Welcome to the Parenting Roundabout Podcasts for the week of July tenth, twenty twenty
three. I'm Catherine Heleco and I'm here with Nicole Narratics Hello, and Terry
Morrow. Hello. Every week we chat about what parents are talking, complaining
and obsessing about right now. But this week things are changing. Nicole is
leaving us. So this week she's going to share some of her favorite episodes
from our years and years, years and years of podcasting together. Because Nicole
and Terry had a podcast together before we started this one, so it's for
them. Has been over a decade, I think, right, yes,
eleven years, so yeah, yeah, sure. So, so Nicole has
picked out her top four, her four favorite episodes, and we are going
to share them this week as our farewell to Nicole. Yeah, so tell
us about the first one that you've picked out. Well, this one was
pretty easy because it's uh is the reason why we did this podcast. It's
because we're all moms. So but I first I want to backtrack and say,
you know, it was really hard because we have over two thousand episodes.
Each one of them you listen to them again to pick up well,
and I thought, okay, well, which was you know which ones were
the funniest. Well, I truly have enjoyed every podcast, and I think
we've laughed, you know, in almost like ninety nine point nine percent of
our podcasts. So they've they've all been I've enjoyed them all, and they've
all been funny, and they've all made me laugh on on some level.
And so that's really difficult. So then I went and I thought, okay,
well, what which ones really kind of signify a time or marked a
special occasion, or you know, was important, really important at the time.
And so of course this one how we became moms, and so let's
started at all. So that's why I chose it, and I hope you
enjoy listening today we are talking about how we became moms in the first place.
Now, your guys story is different than mine, so why doesn't one
of you start and I'll just insert mine in the middle for a little variety.
Catherine, what was your birth story? Well, I was thinking about
this because both of my children just had birthdays. Happy birthday, Happy labor
and aery to you. That's right. The labor anniversary was a few days
before the birthday with um with my and also, you know, some years
their birthdays coincide with Eastern and obviously some years they don't. Um, and
I do specifically remember with my firstborn that first of all, I was gigantic,
like she ended up weighing nine and a half pounds. Wow, and
you're you're not like you You're not like your height, um, you know
like five two so right, so it was a significantly out of proportion.
Yeah. So Easter's Sunday, I went to church and to brunch with um
family, like I had always done. But I had very few options for
clothing. Um, you know, an appropriate dress for church that would fit
overmous It's very difficult. So but I did, I remember, I did
wedge myself into something. Also, I had a condition called pups. It
stands for I believe, well never mind what it stands for, becausiness,
long and medical, but basically it's like extremely itchy hives. Oh that you
get the start that. Yeah, if you're not uncomfortable enough here you have
exactly I'm not already like having to wear one of those girdle things because your
belly is so giant and you can't even haul around. Then and you know,
I had stretch marks, and these things started in the stretch marks,
like just these big red, itchy hives spread all over, not on my
face, thank goodness, but pretty much everywhere else. And there's no there's
no cure. You can take oatmeal baths, and you can put you can
use hydrocortisone cream, oh my gosh, and the only other the only cure
is to give birth and then they generally go away. Oh wow. So
I can remember being at my cousin's apartment and they had this very tiny powder
room, you know, just this teeny tiny little half bath, and I
was in there, like I barely fit, and trying to coat myself with
hydrocortisone acquiring like an entire tube to get get it everywhere. I needed to
go home. Man. So this was Easter. And then the next day
Monday, I remember I had book clubs, so I had gone. I
was living in New Jersey and I I had gone into the city and on
the bus on the way home, I started having contractions. Gosh, so
this is Monday. Okay, Now when did I give birth Wednesday? Whoa,
Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry. And also after you know,
those many many hours of labor, um I had a C section, like
there was oh man, he was not coming out. Did you have an
epidural though to get through all that? For sure? And I was spared
even having to push because it just wasn't happening, you know that. Yeah,
wow, enough progress in those forty some hours for it to progress to
a point where I would push. So hm. So I had a C
section, which was fine, you know, it was. It was not
a big deal. Although I do remember afterwards, probably a few days or
even weeks later, my husband, you know, was in the room with
this intuition, and you know, they put like a drape between head and
your belly soon can't really see what's going on. And he couldn't really see
what was going on either, But I still I said to him a few
days later, like, well you got to see a little more than I
did, you know, Like what what was it? Like? What was
happening? You just said, I don't want to talk about it, because
you know, when you have a C section, they have to like move
organs out of the way, oh man, in order to access Oh my
god, the baby who's being stubborn and not coming now. So so there
you go. This is just for the first time. Yeah, this was
for the first one. For the second one, I did decide I wanted
to try to avoid having a repeat C section, so and I did go
into labor on my own. I spent many many hours walking around my neighborhood
to go into labor. Also because at the time that I was due,
there was a rumor, which turned out to be true, that Johnny Depp
was living in a house on my word because he was filming, because he
was filming a movie near away. So I was like walking on street,
catch a glimpse. But anyway, so I did go into labor on my
own, and my second child was due the same day as my first child.
