Why Is This Night Different From All Other Nights?

The very evening of my last post, right in the middle of the matza ball soup, I went into labor. And by 8:46 the morning of April 20th, we became parents again! We have a little girl. Let's call her baby O for now (I am struggling, as Q gets older and more recognizable with how anonymous I want to be on this blog. Part of me wants the whole world to know it all, part of me wants to keep it less identifiable. But this is a post for another time; right now I have as story to tell)

On the way to Seder dinner with the grandparents, my in-laws, I started having some contractions. I noted to the husband that these were a bit more intense than usual and "this could be it! Pease, God, make it be it."

We arrived and met up with my brother and sister-in-law and the grandparents. Funny, it was a Passover dinner filled with more gentiles than Jews, and you could tell. It was the most pathetic Seder rendering I’ve seen, and at this point, I’ve seen a few. Husband's family is quite funny. They are of the NYC Jew variety. They're obviously very Jewish, but they are not at all religious. For example, most Jewish holiday celebrations in their house involve conversations on whether Zabar’s is better than Tall Bagel for supplies. It’s always about the food. At our Passover dinner, Husband’s father waved his hand over the plate with all the stuff on it sort of said something about tears and the desert and "blah blah blah, let's eat."

By this time, I had told everyone that I was having some pretty intense contractions, but we had nothing regular going on, so there was nothing to do but eat. I did feel irritation as everyone would stare at me and say "was that a bad one?" with a look of gleeful hope on their face as I grimaced in pain.

Finally, by the time we got to dessert, they were coming regularly. About 10 minutes apart. It was time to go. We decided to leave Q where he was and go home, get the hospital bag, call the dogwalker to pick up Faithful Lab and make sure all was in order before jetting to the hospital.

I had a few tears as I said good-bye to my little man. I told him next time we met he'd have to make room for me to love another. He responded by pointing to his "Brown Bear" book, which I read for him through my tears. I finally decided I had to go lest I begin to freak him out. I was feeling very emotional.

By the time we got home things had slowed down. I must complain about all the waiting around of labor. We had to wait until 11pm before anything was regular enough to justify going in, but during that time, I was still contracting and in massive pain and getting tired. My first "hello!" contraction started on my way to dinner at 4pm. By the time 11pm came and it was time to leave, they never were more than 20 minutes apart, but I knew enough to know we’d be sent home if I arrived any earlier. As it was, they only admitted me because my labor with Q had gone so quickly. Otherwise, they might have made us go away.

I was about 4 cm dilated when arrived and the contractions had grown closer, more like 5 minutes apart. They agreed to admit us and put us in a labor room. The contractions started getting very intense. Last time, when I had Quinn, I had vaguely bought into all the natural childbirth holistic fanatics of San Francisco and was all "I'll try to do it naturally." Things had gone fast and I had a baby a mere few hours later. As the contractions got worse this time, my memories of natural childbirth came flooding back, as well as a distinct feeling of realizing I have nothing to prove this time. I’ve been there and done that with the natural childbirth thing and it wasn’t all so fabulous. It wasn’t horrible, it just didn’t feel necessary to do again. I asked for my epidural.

I have my weird blood pressure issues. My blood pressure runs very low, and when they give me anesthesia is seems to get lower. As a result, the anesthesiologist decided that I needed a very low dose of whatever they give in order to keep my blood pressure stable. While the epi certainly helped matters, I was still in a lot of pain despite its presence. And it seems that getting it did slow things down. I do wonder if I could have just dealt with the pain if it would have been a quicker evening. But who cares. There were no major complications and by morning I had a beautiful daughter.

We waited all night for things to get moving faster. Finally the overeager resident gave me some Petossin. Then she broke my water bag (Guru would be horrified I allowed all this “intervention”. But honestly, I just wanted this part of having the baby over with. I wanted the actual baby! Anything to speed it up was ok with me.) Finally our extremely awesome experienced nurse informed the resident that I was pushing and told the resident, who was trying to leave the room, that she probably shouldn’t leave the room and actually, she should check me again. I was groaning and making guttural pushing noises as I involuntarily started pushing baby O out.

When it was officially time to push (again, thank god for awesome nurse who called for an attending and another nurse to help) I was determined to get her out. I think it was less than 10 minutes of actual pushing before I heard her cry. It is the best sound to hear when you’ve just delivered a child. It is seriously the best sound.

There was much crying and holding baby O and husband and I gazing adoringly at her and then at each other. Q visited later in the day and all appeared to go well. I wasn’t holding the baby when he came in, we had a present for him from the baby to him. We gave the baby a present from him that he had picked out earlier in the week. I don’t think he got any of it, but he did enjoy playing with all the hospital stuff.

Since our arrival home, the husband has primarily taken over the care of Quinn while I have grappled with the familiar feeling of sore nipples, boobs and midnight feedings. I still find it complicated to understand how I love and want to love baby O with all my heart, and still feel a pang of loss for little Q, who will now share me forever. Overall, the joy of having a sibling far outweighs how hard it is, but there are times when he’s been calling for me and I can’t go to him because I am breastfeeding or something and my heart does break a little for him. Still, he is doing fantastic overall and I can’t say that I’ve ever heard anyone say that having a sibling ended up the biggest trauma of their life.

The husband, Q and Loyal Lab are at the park. It is beautiful out. Baby O and I are enjoying some coffee on the back porch as I finish this post. Life is good.