The Best Laid Plans

In honor of my daughter’s first birthday, I am taking this month to tell the story of the wild way she came into the world and our family. You can read the first and second chapters here and here.

It didn’t happen the way it does in the movies – the perky pregnant mom, decked out in her finest maternity wear, standing in the checkout line at the grocery store, suddenly standing in a puddle of water.

The morning before my scheduled c-section, I was lying in a hospital bed, typing an e-mail to a friend, wishing her daughter a happy first birthday, when I felt a rush of liquid pour out of me. Most women in my situation – 35 weeks pregnant and a resident of the High Risk Maternity Unit – would probably figure out right away what was going on.

But after nearly three weeks of intermittent bleeding, I assumed that this odd sensation was more of the same and was surprised when I pushed away the tray holding my laptop and saw that the sheets were soaked with clear fluid.

As the fluid continued to gush out and I couldn’t seem to stop it (despite 30+ years of infallible bladder control and months of Kegels!), it finally dawned on me that I hadn’t, in fact, peed my pants.

No, ma’am. My water had broken.

The two and a half hours between that moment and the one when I first laid eyes on my daughter flew by in a rush of questions, phone calls, and needle pricks.

I immediately paged my nurse – Amanda, a labor and delivery nurse on loan to the High Risk Unit – who came in and administered a test to confirm that my water had indeed broken. “And they told me you were easy!” she teased me.

Amanda called my doctor. I called my husband. He called our babysitter so she could stay with the boys while he made the hour-long drive to the hospital.

Amanda then started to orchestrate all of the moving parts that needed to come together to pull off an emergency c-section: booking an operating room; lining up an anesthesiologist, the neonatal nurses, and the other medical staff; alerting the NICU that a preterm infant was about to join them.

I, meanwhile, alternated among a few different states: excitement, surprise, anxiety. I also did my best to convince my little one to stay inside long enough to let her daddy arrive to help me welcome her.

My doctor – my wonderful, whip smart, kind, talented, tough doctor, the mom of two boys herself – arrived to give me the new game plan. I had had c-sections before, she knew, but she explained what she would do, what I could expect. She talked to me and held my hand while people swooped in and out to get me ready for surgery: Amanda with an extra IV, the anesthesiologist explaining the procedure for the spinal, the nurses who had taken care of me stopping by to wish me luck, wash my belly, make me promise to visit before I went home with my baby.

And then the most important in the cast of characters walked in: My husband. My love.

Within minutes of his arrival, Amanda had him decked out in the costume of the hospital: sky blue scrubs, a giant blue shower cap. And we were off to the OR, the same cold, stark bright room where my boys were born.

My husband waited outside while the anesthesiologist administered the spinal block. I curled my back, held Amanda’s hands, did my best impression of yogic breathing, and felt the needle pinch my back. (It’s really not bad, that giant needle.) I felt the anesthesia spread through my spine while the doctor and nurses rolled me to my side and then flat on the table. Then an uncanny warmth spread down my body into my legs. The medical staff finished preparing the room, my doctor arrived, and my husband was allowed in and took up his position next to me and behind the surgical drape.

Here’s what you might notice during a c-section: dazzlingly bright lights; quiet, efficient voices; lots of noise: suction, humming; pushing; tugging; lots of updates from the anesthesiologist; blood on the floor; blood everywhere. Your nose might itch. You might feel like throwing up from your blood pressure falling. You might tell your husband you love him more often than you would on a more typical Friday morning. Your doctor might ask you how you’re doing and then she might ask if you’re ready to meet your baby. Tugging, tugging, tugging.

My husband and I hadn’t found out the gender of any of our kids in advance. And during my weeks in the hospital, I became convinced that we were having another boy. And I was ready for that. My Three Sons. My Three Musketeers.

So imagine my surprise when the doctor held up our daughter and said in her gentle, happy voice, “It’s a girl!”

A girl. Our daughter.

My goodness. How blessed and lucky.

I spent the rest of the c-section swimming in this sea of fortune: euphoria, disbelief, thankfulness, excitement all washing over me in turn.

At that point, our baby was taken to the incubator to be cleaned up and examined and my husband commenced his patrol duty, shuttling between her and me. (Here’s another thing about c-sections: they get the baby out pretty quickly; it’s the stitching you back up that takes awhile.) Soon the nurses swaddled our daughter and handed her to my husband and then the two of them came over to me.

What a delight, an honor, a gift it is to meet your child, to see for the first time this pink, snuggly, snarfly creature who had made a team of medical professionals jump through hoops for weeks.

And here she was at last: big and healthy and perfect. An Apgar homerun. Not a minute in the NICU for her, thank you very much.

Our daughter. Our beautiful baby girl.

At last.