or, “That Time We Paid For Imprisonment”
[Author’s Note #1: This story is the conclusion of a long tale that consists of three additional parts: The Birth of Borealis: Part I, Part II, and Part III. This post makes little sense in general, but even less sense if you haven’t read those preceding installments.]
[Author’s Note #2: In order to produce a true account of my thoughts and feelings from the days surrounding the birth of my first son, I have written a story that is irreconcilably anti-hospital. However, I want to be clear that I am not anti-hospital in general — just in particular. If you, someone you love, someone you know, or someone you met once has loved a hospital, or liked a hospital, or at the very least not hated a hospital, I want you to know that I completely validate that opinion — just as I hope you will validate my opinion that hospitals are basically a type of prison for which you are personally financially responsible.]
[Author’s Note #3: This post is extremely long — about three thousand words longer than Part I. I am so sorry. You can still bail and just read the sanitized and condensed version of the rest of this story in the last several paragraphs of The Birth of Borealis: The Executive Summary.]
Act V: The balance of February 16th and the first two hours of February 17th
Borealis, who is fifteen months old at the time of this writing, has finally developed an interest in reading. Well, in *me* reading, to him. (I mean, my kid is clever, but not that clever.)
Among the few books that Bo often “requests” is Goodnight Moon — a children’s classic that chronicles one young bunny’s elaborate procrastination of bedtime. After saying goodnight to *everything* in the room, the protagonist finally ends with, “Goodnight noises everywhere”.
If we had planned ahead, maybe we would have brought Goodnight Moon to the hospital to read to our son on the first night — well, early morning — of his life outside the womb. I’m not sure it would have made a difference, though. At only four hours old, Borealis was interested neither in reading nor in saying “goodnight” to noises everywhere.
Now, don’t get me wrong. Our newborn *did* sleep. He just didn’t sleep quietly. The volume and variety of grunts, snuffles, and squeaks that emanated from his tiny frame was truly astounding.
Here’s the thing — I’m a light sleeper. I have not had an uninterrupted night of sleep since I was in college… and even then, I was a borderline insomniac. Generally, I only sleep “well” in my own bed, in a completely dark and silent room, while snuggling with my husband.
Unfortunately, my hospital sleeping situation had none of these characteristics. Accordingly, my night passed in a series of short snoozes, punctuated by many, many moments of bleary wakefulness.
Obviously, the baby’s noises contributed strongly to my poor night of sleep, but he wasn’t the only culpable factor. I mean, for one, the irreconcilably-uncomfortable, mostly-upright hospital cot did nothing to facilitate my rest. [Note: I’d like to think that under normal circumstances, I could have devised how to alter the angle of my “bed”. In my hazy post-birth state, however, I was both physically and technologically incapacitated.]
Additionally, the lighting was reminiscent of my high school cafeteria — dim enough that lunch felt like a gateway gang, but bright enough that we could still see our fellow initiates — er, classmates.
After one particularly loud squeal from our sleeping babe, I flopped my head to the left so I could “check on” Borealis. I discovered that he was already being monitored by my fellow initiate — er, husband.
Dad Taylor had swung his legs off the couch and was crouching at the edge of the cushions, his face inches from the wall of the transparent bassinet.
“Is he still alive?” I mumbled.
Taylor: <grunts in confirmation>
“Then what are you doing?”
My husband sat back against the couch and replied in a whisper, “I don’t know, I just can’t sleep. I mean, what if something happens to him, and neither of us realizes it?”
Still staring at the baby, Taylor missed my answering shrug. I attempted to clear my dry throat, at which point my husband glanced up sharply.
“Shhh!” he hissed venomously. “You’re going to wake up the baby!”
Oh well. I finally had Dad Taylor’s attention.
“Babe, you gotta get some sleep,” I exhorted quietly. “Or else you’re going to be a total mess tomorrow. I think you’ve gotten even less sleep than I have in the past day.”
Taylor chuckled. “Oh good, then I guess *you* can stay up and watch the baby while I nap tomorrow!”
I huffed out an ersatz laugh. “Yeah, not quite what I was saying. You should lay down and try to sleep some more.”
He did, and I did too.
After some interminable length of restless sleep, we were woken again by a forceful vocalization — and then another, and another. I unglued my eyelids to behold my precious newborn wriggling aggressively within his swaddling restraints, squawking indignantly. As I watched, he finally extracted one arm, then the other.
Rather than appeasing my son, the half-freedom seemed to incense him even further — as if the slight taste of liberty had only strengthened his desire for emancipation. His little fists beat the air vigorously, and his protests began to sound less sleepy and more, well, wakeful.
“Do you think we need to take of that?” I grumbled.
Taylor: <grunts in confirmation>
“Well, I’m still not supposed to get out of bed, so…” I trailed off.
Taylor: <grunts resignedly>
He swung his legs off the couch once more and slowly rose to his feet. Carefully, he slid his massive hands around Borealis and lifted the newborn to his chest. Bo calmed — but only slightly. Dad Taylor began to sway unconsciously (as one does while holding a baby), then turned to me and asked, “So… what order are we supposed to do this in?”
“Um…” I stalled. “Um, well, we have to do it like unswaddle, diaper, then swaddle.”
Taylor nodded. “Yeah, but like, do you want to feed him first, or after?”
It was way too late — or rather, way too early — for questions. “I guess first?” I suggested. “To calm him down before you change him?”
Taylor nodded again. “Ok. Do you think you’ll be able to get him to latch? Or should we call the nurse now?”
I shrugged. “Let me try first. Hopefully we won’t need help.”
I reallocated my pillow distribution so that my arms were supported. Then, I aligned the baby just like how I had learned in breastfeeding class and tickled his lip with my left nipple. (I don’t know. I’ve heard this is a foolproof technique.) Borealis rewarded me with a half-yawn, almost reluctantly latching on for a feeding.
“Ugh, he doesn’t even seem interested,” I complained.
Taylor sighed. “I don’t know, babe. They said that breastfeeding wouldn’t be easy, so this is probably just kinda part of that learning experience. Also, cut him some slack, because it’s not like he knows what he’s doing, either.”
As my husband pontificated, Borealis began to suck at my nipple — which turned out to be a remarkably painful process. I yelped involuntarily and jerked my nipple from my son’s mouth. This rash action, of course, caused my nipple even more pain and also incited my son to recommence crying.
At Taylor’s inquiring expression, I explained, “He didn’t have it in far enough. Dang it, I feel like the midwives explained this in class.” I thought for a second, then determined, “I think it’s that he was jamming my nipple against his hard palate. It really hurt!”
Taylor nodded sympathetically. “I’m sure it did, babe. But maybe do you want to try again? He’s still hungry, and he wants your love.” My son’s bawling supported this assessment.
Dear reader, I want to be serious with you for a moment. I want to be able to tell you that as I gazed at my infant son, my heart was filled with an overwhelming sense of love, and I joyfully brought the baby to my chest once more.
But that’s not what happened, and I’m not in the habit of lying to you.
Instead, I looked down at my squalling child, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to deal with him. Why was he my problem? Couldn’t I pawn him off on someone else? At that moment, I felt no affection for Borealis: I felt only duty.
But, it was enough. Duty (i.e. commitment) is a major part of any long-term love relationship. Look at any decades-long marriage. Each member will readily admit that while they [probably] always loved each other, they didn’t always like each other. (And if they don’t admit this… they’re lying.)
[Note: For a more esoteric example, look at God (Yahweh) and the children of Israel. While God always loved the Israelites, He *did not* always like them. (For example, see the Golden Calf incident in Exodus 32.) But, regardless of His emotions, He always fulfilled the promises He made to Abraham, Jacob, Moses, David, etc. — i.e. He remained committed, despite what He might be feeling.]
This dichotomy exists because love is chiefly a verb — it describes how we act, not how we feel. Feelings are fleeting, but commitment can (and should) last for a lifetime. While affection is also an important aspect of a long-term relationship, its conflation with “love” is a dramatic oversimplification of the latter term.
[Note: If this assessment seems starkly unromantic to you, then I invite you to critically analyze two relevant sources of information: 1) the qualitative and quantitative statistics surrounding arranged marriages (specifically, how an emphasis on commitment leads both to remarkably low rates of divorce and [eventually] strong feelings of affection), and 2) one or more of the following books about marriage: Timothy Keller’s The Meaning of Marriage; Jim Daly’s Marriage Done Right; and Emerson Eggerich’s Love & Respect.]
In loose summary: when I married Taylor, I promised to love him forever. That vow didn’t mean that I would like him forever. (And how!) Rather, I am committed to honoring and respecting him, to standing by him as a faithful wife, and to continually seeking the best for him as an individual and for us as a couple. My feelings usually align with my vow, but to be honest, it doesn’t really matter whether or not they do.
And so, with that in mind, I realized that it didn’t matter that I wasn’t experiencing that all-encompassing mom affection that I’ve read and heard so much about. I would commit to loving my son whether or not I “liked” him. After all, what would Jesus do? (If He could nurse, that is.)
Luckily, this analysis took much longer to type than it did to think. My son had been crying for only a handful seconds before I steeled my resolve and tried again. I expressed some colostrum, readied my breast, and took advantage of a particularly open-mouth sob from Borealis.
This time, our bodies fit together a bit better. It seemed like my nipple was buried farther in Bo’s little baby mouth, because the sensation was significantly more tolerable during this second attempt. We both relaxed into our positions, and our nursing session began to resemble the breastfeeding endeavor we had experienced several hours before: sweet, and intimate, and not too painful.
Consciously, I released the tension in my arms and let them rest on the pillows instead. Unconsciously, I released a noisy sigh through my nose.
Taylor: <grunts inquisitively>
I shrugged, which was not conducive either to releasing the tension in my arms or to breastfeeding Borealis. Luckily, he simply readjusted, re-smashed his face into my breast, and went back to sucking. (Crisis averted!) I tried to relax my shoulders once more.
“I don’t know,” I finally answered, a little tearfully. “I just… feel like I don’t love him.”
