2003-09-19 - 10:35 a.m. - Cycle day:

Resume flashback mode ...

M. was born just as the sun was coming up. My attention was pretty evenly divided between the baby and my post-partum repairs, so I've lost some track of the timeline at this point. Dr. Hippie was concerned about my bleeding, so they ran Pitocin in my IV line and he packed my uterus while he was suturing me (and then unpacked it when he was done). I thought it was sort of funny that the only drugs I got were after the baby was born.

The Husband saw the nurses note the APGAR test results - M. scored an 8 at one minute and a 9 at five minutes - but I assume they did the evaluation while I was holding her. No one took her from my arms until almost as hour later when she was weighed and measured. As I mentioned in my previous entry, she weighed 7 lbs 3 oz (after nursing for a while) and measured 20.5" long. Her head circumference was 35 cm and her chest was 31 cm. She didn't enjoy getting weighed, or anything else that required her to be naked. (Diaper changes were a major drama and have only recently become more tolerable to her.)

We spent the first hour or so after birth just trying to absorb the situation, and then we started making phone calls. We were both exhausted, but our excitement and sense of obligation to far-away family kept us awake just long enough to contact our parents and siblings. I was parched and ravenous, but when they brought me breakfast, I could hardly eat (ditto with lunch, which came about an hour later). M. wasn't really eating much, either. Both of us slept most of Friday afternoon.

The nursing shift changed right around the time M. was born, so there were new faces around. My introduction to one nurse came when she arrived to check my uterus - I wasn't expecting the amount of pain that would come just from pushing on my belly. I was pretty close to hating that nurse, although she redeemed herself in subsequent visits. All of the nurses were pretty amazing. One of them was a certified lactation consultant, but at least three different people helped me learn a proper latch and showed me different nursing positions. There was one nurse that I didn't initially warm up to because she was so eager to get me out of bed and I was scared of how much that would hurt, but she became my best friend when she prevented me from cracking my head open on the bathroom floor when I passed out after my first attempt to shower. (Turns out my iron - which I'd managed to get up to 37.5 - dropped to 28 after delivery. It took a couple days for all the woozies to wear off.)

Dr. Hippie stopped by Friday afternoon to check on both M. and me. He declared us both excellent, naturally. He also laid out the likely scenario had I requested an epidural. He said that, while he doubted a c-section would have been necessary, he did think I would have ended up with a forceps or vacuum delivery, which in my case would have required an episiotomy which then would have caused a 4th degree tear, rather than the 2nd degree tear I got on my own. (Or in other words, a tear that would have been rated a 10 instead of a 6). I was so grateful that he told me that. I didn't plan a natural childbirth for the glory of it. I did it because I thought it was the best thing for me and my baby. To have him confirm that I actually spared us both a significant amount of pain and trauma by going drug-free was ... well, it was the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me.

Because of the fainting, and the fact that I had to be catheterized to get out the liter of fluid in my bladder, everyone agreed that I should probably stay in the hospital an extra night. I was totally supportive of this decision. I really appreciated knowing that there was always help just outside the door, and I liked being able to spend all day and night sleeping in disposable clothing and on bedding I'd never have to wash. Because of my trouble peeing, my uterus couldn't contract well so my bleeding stayed heavy - I got pretty skilled at the whole bathroom ritual involving the peri-rinse bottle, antiseptic spray, the magic epi-foam and the giganto hospital-issue pads.

We started the first night with M. in the bassinet, but after her first night-time feeding, she was in bed with me. It just felt unright to have her away from me. I needed to be able to touch her, and I felt like she needed to be touching me, too. I wish the hospital bed had been bigger, because it would have been nice of The Husband had been able to sleep with us, too. As it was, he spent Friday and Saturday night in the fold-out couch that I labored on (and probably stained).

We had two visitors on Friday: our friend P, who has two toddlers, and our friend L, who took digital pictures of M. and emailed them to the grandparents as quickly as humanly possible. L also came back on Saturday and brought us dinner, which was the first real food I ate. At about the same time, our friend M. arrived with two bottles of Guinness to toast the new arrival. I think that made the whole thing official for The Husband.

We got ready to go Sunday afternoon. I showered on my own and then put on the loosest non-maternity clothes I'd been able to find. We got M. in her going-home outfit and even got her in the car seat without much fuss, but then we spent too long fritzing around with the straps and she was in a full meltdown by the time we left. She hollered all the way down to the lobby and kept it up while The Husband loaded up the car. She got quiet once we were moving, fortunately, or else I don't know how we would have made it home. As it was, The Husband was on edge and exceptionally cautious the entire drive back.

When we got home, we let the desperately lonely and enthusiastic dog out into the backyard and The Husband played with him for a while before M. and I went inside. The Husband carried the baby throughout the house, showing her each room. And then I think we both felt that "Well, now what?" panicky feeling at the same time. M. was sleepy, so I laid her down in the crib for lack of a better place to put her. I very gingerly curled up on the guest/baby room bed so I could rest and still see her. It still had not completely sunk in that this was a permanent thing - I felt like a very devoted babysitter.

I remember changing her into her first set of cloth diapers, but the rest of the day is pretty hazy. I recall that we ordered a pizza for dinner, and I got pineapple and Canadian bacon on my half, which is really unusual for me. I don't know what time we went to bed, but I know we were only woken up twice, and were pleased and amazed that M. had slept in 4-5 hour stretches.

The Doula came over the next night. She brought us a hot, homemade dinner, sat and talked with us for a while, and then gave me a back and foot massage plus a Reiki treatment. Those three hours alone made her services worth every penny. I wanted to found a national holiday in her honor. She also helped me relax a little about breastfeeding, which then made the whole endeavor much easier for both the baby and me. We got much, much better after that night (as made clear by M.'s one week weight gain), mostly by me just reminding myself to stay calm and let things happen.

I've been trying to relay that principle into all aspects of parenting, and it's made a big difference in my stress level. Although when I do get stressed, it seems to pile on up - I woke up on Tuesday feeling that expected but still disconcerting uncontrollable weepiness, which didn't get much better when my washing machine blew up (literally - there was smoke), and then my father and The Husband got in a car accident on their way to pick up some dinner (they're okay, but the car was rendered undriveable, making it sort of hard for my parents to drive the 900 miles back home). Things are going much better now, though. It's been two weeks, and I'm almost starting to feel like I know what I'm doing.

Edited to add: I forgot to mention that I was somewhat of a celebrity in the birthing center for having a natural labor/delivery. All of the staff heard about my experience and they were all really supportive of it. One of the nurses actually said "It's so nice to see that women can still have babies."

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