birth

posting again from my neighborhood library branch, in the children's section, between tables of fabulous kids from the head start up the street cutting out paper leaves and the couple at the next computer who use more swear words than not. who knew it was possible to construct entire sentences out of nothing but profanities??? the things you learn at the library. knowledge really is power.

my ovaries are twitching today over the fabulousness of milo, a sensation not muted in the least by the prolific vomiting he committed all over my shoulder, back, leg, etc, this morning. i look at him, with his precious-moments-y eyes taking everything in and his left arm pumping up and down, and i think, i want more of him. it's absurd. i mean, i have a hole in my stomach lining from the anxiety it took to produce him and sustain him. i would almost certainly have gestational diabetes again, and it would be unethical for me to knowingly inflict that kind of risk on another child. but he's so fabulous i can hardly take it.

maybe if i had a horrific birth story, it would help quell the insane urge, but it was just so damn easy this time. the amnio was worse than the pushing, if you can believe it, at least as far as i can remember now, nine weeks later. it was sweltering that day, and when my mother-in-law arrived at my house to pick me up, i said, let's just go to the hospital now. i was desperate for some a/c, and when it's that hot outside, our portable a/c just can't keep up.

despite arriving a little early, we were still delayed getting started. in the waiting area by the registrar's desk, a large clan awaited someone else's birth by listening to maury povich at maximum volume while playing with a portable drum machine. i am not making that up. who brings a drum machine to a hospital??? idiots, that's who. the worse part is, the person playing the drums was an adult. the children in the group just ran around unattended and shrieking, while an adult played the drums. badly. very, very badly. rhythm takes a vacation. when they called me back to be admitted, my mother-in-law asked if maybe i needed her to come with me. oh, definitely, i said. as if i would have left her in that hellhole.

inside labor & delivery, we waited some more, but at least in a quieter area. the only noise was another pregnant woman, who was on the phone explaining to someone that she was being induced because she, too, had the gd gd, but she wasn't going to any of her appointments and the ob felt it was safer just to "take the baby" than to let her go on not taking care of herself. it was a lovely moment.

justin arrived just before they finally started monitoring, and then we had an even longer wait, because milo decided to sleep away the day. at last, the peri came in and decided not to worry about trying to get a reactive non-stress test result but to do an ultrasound before the amnio instead. justin and i followed him down the hall to an aqua-colored room with low lights and an actual pillow (!) on the bed. i had forgotten how much an amnio hurt, perhaps because the last one i had involved my mother squeezing my hand so hard that i was distracted. at any rate, the amniotic fluid was on the low side of normal and he had a hard time finding a big enough pocket in which to insert the needle. the amnio was further complicated by milo suddenly springing to life and swinging his arms like muhammad ali into any and all remaining space in my uterus. it took three tries to finally get a draw, during which i kept my cool but felt like hitting someone, but the peri got it. he pronounced the fluid "good-looking" but warned that milo was going to come out with some arm scratches, as if we would care about a little surface scratching if milo was alive and out. ha!

we waited a couple of hours and then a resident came back to start giving us instructions that would only make sense if i were being admitted, and we had a pretty good idea that the results were back and they were good. finally, at about 8 pm, the attending gave us the official good news, and that's when it really hit me, and the joy and relief started to wash over me. the rest was just coasting.

they kept me on a low dose of pitocin for the night, and i dozed off and on. my mother-in-law watched the monitor all night and chatted with the wonderful nurse, who was a bartender before he became a nurse, and it showed. justin went home and got a shower and brought back a cd player, and we kept charlie haden and the rachels and dave brubeck playing through the night while i sucked on popcicles. at one point, a really hot doctor came in to let me know he would be filling in for my ob if anything happened too quickly, and the eye candy helped to make up for the night of waiting. later, a really mellow nurse named jenny came on and saw us through until morning.

at 5:30 am, an intern came in and broke my water, and then everything went lightning-fast. i had the perfect epidural - really, really perfect - and at 7:30 my ob arrived. at 8:00, we started pushing, and it was easy, easy, easy, and then at 8:33 am, justin cut the cord and started to cry, which made the nurses cry, and of course, milo did a bit of crying, too. he was laid across my chest, and he was beautiful, and perfect, and then he peed all over me. really, it doesn't get any better than that.