Taylor: <grunt that fully communicated the commitment/affection discussion above>
“Yes, don’t you think I know that!? ‘Luv is a Verb’ and all that, right?” I snapped, a tear rolling off my cheek and onto my son’s.
Taylor: <grunts reprovingly>
Taking a deep breath, I apologized, “Yes, you’re right. I’m sorry. I just… I wanted to feel it, you know?”
Taylor nodded. “Yes, I *do* know, sweetie. And you may still. This has been a crazy night, and it’s not like this has been the best situation to facilitate mommy-baby bonding, you know? So you could totally still feel that super-intense baby love, once we get home and get into the groove of things.”
I nodded silently. I was glad that Taylor had suggested that possibility, because that was for sure my preferred option.
“But—” my husband started. He then conveniently took the opportunity to slowly — and silently — resettle himself on the couch. (Taylor does not multitask.)
“Yes!?” I finally prompted.
Taylor looked up. “Give me a second, Wifey. I’m tired too.” After another dozen seconds, he continued, “But, it’s possible that you won’t ever feel that borderline-irrational affection.”
And *that* was the option I feared.
At my obvious grief, Taylor sympathized, “I’m sorry, Wifey. I know you had hoped that seeing the baby would give you this instant connection, but it doesn’t always work like that.” Seeing my tortured expression, he affirmed, “You’re not a bad mommy!”
I sighed. “I hope not, babe.” Then, looking down at our son, I queried, “So… how do I know if he’s getting anything?”
This was actually a valid question. There are a variety of ways to tell whether your baby is swallowing (i.e. feeding) or just sucking (i.e. seeking comfort). Unfortunately, we didn’t know (or more likely, couldn’t remember) any of these methods. I wished I had a tiny flow meter in my nipple to confirm, well, flow.
Taylor: <grunts uncertainly>
“Yeah, I guess we’ll just have to ask the nurses tomorrow,” I answered. “Or, today, I guess.”
Taylor: <grunts in laughter>
We continued to sit in silence until Borealis pulled off my breast. I held him up to my chest and artlessly began to burp him. He responded by vomiting up a massive amount of liquid, most of which was either amniotic fluid (good to vomit) or colostrum (bad to vomit).
“Thanks,” I snapped. “I think you literally just lost calories on that feeding.”
So, the proper actions for me to take here would have been: 1) not gripe at my newborn, and 2) offer him the other breast as well. But, in what was not my first and not my last faux pas as a young mother, I executed neither “proper action” and instead promptly handed my son back to his father.
“Ok! Time to get him all changed!” I commanded.
Taylor gingerly unwrapped what remained of Bo’s swaddle prison, then carefully laid him down in the bassinet and removed his diaper. Borealis, appropriately, began to bawl once more.
Taylor: <grunts in surprise>
“Meconium?” I guessed. This “early poop” is passed by the infant during the first few days post-birth — and even sometimes before birth. (Since meconium-tainted amniotic fluid elevates the risk level of labor, we were blessed that this diaper was our first experience with the tarry stuff.)
Taylor: <grunts in confirmation>
He removed the diaper and suddenly looked up in panic. “Do you have any wipes or diapers in your labor bag?”
I shook my head. “But they’ve gotta have them somewhere in here, right? Maybe in those drawers?”
Taylor opened the top drawer and exhaled a sigh of relief. He extracted a wipe, cleaned off Bo’s tiny bottom, and quickly re-diapered him.
“Daddy’s first diaper!” I exclaimed weakly.
Taylor snorted. “Yeah right. I used to change my sister’s, you know.”
I shrugged. That was over a decade and a half ago, after all.
My husband looked around. “We don’t have any clothes for him, do we?”
I shook my head. “Just his ‘going home outfit’,” I told him, gesturing at the labor bag. “It’s pretty warm in here. I think we’re probably good just swaddling him back up. Do you feel like you’ll be able to do it?”
Taylor: <grunts noncommittally>
And so, I lay there uselessly as my husband struggled valiantly to re-swaddle our baby. And let me tell you — it was quite the show.
Borealis was not pleased. Several times during Taylor‘s swaddling endeavor, Bo broke free an arm (or both arms). On these occasions, the volume of his wailing (which had not abated since the removal of his diaper) swelled to triple-digit decibel levels. It was kind of impressive, really.
Finally, Taylor managed to effectively imprison Borealis into the swaddle wrap — an accomplishment that simply made our child scream all the more. Taylor looked up at me with the beginnings of terror in his eyes. “Can you feed him again? Please?”
I sighed, then nodded and held out my arms once more for my son. I offered him the other breast, and this time, he was much more proactive about enabling the feeding. The only problem was, his nursing (like my parenting) was still rather graceless.
After a few minutes, the pain in my nipple was so severe that I could not continue nursing. It felt like Bo was intermittently jamming my nipple into his hard palate, and as the session went on, his flagging attention yielded more and more instances of nipple-smashing.
The sensation was (in that moment) worse than labor. (I’m serious.) I tried to break his latch with a little finger, but his indefatigable determination prevented me from prying apart his jaws. And so, once again, I had to extract my nipple from the inexorable clutch of my son’s mouth, and once again, it felt like my nipple was being torn off.
Not surprisingly, my child took the removal of his food source as a personal affront to his worth as an individual, and promptly replied with a powerful rebuke of tears.
“Dang it, Taylor, it hurts too much. I can’t feed him anymore. Once he starts to fall sleep, he just stops nursing correctly. Can you just put him down? He’ll fall asleep eventually”
Taylor: <grunts sadly>
I huffed out angrily. “Look. I am trying my best. I am so exhausted, and he is not helping. I’m sure it will get better than this, but I am literally at my wit’s end right now.”
Taylor sighed as he lifted Bo from my arms. “I know, babe. Let’s plan on asking if we can make an appointment with the lactation consultant before we leave tomorrow — today — so that we can get some ideas of what we could possibly do better.”
I hunkered down on my cot as Taylor gently laid our son back down on his back. Through the clear sides of the bassinet, I watched Borealis buck against his constraints. As we looked on, Bo wrested his left arm from the swaddle, rolled onto his side, and stuck his thumb in his mouth. While surprising, this development carried with the ancillary benefit of silencing his caterwauling.
Taylor spoke for both of us when he concluded, “Well, I guess that’s how it’s gonna be now.”
I laughed, then looked longingly over at my husband. “Do you think the couch pulls out?” I asked hopefully.
Taylor shook his head. “But even if it did, we wouldn’t have room for it with your bed and the bassinet,” he accurately pointed out.
My shoulders slumped. “And you’re sure you don’t want to try to share the cot with me?”
“Nah babe. You need to focus on healing, and I don’t think that contorting yourself so that I can fit too would be very helpful for that.”
I sighed piteously, but I knew he was right.
“Alright babe. Try to get some sleep.”
It seemed like only a minute later that I was awakened again. In fact, it might have truly been only a minute later.
Was is the baby, you ask? Ah, I wish it had been. No, instead, it was Nurse A, making her bubbly and vivacious way into my room to check on me.
Now, I want *you* to know that *I* know that it is a luxury that my bedroom is typically a silent and private place. At the time of this writing, Borealis cannot yet climb out of his crib or open doors, and Paul (our only other housemate) knows that entering my room without permission would risk his health, safety, and innocence. I understand that such privacy is a blessing, not a right.
But let me tell you. At oh-dark-thirty on February 16th, Nurse A just about lost her life. Or, at least, she just about lost her bubbly and vivacious mood.
I can’t remember exactly how I responded. It was likely either with silence or with something like, “You have disturbed my sleep. Get out or die.” (You know, upon further reflection, I think I probably chose the former.)
“Just checking in!” the nurse stage-whispered to my family, two-thirds of which was now awake. (Thankfully, Borealis slept through this intrusion.)
Taylor: <grunts blearily>
“It’s been four hours since your last dose of Tylenol. Would you like another dose now?”
At this point, I couldn’t even remember taking Tylenol the first time — although apparently I had. Not that it had reduced my pain level.
Accordingly, I couldn’t help but laugh at Nurse A’s somewhat bizarre question. Tylenol? Man, I had just pushed a cantaloupe-sized head through my body! How in the world would Tylenol help me recover from that!? I almost expected the nurse to also offer a Band-Aid for my placenta-wound.
“Um, no, I think I’m good for now,” I said aloud. Unless you have a morphine drip back there, I said silently.
“Ok, I’ll ask again in two hours when I do my rounds!” Nurse A chirped.
I wasn’t sure what to respond, so I answered, “Great, see you then!”
Dear reader, I know now that my breezy compliance was a mistake. Instead, I should have strongly urged Nurse A, “Please do not come back unless it is medically necessary or unless your job is at stake. I am so tired and all I want to do is sleep. Please, please leave me alone.”
Some hospitals will allow you to sleep through the night if you request the luxury (and are considered a low-risk patient). However, I have no idea whether *this* hospital would have afforded me “uninterrupted” sleep. Why? Because I didn’t ask. I was a dummy-head!!! Please don’t be like me! If you ever end up in the hospital, ask if you can sleep! (Or, better yet, find out if there’s just a lock on your door.)
In summary, I had not educated myself about my rights as a hospital patient. And why would I have? After all, I was extremely certain that I would not be transferred to a hospital mid-labor. While this assumption ended up being true, I realized — too late — what a foolhardy and prideful stance I had held! Alas. Hindsight is usually twenty-twenty.
The long and short of it was, we saw Nurse A again about two hours later. This next intrusion carried with it the additional benefit of rousing the baby. (Granted, he was probably close to waking up naturally anyway, but still.)
I guess Nurse A probably came in and checked some metrics of my health, but at the moment, I was more concerned with my wailing babe. Dad Taylor (who, presumably, had slept some amount in the preceding two hours) rose groggily from his couch to scoop up our child. Suddenly, an epiphany struck me.
“Hey, you!” I politely addressed Nurse A. “Since we have you here, will you check our nursing?”
“Well, I’m not a lactation consultant, but I may be able to give you some tips!” she offered.
