The car service worked smoother than I had feared it might. At the time, I assumed managing your mother and our bags into a car would be a difficult prospect. But at the time I didn't have the perspective of having left the hospital yet - with recuperating mom, infant in car seat, double-parked and with vases full of water and flowers wedged between the back of the passenger seat and a bag. But I'm getting ahead of the story.
We took a picture of ourselves outside of the hospital, in an effort to find a little of our joy in what was about to happen. From our very first anniversary vacation, we've usually half-sung "Face-book!" as we do that strange maneuver to snap a shot of ourselves (I was too tired/stressed to think of how our iPhones could frame the shot for us, having cameras on either side). We didn't do that sarcastic little ritual in the dark outside the hospital, though, and when we look back on the photo all we can see is how wasted we seem. Still: it helped in the moment.
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| The pensive couple. |
We didn't want to induce labor. We certainly didn't want the whole process to have to start at 1:00 in the morning. But you were a week overdue, the doctor was concerned about your size relative to your mother's, and besides - she was due to go on vacation within 48 hours. So, in spite of our plans and our lovely young doula's ideals, there we were in that hallway, contemplating what comforts the woman across from us found in her Torah that she couldn't in her silent husband.
Eventually we were shown into the triage room wherein your mom would receive her treatments. This - I thought upon arrival - is the tiny room in which I'll finally meet my daughter. It wouldn't be, but I couldn't know that then. The nurse who showed us in (Desiree, I think her name was) told your mom to undress and put on the standard smock. And your mom said no. And the nurse said she had to. And your mom said they had plenty of access with what she had chosen to wear - a loose black skirt and her favorite old t-shirt, black too, with a colorful print of a skull stuffed with flowers and moths - and the nurse said the staff would make her wear the smock, and that her clothes would be ruined besides if they had to prep her for surgery, but she would ask about it.
It was a small victory, but it made a difference, then and now. In spite of all the surprises, this was our experience. Your mother's, mine and yours.
The early morning hours are a blur of anxiety, procedure, panic and naps. Your mom was propped up with a dull back ache in the insane "bed" that transforms in every direction, and I camped out in a nearby overstuffed arm chair when not in a moment when I needed to be by her side, my feet precariously balanced on the rolling doctor stool and with a hospital sheet draped over me. It was freezing in that damn room. No one told us we had a thermostat until the late morning, when the doctor did. Then again, I suppose we never asked, either.
Induction started with a balloon catheter. After it had been applied for some hours, your mother was dilated from 1 to 5 centimeters. This seemed like a promising sign, and the day-nurse who came on started her on the Pitocin at a very low level (Hayley is her name, and she was wonderful). As it turned out, your mother had already been laboring - it only registered for her as mild-to-moderate back pain. Nurses would come in to check on her, and be shocked that she wasn't in agony based on the read-out of her contractions. She might've been laboring for days.
We were buoyed by this news, both of us hoping without hoping too hard that everything we were doing would cue you to exit of your own accord. The doctor arrived, and was passive where your nurse had been encouraging - but that was her job. She's got to make the difficult calls, when necessary, and no sense in getting excited. Siobhan, our doula, arrived soon after, and the day kicked into high gear, with her leading us through as much as she could to get things moving naturally. We were active, and we were hopeful.
We were not, however, seeing sufficient progress as far as the hospital was concerned. Her doctor gave it some time after her initial examination of your mother's dilation - opening four centimeters was no joke, and her cervix was near-fully effaced - but your position was still high, and she upped the Pitocin to intensify the contractions. She upped it rather suddenly. Over the course of a few intervals, but we had been going at 1 units, and got up to around 25.
Now: Here is where some of the hardest stuff came in, and where opinions may begin to separate somewhat, depending on to whom you speak. I'll try to state some facts and leave it at that, but please bear with my tone if it gets the better of me. It was an emotional time.
The difficulty with having a doula - passionate, idealistic - involved in a hospital birth is that he or she can be at cross-purposes with the medical staff. That is, the staff has a priority in controlling the situation, whereas the doula can have a priority for being receptive to what the situation is telling us - or "what the baby wants." We went with hiring a doula because it was our first pregnancy, our friends recommended it, and upon meeting Siobhan we were quite won-over. I wanted your mother to be as safe and nurtured as possible, and ultimately I believe she was.
But a tug-of-war of sorts ensued in the triage room, between our ideals and the doctor's concerns, and all of it during a time when your mother was becoming increasingly unable to respond (much less think) due to the intense and seemingly unrelenting contractions that the Pitocin had inspired. There was weeping. Siobhan did an amazing and continual job of advising and massaging. Your mother bore up under the strain with such strength as I have never seen. I tried to buy us time with Dr. Leipzig, because it seemed to be the best course for what Megan wanted, but it came down to ultimatums between the doctor and me - either we consent to a caesarean section, or she may not be our doctor for this birth.
