Today is my son's birthday. His actual time of birth is 8:29 pm, so technically, as I start this post, he's still seven, and we're rapidly approaching eight. The actual time matters to nobody except me, the date is good enough for everyone else.
I often wonder if I will look back every year, on May 10th, and think "Oh, at this time x years ago, my water broke all over the floor at the hospital." or "At this time x years ago, I was starting to push" or "Shit. At this time x years ago he was born and I was out like a light and his dad was in the other room." or "Fk. I remember hearing the baby next door, and I wanted mine, but I couldn't get my nurse buzzer and my husband was asleep and couldn't hear me because I had been tubed and had no voice, so I just kept pushing my morphine drip until it locked me out and I fell asleep."
I love my son. Absolutely, without fail, he is one of the best things to happen to me, love him. I would take the bullet, give away my organs, do whatever it took for my child kind of love. I cannot imagine my world without him - at all.
But, my memories of him being born are mixed.
I was that crazy woman that actually enjoyed her labor. For me, it was very calm, almost relaxing, and at no point was it overwhelming and out of control, until the very end, when it all hit the fan.
I had no drugs, no iv, and had made it to ten and was pushing, when they realized that Q was trying to make his appearance chin first. This is a virtual impossibility in a first time mom, with an anterior baby. Had he been posterior and/or been a 2nd or more child, they might have tried to continue with a normal delivery. Not for me.
My doctor looked at me and told me I needed surgery, which I understood was necessary, and I looked at my husband and said "Oh, hurry, go get the blue clothes" and the nurse told me "Oh, no honey, he can't come in, you'll be having general anesthesia, there isn't time for anything else."
Oh.
They took the brakes off the bed and they ran - I remember yelling to my husband to tell my Dad that I was sorry, that I would be fine. After that, I remember my husbands big brown eye watching through a crack in the operating room doors, until somebody went and closed it on him. I remember the room being freezing cold, and the table being very narrow, afraid I would fall off. I remember the anesthesiologist putting a mask over my face, and me taking if off, telling them that I was still awake, not to start yet, when I felt the cold of the betadine on my belly.
The next thing I knew, I felt my Dad's hand on my forehead as I woke up.
My mother in law was in the chair next to my bed, and my husband was somewhere with our friend.
I was awake long enough to learn that he was a boy, and I saw a quick video of him, that my husband had taken when they took him from the OR to the NICU. I was awake long enough to realize that he didn't look right on the video, but not awake enough to question the answers I was given.
I woke up again, in a different room, with an iv in my left arm, my husband asleep in a chair to my right. I couldn't speak, because, as I found out later, I had been tubed in surgery as an airway precaution (standard), and I couldn't find my nurse buzzer. The baby next door was crying and all I wanted was my baby, but stuck in a bed, unable to call for help, and afraid to move, I just kept hitting my morphine drip until it locked me out and I cried myself to sleep.
The next morning I was up and wanted my baby, but they had to keep him in the NICU. I had to jump through hoops to get to see him, and it wasn't until almost 18 hours after he was born, that my husband wheeled me down there, helped me scrub up and introduced me to our son. I heard this wheezy, pathetic little cry, and that was our son.
He was in a diaper, under the lights, with all sorts of monitor leads and an iv. His face looked like he had been beat up, and his voice was almost non existent because of a collapsed vocal cord. All of that happened when he tried to come chin first, and he ended up extending his neck and basically my pushing was causing his face to get smashed repeatedly into my pubic bones.
He was born limp, blue, not breathing with barely a pulse. I later found out that his beginning apgar was 1, and the nurse told me that was generous.
This makes me want to cry, eight years later.
I know understand why my Mom cried when she told me the story of my birth, even twenty years after the fact. I now get it.
The baby my husband and I waited 40 weeks for, the baby we had planned to meet, together, was born in a cold, sterile, bright white operating room, with a mother that was asleep and a father pacing the halls and reassuring our friends/family in the hall that it was going to be okay.
(It's 8:29 by my laptop! Happy Birthday Q!)
Our son needed to be resuscitated, poked and prodded. I don't know what's worse - him being welcomed by strangers, me asleep and his Dad not there, or me having been awake and the two of us having had to watch that happen. Both give me the shivers.
His birth ended up a five day NICU stay, and at the end, I felt like they were holding my son hostage - all I wanted was my baby. My baby, at my home, with us. It was made all that more difficult because by looking at him, physically, he wasn't sick. He was the biggest baby in there, and by far had the least number of issues, but he still had to stay until they could be guaranteed that his inspitory stridor was not going to cause problems.
My physical recovery was quick and uneventful, my scar is slightly wonky, but I don't care.
My emotions took a while to recover, combining his birth with the lovely roller coaster of post partum hormones, but it all worked itself out.
We finally made it home, and we hunkered down, amidst various doctor appointments, and started being a family. I remember our first night at home, how I sat on the floor of his room with him when he woke during the night, and I just held him and looked at him, and marveled. I didn't try to get him back to sleep, and I didn't care that I should be sleeping and I still had a surgery to recover from, but I took my son, and I held him and I stared at him, and soaked up every bit of Q that I could. It was beautiful.
And now he's eight. He officially turned eight eleven minutes ago, by my clock.
And what a fantastic eight years it has been.
I have been privileged to travel with him in a world of rocks and dirt, dump trucks and fire engines, John Deere and dinosaurs, Dr. Seuss books and Thomas the Tank Engine trains. Now we're moving on to chapter books and art supplies. He loves to dance and ride his bike, to make up stories and elaborate battle scenes. He thinks about the future, what he'll be and what he'll invent. He cares about others and the environment, and he mostly likes his sister, when shes not being pesky.
So what was a rocky start, and is still an emotionally tough memory for me, mixes with so many memories that in a million years I never would have imagined having the privilege of having, I am the parent of an eight year old boy.
Happy Birthday to you, Q. Happy Birthday to you.