Uncomfortably, I exposed my breast, then quickly (too quickly) brought Borealis up to cover my nakedness. Alas, in my haste, I didn’t really wait for my son either to give me feeding cues or to realize that I was trying to feed him, so the only thing my desperation accomplished was smashing Bo’s face into my breast. He proceeded to cry louder, while Nurse A clucked in mild disapproval.
“Well, you’re rushing it,” she concluded — somewhat unnecessarily.
I knew anything I said would be mean, so I said nothing, and instead tried again — this time, consciously attempting to quell my heartfelt urge to cover my nipple. Borealis gave another lackluster yawn and half-latched onto my right boob (the one that had given us problems the previous session). And, almost immediately, the issues arose once more.
Through gritted teeth, I hissed, “Would you come check out our latch?”
Nurse A bustled over to my cot-side and perfunctorily requested, “May I?” as she took hold of my breast. It would have been the perfect time to quip, “Whoa, with my husband in the room? Take me to dinner and a movie first, why dontcha?” Unfortunately, I was too exhausted/surprised/mortified to utter anything but a small, “Ok?”.
Securely cupping my nipple with her hand, Nurse A instructed, “Doing this will make it easier for him to get your nipple fully into his mouth. And be patient — wait for him to open his mouth completely before you pull him to your breast.”
She probably continued rattling off other valuable tips, but I was really only able to focus on one task at a time. I took over nipple-cupping and waiting *patiently* for Borealis to open his mouth fully. And waited. And waited. Then, I just settled for a half-open mouth, which was seemingly all I was going to get.
Thankfully, this latch was bearably painful. Bo emitted some sweet snuffling noises, which may or may not have indicated that he was ingesting colostrum. After about a minute, Nurse A chirped, “Great! Well, is there anything else you need from me right now?”
I stared dumbly at Taylor — which should really indicate to you the gravity of my muteness. After all, Taylor’s really not the talking sort.
After a few seconds of silent communication, we both turned back to Nurse A and simultaneously shook our heads.
She smiled. “Awesome! I’ll be back to introduce you to the day nurse at our shift change.”
Once she left, I addressed my husband again. “So… do you think you should change his diaper again?”
Dad Taylor shrugged. “I guess so?”
And so he did.
Here’s the thing. We really didn’t need to change the baby’s diaper. After all, that’s one of the major benefits of disposable diapers — that they don’t require immediate removal like cloth diapers. In fact, most disposable diapers actually advertise something like “12-hour protection”. So, Taylor was unwittingly changing a diaper that had at least another eight hours of viability ahead of it.
You see, we had never thought to ask when a baby’s diaper needs to be changed. Like many brand-new parents, we were under the [erroneus] impression that a wet diaper needs to be changed immediately upon discovery. This is simply not the case.
Please note — this is the case for *wet* diapers, not *soiled* diapers. Poopy diapers need to be changed immediately — for all babies, but especially girls (whose anatomy makes them more susceptible to fecal-related urinary tract infections). But pee-pee diapers… those render a bit more flexibility.
Again, there are some caveats here. For instance, if a baby sits in a wet diaper for too long, his skin can become irritated with what is commonly called “diaper rash”. Furthermore, some babies naturally have very sensitive skin and need to be changed more often. In addition, any sort of yeast or bacterial infection is usually exacerbated by a moist environment. (And, finally, cloth diapers — those basically always need to be changed immediately.)
Let me clarify my position. I’m not advocating letting a baby sit in his own pee for nearly a dozen hours. (Although, admittedly, most diapers are designed for such a timeline.) However, I am advocating that young parents get as much sleep as possible — and sometimes, this means allowing your precious bundle of joy to cycle through another round of sleep before changing his diaper.
Fifteen months later, I can laugh at the needless diaper change, which revealed neither meconium nor pee. However, at the time, all I could do was cry — which was, incidentally, exactly what Borealis was doing too.
Luckily, our post-diapering-and-swaddling nursing session was on the “easy” boob, so Bo calmed down fairly quickly — at least, while he was nursing. After Taylor reswaddled and resettled him into the bassinet, the baby raged for a few minutes before he again succeeded in extracting his left hand, rolling onto his side, and inserting his thumb into his mouth — at which point he fell promptly asleep.
“Do you think we should try to get him to stop sucking his thumb?” I yawned.
Taylor shook his head. “Nah, it won’t cause any permanent damage if he stops before his adult teeth come in… and that’s a problem for a different year.”
I chuckled. “Good, because I really wasn’t planning on doing anything anyway,” I murmured.
Taylor didn’t respond. He was already asleep. And after another minute, I was too.
And after *another* minute, I was awake once more.
Just kidding. My “nap” was probably closer to an hour, because this time, Nurse A appeared in the company of another woman, whom she glowingly introduced as the day nurse for the ward.
Nurse B was a plump woman in her mid-fifties with steely hair and an equally steely expression. I think she was best described as “no-nonsense” and “not maternal”.
Nurse B gave me a brusk nod in greeting. “We’ll chat more when I do my rounds,” she announced.
The pair left our room, which was now brightly lit by the newly-risen sun. [Note: In verifying a sunrise time of 6:52am for February 16, I also discovered that Bo was born on the night of a new moon… you know, the opposite of what the old wives’ tales would suggest.]
How did our room get flooded with light? I’m not sure. (This is one of the many parts that I don’t remember very well.) Maybe one of the nurses opened the shutters on our east-facing window — or maybe the shutters had never been closed at all. Either way, our day was beginning, whether or not we were ready for it.
The baby still hadn’t stirred, so Taylor and I remained ensconced in our respective sleeping arrangements. “Well, I guess I better start texting people,” I suggested. “If I want to be able to post anything on Instagram anytime soon.”
Taylor: <grunts in agreement>
“Which means you should also text people,” I concluded.
Taylor: <grunts in disappointment>
For a while, we texted in silence. Having discovered at some point (another memory gap) that you actually have to *pay* for hospital food, we breakfasted instead on stroopwafels and sunflower seeds from my labor bag. I donned the nursing bra I had packed in an effort to gain just a little privacy.
At some point, the baby woke up in a “good mood” (i.e. crying, but no more than usual). Taylor transported him into my arms, and we were treated to another tolerable nursing session.
Nurse B conveniently reappeared during said session, bustled over to my cot-side and declared, “I’m going to check on your latch. [Nurse A] told me that you had had some issues last night.”
Oh, so now the nurses were gossiping about me, huh? (Just kidding. Obviously this was a necessary and responsible exchange of relevant medical information.)
Nurse B performed a perfunctory and austere assessment of our latch. “Well, part of the problem is that his lips aren’t flanged properly.”
This was true. Rather than splaying outward like those of a fish, Bo‘s lips were distinctly un-flanged. Nurse B ran a finger under his lips, which then obligingly flanged. (Thankfully, this accommodation suggested that the issue was due to laziness, not due to a lip-tie.)
After adjusting our latch, Nurse B stepped back and analyzed a large whiteboard on the wall. This board was filled with details of our birth and postpartum experience. I saw descriptions like “Hematoma” and “38.4 Weeks”. Many of the items on the board were followed by purposeful blanks, which indicated that we had not yet addressed the topic with hospital staff. After taking in the profusion of blanks, Nurse B turned back to me and cut right to the chase.
“After you finish nursing, I’m going to make sure that your hematoma is healing up right, and then I’ll help you use the bathroom, if you need to go.”
After Borealis sucked his fill, I begrudgingly handed him back to Taylor and awkwardly lay back for my examination. Nurse B was at least the sixth person to assess my nether regions up close within the past two days, but the process still remained unbearably uncomfortable for me. Thankfully, the nurse was not alarmed by anything she saw, so next thing I knew, I was being helped to my feet and shepherded to the adjoining bathroom.
As I sat down, Nurse B handed me an empty peri bottle, then exited the room. I had no idea if it was the exact one that I had used the previous night, but the mechanism was certainly the same. The only problem was, Nurse B hadn’t filled the bottle for me before leaving the bathroom, so I was left to scoot to the very edge of the toilet, then stretch to reach the sink. I managed to half-fill the peri bottle with [what turned out to be icy] water before the sound of the running faucet caused me to pee.
I shot a resentful glare at Nurse B’s back. If I was going to be trapped in the hospital, shouldn’t I at least have some help with the most challenging tasks?
After assembling a new mesh panty ensemble, I straightened up slowly and washed my hands. Thankfully, I was much less woozy than I had been for my previous trip to the bathroom. I walked back to the cot under my own strength.
After I laid back down, Nurse B felt my stomach and massaged the top of my uterus. “That’s shrinking nicely. How is your bleeding?”
I shrugged. “Tolerable?” I guessed. I had no real reference point.
Nurse B seemed to accept this explanation, because she moved on to the next topic of conversation. “Now let’s discuss the baby. It looks like you opted in for the Vitamin K booster, and you opted out for the erythromycin. Is that correct?”
I nodded.
“So are you getting him circumcised?”
I shook my head.
This was a logical follow-up question, since the Vitamin K booster is a mandatory prerequisite for circumcision. Still, my feathers were a bit ruffled. The circumcision question had been a hard — sorry, a difficult — one for Taylor and me, so I was unwilling to explain our very personal decision to this perfect stranger.
While we weighed things like family tradition and societal norms, we ultimately wanted to make our decision based on God’s Word. We revisited the New Testament teachings on circumcision and confirmed that Borealis’s salvation will not rest on his penis situation… so we decided to leave it intact.
I had always been so confident that I would circumcise my sons — until I actually pictured strapping my child down and slicing into his body. (Obviously I wouldn’t have been the one doing the surgery, but the thought process still holds.) Plus, circumcision is not zero-risk (or even necessarily low-risk) — and according to the nurse educator at our birth center, the risk of circumcision-related infection is approximately equal to the risk of uncircumcision-related infection.
Accordingly, we decided to forego the surgery altogether. [Note: Even though we weren’t getting Borealis circumcised, we had opted-in for the Vitamin K booster because the shot is a low-risk way to curtail a preventable bleeding disorder.]
I didn’t voice all this reasoning, and I’m not sure Nurse B would have wanted to hear it, either. She merely raised her eyebrows and made a marking on her clipboard.
