By this time we had had two false alarm visits to the hospital. The first time I was convinced my water had broken, well... ha, it had not. The second time I was very nervous because I hadn't felt the baby move ALL DAY no matter what I had tried, sugar drinks, moving around, lying on my back, and the list goes on. Turns out, he was perfectly healthy and fine, just an inactive day, I suppose, mixed with the fact that he was rapidly running out of room to move in. Both of these trips wound up being hours spent at the hospital just waiting and sitting and a whole lot of nothing.
During each of my prenatal appointments, I continued to ask if they would induce because I was so swollen and in so much discomfort, and of course it really wasn't in the baby's best interest and so they answer was no, and I sort of knew that anyway.
Just a few weeks prior, I started walking. Walking and walking because I wanted to go ahead and get things moving. Nothing. Not even a peep. I was happy as a clam where he was. I didn't know then just how "situated" he was.
Again with the two weeks prior thing, I was scheduled to have a final ultrasound before birth. Things certainly did not go as planned. Though, thank God, we had a totally healthy baby, a big baby, who was already 'practice breathing' or moving his lungs in and out visible on the ultrasound, we found out then that he was breech (upside down, only not upside down like he should be- he was head up, bottom down, and not in a birth position). In the days that followed, I discussed with my doctor what this would mean for me and the baby as I prepared for birth. Dr. Galgano was hoping that he would still turn on his own (though they normally do this around 34 weeks gestational age), and he may have been in the correct position but turned around again at the last minute, though she warned me that this was not entirely likely as he was already long and big, and was truly cramped, leaving little wiggle room. We also discussed the OB staff manually turning him in-utero. Not only would this be painful, but we found it would be impossible to even attempt it for several reasons: first, this was my first pregnancy, so my uterus walls were harder and more firm than a subsequent pregnancy; Second, again with the big baby thing; Third, Dr. Galgano saw that my placenta was attached in a relatively unusual spot, right on front- behind my belly button rather than at the bottom, and moving the baby would be risky because it could possibly detach the placenta during the move causing an emergency and early delivery. So, with the chances of having him turn being next to nil, we went on ahead and scheduled the c-section. Dr. Galgano recognized how miserable I was feeling and told me that based on how well the baby was doing, that she thought it would be completely safe to go on and take him at 39 weeks, or I could wait until the due date, August 11th, at 40 weeks if I wanted. I said NO! As long as my baby was safe, I didn't want to wait a MINUTE longer than I had to. I will take the 39 week appointment for the 4th of August! I wanted this part of the journey to finish. I wanted to feel human again, not trapped, not awful, but most of all, I wanted to hold, smell, kiss, see, talk to this wiggly little precious baby.
I cried at first, because it wasn't at all what I had imaged. I had even wanted to try natural labor... at least as far as I could take it, laboring in the birthing tubs that our hospital rooms came equipped with. I had imagined pushing, and holding hands with Scott, having gone to all of my birthing classes I felt ready to exercise my 'breathing techniques'.
I guess I sort of came to peace with it though because I finally had a date! I had an ending point! Finally a deadline of feeling so awful. Finally a time when I knew I could count down to meeting the love of my life!
I did, however, grow increasingly nervous about the surgery. Of course, I scared myself to death reading all of the horror stories on the internet, and listening to neighbors talk about how their epidural didn't work and so forth. Eeek!
Scott was ever so supportive, as usual, and we made a whole new birth plan. He didn't feel like he would be grossed out by any c-section 'sights'.
The night before, Scott and I were so excited and nervous about the life changes we were only hours away from that we only slept for 2 hours.
I must say, what a luxury it was knowing the exact date, the exact time! I was able to pack my bag at a leisurely pace, relax, mentally prepare, make sure I finished a book I was reading, finished our housework and paperwork... ah what luxury! It was all so calm and organized.
That morning I got up around 6am, and took a long hot shower just letting the water run on me as I truly relaxed and prepared. I remember having little thoughts like "this is the very last shower I will ever take as a non-mom" haha. We got dressed, packed the car, and drove literally right across the street where the hospital is located. We were to be there at 8:00am for a 10:00am c-section, and we were late, as usual. It was 8:15ish.
We were brought back into the labor unit and we got all checked in with our little wrist bands, one for me, one for Scott. They hooked me up to all the monitors and asked me a tremendous amount of questions about my medical history, though they ask these every time... aren't they in my chart? Much of this time was just waiting and waiting and waiting alone together in this tiny room as I was on an incredibly uncomfortable exam table. I was getting so nervous that my palms were sweaty. I was not nervous at all about meeting the baby, calm about that in fact... as the minutes went by closer and closer to 10 I started to become terrified about the surgery and the epidural.
