how it began

Before another week passes, I need to write this down. There are so many things I want to remember about how D. came to us.

We'd only been in New city for 3 or 4 days-- and the movers had only brought our belongings 2 days before-- when my water broke in the middle of the night. I woke up, gushing, nudged P. awake, & called my mom as P. and I tried to figure out what to do. Back in Old city, I'd actually bothered to pack an overnight bag for the hospital just in case, but at the last minute, P. and I decided to pack most of what was in the bag in something else and use the bag for things we needed on the car trip-- we figured the baby wouldn't arrive soon enough to worry about it. The day before D. came, I'd thought about packing that bag again, but didn't get around to it. I jumped in the shower and P. tried to pack, hastily. When I got out of the shower and got dressed, I started leaking again, and wanted to change clothes, but P. kept rushing me, trying to get met to the hospital. We wound up taking an old towel in the car fo rme to sit on, and I kept leaking on the way to the hospital.

We showed up at the emergency room and someone wheeled me through this maze of hospital corridors to a different part of the hospital where babies are born. They confirmed my water had broken, got me settled into a bed, and called my OB, who I hadn't even met yet (I had scheduled an appointment with her for 2 days later). An incredibly nice and soothing nurse named Julie took down all my information and stayed with me while we waited. An on-call doctor came to do an ultra-sound and confirm that D. was still breech. Some minutes after he left, D.'s heart rate went way down, and suddenly my room was flooded with nurses-- at least half a dozen. I was given oxygen, told first to lie on my side, and then to get on my hands and knees. The nurses handled everything very calmly, but it was a chaotic and confusing few minutes. I couldn't see P., I didn't know what was happening... the heart rate went back to normal again, my ob arrived, and I was prepped almost immediately for surgery. Everything seemed to go incredibly fast.

In the operating room, a kind Indian woman anesthesiologist gave me a spinal. My nurse, Julie, was there, and told me to arch my back and lean into her, to hold her scrubs if I wanted to. I can't explain how nurtured I felt by this woman... I was nervous about the needle going in, but didn't even feel it. I started going numb almost immediately. I couldn't even move myself onto the table. The screen went up, P. was brought in to sit near my head, and D. came out of me, apparently urinating, minutes later. I cried.

They took D. away pretty quickly, and P. wound up going with him, and letting me get finished being sewn up and taken to recovery on my own. Eventually I was taken back to my room and D. was brought into me. I'm not sure I can recall getting to hold him for the first time, but I know that the first few days together with him were entirely bliss-filled. I stayed in bed mostly and held and nursed D. while P. spent some time back at the apartment trying to finish unpacking or hiding boxes to get ready for my parents' arrival. The morphine and other pain killers made all that time blur together. I felt like I was inside a dream.

There will have to be a second chapter here, about D.'s time in the special care nursery, but that will have to wait for a while as D. is rousing himself for what's likely to be a midafternoon snack.