You may have noticed its been almost 3 years since my last blog post. When I think of the personal journey jammed into the last 3 years, its hard to believe its possible so much has changed. I know I’m not alone. Every single one of us has gone through a dramatic change in the way we work, socialize and see the world. For better or for worse, we are not the same people that we were last year.
For me that transformation began shortly after I wrote my last post in March of 2018. I was 3 months pregnant with my second child. I felt like garbage between the morning sickness, fatigue, parenting a very active toddler, working a full time job and trying to jam in my passion of family history in between it all. I had booked a few speaking engagements that had wonderful turnout, conversations and connections that followed them.
I had my daughter in August 2018. True to her form and personality that I know now, she came into the world quite dramatically. My husband had been out late working at a pre-production meeting for a film he was working on. I asked him if he could wrap it up and bring me some ice cream because I was huge, one day past my due date and it was one of the hottest Augusts I can remember. Being the amazing guy he is, he did just that, bought me a caramel sundae at Dairy Queen and brought it home.
One of our nightly rituals was watching an episode of The Office before bed. I turned it on and the episode where Michael is practicing for Jan’s upcoming birth gives birth to a watermelon with Dwight ready to catch the slippery fruit from under Michael’s shirt. I took a bite of my ice cream while laughing and felt what I can only describe as like a balloon popping inside my stomach.
Apparently the amusement I got out of Michael Scott delivering an oiled up watermelon and the delicious caramel sundae produced enough oxytocin to stimulate labor. This was my second go round, so I knew I had plenty of time to labor at home, get to the hospital that was just 5 minutes away and have my doula arrive in plenty of time to coach me through my ideal delivery.
Ten minutes later it was becoming apparent that this was going to be a very painful delivery. I have a high pain tolerance, but the closeness of the contractions were making me nervous and I felt better about getting to the hospital sooner rather than later. We got in the car, drove to the hospital (I may have nearly broken Scott’s hand in the process) and checked in. I told Scott to go park the car while I checked in so we didn’t have to worry about it getting towed and knew where it would be.
As he left, I was left by myself in an examine room to change into a gown, but I was barely able to stand up straight with the intensity of the contractions. The nurse came in concerned and decided to see how far along I was. 8cm and I needed to get moved to the delivery room asap.
Scott came in about 5 minutes later walking in casually while I smile weakly and tell him I’m 8cm already. His eyes widen a bit with fear, but then excitement. He flashes me a confident smile and says “You got this”. Nurses are trying to put an IV in my hand, but I am unable to keep still as the contractions are one right after another and then I realize that I’m involuntarily trying to keep this baby inside instead of bringing her into the world. The nurse checks again and looks at the other nurses and says “She’s fully engaged she needs to deliver now,”. I say something to the effect of “THE EPIDURAL!?!?”, but what likely came out of my mouth was a string of obscenities. In almost sitcom-like dialogue the nurse says “There’s no time, that baby is coming!”. I look at Scott with an expression that he later described as raw fear. He went into go mode and told me again that I could do this and he’d be right there with me.
A few pushes later and a primal scream or two, Eleanor Victoria Potter had arrived at 8 lbs, 15 oz in, a completely unmedicated birth in 45 minutes from start to finish. Just as she was born, my doctor and doula rushed into the room. They had missed the entire thing.
The next few days were the usual time-warped, sleep-deprived, beautiful moments that typically follow a birth. When people heard of the story of how she was born, they often remarked “Oh you’re so lucky! Only 45 minutes of labor, that’s awesome”. I can see why they might think that, but for me it was traumatic. My brain didn’t have time to process that I had been in labor much less having a baby arrive. I was not planning on a medication free birth and the speed of her delivery carried its own risks. I also had envisioned a much different experience, with my trusted doctor, doula and a calm environment. The labor room was chaos. it was full of nurses shouting, holding my arm down telling me to hold still while trying to jam a needle in my veins and then leaving me bruised and battered when I couldn’t hold still enough. My mental preparation for a calm, relaxed birth went out the window the minute we arrived at the hospital.
