Now before anyone gets bent out of shape over word choices, let’s just remember where I live. And that in all likelihood that is actually taught as the correct term for female anatomy. Now kids, that there’s what we call the cooter. Wanna stay away from that. Everybody. Always. Even if it’s your own. Health class dismissed.

I wasn’t going to post anymore about the newly remodeled ‘08 model Vajayjay (2009 really snuck up, it is already out of date). But John and I were talking last night (truly, just talking) and we realized that there has been an ongoing saga of which I haven’t written anything about. And that it was an important continuation of the birth story and what we have learned.

Around the end of February/beginning of March, I returned to the midwives YET AGAIN, because I was still having pain. They found a place where there was still some skin not healed, whipped out their silver nitrate for some cauterization and said to come back in a week to reassess.

I returned in a week, still in pain, feeling pretty low. The midwife looked at me and said, Lily, the skin is finally all healed. And just as I was about to burst into tears because that was not what I wanted to hear BECAUSE SOMETHING WAS NOT HEALED, she said, But. Oh, glorious but. You are obviously in pain, But. Oh, horrible but. There is nothing more we can do. But. Oh, tumultuous but. There is something called pelvic rehab.

Pelvic Rehab. “Life Therapies” as the more modest Catholic hospital labels it. A place for women who have some sort of pelvic issue. The midwife said she had no idea what they would do, but she had sent a couple of her other pt.’s there and has heard great things about them. When I asked what was wrong with me, she said she had no idea, maybe scar tissue build-up, that kind of thing. They could work it out with ultrasound. She gave me the referral and off I went.

I went in tentatively, the PT called me in her room, and we sat down to talk. She asked me what was going on. And so I gave my spiel of the birth and months of follow-up and cauterizations and unrelenting pain and that I still had it and no one seemed to listen to me when I was saying that I knew it sounded stupid, but it felt like I had strained a muscle. In my Vajayjay. Like I’d run a marathon. On my Vajayjay. The PT looked at me, trying her best not to show the horror on her face as I relayed all the details and then she said o.k. Let’s talk about the Vagina.

So we did. She pulled out a model, circa sixth grade science class and I thought, really? I’m a nurse, I used to teach sex-ed, I HAD A BABY, I think I’ve got this thing worked out. But upon closer inspection, it was a model I had never seen. With bands upon bands upon bands of muscle. And the PT patiently explained all the muscles to me and then pointed out the ones based on my description, that had probably torn right along with everything else during delivery. And that the feeling of a strained muscle was right on.

She did her exam, managing as only PTs can do, to find every exact place that caused excruciating pain. Yup. You’ve got some messed up muscles in there. Basically, she said imagine if you tore your hamstring, then instead of getting it treated, you kept on running your 10 miles a day on it. Not only would it be excruciatingly painful, it wouldn’t heal properly. So all those muscles torn during delivery healed, but not correctly. And they no longer know how to contract and relax, so they are in a constant state of flux, spasming.

So began my weekly PT appts. It’s been three months now, each week a little improvement, and with each improvement the ability to uncover layer after layer of damage to really get to the core of the problem. One of the big issues was the spasming. It wouldn’t stop. So, my PT, the magical goddess that she is, said, it’s time for Valium. I said oh, Valium! I’ve taken that before. Yeah. Not that kind of Valium. You don’t take it the same way. Really? I naively asked, how many other ways are there?

And so began The Cooter Shooter. Surprisingly that’s not the official name, something we came up with one night. But it shoots specially (and expensively) compounded Valium right up into those spasming muscles. Oh, the difference. The magical, wonderful difference. Immediately. There was a lot of joking and laughing, but on a serious note, I feel the single most effective thing it did for me was validate the pain. By the absence of it.

I had begun to think maybe I didn’t remember what no pain felt like. And that maybe I wasn’t in pain, but I thought I was. Hard to describe, but a scary feeling. Waking up after the first morning of using it was the best feeling I’d had since Cameron was born. It also gave me hope that maybe I would actually be pain free someday after all.

