Reminiscing, Already

Dear Kaelyn,

Tonight, for some reason, sleep eludes me. It has finally really hit me that this week has ended and this coming week, I return back to work. My last full week as a stay-at-home mom is over. I know and I've constantly told myself that many moms have done this and most when their little ones are even younger than you, but the heart rules over the mind in this case and I am still somehow having trouble focusing on the blessing of being home for so long, versus the sadness of parting.

I'm sure both of us will adapt and become accustomed to life after the transition, and all will go on quite well, but tonight... tonight it is just hard to think about leaving you.

As I lay in bed listening to your soft sleeping breaths and your daddy's louder ones, I couldn't help but reminisce about that first day with you. I ran through the events in my head until the tears came pricking to my eyes as I recalled the details. And I knew I had to write them down somewhere...

I remember so clearly the first hour or so with you, lying skin to skin against me, snuggling up and hungrily rooting around making little snuffling noises like a baby animal. In that instant, I felt keenly that the heroine of the hour was truly you and not I who birthed you, because you were this exhausted new wee one who had just made a strenuous and traumatic journey, and still then bore on to take your first breath and cry and then determinedly latch on and energetically eat your first meal before finally resting. I held you close, trying to soak in the reality that you were finally here and that I -- we -- had really completed the monumental task of birth. There were tears and achingly huge smiles, an overflowing of joy. That hour flew past, and the memory of it, so many minutes seemingly compacted into a moment, is etched in my mind as if it were yesterday.

Your grandparents arrived to meet you for the first time, and after some small talk your daddy took you in his arms while I hopped out of the semi-upright hospital bed to try to use the bathroom for the first time after the birth. My lack of any drugs allowed me to be able to do this unassisted, but I was still unprepared for the dizziness from blood loss that came as I walked to the toilet in the little room inside my birthing room. Alarmed, I snatched desperately at the handicap handrail to steady myself. The aftermath of the birth was everywhere and I refilled the peri bottle I'd been given again and again, trying to rinse some of it away as best as I could. The birthing site, newly stitched up, was unbelievably sore and painful as the stream of water hit it.

I remember catching sight of my face in the mirror above the sink and feeling stricken, unconsciously letting the bottle fill to overflowing beneath my fingertips. My reflection looked gray and colorless and more tired than I'd ever imagined I could look; the too-big blue hospital robe had blood on it and hung off one shoulder. I don't think I could have looked much worse. There were days ahead that I didn't know of then, where the hormones would kick in hard and I would cry and complain about the healing process and the horrors wreaked on my physical self. But at that time, even as I took stock of the somewhat gruesome details of the aftermath, my head was in a euphoric cloud. I had YOU. You were right outside that door in your daddy's arms and you were perfect and whole and peacefully asleep at that moment.

I toddled back into the birthing room in a fresh robe, this time with the help of my nurse, who'd rushed in once she heard that I'd attempted to get around on my own, and sat gratefully down in the wheelchair she'd brought. I sipped a cup of water and a small cardboard apple juice box comfortably while I enjoyed the exclamations from your grandparents over you. Finally, your daddy laid you, swaddled in a hospital blanket and wearing a purple cap handknit by the mom of the attending midwife, back in my arms and began gathering our things to move to the recovery room in the mom/baby unit. I vaguely remember the rest of the family's chatter, but mostly I only had eyes for you. I kept my eyes on you, pretty much oblivious as we were wheeled out of the birthing room, down the shiny linoleum hallways to our small but private recovery room. While pregnant, I'd imagined that ride down the hallway with you in my arms many times, envisioning how proud and triumphant your daddy and I would be. But there was no way I could have imagined the way I felt at the actual moment: so blessed, so overwhelmed, so enamored.

The room was sparse, as most hospital rooms are, but it was small and cozy and had a view of the street in front of the hospital with its ever-changing scene. There was a large clear box with a padded bottom on a metal cart next to the hospital bed that I was helped onto, to serve as your bed for the night. You didn't spend much time in it, though -- we held you for the majority of that first night of your life.

The night was spent learning to breastfeed, sharing a somewhat edible hospital meal (they only gave a meal for mom that night) and then eating a celebratory take-out meal that your daddy went and picked up nearby, changing your first sticky, tarry black meconium diapers and meeting new nurses as they traded shifts. At that time, visitors beyond our parents weren't allowed, something I'd been quite disappointed to learn months before. Now, I was almost glad. Between feedings and diapers, naps and the occasional text message, we held you and marveled over you and your ten fingers and ten toes, your tiny lips and tightly closed little eyes. Your exhausted daddy and I both took turns taking small naps to refuel our energy as adrenaline wore off. I found the time awake wasn't too hard, though we were having a pretty rough start at breastfeeding. I was so fascinated by you, so taken with you and I could not get enough of looking at you. We talked to you, kissed your little cheeks and nose, said silly things that parents say to their babies in unconsciously higher tones and tried to guess who you looked like most. (At that point, it was definitely Daddy!)