Well I was truly getting upset and got a little misty eyed with worry, and finally so close to 10, maybe around 9:40, a nurse came and said that they were having to do an emergency c-section on someone else in their OR delivery room and I would have to wait. Worst news- because I started pacing and this did nothing to ease my mind. The tiny room was growing even tinier. I had never been so physically or emotionally uncomfortable and upset.
Finally, around 10:40am, the anesthesiologist, Dr. Shakes- yes SHAKES, came to greet us. Yes, my mind went there immediately (immature, I know) but SHAKES? And I'm nervous about my spine and my epidural and pain and you hitting a nerve, and me being paralyzed for life, or it not working at all, and a huge hollow needle in my spine and you look like the Grim Reaper and your name is Shakes? Great.
Shakes asked another round of one million questions and then thanked us telling us he would see us in the OR. The nurse came in and started and IV, which bled everywhere and ripped out. Fun. So, she started another one, and they give the sterile outfit to Scott (clothes, shoe covers, hat, face mask).
One surprising and wonderful thing we didn't expect: they allowed us to bring our camera into the OR after we had been told time and time again that we couldn't.
Then came time. It was 10 minutes to 11 and they came to get us out of the little room, and separated us in the hallway because Scott was not allowed to be in the OR for the epidural part. We hugged and kissed in the hallway and I cried. I wished Scott could have stayed with me. He stayed in the waiting area and I waved and looked at him until I had to go around the corner.
In I went and they had me sit up on the table. There were 8 or 9 people in the room. Dr. Berkle, 4 or 5 surgery assistants, 2 'baby' nurses waiting for his arrival, and Dr. Shakes. The anesthesiologist told me to put my head as far down on my chest as possible and to lean over. Well for an enormously pregnant woman this is damn near impossible. I pretty much just put my chin on my collar bone and that was that. The epidural was as bad, if not worse, than I imagined it would be. I can't even put it into words. Many woman had told me that it wasn't so bad, but looking back on that, each of those women were already in labor and were experiencing that pain that the epidural was nothing to them. Hello? Not in labor here... yikes it was creepy and awful and tingly and SO EXCRUCIATING. I have broken a bone before- no comparison. I actually had to cry out loud, and the nurse that was holding me still said I could hold on to her. She had a rather large bust and I just buried my face right in it and moaned. It is sort of funny looking back on it. I can say that if I ever have another child and epidural, the memory of it and it's awful-ness is still vivid, I will probably dread it and moan all over again.
Well he finally finished after what felt like 5 minutes straight of that, and lo and behold, it didn't take on the entire right side of my body. Of course. He was like "you shouldn't be able to move the lower half of your body so the nurses will help you lie down". So for his benefit, I flung my right leg all around out of demonstration. He said he was sorry but that we would have to go through it again. And we did. And it was just as awful as the first time around, only this time I was so sore from it having just been done that I cried even louder. Thankfully, Dr. Shakes, you had success the second time around and we were in action.
Down on the table I went, and they started setting up the screen on my chest so that I couldn't see below that point. My hair was placed into a hair net, and they laid my arms out crucifixion style and plugged them up even further with an array of fluids. My body started to shake moderately and uncontrollably from the morphine, and my teeth were chattering. Dr. Galgano was not on duty that day, much to my dismay as she has been my OBGYN for years and saw me through this pregnancy. Dr. Keith Burkle would be the delivering OB. He is a very nice man, not all that much older than Scott and myself. He joked with me and was kind, and he kept the atmosphere light. He knew I was scared and told me step by step what he was doing, with humor as well.
My next door neighbor had told me previously that she had had a c-section, and her epidural didn't work, and therefor she felt when the scalpel penetrated her skin for a second, and was in a lot of pain from it. They re-did her epidural. I was so terrified of this happening to me, especially since I had already had a slight bump in the epidural road. I kept saying 2 or 3 times over to Dr. Berkle to please prick me to see if I could feel it first before he cut. He kept telling me that he would be sure to do that. I started to feel my body being bumped around and yanked on, and I figured that they were preparing me for the actual surgery out of sight. I asked when would Scott be able to come in and someone went to get him. I remember feeling very cold, and I was shaking, arms, hands, shoulders, jaw.
