Elizabeth was due January 29, and I hoped she would arrive a few days early--mainly because I had started my maternity leave on January 18, and I felt sort of guilty for doing so, knowing the longer Baby Girl took to arrive, the shorter amount of time I'd have on maternity leave with her actually HERE. Physically, though, I still felt great up until the end and wasn't terribly uncomfortable.
The weekend arrived--Saturday January 23--and I thought it would be a really great time for her to arrive. I had this inkling that she would be at least a week late. No problem with hoping, though, right? Saturday I tackled some errands, primarily going to Babies R Us to pick up some things using the generous gift card my co-workers had given me.
After the errands I faced an afternoon home alone, because Craig had to run down to his rental property and do a couple errands of his own. I decided to vacuum out my car, which was pretty gross after carting my dog in it earlier in the week and being congealed with salt over the winter weeks. Contorting my body to get in the corners and under the seats made my back throb, so I decided to take it easy the rest of the afternoon.
I felt restless! I tried to get some more little projects done, here and there, but had trouble concentrating. Once Craig got home we decided to make a grocery run for the following week. At home (by now it was around 9 PM) we put the groceries away and Craig, always the night owl, decided to work in his shop for a couple hours.
I will add that, for most of this day, I just had a *feeling* that something was happening sooner rather than later. And to make a long story short, once I went to bed at 11:00 I had a lot of trouble getting comfortable because my back ached so much. I figured it stemmed from my gymnastics of vacumming out my car earlier...then noted that the back pains seemed to be coming in waves. I put in a call to the doctor's answering service, mentioning the pains along with a couple other symptoms I'd been having. I was told to go to the hospital.
Craig had now been in bed for about a half hour. I took a shower and then woke him up, wishing we had gotten at least one more good night's sleep, because who knew when we would have another one?? My bag was already packed. I made sure to grab some snacks and water for the car. The dog looked very confused as we hustled out the front door sometime after midnight.
With a January due date, for months I'd bet we'd be driving to the hospital in a blinding snowstorm, but the day had been mild and the streets were dry. We made it pretty quickly, that time of night. Craig wanted to drop me off and park the car, but I didn't want him to leave me--I didn't mind waddling the extra steps if it meant I didn't have to be alone!
I will spare the specific details of the next few hours. The biggest news was that I was already 7 centimeters dilated when we got to triage, and fortunately there was enough time for an epidural! (I can't praise the epidural enough!!)
So, in the wee hours of the morning, Craig and I were hanging out in the delivery room waiting for things to happen, when he started up his laptop. He pulled up a baby name website. Yes, here we were, hours before meeting our baby girl, and we still had no name. Craig angled the laptop toward me to show me the website. In my epidural-induced happy haze, I noticed the name "Elizabeth"--which we had pretty much settled on as a middle name, in honor of Craig's grandmother--and commented that it might in fact make a nice first name. Craig agreed that he'd considered it. The conversation ended there because things started happening quickly...
Again, sparing the specific details, at around five in the morning the doctor decided that Baby Girl was not going to make her entry into the world the conventional way, due to a variety of factors. I was going to have a c-section. This information was given to me too quickly for me to mentally prepare. All I remember at this time was being told that Craig would join me in the operation room a few minutes after I arrived, and then I was wheeled away. I watched the ceiling tiles float above me and was reminded of numerous TV shows in which patients have been wheeled into operating rooms, watching the ceiling. I knew I would meet my baby within minutes but felt pretty terrified.
Prepping for the surgery was very scary, especially when my arms were splayed at my sides and strapped to the table. I don't know what I thought about as those moments passed. Suddenly, someone announced that the baby had hair. I asked for confirmation that it was indeed a girl, and a nurse laughed back that they couldn't tell yet.
And then, someone asked if I wanted a mirror placed so that I could see her coming out. I said yes! And before I knew it, I could see a tiny porcelain-colored person--and I looked at her feet. I'd laughed for the last few weeks about wanting so badly to see her feet in person, because they had stuck out of my right side, wedged among my ribs, for so long. And there they were...there she was! She wailed instantly--such a beautiful, welcome sound!
The hardest part about the c-section was that I did not get to hold her for so long. Right away she was whisked across the room and I, still strapped to the table, just had to listen to voices telling me how much she weighed (6 lbs. 2 oz.) and laughing comments about the little hat they'd put on her, affixed with a giant bow that was as big as her head. As we waited to meet our daughter, Craig and I returned to the question of the name. It literally went something like this: I said "Are you sure you're okay with Elizabeth?" "Yup." "Okay, me too." As half-hearted as that conversation sounds, after weeks of agonizing over what to name our daughter, I knew her name was perfect.
We finally got to meet our daughter, although I didn't get to hold her until I was wheeled into the recovery room. We spent the next couple of hours there, quiet and dazed and exhausted and thrilled, just the three of us and an occasional helpful nurse. Just getting to know our daughter. My labor had been relatively quick and easy, and Elizabeth had arrived safely. What more could we ask for?
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