Edit: 1/14/08 2226 - More to the story.
Edit: 1/15/08 0539 - More to the story.Alright, so I'm home. I guess you could already tell that. But here's the low-down on everything that's happened so far.
Tuesday, Jan 8 - 5am : Josh and I wake, partially moved into his mother's house. The alarm hasn't gone off yet, but I'm anxious. Today's the day I get to see my baby face to face. Today, I get to hold her in my arms. Today, I become a Mommy. I poked Josh awake, saying, "If you want to shower, now's a good time. Don't rush. It's still very early." He rolled over and just smiled at me, then snuggled closer and held me in his arms until the alarm rang a half hour later. That's when he got up, and moved to the bathroom. On his way, he put a gentle hand on my forehead and said, "I'll be right back, sweetheart. You get some more rest. You and Lori have a big day today." I couldn't help but smile, nodding in reply. Such gentle motions from so big and powerful a man leave me breathless and without words. I listened to him get into the shower, laying on my side, and tried to ready myself. Anxiety came to me. Unpleasant sensation. Laying in bed, suddenly afraid of the unknown. But no sooner had I started to feel that, than I sensed another presence. Someone else was in the room with me. The sense of Him was warm, comforting. He was a soldier, sent for one purpose alone: to stand guard on me and protect me from Fear, Worry, Doubt, and Pain. It felt as if He curled up behind me, as Josh had done the night before. There was no heartbeat. Instead, I felt the warmth of a perfect Summer's Day, when the wind is light and cool and the sunlight is gentle and warm. Relaxation flowed through me very bones. In my mind's eye, I could see this Faceless One, a being made of gentle sunlight, perfect white cloud, and the softest of down feather, as he took off his breastplate. It was silver-white armor, metal but lighter than air, thin as silk but stronger than steel. Attached were his wings; white dove-feather radiating with a warm glow, like a night-light. He draped it on me, and it seemed to settle on my shoulders, around my ribs, and against my back. Just like His arms had felt to be wrapped; just like Josh's arms were wrapped the night before. I smiled, relaxed, and nestled down to a light sleep until Josh's touch on my shoulder woke me. I felt refreshed and renewed, ready for the day. Excitement and Joy were once again mine.
We dressed, finished the packing, and stepped outside of the rooms we have and into the main part of the house, where I got the glimpse of a clock. 6am. All of that, and only an hour had past. "It's a bit early, Josh. My appointment isn't until seven," I said, eyeing the clock. There was the faintest of blushes, seen on his face only as a grin that could be called sheepish. "Well, we'll just sit down and wait a little bit," he said in an awkward tone, while he shifted his weight from his right to his left foot. He's anxious now too. "We could leave now, get there early, and start the check in, if you want," I offered, trying to hide the smile as his eyes lit up. "Yeah, let's go," he replied and moved for the door instantly. "Should we wake your mother and let her know we're heading out now," I asked as he worked at the doorknob. He didn't answer right away as he shuffled with the door. An annoyed little 'hmph' escaped him as he turned from the door and said, "Looks like we'll have to. The door is locked and I don't have the key." On cue, out walks his mom, somewhat bleary-eyed, asking, "Key to what? You're not leaving until we pray." Perhaps Josh was trying to avoid this. His faith is something personal. His mother's way is too forward at times. But we sat, listened to her prayers over us. I said my own, thanking the divine for the angel's armor, thanking for the strength I'll need and the calmness I feel. Josh prayed too, in his own way. His eyes closed, his hand tightened on mine, and his breath stilled for a few heartbeats while he sent his wishes and thoughts Above. Half past six, and we head out toward the hospital. I make a few calls to family letting them know that we're on our way, and to call Josh's number, or mine as he'll have it with him, for progress checks through out the day. Arlene called right as we were arriving to the hospital; I had barely gotten out of the car.
