Let's Start at the Very Beginning....

I'm going to try really hard to make this concise, because I could really ramble on and on about everything that's happened. Just the facts, ma'am:

So from about Wednesday through Friday I was in pre-labor crankiness. I couldn't believe how "uncomfortable" it was. I could barely walk, I was crampy as hell and didn't want to eat. My Ob/Gyn didn't think I'd make it through the weekend.

Early Saturday morning, I was sitting up in bed around 5 am, trying to figure out which pains were real contractions and which ones were cramps, and if I had anything that could be timed at all. I felt a POP! GUSH! and my water broke all over my bed. G, being the thorough person that he is, had lined my side of the bed with a changing pad underneath the sheet to protect the mattress in case that happened. I rolled my eyes when he did it, but when my water broke my first thought was, "Oh no! I'm not sitting on the pad! The mattress is going to get wet!" I hopped up and gushed all over the "A Woman's VBAC Companion" book I'd checked out of the hospital library. A portentous sign. G. called our neighbors who came over to stay with A. until my sister could pick him up.

The hospital told me to take a shower and come in. I did. We arrived at L&D, and were escorted into one of their new remodeled rooms. We admired the DVD/CD player, the new furniture, and noticed how much nicer it was than last time. I was particularly looking forward to using the shower. By that time, I was having real contractions about 2-3 minutes apart. They hurt, and I was thinking, "So much for trying this without pain meds." We got settled in the room, but hadn't been checked in yet.

I had some indigestion. After the fifth contraction, the nurse came rushing in and I asked her if I could have some Maalox. She said, "OK" and rushed over to the monitor. Unbeknownst to me, the baby's heart rate had dropped dramatically. All of a sudden I had a ton of people in the room yelling at me to roll to that side, then to this side. She couldn't find the heartbeat. This was very different than when A's heart rate dropped and there were a bunch of people but they were very calm. These people were not calm. They kept yelling, "It's for your baby!" when I'd move too slowly. The midwife went to put in a scalp fetal monitor and said, "I feel the cord." That, apparently, is not a good thing.

Next thing I know, they're telling me to get on my hands and knees with my head down and my butt up. It hasn't registered why they're telling me to do this, so I'm thinking, "Wow. This sucks." I do it, and they pull the bed away from the wall and head down the hallway. The midwife is pushing up inside me, and it hurts like hell. Everyone else is yelling, so I start yelling too. "Stop pushing! Oooowwwww!" I yell as we travel. I asked G later after I woke up, "Um, so I was riding down the hallway with my ass in the air and her hand up me?" He said, "Well, she was in the way so you couldn't see anything." He's a nice guy. We get into the OR and they tell me to jump on over to the operating table. Riiiiight. I do my best and lie down. My OB shows up and says they have an emergency situation and have to do a C-section now.

More yelling. Apparently they can't get an IV in. I guess the stress is making me vasoconstrict so they can't get a vein. They also can't find an arm board for my left arm. Someone takes off my necklace. I hear, "Is she under?" and "I don't have an IV!" Someone ties my arm down, and just to show you how out of it I am about what's happening, I say, "Oh, can't we let my arms be free? I'll hold them still." They ignore me. I'm getting poked and I yell a few more times for good measure. I have the oxygen mask on, so I figure it's muffled.

Finally they give the anesthesia. Next thing I know I'm waking up in a recovery room. There's a woman next to me who I know didn't just give birth. I hear her mention gallbladder surgery and I wonder where the hell I ended up. My OB shows up and tells me something I can't remember now. She said later that I had had a very coherent conversation with her in recovery and how rare that was. I think she told me that the baby wasn't breathing at birth, but they resuscitated him and he was on a ventilator. G was outside the OR the whole time, poor guy, and a nursing supervisor gave him updates. Once they got B out, the supervisor told G., "He's out." That was all she could say, because according to a report I saw by accident later, he was "blue, floppy, unresponsive and limp." His one minute Apgar was 1, which means he got some credit for a very faint heartbeat. But, and it's a big but, his 5 minute Apgar was 8, so he recovered quite quickly.

I remember very little about the first two days, because I was on a morphine drip and more loopy than I realized. I got to see him later that day, after he was taken off the ventilator. I remember thinking that G was far more traumatized than I was by the whole thing because by the time I saw the baby, he looked pretty good and I was asleep for most of the procedure. I thought he was just in the NICU sort of as a formality because it had been such a rough start. I was feeling pretty good, considering. He had some tremors, which were concerning, but they thought that was low blood sugar. It took a couple of days to name him. (We're all friends here, I guess I can tell you - he's Benjamin).

They released him from the NICU to my room one night, and when the nurse came to check his glucose, she noticed that he was choking. He'd been choking right next to me and I hadn't known. He turned blue, and she called a code. He was fine very quickly, but it scared the hell out of me and I realized I'd been in some denial about the whole thing. He was readmitted to the NICU. I sobbed.

To make a long story just a tiny bit shorter, he's had all kinds of tests. Sonograms, EKGs, EEGs, numerous blood tests, etc. All have been normal. The neurologist came and evaluated him and said that he was very confident that there was no lasting neurological damage from the two "events," as they call them. The tremors did not seem to be related to his blood sugar after all, and every nurse who saw them said, "Wow, I've never seen anything like that." Thanks. But they don't look like seizures, and they have actually abated to the point where no one is worried about them anymore.

I was discharged on Wednesday, but because B. was staying in the NICU, we tried to stay in what they call the "Mother's Room," where moms of babies in the NICU can rest between feedings. Couldn't get in, so we told the staff "Oh, that's OK, if you can't find room for us, I guess we'll just sleep in the car," followed by a heavy sigh. They opened up the "meditation room" downstairs and let us crash there.

They were going to send him home after we took an infant CPR class at the hospital, but we convinced them to let him come home a day early. He's nursing well, his color's great, he's a brunette and while his face looks a lot like A., he has G.'s coloring. I guess that's fair, since A. has my coloring.

I'll write more about the feelings and things that struck me during the week later. I have to sort them out a bit. I'm quite hormonal, but mostly, as G. says, "It's been a real heart-chakra-opening experience." It's been less than 48 hours, but so far so good. I took a nap today, he feeds every 3 hours like clockwork and sleeps in between. No PPD (Praise the Lord), I'm not deathly exhausted, and A. is doing OK. He's a little blown away by the upheaval, and is a bit more whiney and testy than usual, but overall he's doing well. He shakes B.'s hand and says, "Nice to meet ya!"

In a few minutes the header above will show the flowers that were in bloom in our yard the week B. entered the world.