Scott suddenly appeared around the corner of my "screen" in the overhead lights and the first words out of his mouth were "Oh, babe, I'm so sorry you're having to go through this". I think I said something along the lines of "I'm scared". Moments after our meeting I started feeling sick. For the first few seconds I thought I might be able to talk myself out of it, but then I realized I was dealing with a force stronger than my body- it was the morphine making me vomit, not my nerves. Well everything below my chest was temporarily paralyzed and I could not get my stomach muscles to work to throw up. But that didn't stop it, the vomit was oozing up my esophagus whether I liked it or not, and I didn't want to choke. All I could do was "moan it up". I had to lay there, moaning and moaning to try to bring up the puke. Beautiful. While Scott held the pan for me. It was majorly attractive, I assure you. Moan, moan, MOAN, puke. Moan, moan MOAN, puke. And then it was finished.
I felt much more at ease with that out of the way and with Scott by my side. I decided to speak louder to Dr. Berkle to remind him to prick me first before he cut, just to be sure, like we had agreed. It was then that he told me he was already half way finished. I felt totally happy and relaxed to hear that. I felt comfortable and in good hands. Scott took pictures, and we chatted back and forth just waiting as my body continued to be tugged around.
Minutes went by and still no announcement had been made, or even any description of what was going on. It was then that I realized that Dr. Berkle's easy demeanor and joking tone had changed, and that his relaxed and cheerful voice now seemed more urgent and strained. The staff were talking in these hushed urgent tones to each other and we couldn't hear what they were saying.
Suddenly I felt like I couldn't breath, and I said so out loud. Someone asked me what was wrong, and I said "I feel like there is someone sitting on my chest" and Dr. Berkle's response was "That's becomes someone is sitting on your chest". I didn't know what that meant then, but now I know that there was a nurse that had climbed up on the table and was pushing down hard on my upper abdomen because the baby's head was stuck.
We heard this tiny, split-second whimper of the baby, and then nothing, no sound for what felt like forever. Instead we heard more talking of the staff, strained and serious. I heard the doctor half-shout/fuss at one of the assistants that she had handed him the wrong instrument that he had asked for, and that if she didn't know what it was that he had asked for then she should ask someone else instead of just guessing. This was completely out of character for the Dr. Berkle I knew, so I knew that things seemed to be not going so great... and I started to worry. I looked at Scott who also seemed a little worried. He was ever reassuring and I saw that he was slightly forcing his upbeat attitude. I also noticed that he had stopped taking pictures.
It was then that I became a little more aware, and worried. All I could do was just lie there. I still felt my body being tugged on. I felt like I was in a haze, blur-like. I couldn't think of anything to discuss with Scott, I couldn't think of anything to even think about, if that makes sense. All I could think was that I know I had heard the baby, even for a second, and now I don't hear him, and these are minutes that are going by. All I could do was be there and just wait, and listen to the hushed urgency of the staff and look at the lights above me.
Out of nowhere, the baby appeared from around the side of my screen being carried by a nurse to the waiting exam station and the other nurses. I could hardly see the baby, only a speck of his skin, perhaps part of his shoulder, because too many people were standing or walking in the way. I saw the nurses rubbing him violently where his little limbs were almost flailing around. I overheard one of them say "Come on, baby. Come on, baby."
I noticed that Scott had been by my side the entire time, and that no one had asked him to "cut the cord" as planned. I then noticed that there had been no birth announcement. No one had called out that he was here. The stern tone in the room had not changed and there were no celebratory voices. I noticed that they had not yet let me even see him, and worst of all, there was STILL no sound all those minutes later from when I first heard a peep. I put all of these pieces together and realized that they were trying to get the baby to breath, and that he was not breathing yet.
Just then, I couldn't make myself feel anything. I was suspended in the moment. Just frozen. Just waiting. It felt like forever. Helpless.
And there it was. He cried. He cried a few choppy cries, broken up, like a little bird. It was the most incredibly perfect sound I had ever heard in my whole life. It was beautiful. They wrapped him up in a blanket and put a hat on him and a nurse walked him over to us. She did not give him to me, but held him out in front of me for only a few moments. He and I were face to face, and I looked upon him with such awe, still numb in the moment. Then she took him away just as quickly.
He was born at exactly 11:30am on the morning of August 4th, 2011, a Thursday.
They explained to us that in being upside down, or breech (wrong side up), his head had become so tightly wedged in my upper abdomen that he was stuck during the delivery. They had opened my uterus and an air pocket had gotten down to him so that he was able to breath for a second (the whimper I first heard) but then the fluid filled in around him while he was still stuck and he was breathing it in, drowning essentially. I think this is when the tones in the room began to change, that I could hear. They eventually freed him and the delivery nurses were finally able to get him to breath on his own. We were not allowed to hold him or be with him any longer than that minute because they had to take him to the NICU to be deep suctioned. They had to get all of the fluid out of his lungs so that he could breath easily and safely on his own, and before any infection set in on those oh-so-new lungs.
