I remember the moment the doctor caught her. She held her up and said, “Here is your daughter.” She was all wrinkly and squinty and purple. They placed her on my chest, and I can still vividly feel her warm, moist skin against my dry skin. She started to cry. I patted her and said, “It’s okay baby,” my mothering instinct kicking in to protect her.
“No,” they said and snatched her away. We need her to cry. You want her to cry to get the fluid out of her lungs.
They placed her under the warmer and started to clean her off. I stared in amazement. This is my daughter. My daughter.
The room was dim. It was the middle of the night and their standard overhead lights were malfunctioning, so they just had a little floor lap that the doctor had brought over.
The air felt thick. Not in a bad way — in a way that brought on the magnitude of the moment. The air was thick with the anticipation and the wonder and the sheer significance of this event five years in the making.
This was early one Wednesday morning. The Thursday before I had had some tests done which showed that her amniotic fluid levels were low. Come back on Friday, they said, and we’ll see if they have gone up. I gave my last final that Friday and went straight to the doctor thinking I was about to be induced, but my fluid levels had gone back up, and she was all set to incubate for a few more days.
That was Memorial Day weekend. Knowing that induction was pretty much inevitable, we did everything we could that weekend to induce labor. It seemed as if we walked dozens of miles, and everywhere we went, people would look knowingly at my belly and smile. But the walking didn’t do any good.
That Tuesday I went to the doctor and the fluid was once again low. This time right on the margins between “wait another day” and “induce now.” After talking to the high risk doctor, we decided to induce. He seemed to trust my instincts as a new mother even though I didn’t.
The ultrasound technician had been late, so TJ couldn’t wait at the appointment with me. When she finally came and we knew the decision would be made, he ran from the other side of the hospital where he worked over to the doctor’s office. We sat there in that dark room, hearts pounding, as he spoke to our obgyn and recommended induction. I kept second guessing the decision that just moments ago seemed so certain. And then he came in and said, “Let’s have a baby.”
We had about an hour and a half to head home, grab our stuff, and head back. As I walked out of the hospital that slightly brisk day, I started to text everyone that I knew. I called my sister and spoke to her. I can still feel my hands shaking in anticipation over what was to come.
When I got home, I grabbed my stuff and the baby’s stuff, all of which had been organized for months, and packed up the car. TJ wasn’t quite as organized, but eventually we made it into the car. Of course there was construction on the way there, and I was sure we were going to be late and they would send us home. (Needless to say, they don’t send home medically warranted inductions because the mom to be is five minutes late.)
But we made it to the hospital and the next couple of hours are a bit of a blur. I remember walking into the room, grateful that the ob department was the only wing my husband hadn’t worked on and therefore didn’t know anybody, until the nurse who walked through the door screamed his name and gave him a huge hug. Apparently they had gone to nursing school together.
I remember changing into the hospital gown, ready to have TJ take a last picture of me pregnant, but then the nurse came in and I was too embarrassed.
I remember them asking me what my choices were regarding pain relief and I said “I would like to try to go natural,” not knowing at the time what that decision would entail.
I remember around 2:00 the doctor came in and broke my water. And then around 5:00, they started the Pitocin.
Almost immediately, contractions started, and I had no idea what to expect. It just seemed as if everything became chaotic. A man came in to try to repair the broken light, nurses were in and out, my parents came to wish me luck before they went next door for dinner before starting their vigil at the hospital. And then the nurse asked me how I was doing. I asked her if it would get worse than this. When she started to laugh, I asked for the epidural.
The doctor came in and gave me the epidural, but unfortunately, he made it much, much too strong, and I couldn’t move my entire lower body. I asked them to turn it off at one point because the feeling of being paralyzed was too much (I didn’t realize that this wasn’t normal at the time,) and instead they turned it down slightly.
A little after 1 am, they said I was only at 3 cm and that I should get some sleep. “You probably won’t have the baby until tomorrow afternoon or evening.” As most first time moms, this almost made me cry. That seemed entirely too long.
But we decided rest was a good thing, so we put away the game of cards we had been playing, and we turned off the Girl Next Door marathon we had on in the background, and we tried to get some sleep.
About an hour later, I started to feel some pressure, so I called the nurse thinking that maybe my epidural needed to be a little bit stronger. She got excited saying that maybe I was starting into active labor. She said that can sometimes make the pains come on stronger.
I will never forget the look on her face when she said, “Here is the baby’s head! You are ready to push!”
At that moment, things got really chaotic. Nurses and nurse’s aids started running in and out of the room getting the baby warmer and all of the equipment prepared. They got the doctor on the phone and told her to come immediately. My husband went out to tell my mom that the baby was about to come.
All of this chaos about me and my baby, and we were alone in the center of the room with all of this going on around us. I started shaking and I got really cold. My teeth chattered as they would with all three of my deliveries. On the one hand I was over the moon — I was about to become a mom. On the other hand I was terrified — would I be able to push her out? Would I know what to do with her after she came out and for the next eighteen years?
Ready or not, I was about to become a mom.
Less than ten minutes after this all started, the doctor was there at the end of the bed, and she told me to push. Three pushes later, and out she came. That purple little, writhing, beautiful (oh was she beautiful!) mess.
There’s something about that first moment with that first baby. It’s all a dream and a miracle. Just as much as a baby is being born, so is a mother and a father. Where before there were two people with a huge dream in their hearts, now there was a family. A family that, inexperienced as it is, would sink or swim together. A family that would figure it out together. A family that would take each new step on this journey together.
Awhile back, I posted Goose’s birth story.
Oh, now I’m crying! So many memories. So precious!