Calming the storm

Tabitha is now 6 days old. One day shy of her first week with us outside. She is an amazing and wonderful little girl. I sometimes just look right at her and start weeping. I cannot believe I actually got her, that I actually, finally after so much trying and effort got my baby. She cries and I am happy to hear it, it makes me laugh and feel so warm inside to hear her pitiful wails. She has such spunk already this little lady of mine. She gets so angry when her clothes are removed, or put on for that matter. She pulled the stethoscope out of the nurses’ ears at the hospital and gets even crankier when you mess with her cute little feet. She grabs onto my breasts and looks me in the eye as if to say, Get To it Woman, I Want the Boob. She is endlessly fascinating to me and I can’t help myself but to stare at her for extended periods of time. All the little faces and expressions that are developing and I get the privilege of watching it all happen before my eyes.

Her arrival to this world was scary and complicated. My face was bruised and bloodshot from enduring endless contractions with no relief. She did not do well when pitocin was added to my IV to progress labor. Every time I had a contraction, her heart rate would plummet and on a few occasions even stopped. The doctors and nurses went into a panic and ran into my room and made me flip over on the bed onto my hands and knees to relieve pressure to her cord so her heart would accelerate. Not easy to do with an epidural and you can’t feel anything below your bellybutton. That worked temporarily but then another medication was added to the IV to stop all contractions called Terbutaline. Nasty stuff this. It makes you feel very anxious, paranoid, shaky and your heart starts beating a mile a minute. It does have the desired effect of stopping the contractions though. My body of course, did not take the hint. The contractions stopped temporarily but then my body said, no….we are doing this thing anyway. We needed to get this baby out and get her out now. So I was prepped for a C-Section.

I was brought to the operating room and the docs and nurses in attendance were running about getting everything ready as fast as they could. I was strapped to a table that looked like a cross. Legs tied down, arms tied down, blue curtain over my face so that I couldn’t see what was happening. The anesthesiologist added a different med to my epidural and the cold feeling of that medication crept down my body and paralyized me from the ribcage down. I felt nothing at all, the doc said that they were going to some numbness tests and asked me if I could feel anything. When I replied no, he said good, because we started 2 minutes ago. David was sitting near my head to the left holding my hand and cooing into my ear. There were feeling of pushing and pulling and I did have some pain in one spot but I breathed through them (they were easier to take than contractions) They pulled her out and I didn’t see her or hear her. I know that they took her over to the warming table and started working on her. I heard nurses calling out stats on her. Her weight (8.86 pounds), length (20 inches) but I still didn’t hear that cry. I started crying waiting for it. Then, there it was. A small, pathetic little mewl. She was alive and she was my baby. She wasn’t breathing well on her own yet and they needed to help her . They worked on her and cleaned her up she started breathing better on her own. It felt like eons until I finally got to see her for the first time. Hidden from her by the big blue curtain it felt like they were cutting off my heart rather than just my view. Daddy brought her around the curtain for me to see and she was wonderful!! So beautiful and just so perfect with those big fat cheeks. 6 days later, she has already changed so much. Those big cheeks are not so big anymore but now she looks at me and knows me on the outside like she did on the inside. It is me who can calm her when the storms hit her eyes better than anyone.

Cindy