We walk in, register, give the clerk all my medical orders, and then sit and wait. And wait. And wait. Kathy, Josh's mom, joins us before going into work. The clerks change their shift. Lights come on, and phones start to ring. Kathy leaves, and still we wait. I feel my first mild contraction. "Ma'am, I'm sorry to bother, I know we're waiting on a room, but if you could let them know that I think I'm having some mild contractions right now, I'd really appreciate it," I state to the clerk that's trying desperately to secure me a labor and delivery room. Twenty minutes later, and she gets me into triage. Any bed is better than now bed, and there they can at least begin the monitoring and blood work (though they refused to infuse me with the induction chemical, not wanting me to go into full labor and have my baby in the ER).
In we go, and I get into the little gown and socks, pee in the cup, and get into bed. Fetal monitor gets hooked up, and they're just about to open the blood work baggie when a delivery nurse arrives with a wheelchair. "I'm ready for Ms. Carranza now," she said, and with some doing I'm transfered to a wonderful, dimly lit, comfortably large delivery suite. My mom and Josh's Aunt Linda arrive and we begin the next phase of waiting. I glance at the clock. It's 9am.
Edit: 1/14/08 2226 - More to the story.
The doctor visits me. I'm having contractions and am 2cm dilated already. Time for the booster, aka the labor inducing drug: oxytocin. They shoot me up at 10am, and for two hours everything is okay. The contractions are mild, and I'm pretty much talking through them, laughing with Aunts Debbie & Linda and Mom, and not really doing much of anything. Josh takes a break and Arlene joins us for her lunch break.
Edit: 1/15/08 0539 - More to the story.
Arlene, this baby is all your fault. Not five minutes after her arrival, and one Arlene-joke later, and the first active labor pain hits me. Labor. It's not as bad as everyone made it out to be. I kept getting horror stories, that labor was the single most painful thing ever. In actuality, while I've never truely felt anything quite quite like labor pains, I've had menstrual cramps that hurt worse than labor pains. (When cramps land you in the ER getting pumped with pain meds, you know they're bad.) I don't think... no, I know, for a fact, that I simply could not have handled the pain the way I did without Josh's constant support.
First time mom, here. And wasn't ever able to find and enroll in a Lamaze class, so I was pretty much clueless. Thank God for my delivery nurse. A three-time mom herself, Gina was awesome at describing what I'm going to feel and how best I could handle it. I started off by asking Josh to talk to me. Now, I know that sounds a bit bizarre, but when he uses a certain type of voice, soft and deep and slow, all my tension just melts away. That was the voice I was asking for. I didn't much care what he was saying as long as it was in that Voice. And the things he was telling me were making Aunt Linda laugh. Stories about his grandfather, and fishing in Louisiana. Apparently, there was this alligator that stole one of Granpa Grant's fishing lures. Okay, not one of, but his favorite lure. It had gotten stuck around the gator's tail, and Granpa had to cut it loose. Several month later, Granpa's out fishing on that same strip of lake, when he sees his fishing lure, sitting out on the water, in plain sight. Delighted, Granpa moves his boat over and reaches out to scoop up his lure. No sooner had he closed his hand around the lure, than the line still attached to the lure goes taunt, and the very same gator Granpa had cut loose months before, comes snapping out at him from the water. Granpa had gotten hooked by a gator! The very gator he'd hooked himself! And using his own lure against him. See, the gator, having gotten the lure stuck to his tail, noticed that he'd caught a fish with it. When he ate the fish off the lure, lo and behold, another fish came. And another, and so on. Granpa had given this gator the tool he needed to fish for himself. I guess that old adage about giving a man a fish over teaching a man to fish can be applied to gators too.
