Okay-if you are still here...Hi! I just had a baby! Actually I had a baby two weeks ago, but judging by how my abdomen and nether regions are feeling right now, it might as well be yesterday. Before too much time has passed, I want to jot this down so one day my lovely little Cora can read it and say..."Gross, mom. Seriously...gross." And it will be glorious. Especially if it convinces her to wait to have a kid until she's 35, like me. Or mid-50s. Whatever comes first.
Speaking of what came first, let's start at the beginning. This story actually starts with...Coraline's sister, Camila. (I know, I know, she's already trying to upstage her sister. I can't help it, this is how the story went!) On the night of March 5, 2016, an unusual occurrence took place. Mila woke up in the middle of the night crying and we could not get her back to sleep. In fact, just a few days prior, I was praising her for her ability to sleep through the night, so this was rare. After Carlos brought her to our bed (and retreated to the living room! Ugh 😡), she calmed down but was no longer sleepy. She pretty much wanted to play, talk, sing, and poke me in the face. After about an hour of that nonsense, I put her back to her crib and she finally relaxed, but I couldn't relax...I was cramping. Badly. And it seemed to be every ten minutes or so. Just as with Camila, I was nine days before my due date but UNLIKE Camila, my water hadnt broken so I wasn't sure I was in labor. I had had Braxton-Hicks contractions for three weeks do I wanted to be sure this was the real deal. I spent a good two or three hours timing these cramps, which turned out to be contractions. The on-call doctor (which is never MY doc because I always seem to go into labor late at night when he's off-duty) said to come in when they are 5 minutes apart. The problem was that sometimes they were 5 minutes but then the contractions were weak, and being a perfectionist, I wasn't sure if those "counted." I was seriously driving myself crazy. I had an app on my phone and was trying to find a pattern in the contractions. I wish there was an app where I could just place the phone on my belly and it would say either "GO TO HOSPITAL NOW!" or "Chill, girl. You got time. Have some FroYo." but there isn't. Maybe one of you readers of my blog can invent that!!! And then you better give me royalties because I came up with the idea! Hey! I got two little mouths to feed now! Kids ain't cheap, mofos!
Oh yeah...back to the kid... So, I woke Carlos and told him I might be in labor. He seemed to believe me this time, I guess he learned to trust my instincts after NOT believing me when my water broke with Camila (no, sweetie, you will never live that down). By 5 am, the pains were becoming unbearable and although they averaged seven minutes apart, we headed to the hospital. On the way there, they turned into three minutes apart (what the heck happened to all the minutes between seven and three?!?) and every bump in the road was excruciating. By the time we got to the hospital, I was ready for the drugs!
Have I mentioned how much I love Greenwich Hospital? Pain or not, I was psyched to be there. The service is outstanding, it's a beautiful hospital, I never have to wait, it's basically a hotel with a medical staff. They hooked me up with the IV after a few painful failed attempts, and then it was epidural time.
Epidurals are scary. I'm not sure why because they aren't actually painful, but you have to sign a waiver, and they don't let your partner see what they are doing, and I've heard nightmare stories so I guess that's why, but regardless of the reason, I was freaked out. I was also, apparently, dehydrated. Just before the epidural was complete, I started feeling woozy. Like..."I might faint" woozy. I started sweating all over and the room was closing in on me until...SMELLING SALTS! Or ammonia, rather. Scary moment, but the nursing staff (and my hubby) were there when I "came to" and once the drugs started kicking in, I felt MUCH better. It was bliss.
Well, for a while anyway. Until they inexplicably started becoming painful again. With Camila, I had pressure pain so I didn't expect a painless labor but this was different. And getting worse. The epidural specialist came in and gave me an extra dose of whatever 'epidurally medicine' they give you but it didn't cut the pain one bit. He offered to redo it but after my near-faint experience, I was reluctant. My blood pressure was already dropping to sort-of-scary levels and I didn't want to risk it.
