As many of you know, I hold Dr. Bootstaylor and DeKalb Medical Center in the highest regard. Dr. Bootstaylor always gave Brielle and I the best treatment, attention, and certainly more of his time than anyone could have possibly expected. He treated Brielle with kindness and respect.
The same can be said of the nurses, NICU staff, and Jamie at DeKalb Medical Center. They all went above and beyond. Showering Brielle in compassion and love. They showed kindness and empathy towards me, and Jamie even stepped in as a surrogate mother for me while I was hospitalized.
DeKalb Medical’s Staff and the SeeBaby staff all worked beautifully together. They had respect for each other. They were humble. And they operated as a cohesive unit.
This is why I am so disturbed by a decision “at the top” to no longer support what Dr. Bootstaylor stands for. DMC will no longer be supporting vaginal birth after cesarean (VBAC) or vaginal breech deliveries. Dr. Bootstaylor centers his work around providing the care the mother wants, not what is easiest for him. He gives of himself selflessly and he can no longer use DeKalb Medical Center under these new terms.
Both the staff at DeKalb and SeeBaby are devastated by this and this is not something that anyone seems to support. To disband such a beautiful group of people, honestly trying to do what is right, cannot be permitted.
I, as well as many others, will be contacting DeKalb Medical Center in opposition to this. We hope that enough outrage will be heard that the decision will be overturned and SeeBaby can continue the work they’ve been doing.
If you have the time and desire to support Dr. Bootstaylor and his practice, I’d ask that you please contact DeKalb Medical Center leadership:
I’d ask that you also keep this situation and the mothers who are currently due in your prayers, this decision, I’m sure, is causing undue stress during such a fragile time in their pregnancies.
For those of you that live in the Atlanta area and would like to protest this gross violation of human rights, there will be a protest this Friday. Information here.
This may be a more controversial post, but I’m going to say what I have to say regardless. Since Brielle’s birth I’ve spent quite a bit of time thinking about my days as an art student. Artists generally have areas where they excel in, and subjects they generally excel in. I found my niche in figure drawing. For those of you who don’t know, figure drawing “is a drawing of the human form in any of its various shapes and postures using any of the drawing media.”
One of my classes spent quite a bit of time focusing on this. Nude models were brought in and we were taught how to see the human form for what it is. We saw it in shapes, colors, and shades. And we were taught the difference between nudity and nakedness. This is important, because it keeps the artist from seeing the subject as a sexual object or violating the subject’s personhood. Nudity is observing a subject as a form. Nakedness is seeing the person for who they are, exposing them and their inner self. Perhaps a good way to explain this is to think of when a doctor gives you an exam. There’s nothing sexual about that. You might be uncomfortable, but they are just doing their job.
A model would come in (we drew males and females of all shapes, sizes, and ages), pose and we would have minutes to draw the entire figure. We were taught to respect the model and their privacy and we did not speak to them or speak about them. Drawing in this way forced you to quickly take in the shape of the human form and put it to paper as fast as possible. Most times I rarely looked at my sketch pad. I needed to absorb the angles and lines before the moment was lost.
If I had to tell you what impacted me the most from my college education, I would say it’s what I learned in this class. This class taught me to see the human form as God made it. To see it in all of it’s perfection and imperfection. It wasn’t photo shopped or magazine perfect. It was loose, strong, real, beautiful. It taught me balance and respect for both sexes. The human form is incredibly balanced, but what makes it balanced is constant opposing lines and shapes. It’s a beautiful, constant play of angles and lines. Men, no matter their size, always maintain strong, hard lines. I found them harder to draw, because I had to feel and think in an edgier way to capture them correctly, it was harsher on the eye. But women felt like a natural subject to capture. They were all curves, again, no matter their size, they were absolutely beautiful. Their lines were easy, there was almost a laziness to the movement of their bodies. The female form encourages observation and is comforting to look at. As it should be, it creates and nurtures life. Together, both forms make a beautiful combination and are the perfect balance to each other.
I found myself observing the “imperfections” of these forms and finding beauty in them instead. These “imperfections” gave each person their character, it made them unique, special and beautiful. They were beautiful because they were just as they were supposed to be. No matter the imperfection, the form in my drawing pad always came out looking perfect. I remember drawing a female nude, much thinner than me, but noticing she had love handles similar to my own. I looked at the form on my pad and I saw it as beautiful and realized that I was entirely too hard on myself. I was comparing my body to something that wasn’t natural. This was natural and it was soft and beautiful. How could I look at this form and see it as beautiful, but not look at myself and think the same thing?
