Naked Came the Baby

Here is the tale of Sarah's entry into this world.

July 26th, 2006...it was a hot and steamy day. I had eaten only most of a box of Honeynut Cheerios all day. As Kate had been, this fetus was late. Fat, grumpy and sweaty, I was ready to get the baby OUT. Earlier in the day I'd accidentally shaved over a mosquito bite on my leg. Those things really bleed, so I put one of Jeremiah's bacon strip bandaides on it. So really I was fat, grumpy, sweaty and injured. It was about 5:00pm and I was sitting in the TV room with Kate, who had just arrived home with Jeremiah. We were watching the Muppets.

A side note: Kate is addicted to The Muppet Show. Sick of the Brainy Baby "Animals" DVD, we encouraged this earlier, but it turned out to be a horrible mistake. There is but one season of The Muppet Show on DVD and the next one isn't due out until next spring. Kate arrives home each day demanding yogurt and The Muppets. Sometimes I think if I have to watch Twiggy sing "In My Life" one more time I will kill myself.

While sitting there with Kate, I felt the baby make a drastic downward move. It was shocking considering I hadn't even been having contractions. Oh, and it hurt. I removed myself to the bathroom, mostly because I pretty much always had to pee and partly because I couldn't think of anything else to do. To my extreme delight my water had the decency to break right then, while I was in the loo. Very tidy. Happily, Joy was available to come watch Kate right away and after a quick call to the doctor, we headed out the door to the hospital. At that point, I began one, long contraction that I'm pretty sure didn't end until Sarah was born.

At the hospital the security guard sent Jeremiah off to park in the garage and took me upstairs to Labor & Delivery. There, someone handed me a form to fill out which requested all the same information I had already thoughtfully completed when I pre-admitted myself via the Internet. In extreme pain, I squatted in front of the bank of seats and began to write. Several strangers, who were seated next to me, began chatting together about my pain. "Wow, she's ready to pop!" "They say that's how you should sit, too, helps the baby come down". I was in too much pain to say "I can hear you." I was also in too much pain to inform the security guard, who was trying to be kind by rubbing my shoulders for me, that I hate to be touched at all when I'm in pain.

Finally Jeremiah arrived, someone relieved me of the form and I was ushered off to triage. There, the nurse began to ask me questions. I felt like saying "read the damn form!" Jeremiah very sweetly tried to answer for me whenever he could. Anyway, it was while I was still in the triage room that I discovered my unspeakable pain could be temporarily relieved by deep, straight from the diaphragm, primal screaming. It crossed my mind that this might frighten the other gals but my concern about scaring them was quickly over-shadowed by my bitterness that they, too, weren't in so much pain they were screaming. I remember the nurse saying "we better hurry up and get you in a room". Turns out I went from 4cm to fully dilated in less than 30 minutes. (Also, she was probably anxious to get rid of the screamer.) Shortly after we arrived in my official room, I needed to push. My doctor was not yet there.

"I have to push!" I screamed. I was vaguely aware of people scurrying about the room and saying to me "don't push yet, your doctor isn't here". "I don't care!" I screamed (I screamed everything, but I did apologize to the nurse for that afterwards). To my relief, they grabbed some poor guy off the street to come deliver the baby. He introduced himself, said that Jeremiah's name was a "solid Christian name" and set to work telling me to push. Gee, that's a good idea...thank goodness there was an MD there to tell me to do that. At least, I think he was an MD. I still don't care.

While holding my leg back and cheering me on during the whole pushing event, my nurse noticed my shaving-related injury and said to Jeremiah "Is that bacon?"

At 7:56, just shy of 3 hours after the whole thing got started, Sarah arrived, purple and screaming. A successful VBAC, just what I always wanted! I had not intended to go all natural childbirth on her, but hey, she was out and she'd even used the preferred exit. My doctor arrived just in time to deliver the placenta. Ah, yes, the closer...out on the field just in time to take the win!

I know every mother probably says this, but Sarah wasn't the startling, pointy-headed larval mess most newborns are. Oh no, she was stunningly beautiful from the moment she crowned. You have to be amazingly gorgeous to look good covered in goo and Sarah really did. So now we have two beautiful girls. I'm jealous of them both because I always wanted a sister.

(I have a picture to place here, to prove my point about Sarah's beauty, but this lousy free blog site won't upload it at the moment...)