But it was getting worse. The doctor came in to check on my dilation and when he checked me (like, on the inside) DURING A CONTRACTION, it was the single most painful thing I ever ever experienced. I thought my body would split in two from the pain. My amazing nurse Chrissy broached the subject of redoing the epidural again, and this time I went for it. I was out of options. A new specialist came in to do the procedure, while Nurse Chrissy kept me calm through the contractions. It turns out, the original epidural fell out of place so I was pretty much doing natural labor for the previous two hours. (Side note...natural labor is horrible. In 2016, I don't understand why anyone would do it. I'm not even sure I understand how the human race still exists considering how long women had babies without drugs. Baffling.)
Finally! Relief! After this, it was pretty much smooth sailing until delivery time. Carlos and I watched a lot of HGTV (another side note-what is this fascination with "tiny houses" lately?!? I don't want to live in a space where my bed doubles as my breakfast table slash sofa slash desk slash whatever) I wasn't even getting the pressure pains in my backside like I did with Camila. I was dilating well, too. The only issue was that the baby was too high up. After shifting me around for a few hours, Nurse Chrissy came in with what looked like a giant pill device that looked like two big exercise balls melted together. I had no idea what the hell to do with this thing. Bounce on it? Bend backward and stretch over it? It turns out that they put the giant thing between my legs (if you know what I mean), like a pillow when you are sleeping (wait...what did you THINK I meant?!?) and...it worked!!! About a half hour later, Cora was in position and we were ready! Nurse Chrissy was the absolute best!
It was showtime. I was NOT looking forward to this part. I pushed for nearly an hour with Camila and by the end of that labor, I was more exhausted than I had ever been in my entire life. Well, they say that your subsequent deliveries are shorter, and that was true because I only pushed for 20 minutes or so. Although it must be mentioned that the staff and my own husband OUTRIGHT LIED and told me that she was "right there" for about 15 of those minutes. In fact, during my second-to-last push, I could have SWORN that the baby was halfway outside of me and I BEGGED them to let me push again. By "them" I mean all six people on the room. Yes, it was a full house, partially because they had found out that the baby made a bowel movement right before delivery (That's my girl!) and needed extra staff from the NICU to make sure it didn't pose a threat to her health.
But that last push did it and, according to my husband, she "shot right out!" They placed her beautiful (and covered in disgusting jelly looking stuff) little head on my belly and I could already see her fuzzy little shoulders and big eyes wide open just like her older sister. I kissed my hand and placed it on her head before they whisked her away to the next table to make sure she hasn't ingested anything dangerous. The next few minutes were a blur of relief, me craning to try to see my new baby, passing the placenta and getting stitched up (which I didn't actually feel! Yay for a functioning epidural!) and the bustling of all those people in the room. I remember two things most clearly- 1. The number of people commenting on her crazy-long eyelashes and 2. The look of joy on Carlos' face. When I had Camila, I was too exhausted afterwards to pay attention to his reaction, but this time I got to see his "proud papa" face as he inched in to take photos and video of his new little girl. Our family just became all the more complete.
Finally, they cleaned her up and I was able to hold my sweet little Coraline for the first time. I kissed her little forehead as I would do thousands of times in the following weeks. She looked like her sister, but not quite. Her nose was definitely different. I could already tell she was a quiet, peaceful little thing. And she was here. Thank the Lord.
I started this blog entry a week ago, it's actually Easter morning and our sweet Coraline is exactly three weeks old today. It hasn't been easy with two-under-two, but she is a wonderful baby and has made it a lot easier than it could have been. She sleeps a good 90% of the day...and that includes nights!!! Woohoo! So far, she doesn't seem to have a "witching hour" and I hope that doesn't change. She has a little red birthmark above her lip and another on her right eyelid like her mama. In short, she is my perfect angel. Her name means "beautiful heart" and so far she is living up to it.
Welcome to our crazy family, Miss Coraline Jolie. We love you so gosh-darn much.
Beautiful story, thanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteSorry, it's Mel, not sure why it isn't posting from my profile. I just wanted to make sure you knew it was some creepy internet stranger
DeleteMore spooky if you were a stranger
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