During my pregnancy, I found myself marveling at the strength of my body and how impressive it is that a woman can make a human. It’s amazing. I found myself being kinder to myself as I realized how incredible it was that I was making a life support system, then lungs, bones, blood vessels, skin, etc. Each week I excitedly checked to see what I would make for Brielle this week. And I would happily tell David what I would make. As my body became larger and larger from polyhydramnios, I found myself once again marveling at just how amazing the human body is. How strong my body was. And how hard it was working to give Brielle the best life she could have, as well as keep me healthy. I was two people all at once. I was and am so proud of myself and my body. And I’ve found a deep respect and love for my body.
However, even though my body was strong and incredible. It needed help. And this is what brings me back to figure drawing. This class taught me that there is always balance. My body is soft, nurturing, it is made to create. David’s body is strong, it has hard lines and angles. My body needed someone to literally pick it up, to support it, to care for it. I needed to nurture and create and he needed to support and protect. Instead of thinking, “I don’t need a man. I’m a woman. I got this.” Which I often do think, I found myself appreciating our differences and seeing the beauty in them.
Now that I’ve had Brielle and my body is going back to it’s new normal, I find myself looking for it’s beauty. There will be moments where I will think negatively about my sagging, stretched abdominal skin, but then I will think about why it’s sagging and stretched. My body just performed something incredible and that soft sagging skin would be a wonderful pillow for Brielle if she were here. My body is everything it needs to be. It tells a beautiful story and I am proud of that story. I’m proud of the work my body did to care for Brielle. And I’m not sure I’d be able to fully see how wonderful my body is if I hadn’t learned how to appreciate the human form and what a beautiful work of art we each are.
(These sketches were not made by me, I found them on Pinterest and used them as examples of the male and female form. If you all would like I can take pictures of some of my work, but it has a lot of frontal nudity that I didn’t think would be appropriate for everyone in this audience.)
I wrote this after my one week check up: Yesterday was my one week check up. It hurt going into the office for the first time without Brielle. It felt so very wrong. And I was okay, I kept it together, until another new mother came into the empty waiting room. Out of all the chairs she sat right next to me, with her brand new baby girl, and began nursing her. I turned my back to her, held David’s hand, and started crying. Thankfully, the staff is very kind at SeeBaby and the nurse that always takes care of me quickly got me into a room.
David and I struggled to get it together while we waited for the midwife to see us. The midwife was nice, thankfully knew our Brielle had died, and was very kind to us. My incision looked “beautiful” and “perfect.” I’m healing very well and she’s very happy with my progress. I know everyone cares about that, but I don’t. I just don’t care about much anymore. I feel numb.
I needed to pick up a few things at Target, I was in a lot of pain, but I needed a few things. We passed the baby aisle and I saw Christmas bows for infants and sweet little outfits. I leaned on David and cried. I walked through Target crying. David physically held me up when the pain was too much, he held my hand when I was too numb to make a decision or move. He guided me through Target and let me have “retail therapy” as he calls it.
All I could think about as we shopped, was how Brielle should be here. She should have a crib. She should have a Christmas this year. I should have celebrated Christmas with her, why didn’t I do that? We could have done that for her 25th week. I should buy her a stocking, but it has to be perfect. Brielle should be here.
There were screaming babies everywhere, families out with their children, having lunch with their children. Kids in the toy aisle. We left the parking lot and a blonde little girl around seven skipped in the crosswalk in front of us with a big pink balloon and waved hello to us with a huge smile. I waved back and cried. Brielle would be like that little girl.
I miss her. I miss my baby. My arms are empty and my body craves a baby, it knows there is supposed to be a baby here. And she’s not here. I find myself wanting to try again soon, I need a baby. But I don’t want a baby, I want Brielle. I don’t want another little girl or little boy, I want Brielle. I want her silly personality, her strange taste in music, her pure beautiful heart. No one else is like her, and I want her. I miss her. I need her. No one else, just my beautiful Brielle.
