The Perpetual Student's Wife: Violet's Birth Story: Delivery Day

4 am on Wednesday, April 30 rolled around and I impatiently waited and stretched and arched my back to work out the 6 ½ day kidney stone pain with no success before the nursing staff came to prep me at 7:30. Did you know that kidney stones in pregnancy, while pretty darn common, should only last 48-60 hours. Mine lasted 156. That’s nice, I guess.

My best friend and her boys- Wahoo! Baby Time

Aaanyway, Rob wasn’t allowed to join me in the OR, but I had the head nurse, who was warm and kind and spoke English, with me, and our dear friend Annie, who was an incredible advocate for us during our long stay and many medical confusions and misinformation yo-yo’ing and the IV and fetal heart monitoring fiascos, was with Rob, anxiously waiting outside in the hall. I was wheeled in, got ANOTHER IV line in the inside crook of my right elbow, and then received my visit from the anesthesiologist. A quiet, nimble angel of a man who was calm, efficient and made the needle insertion last a grand total of 45 seconds and felt like two mini spinal massages and two placements of a dot marker with a ballpoint pen. I didn’t think he’d finished yet since it didn’t hurt at all, but then my legs felt warm and ta-da! It’s go time!

Unlike American OR visits for a C-section, I didn’t have a nice screen and open space on my chest for snuggling my little one once they arrived. I had a wad of hospital-grade comforter crammed over my abdomen and blocking my view of the man-handling down near my nether regions. It didn’t hurt, I wasn’t panicked, but I was distinctly aware of the jostling and yanking at the incision site. My whole body rocked side to side as they suctioned goodness knows what and they had to pull my kid’s tiny butt out first, then man-handle some more to get her little head out from its snuggly position of being wedged between the uterine wall and placenta.

Then, finally, a big scream for such a little person and I knew I was a parent.

Boy or girl? Boy or girl? I asked at least four times before anyone else in the room stopped gawking at my mysterious little one long enough to realize I was asking a question. I thought, all the way through my pregnancy, that it was going to be a little boy. We didn’t want to find out, and I had a sense of “little boy energy”.

Nope. She’s a girl!

I asked to see her and they had her literally bundled up to her eyeballs, but they brought her up to my face and touched her soft little forehead to mine. Beautiful round eyes, crinkly forehead all twisted up in concern over the no-labor-and-hormonal-cues-abrubt-removal she’d just endured. And blond freaking hair. Oh, geez- she’s going to look just like her dad and I’m going to seemingly have had nothing to do with her genetics.

I was wheeled out into an OR annex while they popped out into the hallway with her to show Rob. He’d guessed girl the whole time, and the nurse happily exclaimed that he was right! They wheeled me out and our entourage made its way back up to our room where I was plopped back onto my recovery bed and promptly ignored, unless it was to poke at me or arrange something with my IV line.