Whatever brought us to that situation, it was the right call your mother made, even in the midst of all that chaos and pain. We were very lucky that her parents had decided to drive up that morning, and her mom came when we called to be there as she was prepped for the surgery. The room came to its most chaotic during this time, with doctor, doula, grandmother, nurse, soon-to-be-mom and of course you and I all trying to get out of one another's ways. The shirt Megan had worn to give her comfort had to be cut from her to remove it from around the IV, then Dr. Leipzig pointed out that they could have removed the tube instead. She promised to sew the tattered t-shirt back up on her vacation. (And she did.)
I and the doctor walked your mother the seemingly long way down from triage room to OR. She had wanted to go right away, when she felt a window had opened in her contractions, and tried to convince the staff that she didn't care about her backside hanging out. Leipzig assured her she would, and an extra smock was applied. On the walk, I said many of the same things to your mother than I had been saying all day - reminding her to breathe into the pain, not hold her breath, trying to keep her going no matter what.
I was dropped off at a recovery room on the way, to be put into scrubs, and only then did I realize that Hayley the nurse had been walking with us the whole way as well as she scooped in on Megan's side where I had been.
The wait seemed interminable. Your mom tells me that the three of them headed down to the operating rooms, and that she kept trying to burst into one to get things underway, restrained at the last minute by her concerned guides. When they did finally get underway, she couldn't hold still for the spinal, vomiting from the effort. But once it was applied, she felt the contractions disappear and (despite her increasing concern that they never would) they put up the paper curtain that would obscure her view of the procedure.
Meanwhile, I just tried to hold it together while the people staffing the recovery room I had been shunted into looked at me askew (no one could figure out why they sent me in there for scrubs), Siobhan snuck back to remind me to find her to help with the latch when it was all over, women and men in various stages of similar disconcert wandered or wept from their beds, and I, once I had acquired scrubs, wondered just what in the hell could be taking so long. Finally Dr. Leipzig reappeared to bring me back. She pointed out how to properly wear the surgical mask (it needed to be stretched out open so it encased my chin, and the nose piece bent to bear down) and in we went to the proper OR.
Just past the double doors I saw your mother's right profile, prostrate on the table, and her body stretched out and exposed on the other side of the short paper curtain. I was guided into a tiny stool tucked in between her head and what seemed like unnecessarily close monitoring equipment, where I was greeted by the anesthesiologist and a nurse, and saw your mother again. Her head was completely swathed in cloth, but she was shivering off and on. It took her a moment, but she seemed to be happy to see me. I just did what I could to keep her focused on anything but what would be happening on the other side of the curtain, keeping that mantra about breathing going.
All the happened for us was that Megan was extremely uncomfortable, wincing, I was trying to focus on her and not on the doctors' conversation as they operated, and the amazing anesthetist did an amazing job of distracting Megan with interesting and terribly tangential personal questions (thereby accomplishing part of her job without even applying her drugs; later she would come by the recovery room specifically to check on Megan). That's what happened on our side of the curtain while you were delivered.
What happened on your side was somewhat more eventful. Once they were inside your mother's womb, they saw that not only did you have a head that was a bit on the larger side, but it was nestled snugly in your mom's right hip. This might've explained why you weren't descended at all. You were so snug, in fact, that they did not feel they could extract you properly the right way around. So, much to the discomfort of mom, they turned you around in utero, before pulling you out by your legs. I have to imagine you were very confused by the whole thing.
After what seemed an interminable time at the examining table, you were brought to me to hold for the very first time. It was a very strange feeling, and not just because it was so rare, but because they had since started the process of putting your mom back together and I was very focused on helping her get through it. So there I was, torn between the rapture of you and the agony your mom was in - apparently the anesthesia doesn't extend to the areas of the chest that get trapped air in them. Still, I was rapt with you, and you gave us both a beautiful moment when your mom spoke for the first time...and you went completely still, and you turned your head toward the sound of her voice there on the table. I'll never forget the sound of her voice then as she talked, and you listened. "Hi, baby. Hello, Josephine. Hello, my little girl..."
So, we survived what was a very long day indeed. You were delivered at 5:47pm, we finally made it to the recovery room a little before 8:00, and your mom's parents visited for a little while, and then it was just you, and your mom, and me. Well - and the Hasid who occupied the back half of the room (not the same one from our arrival). But essentially, we were there. Then, eventually, I had to leave. I think they let me stay well past visiting hours, but it's hard to say because I was in such an altered state over you, the day, what was to come. I kissed you and your mother together goodnight, for the first time, and walked to the subway.
I got home around 1:00, nearly an exact day from when it all started. I knew it was going to be difficult to leave you and your mom, but I hadn't counted on being so exhausted that I couldn't think about it too hard. It seemed impossible as exhausted as I felt that I would sleep only a few hours, then charge right back to the hospital. That's exactly what I did, rising at 5:45 the next morning. As it turned out, that was all I could think about. You were all I could think about.
But that night, I did sleep.
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