By 1pm, I'm in full active labor, and people other than Josh are really starting to distract me from staying calm and not tensing up at each contraction. Everyone had cleared the room but him, for a lunch break, and when my mother came back in, I heard her talking. Tension flooded into me, and it was the most painful contraction I had felt. I couldn't focus on Josh's voice with her voice there. I started chanting at her, "Bye, Mom. Bye. Bye. Bye, Mom. Bye. Bye. Bye!" Gina got the message, and I heard her very calmly take my mother by the hand and lead her toward the door. "I'm sorry," I heard her say as Josh was reclaiming my focus, "Sounds like she doesn't want any more visitors right now." I was loosing control. That one break and I was whimpering, "I can't do this anymore. I'm tired. I can't breathe. I can't. I can't. Make it stop, just for a moment. Just so I can think. Just so I can catch my breath. I need ten minutes. Ten minutes to rest, and think. Please? Please?" Josh's voice sounded worried, "Do you want an epidural?" Epidural? Morphine? A smack to the back of the head. "Anything to let me catch my breath, to let me think a moment. Anything. I don't care," I remember replying. I'm glad now that I had signed the consent for an epidural. I heard Gina acknowledge, and call for the epidural. "He'll be here very soon, Claudia," she said, "In the meantime, try to stay focused on your breathing, like we'd talked about. Each pain opening your hips up to make room for Baby."
Open. That's what I had to focus on. And so I asked Josh to help me focus. Each in take of breath, "Breath." A slow, relaxed, inhale through my nose. An unhurried filling of my lungs. "Open," came with each slow exhale through my lips, as if I were holding a mesoforte note on my oboe. An unhurried opening of my mind, heart, and body in joyful and unrushed anticipation of my child. At each Open, I was picturing a ring, the ring of my hips, stretching open into infinity.
That visualization lasted until Kathy came in, and I happened to open my eyes and see her there. I wouldn't have looked, except I hear a change in Josh's voice. It was tighter, not as open, more reserved and distant. It was the sound of Josh hiding his emotions and warmth from the world. Someone else was in the room, someone he didn't want to see that side of himself. It disturbed me. I was losing control of the pain again, and another contraction was on its way. I started shaking and crying, "Go away. Kathy, get out. I love you, but go away. I can't. Go away! Go away!" The nurse, I think, had stepped out, cause Kathy had walked to my bedside and was trying to calm me down, but I couldn't hear Josh. I couldn't feel him any more; he'd withdrawn emotionally. Gina returned at that point, and escorted Kathy out. No sooner had she left, than the sense of Josh returned full force and the urge to push came intensely. I let him know, and struggled to regain my visualization. It was hard. The forever opening ring wasn't powerful enough. I was losing myself, and starting to cry out. Behind my closed eyelids, in the low warm yellow-glow of the dimly lit room, the next contraction brought a soft white light. White, like the protective angel that visited me that morning, like the wings he'd given me to shelter me. At the memory, I could see the breastplate on me; the wings fluttering behind me like a silken mantle. "Open," Josh's voice said, and I felt the wings open; A bird taking to wing.
That was the image I needed. The pain was gone, replaced with a calm like no other. Each cycle of what had been pain came now as a gentle white light in my eyes. I was flying through the Clouds of Heaven on borrowed wings, soaring ever upwards without fear or tension. All there was was Josh's gentle voice, my Wind.
From 2:00pm, when I called for the epidural, 5cm into my dilation, and after Dr. Montalvo had broken my water to help draw Lori down, I lasted three and a half more hours until 5:30pm when Steve, the anesthesiologist, came in to finally give me my epidural. I was no longer in pain, as I had been, but no the urge to push was so intense that I was having trouble staying aloft in my white clouds. (Josh's chant had gone from "Breathe. Open. Good girl." to "Breathe. Open. Don't push. Good girl.") I was getting tired. Josh was getting tired. Lori was still fine. (Thank God!)
I was sat up, and hunched over, Steve having given me to obligatory risk speech. I don't really remember what he said the risks were. At the moment, I frankly didn't care. I wanted some measure of control back, control that I was losing with each contraction. He told me what he was doing, what I'd feel. Washing my back. Taping something. A pinch. Cold. "How do you feel," he asked me after a moment. "I don't know," I said. He stayed with me as Josh helped me lay back. It was like being lain down on a cloud. I sighed as the tension left me, and the urge to push, that was so insistent, faded to a dull inconvenience I could almost forget. "How do you feel, Ms. Carranza? Any better," Steve asked again. "Ah, yes," I finally got out, opening my eyes for the first time in hours. "Thank you, Steve. Now, go. I waited for you. I don't want to be the reason another is waiting longer than she can take. Thank you, very much. I'm myself again. Thank you." He did a few other things, I'm not sure what, smiling. I heard Gina murmur something about thoughtful, while Josh was getting my attention.