Part two: Gastroparesis involves paralysis of the vagus nerve. This nerve is critical to the function of the entire body and originates in the brain stem. Damage to it causes problems all over the body. One of the things the vagus nerve does is control contractions of the stomach. Your stomach contracts to pulverize food and push it through to the intestines. Mine was broken, no contractions, no pushing out food. Because of this, I fully anticipated that I would not have typical morning sickness.
Sure enough, I never had morning sickness. I suffered severe nausea for a few weeks, but I never threw up. People would tell me I was lucky, but I was thinking, I wouldn’t call this luck. Things started to feel different as my pregnancy progressed. I could eat more foods and not suffer. My appetite was back, I was actually experiencing hunger, a sensation I had long forgotten.
I found myself loving pregnancy, because for the first time in nearly a decade I felt like a normal person. Each month I felt more and more like a normal person. I had forgotten what “normal” felt like and it was revolutionary to feel what everyone else felt. I loved it. I loved every moment of it. Pregnancy suited me.
Of course you all know the struggles I faced during my pregnancy. And physically it was difficult, but nothing compared to what I had dealt with for the past nine years. But even though I felt better, I would still get sick and could still induce a gastroparesis episode by consuming certain foods.
Throughout my pregnancy we all prayed for healing. We prayed that Brielle would live, survive, a complete and full healing. And we were all heartbroken when she didn’t survive. And while I want to talk about that more in another post, what I do want to share is a strange healing that did happen.
In rare cases pregnancy can cure gastroparesis, for reasons unknown. Of course I hoped for this, but I didn’t expect it to happen. After Brielle was born I fully anticipated that the pain killers they had me on would cause problems and that I would be sick. The smallest dose of Motrin (ibuprofen) would make me violently ill, it had been that way for years. I was taking 800 mg of motrin three times a day and percocet four times a day and had no adverse effects. I thought this was odd, but attributed this to my breastfeeding (pumping) or the hormonal effects of pregnancy.
Yet, more and more time passed and I didn’t have any GI problems. I began to eat foods that caused flare ups. Nothing. No problems. I was hungry two hours later. A normal stomach empties in ninety minutes. My stomach was behaving like it should. Odd. What about my intestines? Strangely, pain free. I did experience bloating around Christmas (one of the more annoying side effects of GI problems), but I noticed I was bloating when I ate highly processed and sugary foods. That’s really not that abnormal. Cut out the junk food and my mild bloating was gone.
While I want to wait until the six month mark to declare myself cured, I find myself marveling at this healing I’ve experienced. Here we had all been praying for Brielle and instead it was me who was healed. Me who has spent the last decade struggling to survive, is normal. Perfectly and wonderfully normal.
At first I felt guilty and it pained me. I didn’t want to be better, I wanted Brielle to live. The healing should have gone to her. She should be the one who gets better, not me. But as time passes I find myself more and more thankful. And completely moved. She fixed me. Her beautiful little life fixed me. All of her love fixed a decade of horrible damage. Nerves that were broken in both of us were cured. And the only slight problems I have are with my intestines (a whole other set of nerves).
And who do I give the credit to? Science? God? Brielle? Could they not all be one and the same? Could not all of our prayers healed me? And could not God have used Brielle and science to accomplish that goal? He is the creator, he did create science. Can I not understand the how, but also give credit to the one who created the how?
I’m still piecing all of this together in my mind. But I’m so thankful. I have a second chance. I was given the opportunity to live, because of Brielle’s life. Brielle’s sweet love healed me. I have a chance now. I might get to grow old now. And maybe I’m not 100% and maybe in a few months I’ll start having problems again. I don’t know. But I do know that right now, I don’t have any problems and that is a miracle.
Part One: December 16, 2006 my appendix ruptured. For two days I had been complaining of severe abdominal pain. It had been so bad on the first night that I cried out for my parents for hours. The next morning I was blacking out in the bathroom. My Dad told me to take an ibuprofen and some toast. It wasn’t that time of the month and it wasn’t ovulation time. Something was wrong, but no one would listen to me. My classmates and my teachers were worried about me, but when I went to the nurse she blew me off and gave me a coke. The second visit to the nurse’s office her and Mom finally caved and I was allowed to go home.
