A Baby Story: Part Two

For Part One of A Baby Story, see here.  Now for the conclusion – I promise!

One thing was missing with this whole birth thing.  The labor part.  They had a solution for that.  They were going to give me Pitocin to start labor since baby broke my water and apparently decided to go back to sleep.  But then no one came for an hour, because someone had an emergency C-section.  By the time they got back, labor had started on its own.  There was some pain now, but a solution.  Demerol.  Oh, Demerol, my good friend, how do I love thee?  My husband flipped channels and settled on Nascar.  I watched the cars go round and round the track.   Wheeee!  I was seriously high.  God, I miss Demerol.  That would have been cool to have the entire pregnancy.

Me on Demerol.

They put a baby monitor around my belly, but it didn’t work, because my baby was like, pfft, you ain’t measuring me, just like you couldn’t tell for certain what sex I was.  Suckers.  So I got an internal monitor, which is just as much fun as it sounds.  I went to sleep for a few hours.  Things were mellow.  The nurses said I probably wouldn’t deliver until like late that night, cause first babies, right?  My in-laws walked in and I was like, “hellllooooo” and then realized that I felt all this pressure which made the nurse freak out a bit and get the doctor.  Hey, wow, turned out I was having the baby that afternoon, not that evening.  I think now she overheard them and decided to once more screw with their minds.

I got an epidural and then came the fun pushing stuff that they always make you watch on TLC but which I won’t force you to endure here.  One nurse did inform me I would have hemorrhoids which I was totes worried about while pushing out a freaking baby.  But then she came, and the doctor said it was a girl, and my father and husband cried while my mother and I did the “yes” sign because while we said we only wanted healthy, hells yeah we wanted a girl.  Thing One, my millennial baby, had arrived.

She was supposed to be tiny, like five pounds because she was early.  She was 6 and a half pounds.  We have enormous babies in our family.  I was a nine pounder.  Not surprising I was also the last baby.  Anyway, everything checked out great with her, except a bit of jaundice, something about not keeping herself warm enough, and oh yeah, she didn’t cry.  At all.  The doctors kept poking at her but she was like, what?  They took her to the nursery, and I saw this part on film.  They bathed her and combed her hair and she looked mildly annoyed but still didn’t cry.  When they put her back in the bassinet she was just lying there, waving her arms and legs, studying the dust motes.  A doctor said he was tempted to put a chemistry book in there with her, since she was so serious.

What? I’m chillin’.

Thing One continued to sleep through the day and part of the night (except the part where we usually go into a deep sleep)  for about a month.  I think she was trying to get in what she missed in the womb.  It was great, though, because she totally became my doll.  I dressed her in her new clothes, sat her in the bouncy seat, took pictures, dressed her in different clothes, etc.  There was a lot of pink.  My husband said it was like someone threw up pepto bismal all over the closet.  I liked pink though, so I thought it was great.  My friend and I dragged her everywhere with us.  To the movies (snore), to the mall (snore), to get professional pictures made (snore and drool).

Then my friend had to go back home.  And I was alone.  With baby.  And holy crap, she woke up, and woke up in a big way.  And things have never been the same since.  She continued, as she grew, to not do what the baby books said she was supposed to do when she was supposed to do it.  She scoffed at the growth charts – who needed to be on those?  Petite was totally in.  And why crawl or walk when someone got you crap when you needed it?  She did all these things eventually, just not “on time”.  She did hum “Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star” to herself as an infant, as she lay in her crib perfectly content, still staring at the dust motes.  That wasn’t in the baby books.  So I tossed them.  I loved my Thing One just like she was.  And I thought, wow, she’s such a good baby mostly, sitting there calmly playing with toys, and so quiet and sweet, wow, this parenting thing is not that hard.  What is wrong with some people?  And then karma did raise its ugly head, and I got pregnant with Thing Two.  But that’s another baby story.