There's just a little bit of pressure on the blog post that would come right about now. It's the biggest one I've ever owed, and I just can't seem to surmount the intimidation. So I'll just do what I do best: I'll vom.
If you don't know what I'm talkin' bout, let's see if you can guess. My face, neck and chest are covered in broken blood vessels. My feet are so bloated that they jiggle when I take a step. It looks like I've had my wisdom teeth out. I can't sit down without gasping. Or shreiking that I need my percocets LIKE NOW. My chesties are rock hard, heavy, and almost hot to the touch. My bathroom peeing routine takes 5 - 10 minutes and involves a cabinet of supplies. It's been one of the most dreamy, romantic, surreal weekends of my life - and most of it has involved fiber supplements, Tucks, and celebrating baby poop and pee. And now I get what everyone's been talking about all along.
My daughter flopped into this world and onto my bare belly at 9:15 pm on a Thursday night. It was March 8th and a full moon. I'll tell you her story now, if you want to read.
I had gone into labor at about 8:30 that morning. My "lower back aches that almost felt like the craps" were immediately 45 seconds long, 4 minutes apart, and it stayed that way until the baby was out. After three hours of these aches (that eventually became breath-stopping, speech-halting and made me tremble), I stepped outside under the brightest blue sky I'd seen since last summer, lowered my mammoth business into the car and headed to Riverton with grandmas following down I-15.
I was four days overdue, but I feared an embarrassing turn-away for some stupid lame reason. A crowd of OTHER laboring gals flocked to that same hospital, that same morning - and my cervix had to compete with all of theirs. I'd only dilated to a 2+ earlier that week, and after three hours of contractions, my damn cervix had performed ZERO. Massive piece of cervical FAIL.
But they didn't turn me away. I had effacement, stationing and softness on my side - plus an appointment that next morning to induce. After an hour in triage and a couple of sweet vaginal exams, they admitted me to labor and delivery. On the way to my room, a girl was being wheeled out with her glow worm wrapped in her arms. It became real that I wasn't leaving my own room without a baby. In my L&D room, the nurse wrote the baby's name on the whiteboard, and I cried.
Labor flew by. Everyone watched Friends DVDs, History Channel, and had guests coming and going. Everytime I looked at a clock, I swore someone had set it a few hours faster. I invited only my mother to witness - and baby's father and grandmother be present for delivery from behind my head, but labor was open season with plenty of visitors. Everyone took turns bringing me ice chips or slushies. Every time a baby was born that day, a lullaby played through the halls and in all the other rooms.
They pumped me full of so much fluid that my face puffed out like a blowfish. But I didn't care. By the time my contractions were really making me shake, the anesthesiologist wheeled in his cart of magic and gave me the drugs. He had to get into a c-section after that, so he advised I get my drugs before that, not after. I was able to move and feel my legs, I could wiggle my toes, and I could feel when I had contractions. But other than that, it was comfortable. I wanted to feel peaceful and positive, I wanted to relax and soak up the intimacy of what was happening. And I did.
My baby's heartrate dropped several times during labor, and they had to inject fluid back into the amniotic sac so the cord would float off of whatever it was compressing when I had contractions. I had to wear an oxygen mask for most of the night and throughout my pushing and delivery. But I was comfortable and excited. I remember the lights being dim except the head lamp over Dr. Langer's head. My toenails were each painted a different color - like skittles - to cheer me up during labor. The staff was breezy and positive. When I said I felt like I could probably push, they believed me. Doc checked me out, and said "OK. Start when you want." It took about five rounds (15 pushes) for her to be out.
I remember everyone cheering, and my baby lying skin to skin with me, both of us sobbing and gasping for air together. I heard her father crying, and I remember flashes of things - strangers' hands kneading my abdomen to work the placenta out. My doctor sewing things up and talking to the nurses about tearing. Scissors being placed in a tattooed hand, which cut my baby's umbilical cord and released her to her new world. Another nurse telling me that my baby was considered SGA - or "small for gestational age." I remember baby's inky eyes peering out at me through sticky, glassy eye drops - pleading to know WTF just happened to her? Who are you? Please love me. Please feed me. Please wrap me up and take me home. But mostly, a whole lot of WTF. New babies make the best WTF faces.