“Alright, well, let’s schedule his first bath, at least,” she finally suggested.
Once more, I shook my head. “Um, we’re not going to bathe him for a couple of weeks so that his skin’s microbiome starts to develop better,” I explained.
Again, no comment, but the steely eyebrows rose even further.
I thought back to the previous night. As she was leaving, Anika had reminded me that I could refuse anything. I raised my chin and strengthened my resolve. My son would be keeping his vernix-y coating.
“Ok, last thing before I continue my rounds. You haven’t had Tylenol since last night. Would you like one now?”
I accepted the Tylenol because I felt bad for turning down the circumcision and bath. I really didn’t want Nurse B to feel useless… but I really wanted her to *be* useless.
My heart ached to go home, to my little room, with my clean sheets and my dog and my husband. I didn’t want Nurse B — or any other stranger — taking care of me. Instead, I wanted to return to Golden and figure things out as a family — not as a group of refugees, which is what we felt like. (Yes, I realize that this is insensitive to *actual* refugees.)
A short while later, a hospital welcome package appeared in my room. (Or maybe it was there the whole time, and I just noticed it then. I don’t really remember.) Taylor had placed a snoozing Bo back in the bassinet, so we took the opportunity to look through the set. A water bottle, a meal voucher, a cute crocheted baby beanie, and a whole lot of hospital pamphlets. I requested water in the bottle and set the rest aside for later. Taylor and I sat chatting quietly while we waited for the “next thing” to happen.
Unfortunately, Borealis didn’t get a full nap before he was roused by the arrival of the “next thing” — which, thankfully, wasn’t another set of strangers. Instead, my hospital room suddenly became small with the addition of my parents and sister and Taylor’s Aunt Franny.
As was her want, Susan promptly proceeded to a chair, where she sat down and began to sing. (This was, of course, preceded by a perfunctory shout of, “Hi, Baby Bo! Hi, Holly! Hi, Taylor!”)
My parents and Aunt Franny gathered around ten-hour-old Borealis, whom Taylor had just deposited into my arms.
“Do you think he’s hungry?” one of the adults suggested.
“Maybe!” I agreed, gritting my teeth in what hopefully passed for a smile. Nursing in front of family is only a little less awkward than nursing in front of strangers. (For me, at least.) I self-consciously removed a breast from my nursing bra while my father (thankfully) discreetly averted his eyes.
Meanwhile, Aunt Franny snapped some pictures that somehow ended up disguising my exhaustion/griminess. Starring in my own production of I Totally Know What I’m Doing, I did my best to faithfully represent the role of “Young Mother” into which I had been cast. The adults applauded my performance.
I sighed in relief when I saw Taylor gratefully accept a Starbucks to-go cup from my mother. She had probably also brought a green tea latte for me, but that wasn’t my main concern at the moment. Of the two of us, Taylor is the one who is useless without caffeine.
Besides Susan (whom we were all content to leave alone), everyone took turns holding the baby. My mother bounced with him, and he cried. Aunt Franny burped him, and he cried. My father barely touched him, and he cried. All around, he was an extremely vocal baby.
And a very vomit-y baby, too. It wasn’t just when Aunt Franny burped him — it was all the time. His face, hat, diaper, and (discarded) swaddle were all layered with globs of innocuous newborn spit-up… as were all of our clothes. I wondered why he was throwing up with such gusto and volume.
As it happened, I didn’t have long to wonder. My family members took their cue to leave as Nurse B reappeared during her next set of rounds. Aunt Franny promised to return that afternoon with Paul (Taylor’s younger brother), while my mother assured me, “We’ll see you on Sunday!” — two days hence.
After Susan‘s farewell stopped echoing around the walls, I asked Nurse B, “Is it normal for him to be throwing up so much?”
She shrugged. “Every baby is different,” she stated banally. Thankfully, she continued, “But there could be some reasons why he would be vomiting more than usual.”
The nurse proceeded to rattle off a comprehensive and extensive list of reasons why my son’s esophageal sphincter might be failing so egregiously. Upon hearing “precipitous delivery”, I cut in.
“Yeah, I think we had that — a precipitous delivery.”
As it turns out, my assertion wasn’t entirely true. Generally, precipitous delivery goes hand-in-hand with precipitous labor, which is a labor pattern that smooshes all the stages together into merely a handful of hours — i.e. NOT what I experienced. (But, even though I was missing half of the “precipitous” definition, Anika had characterized the delivery itself as precipitous because it happened basically without warning and with almost no conscious pushing.)
Nurse B glanced down at a folder in her hands and nodded. “Yes, it says here that he was delivered very quickly. When that happens, the baby tends to ingest more amniotic fluid than typically, and that fluid then has to be either passed through the underdeveloped digestion system, or otherwise vomited out.” [Note: While I can’t find a good source to support Nurse B’s assessment, it was repeated by several other medical professionals while we were in the hospital.]
I glanced down at my spitty baby, who was looking about ready for a nap. “So… he’s just gonna be like that? And it’s ok?”
Nurse B nodded. “But be sure to feed him as much as you can. It will help develop his digestive system, which will help with the vomiting.” After another glance at her folder, she continued, “The pediatrician is going to drop by in within the next thirty minutes. She’ll have some more information for you.”
Had we been in our own home, Taylor and I would have frantically tidied up to receive a doctor. However, in the hospital room, we merely identified — and then did nothing about — the conspicuous messes: my stroopwafel wrappers; the overflowing labor bag; the half-empty Starbucks cups; a dirty pair of Taylor’s underwear (since, in a rare moment of prescience, I had thought to bring him an extra set into which he had gratefully changed); etc.
As it happened, we were justified in ignoring the state of our room. When the pediatrician arrived about forty-five minutes later, it quickly became abundantly clear that she was more interested in eviscerating our confidence as parents than in critiquing our skill as housekeepers.
And eviscerate our confidence she did.
In truth, her visit shouldn’t have been as emotionally wrenching as it was for us. Borealis and I were healthy and safe, and so we really shouldn’t have been upset by Dr. Pediatrician’s harsh tones and non-existent bedside manner.
But, we were *so* tired, and I wanted *so* desperately to go home.
Unfortunately for us, Dr. Pediatrician was quite literally standing in our way.
To be fair, the visit didn’t start out too terribly. After asking us to wake and completely undress our son, Dr. Pediatrician ran one finger along his waxy arm and inferred, “He hasn’t had his first bath yet. You should call the nurse to do that after we’re done here.”
I gritted my teeth. “We actually won’t be giving him a bath until he’s two weeks old. We did some research about allowing his skin’s microbiome to develop, and both the vernix and the vaginal bacteria are really good for that,” I explained lamely.
Dr. Pediatrician shrugged. I got the impression that she didn’t care what our reasoning was. She proceeded to perform an emotionless assessment of our squalling son and finally pronounced him perfectly formed — aside from a single cosmetic abnormality that I have no desire to identify by name.
Frustratingly, the doctor delivered this news with less empathy than I receive from the automated ticketing booths at Denver Airport. (At least those say, “Thank you,” in a lovely robotic baritone.)
“Oh my gosh, do you think it’ll be really obvious when he grows up? Like do you think he’ll get teased for it?” I worried.
Dr. Pediatrician shrugged. “Like I said, it’s entirely cosmetic.”
I persisted. “But could it go away on its own as he gets older?”
The doctor shook her head. “It might, but probably not.”
Seemingly oblivious to the emotional blow she had just inflicted upon Taylor and me, the pediatrician blithely continued. “Are you getting him circumcised?”
I blinked past my tears and answered, “No, um, we’re not going to.”
To her credit, Dr. Pediatrician merely stated, “Well, it’s your choice.” Moving on, she announced, “Alright, onto the measurements.”
Taylor and I silently attempted to convey complex emotional evaluations with solely eye contact. We were mostly unsuccessful. Meanwhile, Dr. Pediatrician dispassionately weighed our son (and presumably took some other measurements too). She then turned back to us and impassively handed me my wailing child.
“I’m concerned about how much weight he’s lost,” she announced without preamble. “Are you breastfeeding?”
I nodded.
“Feed him as much as you can. You need to turn around this weight loss ASAP.”
Here’s the thing — all babies lose wait in the days immediately after birth. The heuristic I gave in Part III was that a newborn commonly loses 5% to 10% of his birth weight within the first week of life — and Bo’s weight loss was within this range. (While I don’t remember the exact number, it was somewhere between 4% and 7%.) I guess Dr. Pediatrician might have been concerned that our baby would continue losing mass at that rate. Either way, her exhortation was sterile and cold, and — whether or not it was intended — my takeaway was, “You are not doing enough as a mother. You are already failing your child.”
Tears immediately sprang to my eyes, but Dr. Pediatrician — either unaware or unconcerned — barreled onward. “You should see a lactation consultant before we discharge you. It’s possible that he’s not actually getting anything when you feed him.”
Oh, goodie. So not only was I a lackluster mother, but I had also possibly been wasting my time every time I fed Borealis. Good news all around.
Still fighting tears, I segued, “Speaking of discharging us. We were hoping to go home tonight, after he gets his twenty-four hour tests done, and we were told that you’ll have to be the one to discharge us. So… can we go home tonight?”
Dr. Pediatrician was shaking her head before I even finished my question. “No, that’s not really how we do things around here. First of all, we discharge at noon, not at night. Second of all—” <glancing down at Borealis> “—we won’t discharge a newborn that has dangerous levels of bilirubin, and I can already see that he’s jaundiced. I’ll send a tech along shortly to draw his blood, but don’t be surprised if we have to put him under lights.”
This threat was a low blow. (Yes, I know that this information wasn’t intended as a threat, but that is absolutely how I took it.)
Let’s take a broader view of things. In terms of babies at hospitals… the absolute worst thing that can happen is that the baby doesn’t survive the birth/postpartum process. Bereaved mothers have my eternal sympathy. Probably the next worst thing that can happen is an extended stay in the NICU. While I haven’t experienced this one personally, I have heard truly heart-wrenching stories.
