And I can imagine some people in my area where I live being like we're not using this doctor.

00:32:59.565 --> 00:33:00.287
Are you crazy?

00:33:00.287 --> 00:33:02.942
Get me a doctor that you know doesn't have a patch on an eye.

00:33:02.942 --> 00:33:03.463
Can you hear me?

00:33:03.463 --> 00:33:08.906
And for me I was like this guy has delivered thousands of babies.

00:33:08.906 --> 00:33:14.583
I am so unconcerned because he can do this with his eyes shut.

00:33:14.583 --> 00:33:16.460
And it was so.

00:33:16.460 --> 00:33:17.041
It's just.

00:33:17.041 --> 00:33:20.423
It's so interesting your perspective, because that was not my worry.

00:33:20.423 --> 00:33:24.579
If something was wrong gonna go wrong, I was in this hospital.

00:33:24.579 --> 00:33:33.182

Mary Willcox Smith's Tale of Four Daughters and Redefining Motherhood

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