What I wanted most was some food or water. I did not care what it was. I was parched, and I was famished. It's actually kindof inappropriate how important food was to me in that moment of my life. I wanted Sprite with cranberry juice. They gave me the most indescribable Sprite cranberry cocktail I've ever tasted, while they wrapped up my miracle into a little wad of whimpering, 6 pound 5 ounce perfection.
They all left and us that big empty suite alone - I had a daughter. We tried to get a boob in her mouth within that first hour. She didn't latch, but she came pre-installed with the basic functions, and she mimicked breastfeeding for a bit. I remember watching her, blissed out and speechless. The lights had been dimmed for deilvery, and we huddled in the hospital bed together in silence, which she broke with her little suckling sounds and newborn bleats.
Then I had one of those memories that are captured and forever committed to that place in your memory with no sound accompanying it, like a Super8 video with no sound. Just silence. I was able to stand up straight from my bed and walk to my chair, I was weak, but I wasn't paralyzed with meds. I remember baby's pop loading up like a mule with the 4 - 5 (or more, maybe...) bags I packed, while I was being put in a wheelchair. They handed me my baby swaddled into burrito-like compactness, and wheeled me gingerly from Labor and Delivery, down to the Maternity ward and into my recovery room. They took Roz away for a big sleepover in the nursery with the other kids, while two nurses helped me waddle in to the bathroom to learn how I'd be peeing for the next week or so.
The days that have passed between then and now are all fused together in 3-hour segments, but I suppose it's been about four or five (they kept her for monitoring). Rosaline's heart rate and hydration have been sluggish, originally leading doctors to think she had a fever from her delivery, and then later they suspected she had an infection. The most likely explanation now, is her feeding, which I've been discouraged about. We're still not allowed out of the hospital, she's not allowed out of the nursery (even to come to my room), and the nursery doesn't permit any visitors other than her grandmothers.
The first couple of days, she was pissy baby. Little did we know, that nothing was coming out my breasts but colostrum, which is wonderful, but it didn't even fill her marble-sized belly. She essentially went over a day without being fed or sated. Her diapers remained empty and dry, and I worried more and more. We started formula, which she vomited (it came out too fast). I'd get calls in my room summoning me to the nursery. The nurse would say "Yeah, we made her mad again. She wants you." I'd walk in and she'd be wailing. Soon other babies would wail. She was inciting the other glow worms to riotous revolt, from her far (wee ones) corner of the nursery, next to the 5-pound "substance" babies and preemies. At about day three of getting slapped with the tubes and cords, she ripped out her IV. I'd pick her up, and her screams would sputter to a stop and she'd spastically start rooting for my breast, and when it took too long, she'd feast on one of her fists, which we saw her doing as early as her 19-week sonogram and all of her ultrasound scans after that.
She looks just like her paternal, but with my nose. She has lots of hair and long, graceful fingers. Pardon the cliche, but she's the most perfect and beautiful thing I've ever seen.
My phone doesn't get service here at the hospital, so when friends have wanted to drop by and say hi, I haven't been able to tell them Rozzie can't leave the nursery, and that no, there aren't windows to peek in and see her. I can't update people or get their messages of congratulation. Every so often, a Tmobile tower takes mercy and allows a little spurt of texts in, but then goes back out of range as quickly as it appeared. Why I actually pay them for phone service, someone needs to remind me...
But life is good. Now, I can eat cold cuts and sushi. I can bend over from the seated position and grab something off the ground. I can hug you without pressing my Santa belly into you. I can hear a loud noise - and nothing in my abdomen gets startled. Life is amazing.
I have a mostly healthy baby, who loves me to hold her and follows the sound of her dad's voice with all of her tiny baby strength. She gazes at him when he enters her short range of vision.
She has even smiled a couple of times...call it an accident, call it gas. She smiled.
I could finesse and perfect this post until it's all here...or I could just post it so something's actually here. Let's do the second one...and I'll fill in the rest later. I'm a mother now, I have to be snappy about stuff now.
All my love.
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