It has been a long road with stretching, ultra sound therapy, electrode stimulation, just to name a few of the fun things done on a weekly basis. There was also some nerve damage that will probably take another 4-10 months to heal, so my original goal of being completely back to normal by the time Cameron turned one probably won’t happen. But I will someday be back to normal. Or at least as normal as someone returns to once they’ve had cherry bombs set off in their nether regions. And that’s really all I want.

Lucky he is cute.

Sleep has never been something Cameron has been a big fan of. Ever. He spent about the first 6 weeks waking every 1 1/2 hours to nurse, for twenty minutes or so, meaning by the time I got back to sleep it had really only been about 45 minutes. The fact that I survived that time not institutionalized, that my husband is still living, and that we kept the baby are all in themselves small miracles.

Since then, sleep has continued to somewhat allude us all. Cameron’s idea of a nap is a MAXIMUM 45 minute power nap in the morning and maybe an hour in the afternoon with occasional collapses in between those times where he literally keels over asleep wherever he is. Case in point one afternoon when his Auntie Reed was holding him and all of a sudden he went from talking and playing with her necklace to limp in her arms. In an instant. We checked to make sure he was breathing.

Nighttime has been no picnic either. And parenthood is funny because it slowly makes totally absurd things seem normal. Like two years ago if you told me I would wake up and get out of bed 3-4 times a night I would have said you’re nuts. But if you’d asked me that when Cameron was a month old I would have sat on you until you swore on your mother’s life that you were telling the truth. That at some point, I would not see the clock hit every hour of the night.

I’m tired. John’s tired. My other friends with babies look quizzically at me while describing their babies 12 hour nights with TWO two hour naps during the day. I don’t think that will ever be our world because if Cameron slept that much I would be convinced he was dying of some horrible sleeping sickness contracted from a mosquito that somehow got through my defenses and poisoned my child. Because mosquitoes=death. Even if John does try to convince me we all probably have West Nile already.

His sleeping is so bad that our pediatrician said with her full blessing we could give him drugs. This was after the three rolls of exam table paper he had torn through in the five minutes she had been in the room, the constant bouncing up and down on the table and me catching him from nosediving off the table about 8 times during the visit. I think she is fully expecting him to skydive into his next appt.

Drugs didn’t work.

So here is where the war begins. Mom vs. Dad in a parenting battle royale of how to get the kid to go and stay asleep. Mom is a bit more draconian, but has agreed not to use leather and chains, Dad is softer, but has agreed that perhaps a tear shed here and there won’t be the end of the world.

The war begins. This is our foe. Falling asleep while trying to climb out of his crib.

I believe when I last posted, I ended with a picture of Cameron looking oh so cute as he shakily stood on the couch glancing behind with a smile. It is hard to remember back to those days now as I pull a dog’s foot or cat’s tail out of his mouth while simultaneously pulling him off the ceiling. I have learned things about myself I never knew, such as my third arm that can shoot out just in time to miraculously catch him as he catapults backwards straight into a doorway, while the other two arms are putting the batteries back into the remote for the 300th time that day and making a bottle.

Batteries in a remote, you say? Dangerous parenting. Those should be out of his reach. And why are you letting him have the remote so many times in a day? Well, for one, I’m hoping by sucking batteries it will stunt his development enough that instead of trying to walk, effectively ending the shreds of what sanity we have left, he will start crawling in circles, trying to find his tail. And two, he has a partner in crime. Serena, who sometimes can’t find me in the house, is able to find a remote stashed in a vault. Underwater. In a different country.

It doesn’t stop at the remotes. This kid’s attraction to electronics I’m afraid rivals the one to his parents. Because if I gave him the option of playing with mommy for an afternoon or sitting with an iphone, the iphone wins out every time. He has already texted his aunt, emailed me, and hung up on people too numerous times to count. When he later in life describes the atrocities he faced while growing up, they will definitely include not getting an iphone for his half-birthday.

Lucky for him, daddy spilled water on the keyboard, Cameron’s other most coveted possession, so we had to buy a new one. I’m pretty sure Cameron will be writing his own posts soon. And then the true abuse he suffers will be revealed. Starting with the four sided cage of doom we make him sleep in at night.