34. Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Four
Meg
G ripped in the churning hell of drug-induced exhaustion and nausea, I forced myself to open my eyes. Mom’s face was the first I saw. “Where’s my baby?” I garbled as if my mouth were full of cotton, wishing I had the strength to grab her shoulders and shake them.
“He’s with Mike up in the NICU.” Mom brushed her hand over my forehead. “Mike texted that Zachary is two pounds eight ounces and his airways are clear. Congratulations, you are the mama of a tiny baby boy!”
Oh, God, if only I could leap from this bed and celebrate but the nausea was overwhelming. I tried to nod, but only managed to dry heave. I needed to see my baby. I needed to see him now. “W-w-when can I see him?”
“Soon,” said a nurse. “How do you feel?”
“Like I’m going to puke.” I tried to push myself up, but I only managed to roll to my side and vomit into a plastic pan held by my mother.
“I’ll give you some anti-nausea medicine and that should help.”
Unable to keep my eyes open any longer, I gave in and let them drift closed. I might be wallowing in the bowels of hell at the moment, but the dregs of the anesthesia would pass and then I’d get to see little Zachary. Two pounds eight ounces? He was as tiny as Maya.
I don’t know how long I was in the recovery room, but every time I opened my eyes Mom was there, wearing a mask, giving me little pep talks. Mike came down and told me how great Zachery was doing—that the NICU nurses were impressed with his strength. He even showed me a picture of a strawberry-red-faced alien, who happened to be the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.
“He has red hair,” I said, trying not to puke, wanting more than anything to experience the joy and wonder of a mother who’d just given birth. I needed to see him. I wanted him in my arms right now. As I rolled to my side, my blessed mother caught my vomit in another tray. My entire body shook.
“Argh!” I cried, trying to will the sickness away and only managing to heave again.
“Red hair like his mother,” Mike replied as a nurse handed me a cloth to wipe my mouth.
Time ticked by while I went in and out of consciousness. Every time I awoke I tried to sit up, but I was too nauseated. And then it hit me. I was alive. I wasn’t even in the ICU. “Did my uterus rupture?” I asked.
“No, thank God,” Mom said, “but you were a long way off being full-term.”
It must have been hours later when they finally took me up to a postnatal hospital room. “When can I see my baby?” I asked the nurse for what seemed like the hundredth time. Dammit, most women got to hold their babies as soon as they were born.
“When you’re able to move into a wheelchair, we’ll take you up there.”
“I can do it now.” I reached out to Mike. “Help me.”
The stuff they’d knocked me out with was wearing off, because it felt like someone had taken a butcher knife and sliced open my abdomen, but after my initial bellow of agony, I wasn’t about to complain. Someone might tell me I had to wait for the pain meds to kick in before I could see Zachary and that wasn’t going to happen. I’d waited long enough.
When I tried to take my weight, my knees buckled, but Mike held me up.
“Easy, Sweetheart.” He swiveled the chair so all I had to do was turn ninety degrees and gingerly lower my butt into the seat.
Oof, I was gutted, glad I didn’t need to move again for a while.
After an elevator ride and checking in at the desk, the nurse pressed a button which opened the doors to the NICU. Mike wheeled me to Room Four. There was an elephant bearing the name “Zachary Reynolds” on the sliding glass door. We’d decided to give the baby Mike’s last name because I was planning to change mine when we got married.
Inside, the incubator was covered with a quilted shroud with little monkeys on it. The light was dim, not nearly as bright as it was in my room.
“They said the baby needs limited light in order for his eyes to develop,” Mike whispered. “We need to speak softly as well.”
“Can we see him?” I asked.
“Yes. ”
Mike lifted up the cover on one side. My heart squeezed at the sight of the tiniest human I’d ever seen. His skin was red and wrinkled and his eyes were covered by a sleep mask screen printed with a pair of sunglasses. Over his nose was a CPAP and, though they had told me to expect there to be one, it was a shock to see the breathing apparatus take up so much of Zachary’s itty-bitty face. Taped to his chest were probes measuring his vitals. A feeding tube had already been inserted through his mouth and on one ankle a blood pressure cuff was attached with Velcro. A tuft of red hair peeked out from beneath a white cotton cap.
I had given birth to this tiny, tiny boy, yet my insides shredded with despair. My baby should still be protected inside the cocoon of my womb. He was too little to be lying alone, fighting for life.
Mike washed his hands, then slid them into the incubator’s arm holes. “For the time being, all we are allowed to do is cradle his head and feet like this,” he said, demonstrating and smiling as if this was the greatest day of his life.
Didn’t he blame me for being so weak?
The baby shifted just a little and I sensed his father’s touch soothed him.
“When can I hold him?” I asked as the nurse came in.
“As soon as possible,” she replied. “Zachary’s doctor will allow skin-to-skin, kangaroo cares in about three days.”
“Three days?” I asked, my shoulders falling. That was an eternity.
Mike massaged my neck. “Everything will be okay. Our son just needs us to give him a little time.”
“But it’s my fault he’s so little.”
“No—if you’d tried to stick it out any longer, I could have lost you both.” He kissed me. “But now I have a son and a gorgeous fiancée. You’ve made me the happiest man alive.”
He wheeled me closer to the incubator so I could cradle our sleeping baby’s head and feet. “Hi, bugaboo, I’m your mom.”