So, let’s agree that a jaundiced baby is neither the worst nor the second worst phenomenon that can occur to a baby at a hospital. However, I would guess that it probably rates in the top ten — and unlike the other “worst case scenarios” (which, by the grace of God, we had seemingly dodged), excess bilirubin was the fate which we found ourselves facing.
Jaundice occurs in babies when bilirubin (a breakdown byproduct of red blood cells) builds up in the newborn’s blood stream. In utero, the placenta functions as the baby’s liver and removes excess bilirubin. However, once the baby is born, his little liver has to go to work clearing the bilirubin on its own — and sometimes it isn’t up to the task. (This is especially common in preterm infants, whose livers are even smaller and less developed than those of most other babies.) Bilirubin removal is aided by an increased frequency of feedings, which leads to an increased volume of pee and poop, which are the avenues by which bilirubin leaves the body (in the form of bile).
Unfortunately, a sufficient reduction of jaundice cannot always be achieved by simply “more boob”. In severe cases of jaundice, phototherapy (aka “putting the baby under lights”) is used to aid the isomerization [read: chemical alteration] of bilirubin. The products of this process are then able to be excreted from the baby’s body in the form of urine and feces. Notably, very few newborns have bilirubin concentrations high enough to necessitate phototherapy — only about 0.5% to 4% of term and late-preterm infants. (This means that, even though three in five newborns are “clinically jaundiced”, the vast majority manage to avoid phototherapy. I wasn’t eager for our son to be part of the minority.)
So what would it have looked like to put our baby under lights? Well, according to a nurse friend of mine, hospital staff will bring a clear or yellow-tinted bassinet into Mommy’s recovery room. Baby will be stripped down to a diaper and protective goggles and will then be placed in the bassinet. Blue or cool white lights will be situated as little as four inches above Baby, who will be periodically rotated so as to expose the maximum amount of skin. Finally, some interminable number of hours later, Baby’s bilirubin levels will be rechecked with a blood draw. During this time, Mommy can remove Baby for feedings and diaper changes, but snuggles and kisses are basically a no-no.
Sounds pretty barbaric, huh? I thought so too. Plus, at the time, I actually thought that phototherapy occurred in the NICU (i.e. away from me), so my feelings about the prospect were less than dismal — and I wanted to make this clear to our ice-cold pediatrician.
“Isn’t there anything else we can do!?” I begged. “I’ve heard that sunlight can help?”
Having finished the hands-on element of her work, Dr. Pediatrician handed Borealis back to Taylor, who mournfully began to swaddle our son. The doctor merely talked over his crying. (The baby’s, not Taylor’s. Taylor cries quietly.)
Dr. Pediatrician audaciously stated, “There’s little evidence to suggest that sunlight is effective at treating jaundice.” [Note: This is patently false. While sunlight can actually be too intense — and can also lead to sunburn — there is plenty of evidence that sunlight can effectively treat jaundice.]
Dr. Pediatrician continued. “Plus, these have a UV coating,” she explained, gesturing at the windows. “And it’s too cold outside to expose him to the sunlight undressed. So, essentially your only other recourse is to feed him more. How many times have you nursed him today?”
I wanted to immediately answer, “A million,” but Dr. Pediatrician didn’t strike me as the type of woman who appreciated hyperbole. I tried to tally the number of feedings I had given Bo in his lifetime. “Like, six or seven?” I guessed. This felt like an admirable achievement, considering my son was barely twelve hours old.
Dr. Pediatrician nodded. “Well, try to feed him more than that, if you can. The sooner your milk comes in, the faster he’ll pass the bilirubin.”
I suddenly thought of another solution. “Or, we could just get discharged now, and we’ll put him in front of the windows at our house! They don’t have a UV coating, and then he won’t be cold, either.”
But, Dr. Pediatrician was shaking her head once more. “I won’t discharge him if his bili levels are as high as I suspect they’ll be. I could discharge you, and you could bunk in, but I won’t discharge him.”
It was at this moment that our hospital stay went from unpleasant and unwanted to downright threatening. I actually couldn’t believe what Dr. Pediatrician was saying. We had gone to the medical center to make sure neither of us was about to die — which, in my view, meant that we were done with the hospital about the time that they sent me to my recovery room. Now, I was being told that not only could I not take my son and go — but I also might have to send him to lay under bright light for a day. So much for skin-to-skin time.
I’d like to say that I maintained a respectful, calm demeanor — but, I didn’t.
“Are you serious?” I demanded. “You’re going to hold my son hostage? Then no, I won’t be discharged, as I’m sure you would guess.” [Note: We had already reached our out-of-pocket maximum for our insurance plan, which meant that they should — and did — eventually reimburse us for the entire stay. Additionally, I wasn’t sure what “bunking in” would entail. Would they totally ignore me and my desires? Would they take Borealis off to a nursery anyway? Safer to just keep things how they were, since the two options were financially equivalent.]
Dr. Pediatrician shrugged, so I continued, “You’re actually keeping us imprisoned, then!”
At this, the doctor smirked broadly. “No, I assure you that this hospital is different from prison.”
Listen. I know that she was right. I would pick “hospital” over “prison” any day of the week. But, at that moment, the two options felt pretty similar.
“But we can’t leave?” I clarified.
Dr. Pediatrician rose from her seat and moved toward the door. “I will discharge you when I feel that it is safe to do so,” she stated with finality.
“So we’re stuck here? You’re saying that my son can’t leave? That’s imprisonment. And even worse — I’m paying for it!”
“I will send a tech along shortly to draw his blood,” Dr. Pediatrician called over her shoulder — and with that, she was gone.
So what did we do with this information?
Well, Taylor felt disgusting, so he decided to shower. Meanwhile, a tech arrived and drew Borealis’s blood — which meant that I had to feed my distraught child immediately afterwards. (At least the heel prick / blood collection was a relatively fast and easy process… this time around.)
As Taylor dressed in the same clothes that he had been wearing before his shower, I decided to take a skin-to-skin nap with the baby. After all, I was exhausted, so my ability to think of any sort of plan was severely curtailed by my inability to think at all.
Conveniently, as I was about to fall asleep, a housekeeper poked her head around the room’s privacy curtain and announced, “I’m here to take out your trash! Would now be a good time for me to do so?”
I cracked open one eye. “Well, now that I’m awake again, why not?”
The maid didn’t seem to notice my sarcasm, and thankfully, my son didn’t seem to notice the maid. He continued blissfully snoozing on, cuddled once again on my chest.
Once we were alone again, I craned my neck to look at Taylor.
“Oh, don’t cry, Wifey,” he soothed. “Everything’s going to be ok.”
“No, it’s not! They’re never going to let us leave! What if his bilirubin is as high as Dr. Pediatrician thinks it will be, and then they have to put him under lights?”
Taylor stood up so that he could take my hand. “Then that’s what we’ll do, and it will be ok. I promise.”
“But what if they don’t let us leave tomorrow? What if we have to stay until next week?”
“Then we’ll do that too. There’s nothing insur… insurma…”
“Insurmountable?”
“Yeah, that one. There’s nothing insurmountable ahead of us. Plus, we’ll get reimbursed for our stay, regardless of how long it is.”
I nodded, but I was still crying. “I just want to go home,” I moaned. “I want to sleep without anyone but my son waking me up. Is that so much to ask?”
Taylor shrugged. “Apparently, yes.”
In response, I sobbed.
He continued, “But, this isn’t going to last forever. You heard the pediatrician — if you can feed him enough to get his bilirubin levels down, then she’ll let us go.”
In response, I sobbed harder.
“My nipples are on fire right now,” I wailed. “I don’t want to feed him ever again!”
Taylor gave me a sympathetic look. “You can do it, Wifey! And, I know you don’t mean that.”
“I don’t,” I conceded.
Taylor squatted down beside the cot, maintaining his grip on my hand. “Maybe let’s make the appointment for our lactation consultation right now!” he suggested.
“Ughhhh,” I moaned in agreement.
Rifling through the information provided in our welcome packet, Taylor managed to locate the number for the on-site lactation consultants. “Do you want me to make the appointment, or do you want to?”
I gestured to the sleeping baby, as if to indicate, “Phones are now dead to me.”
Taylor made the call and arranged a consultation for the following morning. Then, still holding his cell phone, he announced, “You know what would make this better? Pizza. I’m going to order in Anthony’s.”
And so he did. While we waited for the pizza to arrive, Taylor did his best to pump me up for the task at hand. “All right babe, all you gotta do is feed him lots, all the time.”
I glared at my husband. “Do you think he likes pizza?” I asked hostilely. “Because that will at least be more caloric than the one milliliter of colostrum he’s ingested so far.”
Taylor threw back his head and laughed, then exhorted, “No, babe, you’re doing such a good job! You’re a great mommy!”
I eyed him incredulously. “Yeah. We’ll see if his bilirubin levels support that claim.”
As it happens, we didn’t have long to wait. Nurse B reappeared around noon, and after ensuring that we were, you know, still alive, she stood and addressed Taylor and me.
“The blood test came back, and his bilirubin is right on the borderline between Moderate and High,” she stated. “So, the pediatrician will not be discharging you this evening.”
Well, we had already known that bit.
“And she wants another bilirubin blood draw tonight. A tech will just take it at the same time she does the rest of the twenty-four hour tests.”
We hadn’t known that piece of information, but it wasn’t too concerning to hear.
“And if his bilirubin isn’t reduced by tonight, then the pediatrician will have him put under lights immediately.”
Alright, *this* ultimatum was both unknown and concerning.
“Are you serious!?” I demanded. Nurse B turned a look on me that very clearly communicated, I am always serious.
Nurse B probably regaled us with some additional information, but the buzzing in my ears drowned out her voice and the sound of her receding footsteps as she left.
“They’re never gonna let us go!” I shouted. “We’re going to be stuck here forever!”
Taylor shook his head. “Well, there’s only one thing we can do about it right now, and unfortunately, only you have the plumbing for it.”