On the second night I took matters into my own hands and got on Webmd. I put in all of my symptoms and Appendicitis came up as a possibility. I called my Mom and told her she needed to take me to the ER. She asked if I was sure, she was on her way to a Christmas party and didn’t want to miss it if I wasn’t seriously ill. I told her yes, I was sure. I knew that it had almost been a full 48 hours and my appendix was near rupture time.
We went to an urgent care clinic, they did the preliminary work and agreed it appeared to be appendicitis, but would need a CT to be sure. They started me on contrast and sent me to the ER. The ER quickly had me in a bed and on a morphine drip. The pain was so bad I kept asking for more morphine, but I was maxed out. The CT confirmed appendicitis and eventually I was moved to a room. A surgery was scheduled for the following afternoon.
As I was getting into the bed in my room I felt a horrible pain in my side. It was the worst pain I’ve ever felt in my life and I began screaming. The charge nurse heard me screaming and called the surgeon to tell him she was pretty sure my appendix had ruptured. He moved the surgery up to the morning. And after my appendix ruptured I felt wonderful and slept peacefully. For about six to eight hours I had an awful infection brewing in my abdomen.
The surgeon went in, saw that it had ruptured, and cleaned up the mess. I was in the hospital for a week and the first few days were tense. I was never right after that. Within six to eight months I was having horrible abdominal pain. Everything I ate hurt and the pain got to the point where I couldn’t walk. It hurt just to move. I went from doctor to doctor and they would dismiss me as too young and most likely constipated. I ended up back with my surgeon and he believed there were adhesions. A surgery was scheduled for the summer after graduation.
He went in, removed my adhesions, which were pretty bad. They had wrapped around my liver and intestines and there was a strange unidentifiable liquid hanging out in my abdominal cavity. My gallbladder was removed as a precautionary measure. I felt so much better – for two months.
Freshman year of college I began, once again, going from doctor to doctor trying to figure out why I was in such excruciating pain. For now, I’ll spare you the details of the next four years. But I spent four years searching for an answer. No one had one. I tried all kinds of dietary changes, lifestyle changes, anything to make the pain stop. Nothing worked. Spring semester of 2011 at the University of Georgia, the school recommended I see a doctor in Athens. I saw him and we did a few tests and he diagnosed me with Gastroparesis. I had never heard of it.
Gastroparesis means stomach paralysis. He offered two medications and a low residue diet. The first didn’t work. The other is blacklisted by the FDA and began to give me twitches, I had to be pulled off of it. The low residue diet helped sometimes. Ultimately, I was in rough shape with no hope of getting better. I asked my doctor what to do, and he told me to experiment. I threw myself into research and used my body as a test subject. I tried everything and anything. I had long given up on school and work. My body couldn’t handle it and by this point I was just struggling to survive. Living out a life wasn’t even on the table. Things that worked I would share with my doctor and he would write them down as recommendations for his other patients. It became an odd doctor patient relationship, where I educated him and he took notes.
I wanted to live, but my body was literally rotting from the inside out. Undigested food would remain trapped in my body for weeks at a time and nothing I did would help it out. My Dad got me an appointment at the Mayo clinic in the summer of 2012. They did every test imaginable. Including one where they dusted me with powder and baked me in an oven until I turned purple, no joke. The results? The same as the doctor in Athens, GA. I had gastroparesis and some unidentifiable intestinal problem. The doctor at Mayo told me that while he knew what was wrong with my intestines existed, he had no name or treatment options he could offer. His solution for my gastroparesis? Daily enemas. I declined.
February of 2013 I decided that if I was going to die I at least wanted to go to Europe before that happened. I chose Paris and David and I booked a trip. Two months later we were in Paris. David proposed and I felt alive for the first time in seven years. My body was functioning at a level it hadn’t in years. Why? Well I’d been in the sun almost the entire day, every day for a week. It was the only thing that had changed. Vitamin D. I needed a boost of vitamin D. I began to supplement and I noticed a marked improvement. Enough so that I began to have hope for a life again.
Slowly, I began to heal my gastrointestinal tract. David and I were married and in the winter of 2014 I went in to have blood work done to see how well my body was doing. My body was doing great and I had a proper balance of supplements to keep it functioning. I was still sick, but I at least could function. It’d taken me eight years, but I had developed a system that worked. My doctor gave me the go ahead to start having children.
Winter of 2015 I was pregnant with Brielle. I’ll talk about how this applies to my gastrointestinal health in my next post.
lovingbrielle.com 