I brushed my hair. It smelled awkward because I'd used unfamiliar grooming products . It was a weird vanilla lime thing that my husband bought in the hospital gift shop. It was all they had. He'd packed our bags when he drove back to get our daughter, but we were out of conditioner at home; we meant to go to the store once we got back in town the previous Monday. This product set had shampoo, conditioner, hand lotion, body lotion, and bath gel. It was all vanilla and lime, which is a horrid smell.
I felt remarkably great. Our daughter was at a local park with the rest of my family while my husband and I waited to see if we would deliver today. I had eaten breakfast earlier, but had been told not to eat again in case a bed became available in the NICU. I was beginning to gain a sense of hope and promise. I was clean. My Mom had painted my toenails for me earlier, so they were the sexy cherry red color I normally keep them. I braided my hair while my husband and I chatted about trivial things. He jumped up and ran into the bathroom, and promptly vomited.
I pressed the nurse's button and when I heard the disembodied voice I spoke vaguely to the left again: "Can someone help me, please? My husband is sick." I felt hopeless. Whenever I've been sick, he's been so devoted. Whenever he's been sick, I've taken total care of him. This time, though, I had just been strapped back into the hospital bed after my overdue shower. I couldn't get up to go in there and be with him. I couldn't hold his hair back from his face and apply a cool washcloth and deliver ginger ale.
Laurie came in.
"I can't do anything," she said. "He isn't my patient."
"Of course!" I said. "I get it. Can you bring ME some ginger ale and some Tylenol?"
"I can do that," she winked at me.
Jono passed the rest of the day in a weirdness, laying prone on the father's bed in the hospital.
A few words about those father's beds... Are they crazy?! How can a reasonable person expect a grown man to sleep on a bed the size of a cubical desk and then also be prescient enough to do sudden double duty as husband and father? I would like to see Queen Size hospital beds so the fathers can snuggle up next to the new mothers, making us feel safe and secure while they get enough rest to be refreshed for the first diaper change that is inevitably their responsibility. "Husband-Coached Childbirth?" I don't want my husband coaching CHILDBIRTH, of all things, without adequate rest! I look at the hospital father's bed as something that has fallen through the cracks of Feminism.
So the next morning, he was finally dozing in that atrocious sleeping contraption when the anesthesiologist came to visit me.
I'd had a bad experience when my daughter was born: the anesthesiologist calculated my dose wrong and my blood pressure dropped to near-death levels and I blacked out. To her credit, though, she came into my room after and admitted her mistake. So I told this guy that I wanted him to verbally verify my weight before injecting me and to stay right by my face throughout the surgery so that he could react quickly if something was amiss. I also asked if he could numb me up BEFORE the catheter was put in. I'm a great patient: I do everything I'm told, I answer questions in bullet points, I'm never squimish, I'm very cooperative... unless a catheter enters the equation and then I'm a total diva.
After talking to him, Laurie came in to tell me that my family had returned from the park and was asking to see me. She let them all in at once: my sister and her family, my Dad, my Mom, and my Grammy. And my sweet daughter. I felt so bad for her. She was scared of the straps, wires, and beeps coming from me. Everyone dispersed around the room, finding a comfy spot. My Mom sat next to my husband and offered her support.
My doctor came in. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Grammy sidle up in her chair and smile fetchingly.
I don't remember what he said; it was something about delivering the next morning. After he left, Grammy smiled at me.
"That's your doctor?" she asked.
"Yes."
"He's right handsome," she observed. "I bet he's a great doctor. The great ones are always handsome."
I didn't sleep that night. Jono was up and down vomiting every few hours. The documentary "Mankind: The Story of Us" had started, so we tried to watch it. He finally fell asleep just before dawn. When I realized he was sleeping, I undid my bedstraps and detached the wires so I could close the blinds and hopefully buy him a little more rest.
But, oh! Alarms go off if you do that! I felt like such an idiot. Of course, if you take the monitor off your belly, it looks, at the nurse's station, like a baby's heart has stopped beating. Thankfully, Jono slept through the Nurse Brigade, and they closed the blinds for us, and our son's heart was still beating as if it didn't have an issue at all. I relaxed a bit.
For a few minutes.
Maybe a full hour.
Then they came for me. In my memory (which is most likely inaccurate) seven doctors and nurses stormed my room just after my entire family came in.
***A blur of activity***
My favorite nurse, Laurie, was holding my hands as I sat upright in an overly bright room. The anesthesiologist appeared and tipped my face up with his fingers. He looked me in the eye and repeated our conversation back to me and asked me if that was all correct. Laurie showed me pictures of her sweet kids. I felt a lengthy puncture in my lower spine, followed by what can only be described as a "filling of the spine," and that's local anesthesia. None of that was painful, just odd. After that, I kind of tipped over and that amazing anesthesiologist stayed true to his promise. He never left my face. I was aware of the catheter being inserted, but only because he told me so. Laurie appeared for a minute, and I could see the crinkles of her eyes as she smiled at me behind her surgical mask.
I heard voices. So many voices.
Finally! I saw Jono's face. He looked tired and worried. I barely remembered that he'd been sick.
I felt a bit of tugging at my abdomen.
There was a suspended silence in the room. Remember: amniocentesis was inconclusive. Other than the two certain heart defects, no one knew what was going on with Elijah.
I looked at my anesthesiologist in the eye. "I can feel a bit of pain, kind of like menstrual cramps. Am I supposed to?"
"No. I'll take care of it."
"I'm kind of freaking out. Do you have something for that?"
"Yes. It will probably cost extra."
"I don't care."
"Okay. I'll put it in your IV. You'll feel better in about 10 seconds."
I heard a bit of a chuckle. A voice. Suddenly, a baby was put in my line of vision. He looked like Sophia with Down Syndrome. At this point, we didn't know if Elijah had Down Syndrome conclusively, but he looked like it to me.
The most important things, though: he was breathing on his own just fine, he wasn't blue, he didn't have a cleft palate, he wouldn't require machines to survive. Not yet.