[Note: This statement was wrong on two major accounts. Firstly, we had another viable option for getting home. It’s called “leaving the hospital against medical advice” — and quite frankly, if we had known that leaving without being discharged was an option, I’m 99% sure that’s what we would’ve done. However, as you can tell, none of the hospital staff were eager to inform us about this avenue of egress — and, as already stated, we had seriously failed to research our rights as hospital patients. I believed that hospital staff would — quite literally — wrestle my son from my arms if I tried to take him before he was discharged. Secondly, human males can lactate — although the phenomenon usually occurs as an unpleasant side-effect of certain medications, rather than as the result of a deliberate choice. Either way, Taylor wasn’t going to be nursing any time soon.]
I sighed heartily, but I agreed with Taylor. Seemingly, only I had the ability to get us home.
“Ok baby, wake up, I have to feed you,” I murmured to Borealis, who — amazingly — had slept through my shouting. After receiving a gentle jostle, my son groaned, stretched, and cried. The perfect intro to an imperfect nursing session.
This feeding proceeded like the ones before — tolerable, which (at this point) was basically equivalent to “fantastic”. As we were finishing up, Taylor got a call.
“Oh, that’s Anthony’s!” he crowed, jumping up. “I’ll be right back.”
Ten minutes later, we were eagerly working our way through a medium pie. Nowadays, at fifteen months old, Borealis refuses to sit idly by if pizza is being consumed in his presence. However, at about fifteen hours old, he contently sat in the crook of my arm while I inadvertently showered him with crumbs.
“Do you think I have time to take a nap?” I queried after polishing off my third slice of pizza.
Taylor looked down at his phone and grimaced. “Franny texted me a few minutes ago that she’s on her way to get Paul, so I would guess that they’ll probably be here in the next twenty minutes.”
Taking stock of how I felt, I realized that a twenty minute nap would do more harm than good. “Well, I guess I’ll just stay awake, then,” I decided.
I glanced down at Borealis, who had fallen asleep at my side. “You just sleep for both of us, ok?” I told him.
As usual, Taylor’s time estimate was wildly inaccurate. Almost an hour later, Aunt Franny and Paul burst into our hospital room.
“Knock knock!” the former called around the curtain. I could hear from the tone of her voice that a grin was practically splitting her face in two.
And so, graciously, I welcomed them with a loud grunt. It was almost as if I were becoming Taylor.
Aunt Franny and her huge smile appeared around the curtain. You would never guess that she had been up late the previous night and had risen early that morning — or that she had already met my son several times. If anything, her enthusiasm had only grown.
“There’s my Bo!” she crooned sweetly.
Meanwhile, my moody brother-in-law poked his head around the curtain. “Hey,” he mumbled in greeting.
“Hi, Paul. Good of you to join us. As if I weren’t already uncomfortable!” I responded.
Paul: <grunts ambivalently>
Taylor shot me a glare and rose to meet his brother. Paul shook his hand and muttered, “Congrats, man.”
Taylor: <grunts in acknowledgement>
Dear reader, you may get the impression that these two brothers are very similar. This is a correct impression. The main difference is that Taylor can’t grow facial hair, while Paul’s beard — and chest hair — is the stuff of legend. I frequently confuse their voices (and grunts) if one or both of them are speaking from another room.
In addition, you may get the impression that, at the time of Borealis’s birth, I didn’t much care for Paul. This is also a correct impression. Thankfully, about a year of living in the same house has greatly softened and strengthened our relationship.
In an unexpected twist, Borealis took to Paul immediately — well, at least, he took to the beard immediately. (In fact, Paul has remained one of my son’s favorite family members, and the primary reason for that is the fantastic beard.)
Taylor‘s relatives didn’t stay long — but they stayed long enough that at one point, I sent Paul out of the room so that I could nurse again. I think I probably said a total of ten sentences the entire time they were visiting.
Eventually, Aunt Franny rose to leave. “Well, I should be getting Paul back to Golden so that I can make my way to the airport,” she explained.
“Safe travels! Thank you for coming!” Taylor spoke for both of us. He had taken off his shirt and was cuddling our son skin-to-skin. Bo was delightfully quiet — probably because he had fallen asleep again.
Once our family had gone, I lolled my head to the side and asked, “So, do you think I have time for a nap now?”
Taylor glanced at his phone to check the time. “I don’t know, babe. I think Nurse B is gonna be back in just a few minutes.”
And so she was. To my shock and delight, Nurse B was actually accompanied by several medical students as well. After palpating my lower abdomen, she called them over and instructed them to join in the palpating fun.
“First, feel this part. Do you notice how the fundus of the uterus is distinct and a bit rigid? Now feel this section to the side of that. Notice how it’s soft and indistinct? That’s called a ‘boggy uterus’. Now, when we press firmly and push downward—” <familiar uncomfortable sensation> “—that restores the shape of her uterus. Does that make sense?” All the med students nodded and — thankfully — removed their hands from my body and their bodies from my room. I couldn’t help but think that I surely wouldn’t have been a classroom example at the birth center.
“Ok, I have to pee,” I announced after the ensemble left. As I carefully rose from my cot, Taylor panicked, “Are you sure you can go alone? Do you need me to put the baby down?”
I shook my head, which admittedly made me a little woozy. Otherwise, though, I felt remarkably stable. I slowly walked to the bathroom and sat down (sans fainting!). I even felt like an old pro when I used the peri bottle and changed my mesh panty set.
When I returned to the room, I discovered that Taylor had joined Borealis in his nap. Now that our room was finally quiet, I decided to follow suit.
I awoke to the sound of someone knocking on our door and stepping into the room.
Judging by the daylight outside our window, I could tell that my snooze had lasted no longer than an hour. I cleared the sleep from my eyes in time to see Nurse B enter my room in the company of another nurse.
“[Nurse C] will be taking over for the rest of the day shift,” Nurse B explained.
Nurse C was a woman of indeterminable age, with no distinguishing features. Since the day was quickly drawing to a close, I guessed that I would encounter her about three more times. Unfortunately, this meant that the adjectives I assigned to Nurse C were “forgettable” and “wallflower”. The only thing I remember her saying was, “Oh, so you guys are the accidental home birth!”
Indeed. That’s us.
The two nurses left the room just as Taylor and Bo began to stir.
“Oh goodie,” I deadpanned. “We’re all awake now — oh, and you look even more trashy when you’re asleep.”
Taylor looked up sharply. “What do you mean?”
I sighed. “I’m sorry babe, I just feel like we’re getting so judged by everyone here. Like, because we had an accidental home birth, it seems like everyone is also assuming that, like, you’re a druggy skater boy, and I’m the dumb girlfriend you knocked up. And your long hair doesn’t help.”
Taylor: <grunts sadly>
“No!” I burst out. “You know I like your long hair! But, like, I feel like no one knows or cares that we’ve been married for two years, and, like, we’re educated and stuff, and that we planned this baby — just, apparently, not the birth.”
Taylor shrugged. “It doesn’t matter what they think, babe. It only matters what God thinks.”
Which is, of course, true.
By this point, Borealis was crying — obviously — so I nursed him for a few minutes, then tucked him next to my side again. (He was so snuggly as a newborn.) Taylor doled out snacks from my labor bag, the volume of which had markedly declined.
Just as we finished up the last of the salted sunflower seeds, we heard another knock on my door. I rolled my eyes at Taylor. Didn’t we have at least a *few* more minutes before Nurse C was due back?
But, our visitor wasn’t Nurse C. Instead, a very familiar and very welcome voice called, “Holly? Are you decent for company?”
“Anika!” I cried.
Sure enough, my trusty midwife appeared around the curtain. Somehow, she looked smaller in the light of day. I realized that she had taken on nearly mythic proportions in my skewed memories of the night before.
“Hey, I told you I was going to visit this afternoon!” she reminded me as she pulled a chair to the center of my hospital room. “I’m doing the rounds and visiting any birth center clients who ended up here. There are several others, although I can honestly say that you are the only home birth.”
I chuckled a little. “Well, you know me… I just have to be unique.”
Anika quirked an eyebrow in response. “Speaking of unique situations. Less than two hours after I left the hospital last night, we had another precipitous delivery — only, it happened in her car, right when she got to the birth center. Admittedly, not the first baby I’ve caught in a car.”
“Was she allowed to stay at the birth center?” I probed.
Anika shifted uncomfortably. “Well, since the spot she parked in technically belonged to the facility… yes, she received her postpartum care at the birth center.”
“And I’m stuck here,” I sighed.
Anika shrugged. “It is what it is. Plus, I’m here to check on you, so it’s not like we’ve thrown you to the wolves. Speaking of which…” She rose to standing and approached the foot of my cot. “I would like to make sure your hematoma is healing up well.”
“Be my guest,” I groaned. Anika rolled her eyes in response.
Several dozen seconds later, she announced, “All done! Everything looks great. Your hematoma is going down in size, and it should be totally gone in the next few days.”
“Well, that’s good news,” I conceded. “What about my boggy uterus?”
Anika quickly felt my abdomen. “You actually feel pretty good!” she decided.
I shrugged. “Yeah, the nurse just gave me another fundal massage. In public.”
Anika plastered on a faux-frown. “I’m sorry. I know you like to, you know, hide your face from the world and all that.”
“Shut up!” I laughed. “I’m not that bad.”
Anika shook her head as she returned to her seat. “No, you’re not. How are you doing otherwise?”
I sighed. “I mean, I guess we’re ok. Bo has kinda high bili levels, so I’m having to feed him, like, all the time.”
Anika nodded. “And how is nursing going?”
I grunted ambivalently. “I mean, alright, I guess. I think he’s getting something — at least, if the constant vomiting is anything to judge by.”
Anika let out a surprised bark of laughter, then asked, “Did you guys make an appointment with a lactation consultant?”
“Yeah. We’ll see her tomorrow.”
Anika nodded. “I know that the midwives here usually like to check in with the birth center’s clients before they’re discharged. I imagine you’ll see one of them tomorrow morning, as well.”
“Well, I guess that’s alright. I’ve known a midwife or two in my day, and they’re not all bad.” I tried to wink, but I was so tired that I only managed a sluggish blink.
“…Are you alright?” Anika inquired.
“Ugh, yes, but *so* exhausted,” I complained. “I wish I were home.”
Anika smiled. “Yes, you do have a lovely home, from what I saw of it.”
“Oh my gosh!” I exclaimed. “I meant to ask! Did you totally get in trouble for last night?”
Anika looked down into her lap. “Um, well, not yet. I have a meeting with the director of the birth center on Monday.” She paused. “But, I honestly think it’ll be fine. I am so convinced that every member of the birth center — even the director — would have done the exact same thing in my situation, especially since your contractions gave basically no warning that delivery was imminent.”
Taylor, who had been characteristically silent up until this point, finally spoke up. “If you’d like, I’ll chart up the contraction data in Excel and send you a spreadsheet?”
Anika looked at Taylor like maybe she wanted *him* to be Mr. Boyfriend. “Oh my gosh, would you do that? It would be so helpful, especially in defending my professional assumptions and actions.”
Taylor: <grunts graciously>
Anika sat back in her chair. “Man, what a crazy birth story. I honestly think it’s the craziest one I’ve ever seen in person.”
I cocked an eyebrow. “Are you serious? You delivered a baby in a car last night — sorry, this morning.”
Anika waved away my point. “Oh please, those happen all the time. But a thirty-hour labor that ends in an accidental home birth? That’s basically unheard of.”
“Super,” I deadpanned.
Anika sighed. “Alright, well I do have a few more clients to check in on, so unfortunately, I should be going. Will you try to schedule your two week postpartum visit with me?”
I nodded. “Yeah, for sure. What about the six week one?”
Anika broke eye contact. “I’m actually moving back to Oregon. I won’t be here six weeks from now. So, the two week appointment is probably the last time we’ll see each other.”
[Note: It was. Sadly, I lost contact with Anika when she moved to Oregon.]
“Oh, ok,” I said stupidly. “Um, well, bye then, and good luck! With the clients, I mean. Oh, and I guess also in Oregon.”
Anika’s laughter lingered a few seconds after she did.
The rest of the afternoon and evening passed in a blur. Bo intermittently slept, cried, and nursed — and not always in that order. We munched on leftover pizza and labor bag goodies. We tried to nap, but our attempts were mostly in vain. Nurse C reappeared frequently enough to prevent us from effectively sleeping but infrequently enough to prevent us from learning anything about her.
Somehow, I missed both the transition from day to night and the transition from Nurse C to Nurse D. At some point, without my noticing, my room had become dimly lit and my nurse had become a curvy Hispanic woman.
Nurse D was pleasant, but by the time she became my warden, I was already counting down the hours until I could go home. I was really in no mood for Stockholm syndrome.
At some point in the hours between 8pm and 10pm, Taylor fell asleep — hard. The past few days caught up to him all at once, and he just slumped over awkwardly on the couch. Neither my voice nor Bo’s cries could wake him. Considering I needed him to drive me home — safely — the next day, I figured it was best to let sleeping husbands lie.
I mostly kept Bo by my side. He slept significantly better with me than he did in the bassinet — and he slept even better on his chest, on my chest. (Yes, I know that this is unsafe by American standards.)
I dozed on and off as I waited for our last event of the night: Bo’s twenty-four-hour newborn screening tests. A key element of all traditional newborn care, these screening tests are conducted using blood drops (generally from a heel prick). These blood drops are carefully deposited on a paper grid, and the dried blood is subsequently tested for a number of genetic markers, including those indicating cystic fibrosis or phenylketonuria (PKU). (In fact, because this latter marker is part of the screening set in all 50 states, the twenty-four-hour newborn heel prick is sometimes just called “the PKU test”.)
Bo had been born at 10:02pm the previous night, so I expected the tech to arrive on the heels of Nurse D’s ten o’clock rounds. In fact, during that visit, Nurse D assured me that Ms. Heel Prick was not far behind her.
She also assured me of this during her midnight rounds.
A little past 12am on February 17th, Ms. Heel Prick arrived in a chaotic jumble. (I guess the pricks had really been getting to her that night.) As my husband lay motionless on his couch, Ms. Heel Prick requested that I hold my son while she pricked his heel, then continue to hold him while she squeezed his heel for blood, which would be deposited on the super-special gridded paper.
There were just several problems with this plan. The first was that Ms. Heel Prick’s prick was literally the worst stick I’ve ever personally seen. The blood oozed out of my son’s skin as if it were honey (or, to use my husband’s joke, as if it were 80-crit blood). She should have simply bandaged up that attempt and tried again. The second issue was that my son was (and still is) very strong, so he kept forcefully jerking his heel out of Ms. Heel Prick’s hand. While impressive, this action mostly just served to fling blood everywhere — on me, on Ms. Heel Prick, and even on my son himself. This meant that for every drop of blood that ended up on the paper grid, another drop sailed somewhere off into the ether. By the time Ms. Heel Prick got all twelve spots filled on the paper grid, my cot looked like a war zone.
Oh yeah — and the third and most insurmountable challenge was this: the heel prick wasn’t just for the PKU test. It was also for a bilirubin test.
Now, here’s the thing. The PKU test was relatively easy because the need to “aim” the blood drop is pretty minimal — which was good, because most of the drops became amorphous blobs on the paper anyway. However, a bilirubin test (at least, *our* bilirubin test) required that Ms. Heel Prick “catch” the blood drops in a small vial. Clearly, aim would be important here.
Let’s do a little math. Since a “drop” is approximately 0.05 mL, I think it’s reasonable to guess that Ms. Heel Prick was collecting 1 mL of blood — or, in other words, about twenty drops. (I originally had guessed that she had collected 10 mL of blood, but that literally would have taken hours.)
Not surprisingly, the bilirubin test was quite possibly the nadir of my entire hospital stay. My husband impersonated a corpse; my son screamed hysterically in my arms; and Ms. Heel Prick incompetently squeezed my son’s heel harder and harder as his blood began to clot and coagulate.
And me? Well, as I held my poor son, I cried harder than I had cried any time since before I was pregnant. Really deep, gut-twisting sobs. The kind I totally hate to have in front of strangers and/or without my husband. I cried for my son, who was confused why I was hurting him. I cried for my husband, who was so tired that even our wails couldn’t rouse him. But mostly — selfishly — I cried for myself. I cried for the perfect first birth story that I would never have. I cried because I was having to do this alone, even though I wasn’t alone (and, with God, am never alone). I cried because I knew that I had done all I could, but I didn’t know if it would be enough.
Most of all, though, I cried because I was tired. So, so tired. And that, actually, was the silver lining here. Both Borealis and I were so worn out from crying that Ms. Heel Prick’s job actually got progressively easier. By the last drop of blood, my son’s fight had totally left him, and he simply lay listlessly in my arms.
Ms. Heel Prick left in the same manner as she had arrived — in a chaotic jumble. Taylor finally stirred as I nursed Bo afterwards.
“Will you change him and swaddle him?” I begged.
Thankfully, my husband complied — and for once, our child didn’t fight against his bindings.
Afterwards, we all sank into a deep stupor. I slept so hard, I almost didn’t wake up when Nurse D came in at 2am to check on me.
Almost.
Act VI: February 17th — 2am to 2pm
After Ms. Heel Prick left, our night passed in much the same manner as had the night before — with little rest and lots of activity. Thankfully, it was only my son and Nurse D disturbing my sleep, rather than the diverse cast of characters from the previous day.
Once again, we were reluctantly up with the dawn, which coincided with shift change. To our surprise, our day nurse would once again be Nurse B. I considered greeting her with an amicable, “I’m getting out of this prison today!” — but I settled instead on a sedate wave.
I nursed Borealis and settled him next to me on the cot. (After all, if I couldn’t cuddle with my husband, I should at least be allowed to cuddle with my son.)
Once I felt “ready for the day” (an objective criteria, to be sure), we used the meal voucher from my hospital welcome packet to order ourselves some breakfast. By the time it reached my room, the two strips of bacon and minuscule cinnamon roll I had requested were practically room temperature. Taylor, however, reported that the oatmeal was alright.
If I had learned anything from Ms. Heel Prick, it was that things at this hospital tended to run slow. We expected to see the lactation consultant and one of the hospital midwives before leaving, but I figured that we had a few hours yet.
“Hey babe, can you watch the baby while I shower?” I plaintively beseeched my husband.
“Yeah, of course babe. You take your time,” he encouraged.
And so I did.
My leisurely trip to the bathroom was driven less by a desire for relaxation and more by the realization that I could do nothing fast… and that included my first postpartum poop.
Now, I don’t want to delve into too much detail here — partly because there are some things that even *I* don’t like to discuss, but mostly because Scary Mommy’s discussion of the topic is so much better than mine would be.
Suffice it to say, my bowel movement hurt, but not prohibitively. Some women can’t poop properly for weeks afterwards, but this was thankfully not the case for me. I think my relative comfort probably stemmed from my perineum’s remarkable achievement of not tearing. (Thank you, Perineum!)
My shower was uneventful, which is generally how I like my showers. If only the shampoo and conditioner had been higher quality. I would have even settled for “mid-range hotel” quality. (Seriously — even Leroy uses better stuff.) I also would have liked a fresh change of clothes, but I had somehow failed to pack more than just a satiny Victoria’s Secret robe. Accordingly, I donned my nursing bra and another mesh panty ensemble, then returned to the room.
Around 10am, Nurse B let us know that we wouldn’t be discharged without the consent of the pediatrician, the lactation consultant, and the hospital midwife. So now we had two additional people to impress. If only we could meet them!
Eventually, we did. The lactation consultant arrived shortly after Nurse B left. Upon hearing my concerns that Bo wasn’t eating enough, she suggested, “Why don’t I watch you nurse, and then I’ll go get a pump so that you can further stimulate milk production?”
I nodded tearfully. I needed this woman to think that I was a competent parent, so I carefully lined Borealis up for a feeding, sat up straight, cupped my nipple, tickled his lip, and did my best to wait for a wide-open mouth.
Eventually, I gave up.
“He never opens his mouth wide enough!” I wailed. Ms. Lactation Consultant nodded, then instructed, “Try again, and see if he does it this time.”
He didn’t.
She sighed. “Well, let me check his mouth for a lip- or tongue-tie.”
“Wait, wouldn’t the pediatrician have found it if there was one?” I pointed out.
Ms. Lactation Consultant nodded. “Hopefully so. But, it always pays to double-check.” After a cursory look into and a quick finger-swipe of Bo’s mouth, she concluded, “Maybe a very minor upper-lip-tie. Nothing that should affect his feeding. I think he might just be lazy,” she said with a wink. Then, scooting a little closer to us, she offered, “Here, I’ll show you a technique that might teach him to open his mouth wider.”
With that, she tapped my son on the nose, upper lip, chin, and lower lip — in that order. Borealis responded with a pitifully half-open mouth.
“Do that several times a day, and I really think you’ll see a difference,” she promised. [Note: We didn’t — probably because we didn’t do it several times a day for more than two days.] “Now, let’s see you nurse.”
We managed to get a decent latch, and I even checked to make sure Bo’s lips were flanged. Ms. Lactation Consultant confirmed that my son was emitting bonafide swallowing sounds.
“Actually, it sounds like he’s swallowing every third or fourth suck, which is a good amount!” she encouraged. “Now, I’m going to go grab the pump. You’ll get your own kit, but you’ll use our industrial pump, alright?”
I nodded. Ms. Lactation Consultant disappeared for a few minutes, then reappeared with a three-foot-tall pump monstrosity on wheels. She quickly set up my set and handed me the cups. “Now, I’ll set it for fifteen minutes,” she informed me. “It has an automatic letdown function, and it will turn itself off automatically, too. Whatever amount you make in that length of time will be great.”
So, for the next fifteen minutes, I sat slightly hunched over on my cot, pressing two clear plastic cups against my sore breasts. “I bet a guy invented this piece of crap,” I muttered.
Taylor: <grunts in laughter>
I glanced over at my husband, who had graciously taken our son so that I could pump.
“You two enjoying the show?” I quipped.
Taylor laughed. Bo cried. (So, basically what I had expected.)
At the end of the fifteen minutes, I had produced about 10 mL of colostrum from my “easy” breast and about 7 or 8 mL from the “difficult” breast. Unfortunately, I’m not entirely sure about the latter volume, since I accidentally knocked over the plastic vial and lost about half its contents.
In the grand scheme of things, this loss was quite minor. However, at the time, it felt like the end of the world. It’s not surprising, then, that I was crying when we received another knock on our door.
Thinking it was the lactation consultant again, I called, “Come in!”
Low and behold, it was actually room service. But, right on her heels was the hospital midwife. I finished capping my colostrum vials and sat up a little straighter in my cot.
Somehow, Mrs. Midwife (and Ms. Lactation Consultant, and Dr. Pediatrician, and all the nurses) implicitly knew to totally ignore my husband. I don’t know if I should have been impressed at their intuition or shocked at their rudeness. Either way, Mrs. Midwife sat down in a chair facing only me and sighed, “The primip accidental home birth. You’ve got quite the rare birth situation, you know.”
“Yes, I’ve heard,” I muttered.
Mrs. Midwife asked me a number of questions, but since I remember none of them, they probably weren’t that important. Actually, come to think of it, I’m not entirely sure why I was supposed to meet with her in the first place.
After a few minutes, our discussion turned to the topic of sex. “You shouldn’t have unprotected sex during the next few months, and especially not within the next six weeks. I’ve had women show up to their six week check-up pregnant — and trust me, that’s not a situation that you want to be in.”
I should have nodded and smiled sweetly. Instead, I shrugged and told Mrs. Midwife, “You know, we’ll be ready for another baby as soon as God wants to give us one! But, for the record, we’re planning on, you know, not having unprotected sex before six weeks.” [Note: This was one of many plans that we accidentally disregarded during this whole baby process.]
I have never seen a midwife bristle so visibly. It would have been hilarious… if she didn’t have the power to affect our discharge time/date. After a few seconds of incredulous silence, she sputtered, “So are you just going to forego birth control all together!? You know that the first egg comes without a period beforehand! It makes naturally family planning virtually impossible.”
I shrugged again. “I think we’re planning on just using condoms until like four months, and then I’ll stop drinking until I get my period.”
[Note: This sober waiting period turned out to be unnecessary, since I got my period at six weeks postpartum. Yippee!]
Mrs. Midwife shook her head in disgust. “Well, I guess if you’re just going to go about things willy-nilly, then nothing I say will stop you.”
Dear reader. She *actually* said “willy-nilly”. Willy-nilly!? What kind of official medical terminology is that?
Since it was obvious that our conversation was going nowhere, I cut to the chase. “Can we be discharged?”
Mrs. Midwife waved her hands. “Yes, go back to your lives,” she acceded. “Good luck with your future family.”
And then, thankfully, she was gone.
By this time, Ms. Lactation Consultant had been gone for nearly an hour. I called the number she had left, navigated the phone tree, and eventually got through.
“Um, hi? I think you had said that you’d come back and look at the amount of colostrum that I pumped?”
A sigh from the other end. “Yes, I did say that. I got caught up with other patients, but I’ll be there when I can.”
“When I can” apparently meant “a half-hour later”. When Ms. Lactation Consultant arrived, I got the distinct impression that I was bothering her. Even still, she was impressed when she saw the fruit of my boobs.
“Wow! Most women don’t make more than 5 mL!” she exclaimed.
“Oh, well, I spilled that one a little,” I explained. “So, both of them were actually more than 5 mL originally.”
She turned back to me. “No, I meant combined. This is really a lot to produce on your first pumping.”
I glowed with pride at the praise. Maybe I was doing something right after all! I could only hope that Borealis was also benefiting from my bountiful mammary glands.
With the lactation consultant’s approval, all we needed was the pediatrician’s go-ahead before we could be discharged. Only, Dr. Pediatrician was nowhere in sight.
“I guess we’ll ask Nurse B when she comes by on her noon rounds?” I suggested.
Taylor shrugged. “Do you want to feed the baby again while we wait?”
“Yeah, why not,” I agreed.
The three of us watched the clock as noon approached. (Well, Borealis slept, so it was really just Taylor and I watching the clock.) Both hands pointed to the sky… and then one hand started to point back to the horizon. Nurse B was nowhere to be seen.
“I guess I’ll call the nurse’s station?” I proposed.
Taylor: <grunts unhelpfully>
But, Nurse B either wasn’t at the station or wasn’t accepting my call. I rifled through our other resources until I figured out how to call her directly.
“Hello?” she answered irritably.
“Um, hi, we want to be discharged,” I began, “and we’re not sure where the pediatrician is who has to clear us.”
“Yes, I’m in the process of working on it. I’ll let you know when you can be discharged. Goodbye, and I’ll see you soon.”
Some people just aren’t great on the phone.
I turned back to Taylor. “Ok babe, I think this is it. I think we’re actually getting released! Back into the wild where we belong!”
Taylor: <grunts skeptically>
I sighed. “Oh, alright. Back to Golden, where we kinda belong!”
Taylor: <grunts in agreement>
My husband packed up all our stuff. I dressed Borealis in his Ralph Lauren going-home outfit. (It was comically massive on his little body.) Then, I put on my own going-home outfit — the Victoria’s Secret robe. (I couldn’t go home in just a nursing bra and mesh panties, after all.) Taylor left to retrieve the carseat and returned about twenty minutes later. We sat on pins and needles as we waited for our good news.
And waited. And waited.
The hour I sat there was interminable — mostly because we didn’t know if the delay would be one hour or five hours. Finally, I broke down and called Nurse B again.
“Yes, your discharge paperwork is ready for you to sign,” she conceded. “Please come to the nurse’s station to do so.”
“Wait, don’t we need to see the pediatrician again?” I asked.
“No, she was satisfied with just analyzing the lab results. She didn’t feel that it was necessary to chat in-person.”
So, as it turned out, we never saw Dr. Pediatrician again. (And that was a result with which I could live.)
I don’t even remember signing the discharge paperwork. I was simply too excited.
However, I *do* remember Nurse B explaining, “The pediatrician is willing to let you go, but just barely. You need to make an appointment to come back on Monday and get his blood drawn again. His bilirubin is still moderately high, so we’ll need another test to confirm that we won’t need to take him back and put him under lights.”
I honestly think I might have responded, “Yeah, whatever!”
As we left, Nurse B called, “Make sure to stop by our gift shop on the way out!”
[Note: We did. It was closed. At 1:30pm on a Friday. Not sure how it makes any money at all, at that rate.]]
Taylor carried a sleeping Borealis in the carseat, while I slowly shuffled along beside them. (My robe definitely got some weird looks.) Together, we made our ponderous way through [what was to me] an unfamiliar hospital. I could barely believe that I had been wheeled through the same lobby less than forty-eight hours previously.
Eventually, we arrived at the front of the hospital — at which point Taylor exclaimed, “Dang it, we forgot the placenta!”
We were all a little exasperated.
Taylor returned about fifteen minutes later, placenta [in container] in hand. At that point, a kindly stranger asked, “Would you like me to take a picture of your beautiful young family?”
We readily agreed, and this is a cropped version of the photo that followed:
So there we were — a little family, with our first [clothed] family picture. The moment was so perfect that I turned to Taylor and said, “Babe, please hurry and get the car. I can barely stand. I’m so tired. And it’s really cold out here.”
It’s the little things that draw you closer as a couple.
Another fifteen minutes later, and we were finally in my car, on the way home. (Well, to be fair, we were on the way to Chick-Fil-A first.) I texted the above picture to my parents with the caption, “Bo’s first car ride!”
Speaking for both of them, my father responded, “Um, Bo’s *second* car ride”.
And that text basically just summarized the entirety of the previous four days.
The end.
You did it! You reached the official end to this story! If you’d like to read more about Bo as an itty-bitty baby, then you can check out the entries for April 5 and April 18 in A Blast from the Past.
Holly, thank you so much for your candor and also getting me completely off the fence about hospital vs. birth center. I can’t believe we treat women who just gave birth this way!
I am so glad that my story could help inform your own decision! Certainly, my experience reinforced my desire for a birth center birth. 😉