I had the same dude date and basically and then and that was my
first child was actually born on the due date, so I was due on
her birthday with the second one, and I started having contractions like right after
midnight, so basically her birthday happened. And then as soon as the calendar
changed to the next day, he was like, Okay, we can go.
But once again, you know, labored for quite a while and then
they decided, you know, this will not be happening, so repeat C
section. It was wow, you have nice doctors, any hours of labor
for both kids, but no actual you know, no point for all,
like especially for the second one. I could have just scheduled the C section
and yeah, oh man, oh well, it's stories like that, Catherine
make me glad for the way that I became a mom. Right. It
was traumatic at the time, but as I look back, you know,
not so bad really. No hives, a little little little guess or intestinal
distress here and there, but you know, no nobody rearranging my organs on
an operating table, no trauma for my husband only had to do it once,
so you know, we really got the two for one yay adoption.
Who it was? It was a more prolonged process, I guess because we
had been you know, when we came to terms with the fact that me
getting pregnant just wasn't going to happen unless we went to you know, fairly
invasive extremes. And we just both felt like, you know, if there
were existing children who need parents, we don't really want to go be doing
that. So you know, we thought, well, you make this decision
to adopt, and then that's thought that the hardest part is over, and
now somebody's just going to drop a kid at your doors up. But it
turned out that there were you know, there was like a five or six
year waiting list for infants in our area. And then we you know,
we'd go to Wendy's and you see those ads for the National Adoption Center,
and I think that's what it is in Philadelphia, and so we said,
well, we'll do that. We could you know, that would be a
good thing to do. We could take a little older kid or you know,
And so we went to like a conference for that, and we filled
out a bunch of stuff, we had a home study done, and then
they kept sending us. We expressed interest in some kids, and they said
no, they would lose funding if they changed states, or there was always
a reason. Just nothing was happening. And then at some point the place
we'd gotten a home study done called us and said we're starting a program in
Russia and there's a little girl there who's four and a half years old and
has some language delays. Do you want to go get her? And we
said, you know, we had planned to adopt in the US, and
we would have liked to have done that, but this is a child who
needs a parent and we can get it right now, so let's do it.
But you know, perhaps mindful of the sort of experience you had,
Catherine, where you go through a great trauma and then you have to do
it again, we said, got a little brother there for her, could
we just like make this a two for one deal. So then they suggested
the child who eventually became our son, and we went to Russia. My
husband had never been off the continent. He had been to Canada, but
not to Europe. I had been to Europe a couple of times, but
not that part of Europe. So it how much notice, like, how
much preparation time did you have? I don't really remember what we had.
I feel like it was enough. They may have changed the date a few
times. We were, of course, very anxious to go do it.
So we had to bring stuff. I mean, in addition to bringing large
amounts of cash to give to the various agencies, we had to bring donations
for the orphanage. And so I had at that point, I had been
working for a women's magazine. I had quit because I was trying to get
pregnant, and then we were trying to figure out how to do this adoption,
and it just I was working such hours there as we know I do,
and it just wasn't working. So but I had contacts there, so
I was able to go there and say, hey, to the beauty editor,
do you have like a whole bunch of extra stuff you could just commit
to take to Russia and so, and we just got donations from various places
and bought things and so we had, you know, suitcases full of donations.