The first few weeks of newborn snuggles was euphoric, but it felt different than the first time around. I chalked it up to being a mother of two, it wouldn’t be the same as the first time around. But then she started having feeding troubles as I tried to introduce the bottle. She was just not getting the hang of it. As every day got closer to my return to work, the more desperately afraid I became. What if she never took a bottle? How could I go back to work if she couldn’t eat without me?
This began a journey of spiraling anxiety and depression that had no end in sight. Feeding therapy, chiropractic appointments to address a muscular issue in her neck and returning to work while worrying about every minute she did not eat would impact her development and well being. I was being buried by it all in a pit and the longer it went on, the longer my strength waned to keep digging myself out.
With the encouragement and support of Scott, I got help with my anxiety and it was a game changing moment. I felt in control for the first time in my life, Scott had opened his own film production business , we had two beautiful children and life felt perfect in many ways.
Fast forward to November 2019. Scott had a routine endoscopy scheduled as a follow up to check on something. He had so many in the past that I felt comfortable not going with him and having his mom go instead. He went, it was uneventful and went fine. I came home from work at lunch to visit and he was fine. I got a text two hours later that he was in the emergency room in excruciating pain.
The next 4 months were the worst days of my life. Complication after complication seemed to occur. Scott’s life hung in the balance every few weeks as a new infection, new issue and new problem would arise. His mental ability to handle all the trauma waned. My ability to try to be in both worlds of caregiver in the hospital vs seeing my kids every once in awhile nearly ended me. It was like being in a war zone.
After a few failed attempts to stay out of the hospital, Scott came home for the first extended time on March 13th, 2020. The first day of the shutdown of the United States. I was now responsible for caregiving for a husband who was suffering from acute stress disorder, on IV antibiotics that I had to administer and flush every 4 hours, prepare IV nutrition for every night and track medications and vitals. This was all while my children were suddenly home from daycare and school and I was suddenly going back to work after an extended leave.
Those weeks may have been harder than the hospital, because it was on me. I had to keep going after the last four months of hell. But I did because I had to. Eventually through hard work and support of family, friends and medical staff, Scott made a very miraculous turn around. He still had symptoms and medications to handle, but it was nothing compared to the suffering he had been through the prior weeks. Plus, we were all together. We were happy, we saw what was important and we soaked it all in.
Sadly, that time was temporary. Symptoms returned, Scott couldn’t eat again and he was back in the hospital. There was hope with a fairly simple surgery to make things right again. We were hopeful, ready to take it on and confident it was the start of a new normal that we could handle. But it didn’t turn out that way. The surgery triggered a dormant infection in Scott’s body. It quickly took over during the surgery very unexpectedly. Nothing could be done to stop it and we lost him 24 hours later. It was such a long journey, but an unexpected outcome that left all of us reeling.
When you lose a spouse or someone you love deeply, your very identity can be lost right along with it. I’ve always loved diving into the mystery and past of my ancestors. It felt like a treasure hunt to tackle an unknown and systematically figure out how to uncover its secrets. But with Scott gone and my world completely destroyed……that pursuit seemed frivolous. It seemed unimportant to find out where my great great grandfather was born after I had dedicated most of my genealogical passions to it for the past 20 years. I would see birth and death dates, tragedies throughout my own family history and I could not take on one more single trauma of my family’s past than I had already endured in my own short 39 years of life.
And so for the first time in 25 years, I avoided pursuing my ancestors’ lives and secrets. I dreaded learning about what horrible things they had to endure because it reminded me too much of my own. I also didn’t like the idea that now, Scott’s life story was complete. Something that wasn’t going to be further written. These were all very natural feelings with grief, but just looked differently through my genealogical lens. The thing I’ve had to focus on is that my story hasn’t ended because Scott’s life had tragically ended. His love and light will continue on through me, through our two children who adored him and everyone who knew what a wonderful human being was. And for those of us in genealogy and family history research, isn’t that kind of the point of why we do what we do? To discover who our ancestors were, what they endured and learned from in their life and what kind of impact they had on each subsequent generation? While, it’s still difficult for me to jump back into genealogy, I know that it will help me think about how I got to the point to where I was and how my journey from this point forward will impact those generations ahead of me. For better and for worse.
