Shockingly, the Kardashian marathon and constant fetal monitoring wasn't doing great things for my blood pressure. At 8:30 pm, they gave me another dose of labetalol, which helped a little bit but not enough. My nurse broke the news - it was IV magnesium time. Oh, and once that started, I wasn't allowed to get out of bed to pee anymore, (Come on, I'm like a thousand weeks pregnant and guzzling water. Of course I've got to go every thirty seconds!) I'd heard awful things about the magnesium, so I asked to speak with the doctor to see if there was any alternative. I can't remember exactly who came in to talk, but the bottom line was that there wasn't really much of a choice. I sighed, had one last pee and reluctantly surrendered my veins.
It wasn't too bad at first - I just felt a little extra warmth in the room. They gave me an Ambien around midnight and we settled in for some sleep. A little bit after 3 am, my nurse came in to reposition the fetal monitor and I couldn't get back to sleep after that. There's just no getting comfy on your back in a hospital bed when you're hooked up to a zillion different machines. I watched TV, watched Ed sleep, waited for the sun to rise.
At 6 am, it was time for the cervical check. Zero change! Thanks for nothing, cervadil! I was still closed and 50% effaced. They talked about doing another round of ripener but decided to just start me on Pitocin anyway. Pretty quickly, I was epidural'ed by a team of doctors, one guiding the other through the procedure. It made me super nervous but the epidural wound up being textbook perfect - I could move my legs, put a bit of weight on them to scooch myself around, and I could feel a mild tightening sensation during each contraction but I didn't feel any pain. (Well, not until later, at least. Spoiler alert.) I dozed off again for a bit and woke up at 10:45 to the peculiar sensation of amniotic fluid burbling out of my nether regions. Another check - one centimeter dilated! This show is getting on the road!
My parents and Ed's mom arrived sometime around noon, around the same time the magnesium started making me feel truly awful. I was burning up, sweating, nauseated and puking. The next hours passed in a blur of misery. My mom, ever the savior in moments of crisis, was amazing. She held my puke bucket a hundred times and directed everyone else to take turns bringing me damp, cool washcloths for my forehead. Ed brought me water and ice and Jello from the patient lounge, because I was so thirsty that I had to keep drinking, even knowing it would come back up a moment later. My mom broke out the eucalyptus and mint aromatherapy lotion and rubbed my feet for what felt like hours. I was so miserable. I thought the hard part of labor would be feeling contractions and that the epidural would mean my labor would be blissful and serene, full of giddy anticipation for the arriving baby. Instead I was so unhappy that I more or less forgot that I was pregnant and started to feel like I'd contracted some awful tropical disease that I might not survive. Of course, the cervical checks reminded me that there was an end game here... and that I was nowhere near it. I was three centimeters in the early afternoon. I was three centimeters at 5 pm. They said, "if you haven't made any progress by 11 pm, we'll do a c-section." I was three centimeters at 11 pm. They said, "Let's wait til three am to decide." I was three centimeters at 3 am. And I was three centimeters at 4 am, when they finally agreed to call it. (At that point, I'd pretty much said to the doctor "Just get me a fucking scalpel and I'll do it myself, I need to get off of this magnesium.")
I wish I remembered more of Leo's actual birth. When I try to remember it, it comes in flashes of bright OR lights: lifting my hips to scoot from the bed to the table. Throwing up into that weird sock thing. Seeing Ed in his paper scrubs and face mask and not recognizing him at first. Hearing Leo cry and thinking, "Oh. There's a baby in here." I remember saying, "Someone needs to feed that baby!" I know that Ed brought him over to me, that he showed me pictures on the camera screen, that I did see him. But I don't remember feeling anything besides a pang of relief. The baby's here, the baby is healthy, the baby didn't die. This is the hard part of the story, the part that even now makes me get teary and sad for both of us. I spent so long picturing what that moment would be like. I dreamed it in sparkly slow motion, the rush of endorphins, the overwhelming waves of love, how I'd gaze into Ed's eyes and whisper in awe, "We did it. We made this." Of course, it wasn't like that at all. And it makes me sad that maybe it somehow cheated Leo out of something important. Today, I love him so much that it feels like my heart could just burst. I love him so much I can feel it like a vibration in every cell of my body. I love him so much, I think that love pours out of me and surrounds him like an aura, and I wish I could have enveloped him in that love from the second he was born. I know, of course, that I did love him then just as much as I do now. I just couldn't feel it at that moment. But more than the puking or the sweating or the failing epidural, this is the part that was the absolute worst.
Oh right, the epidural! Soon after Leo was born, someone noticed him barking a bit so they whisked him and Ed off to the nursery for observation. (He turned out to be just fine.) As the doctor went about returning my organs to their original place inside my body, I realized I could feel a lot of what was happening. By the time they started stitching, I was in a ton of pain. "Guys? I can feel this." I said. They told me they'd adjust some things and continued on. "It didn't work!" I said, beginning to panic. No one responded. "Seriously," I said to my nurse, "could I at least have a shot of whiskey and a bullet to bite on?" She laughed. "I knew I liked you," she said. We both laughed. I tried to think about other things. The anesthesiologist was telling dirty jokes. I chuckled along with the others in the room. Soon enough, it was over and I was in recovery, begging the nurse for a glass of water.
I was alone for a long time in there - an hour, maybe. It was strange not being pregnant anymore. I hadn't been so far apart from Leo for nine months and now, I was really by myself. Then Ed came in, carrying a paper with Leo's footprints. They were massive. I couldn't believe they belonged to a newborn baby. Then my parents came in. I grabbed my mom's water bottle and guzzled it before the water-rationing nurse could come by and catch me. And we waited and waited and waited. Then they rolled me into my private room. There was a picture of an angel on the door for some reason, and I was irrationally convinced that they'd put me in some sort of special room for moms who were recovering after losing their babies. I was still on magnesium, nearly delirious from lack of sleep, no longer nauseated but still burning up. My bed was right next to a huge picture window and I looked outside. Everything was covered in a blanket of wild, unexpected late March snow. I'm dreaming, I thought. I shed the hospital gown and changed into my own tank top. Ed went to yell at the nurses about turning down the temperature in my room. And then they wheeled Leo in.
I wish I could remember holding him for the first time. I have the pictures, but I don't have the memory. But I do remember spending the rest of the day just staring at him. I loved his pointy, elegant little nose and his sweet, gentle eyes. His hair was so soft and downy, his limbs were so long and graceful, his cheeks were so chubby. He reminded me of a baby bird, somehow both delicate and solid at the same time. And I remember the first time he latched on for a feeding. It seemed so natural and easy, I remember thinking, "Oh, breastfeeding is going to be a snap! Ha, and people say it's so hard! Well, not with this perfect latcher!" (Hahaha. Hahahahahaha. Haha. Ha.)
And there we were! He was finally here. And we were all falling in love.
