On my tenth day in the hospital, having just bid farewell to my favorite nurse Lindsey, my friend Stacey came by and brought lunch. One of the OBs popped her head in the door and asked if I wanted a C section or a VBAC. For a moment we just all froze. After days of nothingness, I was surprised to be asked anything at all about birthing options. As it happened, the L&D was full of patients from my practice and the OB just wanted to make sure that if anything happened, she would be prepared for me. I told her that I was having another C section and she left us in a state of confusion.
That day marked the ninth anniversary of my husband and my first date, January 18th. He brought Chinese food to the hospital to celebrate before heading home. After he left I felt strange. It was the same kind of feeling that I had the weekend before my water broke, the same feeling that had me writing emails at 3am about how much I had to do to get ready for the baby (two hours before my water broke) and the very same feeling that I had when I heard that music box. When they hooked PITA to the monitor, his heartbeat was all over the place. As I tried to chase him around my belly with the monitor, a sharp pain went through my side. The nurse thought it was gas, assured me that the baby was fine, reattached the monitor and went back to the desk to monitor him. She was back in about five minutes.
The baby must have been in distress for them to have come in so quickly. They told me we were going to Labor and Delivery for observation. After so much monitoring, I was hardly excited by the news. As they wheeled me, I grabbed my cell phone, just in case. Erin, one of my favorite nurses, was reassuring on the way to the elevator. I was having pains in my side, small contractions, but nothing more. My OB met us at the elevator and when I asked her if I should call my husband, her answered could not have shocked me more. She said yes.
He had not been gone for more than two hours when I called him to come back. The sound in his voice was something I had never heard there before. It was sheer and undeniable panic. It was 11:00 p.m. when they wheeled me into the observation room. My nurse was a wonderful woman from Ohio. We laughed and talked and I was as calm as a Hindu cow. I did not actually believe that I was in labor.
Matt arrived as they were prepping me for the operating room and the look on his face made the hair on my arms stand up. I had never seen him so scared. There I was, my blood pressure lower than it had been when we were upstairs and there was Matt, clutching his scrubs and looking very much like he was going to be sick. I tried to tell him it would all be okay, but I don’t know that he heard a single word I said.
I walked into the OR, a very strange sight indeed. My last C section had been an emergency after 14 hours of grueling back labor. I had not really seen my surroundings. This was another experience entirely. The room looked more like something you would see in a sci-fi film. I sat on the table and smiled at the techs who were attaching monitors to me and asking me questions. I braced myself for the spinal, as my fear of needles was horrible. I managed to sit quietly and calmly while they did it. I believed the calm came from knowing that somehow the baby would be okay. I think much closer to the truth is that I felt a deep denial that I would not be taking my baby home with me.
The C section went well, with everyone chatting and me remaining very calm. At one point they actually checked to make sure I was okay, as my breathing was so steady. Matt, on the other hand, had terror in his eyes. Even though we had gone to the NICU a few nights before to prepare him for the size of the baby, I do not think anyone is ever ready for their own child to be so small and helpless. My heart just went out to him. I wished so much that I could make him believe, as I did, that it really was going to be alright.
I had teased with my OB that a baby like PITA would come out screaming. She highly doubted that his lungs would handle that, but at 2:18am, Joshua Scott screamed his way into this world. Though the NICU team stood by, ready to whisk him away, there was no sense of urgency once he arrived. His APGAR scores were eight and nine. He was pink and doing really well. They let us see him, his squishy little face barely visible between the blanket and the knitted hat. He looked tiny, but amazing. He weighed 4 pounds and 3 ounces. He was sixteen and a half inches long.
Everyone was in good spirits having just delivered a healthy baby and as I made my way to recovery only one thing mattered to me, being with my son. I had already been warned that the only way in the NICU was in a wheelchair and I was determined to get there as quickly as I could. I was going to be fine. I would not shake from the morphine like I had with my first son. I held everything inside and did not shake. My nurse had stayed with me and kept urging me just to let go and shake. It was the only thing I had control over and I was not about to lose that. When my Mom and Matt knew I would be okay, they went down to the NICU to see Josh. The nurse touched my arm once they had left and said, “Let go” and just like unzipping your pants after Thanksgiving dinner, I let out a deep breath and shook from head to toe. It would be the first of countless times that I would hold in a storm so those around me would feel as though things were fine. I was about to find out just how insignificant a part of the equation my recovery was.
As I concentrated on moving the big toe on my right foot and checked the clock to find it at 4:00 in the morning, the door opened and there stood my Mom and Matt. Had you told me that the entire city of Charlotte burned to the ground just by judging from the looks on their face, I would have believed it. Matt’s face was paralyzed with the fear that came pouring out of him the moment he began to speak. Together they told me that Josh was not breathing on his own, but was on a ventilator. His nurse had been very thorough in preparing them for the road ahead. They did not want any false hope. Josh would probably be staying in the NICU for the next two months.
I could see them standing there, Matt’s devastated face, my Mom with the look she always had on her face when she was scared to tell us something that would hurt us. I could hear the words they were saying, but it went through me. They did not know anything. I would go down. I would talk to them. We would be in the hospital a week, tops. I just watched my toe and willed it to move. The NICU was open at 7:30 and I planned to be the first one in the door. My nurse asked if I wanted a suite on the 8th floor and I thanked her, but I knew I wanted my room back upstairs and I knew my nurses were waiting for me.
I was back in my room at 5:30am. I told Lindsey that I would need a wheelchair at 7:15. Having just witnessed me getting in my bed from the stretcher, doubt crawled across her face. I was insistent and she was just as insistent that I get some rest. I waited in the dark for a sleep that would never come. I listened to the steady breathing from my Mom and from Matt and watched as the minute hand dragged itself around and around the clock.
At 7:00 I woke everyone up. I called my friends to tell them that Josh was born. I called my family. I buzzed Lindsey to bring the wheelchair. She appeared, her smiling, teasing manner of nursing would fail. She reminded me that I had given birth just five hours ago, as if I could forget. She urged sleep and I repeated my request for the wheelchair. She brought it in.
With every ounce of strength that I had, I pulled myself out of that bed. The force of a mother’s love welled within and though it took almost 40 minutes, I was in that wheelchair. When she saw the pool of blood next to the wheelchair, Lindsey said nothing, she just cleaned it up and smiled at me. She knew I was not to be deterred. I was off to the NICU.
There was a maze of endless hallways that lead to the NICU. Once we arrived at the door, a video camera scanned us and we were buzzed in after announcing who we were.. To the right are sinks and we had to scrub our hands with hot water and soap and pull a yellow, plastic gown over our clothes. In all the times that I went through this process, never once was it bearable. The anxiety and excitement that I felt almost consumed me. Finally, clean and ready, we were ready to make our way into the nursery.
The east nursery has automatic doors that swing open. We had seen the NICU at night, so the brightness og the morning caught me off guard at first. There were nurses everywhere and as I was wheeled past baby after baby, lilliputian in their tiny hats. I stopped in front of Josh’s bed, and took my first real look at my son.
He was laying on his back under a heat lamp, wearing only a diaper. A piece of tape held the ventilator in his mouth. On his chest were “leads” that fed his temperature, respiratory rate, and heart beat into his monitor. His precious left wrist had an enormous identity bracelet around it and his right arm had an IV in it. A clip held his tiny umbilical cord and his big right toe glowed with a red light from his pulse oxygen cord. I was not stunned or scared. I just put my hand on his head and told him that he was going to be just fine.
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