We had cash strapped to us in those belts you put under your clothes,
and it was it was just very weird. It wasn't unlike any travel
and we had. We were met in Moscow by two adoption coordinators who are
very sharp, spoke very good English. We felt like we were in really
good hands. There were some stuff we had to do in Moscow, and
then we took a train to Petrozovotsk, which is where the orphanage was,
and there we were delivered unto their coordinator there, who it was a very
new program, and we were in a hotel for a while where we had
a translator. Like once a day people would just come pick us up drive
us to the orphanage. So there was no speaking of English pretty much.
The entire time, and they would just bring us to the orphanage, we
would play with the kids, they would take us to dinner, and then
we would be back at the hotel. And after a while there was some
administrative problems, so it just wore on and on and on. We us
be there for two weeks, and we were there for a month, and
you know, the kids were confused as to why we weren't taking them away,
and we were confused because nobody was really telling us anything. And so
I guess that was our labor. And we just at one point we started
living in the apartment of this woman who was the coordinator, and she wasn't
real happy we were there. I think they hoped we would leave and then
they could just shut this program down. But we were there and we were
staying. And so finally all of us and they put us in a car
and we're in a place and signing paperwork and I said, is this it?
Is this a top? Did you go through? Because everything's in Russian?
And then they drove us back to the place. We got the kids
and got on a train. So it was not waiting, I guess,
not unlike childbirth. It was a lot of waiting followed by rapid action,
flurry of activity. So then did you have to hop on a house soon
after? Did you get on the plane and fly home? Well, we
had to take we had to take this overnight train to Moscow, which you
know, with the two kids. I don't think my kids had ever been.
They had rarely been outside of that place, at least that they could
remember. I think they were in a car for the first time when we
had to take them for passport pictures while they were still at the orphanage.
So here they're like, they're leaving everything they've ever known. They're getting on
a train which they've never been in. My son was free from playpen confinement
and not so interested in sitting still. It's like, oh, okay,
here we are in this extremely interesting place with all sorts of stuff to touch
and look at. But it's time to sleep. Now, let's put you
on a bug. It's time to sleep. So we had to like surround
him with people make sure he couldn't get out, and it was a wild
night. And then we were in Moscow I think for a couple of days,
staying with the mother of one of their coordinators and getting you know,
all the paperwork to go back to the States, and then we got on
a plane. Of course, these kids have never been on a plane,
and I'm thinking, oh, my goodness, this little boy is never going
to sit still for the extremely lengthy plane flight. We're gonna be chasing him
all. It's going to be impossible. So he gets on the plane immediate
falls asleep and sleeps for the whole time. On the other hand, my
daughter, who had been pretty obedient, when it got time to put her
coloring things away and put up the trade table for landing, she was not
interested in doing that. And you know, let everybody on the plane know
loudly, you know, screaming in tears. It's like, honey, honey,
I'm sympathetic. I know you have nice things for the first time in
your life and you want to play with them. But this is not an
accorfortable thing. I'm saying in English, and she's not doesn't understand English,
and everybody on the plane is looking daggers and es. We just adopted her.
So and then we landed and our friends were there, and it was
just, oh, my gosh, such a relief, and you know,
to be back in the United States and to be back home and to have
gotten through this thing and went home and we had a bunch of family members
there and it was really nice, and you know, stuff went on from
there and I did not have stitches to have to recover from, or you
know, the trauma of having a human come out of my body. We
could just hit the ground running. So all in all, though there were
times when you know that are the equivalent of some of the traumas you all
have suffered, it was much easier and yeah, yeah, I guess different
different ways of being hard, but I greatly value that experience. That was.
And nice thing about it also was my husband was going through the ordeal
just as much as it was. Yeah, he wasn't left out of that
process. Yeah, so we were. We were in it together much more
than you know, even the most helpful and solicitous husband is still not having
a human coming out of its body. So yeah, So, how how
was it for you, Nicol? Yeah, well, I guess I was
the only I mean, you each had a different scenario and and so did
I. I I had both of my kids naturally without any pain medication,
so I had the full I had the full experience which I would never recommend
in a million years, and it was definitely not something I wanted. Seemed
like a good idea at the time, did it Yeah, well no,
no, it wasn't even something I then you did it twice? Well yeah,
because first of all, in British Columbia, I mean, it's socialized
medicine. You don't get epidurals on demand. You get it, well yeah,
you get it when it's available and or if you're having a C section,
but they only have a few anesthesiologists available in the and I okay,
so backtrack. So my son I was extremely sick with him. I had
the hypermesis gravit him or I can't remember. So I was extremely sick with
him. I was in bed for the first six months and on, you
know. And at the time I was in a very very small community.
It was like two thousand people of that and so the doctors there were wereal
doctors, great doctors, but you know, they were every time I'd go
to the emergency room, they would send me home telling me to like wear
a C band, things you know, pressure points or drink maylocks or whatever
like. You know. It was just it was so tough because I had
nothing, and I didn't know any better I was I was young. I
mean I wasn't young young, but I was fairly youngish, and so I
didn't really know what other options existed. And and then I, you know,
I was two fourteen weeks overdue or fourteen days overdue, so he was
two weeks late and my labor was so I ended up having him in this
small community, in this small hospital, and we were the only patients in
the hospital at the time, that's how small it was. It was like
literally the doctor, two nurses, and then my parents and my husband's parents
were waiting outside, and then my brothers showed up halfway through and they were
waiting outside, and then the secretary who was there that night. So um,
but it was yeah, it was like twenty seven hours from start to
finish, and gosh, and then it was all like because it was such
a small hospital and it was rural, we didn't have any I didn't have
access to any kind of pain medication or yeah, and so then he was
vacuum delivered. So I don't know if you don't know much about that,
but it's not four steps, but it's the same idea. Because he he
was not wanting to join the world. So yeah, so, and as
soon as he was born, he was put in an ambulance and rushed to
the nearest city and I had to stay behind for a couple of hours until
they could get another ambulance to me. And I would just never recommend having
a baby in a small town, and so I took me five years to
think about wanting another one that was so in dense. And then the second
time around, I actually because I was living in the city by that time,
in Vancouver, and so I had thought, Okay, I'm going to
do it right this time. So I hired a dula, which I absolutely
highly recommend. She was fantastic. And then I had told my doctor,
you know, I want an epidural. I you know, this is how
I want things to go down. Blah blah blah blah blah. Right up
the birth plan. I was also very very sick with her, my daughter,
very sick. But they gave me some medication to you, so that
helped and I was able to get to work. And then yeah, she
um, I had had my daughter. But the whole you know, anesthesiologist
thing didn't work out again as as hoped for, and so she was delivered
naturally. We had actually laughing gas at the time to use, and so
they they hooked me up with some laughing gas and uh, but my husband
decided he wanted to try it as well, so actually we sent a so
for the last half of my labor when we were in the hospital, my
husband and I were sharing this laughing gas, laughing and laughing and oh and
so it was kind of you know, it was it was difficult, but
my husband and I we just we're laughing the whole time and joking and and
then yeah, and then I gave birth to her naturally, so and she
wasn't as long. She was only about fifteen hours or so. So yeah,
that's my story. Still feeling feeling pretty good about mine, Still feeling
good about your listeners. If any of this is giving you pause, I
recommend adoption. Yeah. Well, that was very exciting and I'm surprised we've
never done that before. That's it for today's farewell memory from Nicole. Tune
in tomorrow for our regularly scheduled round two for Terry and I to talk about
TV shows, and then on Wednesday for another memory from Nicole. We are
always interested in what you have to say so, drop us a comment on
our website or Facebook page or Twitter, where you'll find us at roundabout Chat