When morning came and the blurry night was over, I felt elated that we'd made it successfully through our first night as parents, though I also felt like I was standing at the bottom of a huge mountain of a learning curve, looking up and realizing I had to climb it on what small amount of physical strength I had left in me. There were some papers to fill out, my healing progress was being monitored and some tests needed to be run on you (I cried along with you when they pricked your little heel to get a small blood sample), but we jumped through the hoops quickly and were told we could be discharged about 24 hours after your birth. We were smiling from ear to ear at the news. It was time to bring you home.

1.23.10 - A Birth Story

Having never experienced a contraction before, I wasn't sure how I would be able to handle them once they came. I didn't really experience too many Braxton Hicks contractions, partially because I carried baby very compactly and by the last month, she was so tight in there, her movements sometimes were indistinguishable from those pesky irregular contractions.

I started to feel regular contractions Friday afternoon, but they were not very painful -- just a momentary tightening in the belly -- and they were pretty far apart, maybe about 10-15 minutes. They stayed that way until nighttime, when they started to get definitely more uncomfortable, like very bad menstrual cramps, and come closer together, around 6-7 minutes apart.

Around 11 PM, J and I called the hospital and were told to come in to get checked for progress. When we got there, I was 2 cm dilated. The nurse on call gave us a choice: be admitted and know that I would be subjected to fairly regular vaginal exams to monitor progress, and perhaps face some pressure to have labor hastened medically if I didn't make steady progress, or go home and wait it out for a while longer. Though the hospital was a good half-hour away, we chose the latter. Home was just so much more comfortable!

I didn't sleep very well that night, though -- just snatches of shut-eye between contractions. We had been told to go back to the hospital when the contractions were very close together, like 3-4 minutes apart, and "more painful." Morning came, but the contractions stayed about 5-6 minutes apart, though they grew more and more painful. By 10 AM, I couldn't take it anymore. The pain from each contraction was so intense I was sobbing during each one, instinctively throwing my body onto all fours with my back end in the air to try to lessen the pressure and pain a little bit while I buried my face in my pillow. J called the hospital to tell them of my pain and we began the trip there again. The ride there this time was nothing like the calm, collected one of the previous night -- I couldn't help crying as the contractions came again and again. J talked me through them as best as he could, though I could see the helplessness in his face as I writhed in pain next to him.

Around 11 AM, we were rushed through admitting into triage, where I was found to be 7 cm dilated and baby was making her way down the birth canal at +1 station -- no wonder there was so much pressure down there! At this point I was still crying out uncontrollably with each contraction, much to the discomfort of the other couples in triage just a thin curtain away, I'm sure, but at that point I wasn't aware of much besides the pain and pressure I was feeling.

I vaguely remember being wheeled from triage into a birthing room. Had it not been for the contractions I think I would have really appreciated how nice it was -- large, clean, a private shower for laboring, etc. There was even a room with a birthing tub available had I wanted it. They had asked me in triage if I wanted any pain medication and I had responded somewhat deliriously, "I... don't know!" The birth plan they had given me during my prenatal care, that I had filled out months earlier, was forgotten somewhere inside the suitcase we'd packed, but even it would not have offered a more solid opinion. My labor nurse looked at me and said, "If you can make it through this far, the contraction pain will not get worse until you are fully dilated. It's up to you, but if you can make it to 10 cm, the pushing will be a relief and will feel good." I locked eyes with her and gathered strength from her words, willing myself to at least try.

The next half hour or so was a blur. J continued to talk me through the contractions as he watched them on the monitor, telling me when I was over the hump of each one and the pain was subsiding. "You're doing so well... I am so proud of you," he told me.

Within thirty minutes of being in the birthing room, each contraction began to come with the strongest, most compelling physical urge to push that I have ever felt in my life. It was time. I hadn't yet been measured, but I knew. Somewhere in the whirlwind of me yelling out that I needed to push, my nurse checking me to confirm I was at 10 cm, and one of the hospital's midwives arriving to deliver the baby, I found a focal point in my husband's face.

Somehow, as I gazed at him and took a few deep breaths to prepare for the next contraction, the pain became a little less distinct: a backdrop to the bigger picture of what was happening. I concentrated on him as they helped me hoist my legs up, knees toward my chest, and instructed me how to breathe as I bore down to push. I looked at him and pushed as hard as I could through the contraction, focusing on him and the baby and what this meant for us. I pushed through one more, and one more -- and then the baby's head was out: a brief, burning, terrible pain that almost made me see stars -- and suddenly, her first cries were piercing the air, her tiny body was being placed on my chest, her little head full of hair was right there in front of me, my shaking hands were touching her moist little back, voices were telling me how beautiful she was and what a great thing I had accomplished, J's eyes were smiling and smiling at me and I would have seen that they tears in them as well, had I not been blinded by the onset of my own in that one long moment.

The last stage of labor happened as quickly as the one preceding it, with my body seemingly on autopilot to deliver the placenta a few minutes after the baby. I barely noticed. I could only see the small being held close against me, skin-to-skin, for the first time, the tiny hand resting on me with the fingers outstretched, the damp hair covering the precious little head pressed against my chest. My little girl, our baby daughter, had finally arrived.