They told me that we'd have him back soon, and they whisked him away while the doctor stitched me back up. They put me on a new bed and rolled me out at about noon, Scott walking beside me down the hallway to our room. In the hallway, they stopped us by the nurses' station and showed us a little button on the wall for all new parents to push when their baby had just been born. Scott pushed it and it played Bach's Minuet in G Major for all of the hospital to hear, honoring that a new life had begun. My OBGYN group is based in that hospital, and Scott would always accompany me to my prenatal appointments there. Afterward, he and I would always get breakfast or lunch together in the hospital cafeteria before we returned to work. Only a month or so prior to my due date did I hear for the first time that song being played over the PA system in the cafeteria, and after hearing it at odd times I finally realized what it meant. So, hearing it then in the hallway for our baby, just for him, for his little life for all to hear brought tears to my eyes for the first time since his birth. He couldn't come back to us soon enough.
Every single time I hear that song now whether it be through voluntarily choosing to, or it's playing on one of his toys, I think of that very moment and the significance of it. It brings such powerful warmth to my heart and I think it will do this forever. I think I will forever associate that song with this precious little life I have been blessed with the responsibility of leading and helping and guiding.
It was an hour before we got him back with us in our room. They brought him in around 1:00pm for us to truly meet him. Scott placed him in my arms and we just looked at each other for a long and peaceful stretch of time. To say it was love at first sight is an understatement. I can't describe it, or find words that even come close. My world changed in an instant. Everything that was important was in him, my whole life became devoted to him. He was so beautiful. He was so precious. He was ours. I made him 'all by myself'. Looking upon your very own flesh, your child for the very first time is such a surreal moment. His skin felt unlike anything I'd ever felt, I would say even velvet is rough in comparison, silky, soft, warm. He smelled sweet, a soft sweetness. His eyes were so wide, so open, so alert! He gazed straight into my eyes with focus. Many nurses, instead of offering the standard complement "he's so cute", would say over and over "he is so alert". They also said that he didn't look like a new born baby. They said his face had a certain maturity and with a full head of thick hair I'd have to agree with the combination of these things he looked as if he were several weeks old. His head was a perfect symmetrical shape. He grabbed onto our fingers, nestled and cuddled against us. We were so entirely in love from the start.
Unfortunately we had him only for 10-15 minutes when they felt that they needed to deep-suction him yet another time, his second, back in the NICU, due to his raspy breathing. So parting again in the first few moments of life was hard on me. I hated to say goodbye again when I had only held this wonder for minutes only. Thankfully, they had him back in less time than before, a half hour maybe. The hospital staff was so kind to us and giving us as long as we wanted to bond as a new family. They didn't let a soul come back or call into the room so that we could have this magical alone time, just the new three of us, before letting the rest of the world in. That time was so peaceful, quiet and beautiful. Scott scooted up next to me in the bed and we just gazed and admired our new beautiful son. We stroked his skin, kissed him, talked to him, hugged and kissed each other, and appreciated our changing marriage and family.
The very first song I ever sang to him in those moments was "Baby Mine" from the Disney movie 'Dumbo'. It has become our very special, private, baby/mommy song. I still sing it to him even now, and he seems to recognize it instantly now and seems to find it very calming. That song has a powerful effect on him over all others that I sing. I will continue to sing it to him until he thinks he's too old for songs.
Scott and I had finally decided on a name only 2 days prior to the birth. We had previously settled on a few, only to back out as time went on. There were too many hands in the pot, we felt, with too many strong opinions regardless. Scott and I decided we would keep it secret, and decide on it only for ourselves, and not because someone else liked it, requested it, suggested it, disliked it, wanted it after a family member, and so forth. We finally decided on Jackson Cooper Stell. The morning of August 4th we checked into the hospital leaning a little more towards 'Jack' as a nickname, shortening his first name, but when we finally got him in the room with us, and really got to meet him and see him, we both agreed right away that this was no Jack we were holding, this indeed, was a Cooper. And so forth, he goes by his middle name, Cooper.
We brought him home on Sunday. We were both scared not having the nurses around, and exhausted. Friends and neighbors brought us so much delicious food that we ate like kings for a week.
Eventually, we 'sort of' got the hang of things, and other things... not so much. We take it day by day and oftentimes it's Cooper who teaches us the way, not the other way around. We love him so deeply and entirely, and we feel our lives are so much better, even just in regular days, just having him there with us. He makes everything so much more meaningful.
Scott took several of the pictures that had been taken that weekend that were good and made a video of them for our family. Here it is:
