Jada Nadine

I realized right after my last post how quickly we forget.  I guess because the beginning of my pregnancy with Dilena was so difficult, and the beginning with Jada was so easy, and given her dramatic birth, I did forget some things.  I have to have something to guilt Jada with later on in life, after all.

I did lose control of my hands, they would often go numb in the middle of the night.  Being the hypochondriac I can be, of course my thought is I was having a stroke.  Carpal tunnel, pregnancy induced, and no treatment other than to wear these braces which make life with computers even more annoying and painful.  Then at 35 weeks, I found myself waking up at night to scour the palms of my hands and soles of my feet on my carpet, for hours.  I considered rubbing my belly with a steel wool pad.  If you know what PUPPPs is, I'm sorry, because you have probably had it.  If you don't, you are lucky.

AT 32 weeks, I went to see my OB because I was having contractions that would not stop.  Not painful, but rhythmic and persistent.  I was admitted for dehydration, the result of yet another fun GI bug circulating my family.  Being pregnant when you are raising a toddler germ factory isn't fun.   i was given a liter of fluid.  Still contracting 2-4 minutes apart, no pain though, this can't be real labor.  I know real labor.   Another liter.  Still contracting.  The look on Mark's face at the mention of PTL was pretty scary, he has absolutely no game face at all.  We started to think about the repercussions of having a baby so early, NICU time, all the potential complications and how unprepared we were.  Mark had to leave to pick up Di, and I was left alone.  Not dilating, but still contracting.  A shot of terb and another half liter later, and I'm slowing way down.  After 5 hours I am sent home to rest.  It is a scary reminder of how lucky I am to have full term, healthy babies.

Back to the Monday after Easter.  I was 37 weeks and 5 days pregnant.  My baby girl is as active as ever.  I was on the phone with a friend from my parenting forum, I remember it was past midnight because she lives in California and told me to hang up because I was pregnant and needed sleep and it was after midnight.  I had been sleeping on the couch as I do when I am heavily pregnant.  For one, the back support is nice, and everything Mark does annoys me at this point, the sound of his breathing keeps me awake.  I also have severe insomnia at night, so it's nice to be near the TV and computer so I can entertain myself at 3 am, when I wake up nightly during my third trimester.

I can not get comfortable for the life of me.  I decide to try the bed.  I make myself a pregnancy nest, it consists of 2 body pillows, a pregnancy wedge and 3-4 regular pillows and a throw pillow.  It is quite a process, but very nice on the big belly.  Again, I am so uncomfortable I can't sleep.  I tell Mark something feels off.  "HmmmphhhfffT".  Yeah, thanks.  Back to the couch as I am fully annoyed now.  It takes about 15 minutes to crawl out of my nest.  I remake my nest on the couch and sink in.  A bit of wetness. Hmmmm.  Now, its about to get a lot more graphic, so I will ease you in.  One of my pregnancy issues is I can't control my bladder so well.  Sneezing, coughing, jumping, running water and vomiting (which was really a fun surprise) leads to varying degrees of pants-pissing.

So I figured I had let a little go.  Don't judge me, I didnt even want to get up.  I think it will dry, right?  But I am not sleeping anyway, so I guess I'll change, maybe empty my bladder to avoid any more fun.  As I stood up, I was soaked.  Hmmm, again, very well could have been my awful bladder control, but I am suspicious now.  I wake up Mark, tell him I think my water broke.  I don't want to be one of those women who think their water broke only to realize they have in fact, pissed in their pants.  But then I am shaking, hard.  Its about 80 degrees in my house.  Sick again  I have coughed throughout my pregnancy with Jada with various colds and sinus infections, and had several rounds of a lovely GI bug, hence the experience with simultaneously emptying the contents of my stomach and bladder.

I decided to shower, if this is labor, I am really needing to shave my legs, a luxury reserved now only for doctors appointments as it takes quite a bit of contortionism to reach the necessary parts of my body.  Now I am having contractions.  Mark is back in bed.  I have to call him for 20 minutes before he comes in the bathroom "what?".  What the hell do you mean what, I just told you my water may have broke.  Does he think I am screaming his name and risking waking up my sleeping daughter just to chat?

Of course, I do wake up Di.  She is not interested in sleeping tonight, as if she knows something is brewing.  Mark is timing my contractions on his computer, which has the battery life as long as Britney Spears' marriages.   1-2 minutes apart, lasting 1 minute.  Just like Dilena.  Ok, I figure I have time.  If Dilena's birth took 14 hours, this one will take 10...maybe 8 if I am lucky.  I swipe the razor over my legs between contractions.  They get more intense.  I fill the tub now and finish shaving in there.  During contractions I sing Snuggle Puppy and Personal Penguin as loud as I can, in lieu of the obscenities I would much prefer to scream at my husband.  Dilena thinks its funny and asks for " more, more" between contractions.   I am not as amused as I think Mark is.

Finally, I have Mark call my mom and OB.  My mom just arrived home from work and has an hour long trip up.  It is a very foggy night and we live in a very dark part of the state, deep in the woods of Connecticut.  It isn't a drive you can do quickly.  Perfect for those late night emergencies.

My OB is on call tonight, I am so happy I screamed out loud.  I talk to her between contractions, breathless, panting.  She was obviously sound asleep.  "I'll be there in an hour or so, I have to wait for my mom to get here"

"OK," she is yawning.  OK.  I am going in.  This is the real deal.  Next step, getting clothes on.  It isn't easy.  By this time my contractions are so painful, standing really isn't possible.  My mother is on her way, I am exhausted already.  If I have to be in this much pain, I am going to at least rest between.  I lay on my bed, and its the most comfortable thing I have ever laid on.  During my contractions I squeeze my eyes shut, bite into my pillow and hug my arms around it so tight, that to this day it remains deformed.  I put so much tension into my face, hands and arms in an effort to relax my lower body completely, not an easy task.  At one point, I put my hand on my stomach during a contraction.  I feel Jada move, kick about and wiggle through it.  It has to be rough on her too.  I feel so connected to her in that moment, it helps me get through.

By the time my mom is by my side, I am really screaming.  I have forgotten the words to Snuggle Puppy.  I have forbidden Mark from coming in the room, he is keeping Di away.  My mom has the task of dressing me as I lay writhing in pain.  It takes 20 minutes.  As I try to stand, a raging contraction.  With absolutely no control, I find myself pushing as hard as I can.  A rush of fluid.  I stop in my tracks.  Tell my mom in a panic to call 911, I am having the baby now.  As she leaves I have a couple more contractions, no pushing.  As she dials I stop her, I feel stupid.  It's fine, I have hours, I tell myself.  I don't want to overreact.  We can make it.

As we leave, my mother, the psychic she is, I hear her tell Mark to pull over and call an ambulance if we don't make it.  I internally roll my eyes, as the pain prevents any actual movement.  She is so paranoid, I am thinking, as I have 3 contractions just walking to my car.

I stop by the door, I am looking in.  I do not want to get in the car.  The thought of sitting in that seat for the next 40 minutes reduces me to tears and hopelessness.  The only reason I get in, is the thought that I can get an epidural in 45 minutes, its enough to push me into that car.

We have a choice of an unraked dirt road, or a paved road with a dozen speed bumps.  We choose the more predictable speed bumps.  I have my body suspended over the seat by propping myself up with the armrests.  It alleviates some of the pain.  It is so foggy out, and cold.  I have the heat blasting on my feet and my head out the window, howling at the invisible moon like a dying dog.  The wetness of the fog is whipping my face, keeping me in reality, while the heat at my feet keeps my body from the racking chills I have been fighting.  More contractions, now I am pushing each time.  More fluid.  More pain.

We can barely see the road.  I have to tell Mark to slow down, as much as I am dreaming of my epidural relief, I am afraid we will run off the dark roads or hit a deer.  Thats what we need, a car accident.  Suddenly, during a contraction, I feel her head drop into my pelvis.  I can feel the roundness, the pressure.  No pain, but I know she is coming, right now.

I tell Mark to pull over.  "We're in the middle of the road".  No shit Mark, I know.  He pulls into the Cumberland Farms.

"Call 911"  I am panting, "she is coming right now".  He is on the phone with the EMS as I yank down my pants.  I am envisioning, with horror, delivering my baby in my pants and trying to untangle her body.  My feet on the dashboard, I pull my pants down to my ankles as Marks parks the car.  I feel for a head...nothing.  For a fraction of a second, I feel a slight embarrassment.  I am being paranoid again, is she really coming.  I had so expected to feel a head, anything...but I felt nothing.  It didn't last long, in the next second, the familiar pain and a push, and her head was in my hand.  So much hair, I marveled.  As I reached for her with my other hand, her body flew out in a silent, slippery motion, surrounded by waves of water.  She slipped through my hands.  So warm, wet, smooth.  I hope I forever remember that feeling.  The feeling of my daughter leaving my body.  It is the saddest, most amazing, enchanting, exhilarating feeling there is.  Our bodies, going from one to two, her life starting outside of me.  Feeling that little body that kicked me for so long, that I grew for almost a year.  The little life I have pictured, dreamed of, imagined...here.  My pregnancy, ending.  My belly, my beautiful round, smooth belly, reduced to a deflated balloon.  My muscles finally relaxing after the most intense and painful workout humanly possible.  My daughter's birth.  Nothing like I had ever imagined.  With no doctors, no hospital, no medication, no assistance.  Just born into the world, the way women have done it for thousands of years...minus the fluorescent lights and gas pumps.

She is so warm and wet, her seal-like body slips through my hands onto the floor of my car.  I am in shock.  Mark is on the phone with 911, he hangs up.  This is where he comes through for me.  I am a tangle of pants and shoes and umbilical cord.  I can't reach my baby.  Mark picks her up, and in a moment of pure comedy, tries to hand her to me, which isn't possible because the cord protruding from my body into hers is too short.  He then tries to thread my little needle through my legs.  Finally, we take a second, I untangle my pants from my flip-flops which have cuffed my feet together on my dashboard.  The cord is still too short to hold her on my chest, so I hunch over as much as I can to at least get her head skin-to-skin on my body.  Mark calls the ambulance back again and we see lights in the distant fog.  I have never experienced such long, thick silence.  The fog absorbs all noise, and we are in a bubble of thick cloud, the air is heavy and cold.  "We have to keep her warm".  I am able to mumble.  Mark takes off his sweatshirt and I wrap it around her body.  "Wait...it is a girl, right?"  I can't think of anything else to say.  Mark looks at me funny, I don't blame him.

"I didn't check" he is looking for the ambulance.

"I have to check, I have to".  A quick peak provides me with relief, everything is pink at home.  She is so tiny.  I know in an instant she is much smaller than Dilena, I knew it as she was coming out.  She is so fragile.  I rub her back as vigorously as I dare, to stimulate her breathing.  She cries three times, a gurgley, choking cry.  I am scared she has too much fluid in her.  I know a quick delivery doesn't provide necessary squeezing required to rid her body of the fluid she has been living in.  I hold her warm body, kiss her matted hair and wait.

As the ambulance pulls in, I tell Mark to take a picture.  Again, I am robbed of my graphic delivery photo footage, but that one picture I will treasure always.

The EMS is here now, they look as shocked as I am.  "First car birth?" I manage to say with a smirk.  One young EMT looks close to losing his cookies.  I have to step out of my car, naked, from the waist down, covered in blood, mucus and a lot of other unmentionable substances, and walk a few steps to the stretcher.  It is then I notice the elderly gentleman working inside the Cumberland Farms store.

In the ambulance, the young, weary EMT is attempting to cut the cord with a scalpel.  He is shaking and almost forgets to clamp it first.  I placed my hand over my baby's body below the cord.  "I don't want to cut you" he says.  Yeah, well I don't want your shaking hand to cut my baby, buddy.  The blood sprays out, under pressure from the clamps.  My baby is free from my body.  I am still in disbelief this had happened.  We are wrapped in the silver space blanket and I hold on to my baby as the ambulance whips around corners.  They refuse to take me to my hospital, we are going to the local hospital down the street.  Unfortunately, Mark does not know that, so he drives on to Massachusetts.  This whole scenario is much funnier now.

The doors of the ambulance open, and I am greeted by dozens of nurses, doctors, pediatricians and probably a few curious janitorial members.  I feel a bit like a celebrity, people are smiling at me, laughing, clapping and surrounding Jada and I like ants on a melted popsicle.  I am clinging to her, but of course the y take her.  In the ER, I am baby-less, husbandless and alone.  I am, for the first time, afraid.  I cry a little.

I am finally pushed into a maternity room where I deliver the placenta, am examined by a hundred people, stitched up and left to wait.  Mark finally gets to the right hospital and they bring in my Jada bug.  They lay her, completely naked, on my naked body.  We stay like that for hours.  No diaper, not a piece of clothing between us.  She dabbles with nursing, but mostly, she sleeps.  She is absolutely, amazingly beautiful.  She is so small, so sweet.  She is my miracle, my strength, and everything I imagined she would be.  She is mine.  And we sleep like that, bodies melted to each other, and for a short time, we are one again.

Love like this, can heal deep hurt.  Love like this, is what I have been living for.

Jada Nadine
6 pounds, 12 oz, 20 inches at 3:43 am.  4/26/11