"Do you feel better," he asked? He looked as tired as I felt. Tense were I was limp. I nodded, smiling. "Yes, yes I feel better," I replied as the doctor came in to check on me. She was happy to see how far I'd progressed and how much calmer I was with the epidural, but she was worried. The baby, low as she may have been, was not engaging into my pelvis. Lori was stuck in my ribcage. The doctor said, "We're going to have to a c-section to get her out. She's just too big to get down the way she needs to be. Are you okay with that?" "Yes, Doctor. Whatever needs to be done to have her safe and healthy," I replied. I was no longer afraid.
"There's a wait on the OR, Doctor," I heard Steve remark. "There are four other deliveries needing c-section ahead of Ms. Carranza." The doctor frowned, complained, then turned to me. "Can you wait for maybe an hour then? We can see if Baby engages by then. If she does, you'll have it natural. If she does not, then we'll go into surgery, okay?" "Okay, Doctor. I'm better now, in control, so I can wait as long as you need me to. Make sure the other babies are safe. Lori and I are okay right now," I replied. As the medical staff moved out to get things ready, Josh again turned to me, "Will you be okay here, if I go? I need a break." "Yes, yes of course! Go. Thank you for staying with me," I replied, pushing Josh's hand away finally. "But will you send the Moms in? I think I was really rude and I need to apologize." Josh just smiled and kissed my forehead. "They won't think any less of you for it, darling. You were in labor. I'm sure they remember, and from what I hear, my mother was psychotic during labor. You were the perfect of Calm," he replied before heading out.
Kathy and Mom came in a few minutes later, and I apologized profusely. "I'm so sorry if I was rude. I hope you aren't mad or offended. I just couldn't focus with anyone but Josh in the room, and I really needed to focus," I said. Kathy smiled and reassured me, "It's okay, darlin'. You were wonderful!" My mother quipped with a proud smile, "I'm so offended!" I laughed and leaned back on my pillows with a contented sigh. "Still. I'm sorry that I was rude. I could have asked nicely for you both to go," I said weakly. Even I didn't believe that anyone could have politely asked to be left alone while in the middle of active labor. They stayed for a bit, until they saw that I really wasn't talking much. I was half dozing off. So, they stepped away and let Camilo in to see me. Oh, yes. I was told he was here and wanting to see me, but I was having the epidural at the time. Camilo came in, and we started chatting. I was filling him in, when the nurse came by and said, "The OR is ready. C-section in 10mins." I gasped, "Can you get Josh?"
I was wheeled into surgery, prepped, and in came Josh. They had to use two gowns to get around him, and the booties didn't seem to fit. As they were cutting into me, his eyes went wide, and for the first time, I saw fear. I squeezed his hand and tried to assure him that I wasn't feeling anything, but nothing came out of my mouth. My brain was a bit in a fog. I'm not clear on this part so much, until I heard her cry.
"Wuh. Wuh. Wuh. Wuh. Wuh." It was a rhythmic, grunting, sort of cry. They hurried to clean her, and brought her to me. Fat little face, red and upset. But she smelled (cliche I know) so sweet! Josh and the nurses took her away so I could be finished up, and I laid there, eyed closed thinking to myself, "I'm a mommy."
Can you believe that she was less than a day old in this picture? And look at those eyes. Already breaking my heart with her beauty. And she looks so tiny and delicate! What trust in that mere glance. It's heartwarming, uplifting, and downright terrifying all at the same time. Will we ever live up to that immediate, unconditional trust and love I see in her face? I'm so frightened of letting her down. And I suddenly can't dream of life without her.
Breast pumping.
