Chapter Thirty-Four
Iwas barely aware of anyone around me through the haze of pain that came with each contraction. Every muscle in my body squeezed tight, sucking the breath from my lungs. I was trapped in an invisible vise, and it was tightening all around me. Sweat matted my hair against my forehead. The nurse and sometimes the doctor milled in and out of the room. Adam never left my side and yet... I only perceived these circumstances at the very periphery of my awareness.
For these past few hours, my whole world had become the pain.
I’d opted for an epidural but since the labor had progressed so slowly, they waited until active labor started, which made the process so much more difficult.
Nevertheless, I sat slumped over on that bed, attempting to stay as still as possible and hoping another contraction wouldn’t overtake me while the anesthesiologist had a needle inserted in my spine.
But the epidural brought the known side-effect of slowing the labor’s progression. So, the pain relief didn’t last. They ended up turning down the numbing agent in the interest of hopefully spurring the baby along.
And thus, after being awake for over forty hours and experiencing contractions for well over sixteen of those hours, I was a virtual zombie.
The only thing that got me through it? Knowing that on the other side of this, I’d be seeing my baby girl. I’d be holding her. Smelling her. Feeling her soft skin under my lips when I kissed her head. Would she look like me or more like Adam? I fought like a tiger to keep these questions in my mind as the labor progressed and things got nasty.
And I was quite sure that I was probably a rancid bitch to my poor, exhausted husband, but given the fact that he held my hand, even when I squeezed it hard, I was pretty sure he wasn’t holding it against me. After all, it was his kid I was pushing out of my violence-wracked body, right?
When the time finally came to start pushing, I was exhausted beyond comprehension. Sure, I’d been awake for this long—and longer—before. Medical training was no joke. But I’d never stayed up this long while actively managing the unrelenting contractions of one of the most powerful muscles in my entire body and dealing with the pain that came along with it.
Sixteen hours was a long time to be in pain.
But this wasn’t the light at the end of the tunnel I’d been hoping for.
After an hour, I was sweat-soaked and nearly incoherent. And the baby was no further down the birth canal than she had been when I’d started. After a particularly heinous contraction, while the doctor checked the baby’s position, my eyes drifted out the window. When had it gotten dark again? What time was it? My eyes flew to the clock on the nightstand beside me. It was well after nine p.m.
“The baby is at zero station, Mia.” My obstetrician told me with sad eyes.
I let out a breath of exasperation, rolling my eyes upward. “The nurse just said she was at plus one.”
“She was incorrect. The baby’s head is swelling, so she thought that meant the baby had moved down the birth canal, but she hasn’t.”
I banged my head against my pillow with a huff of frustration. “Fuck.”
She sighed. “The baby has been in the birth canal for a while with very little progression. I think it’s time to consider a cesarean section.”
I shook my head as tears prickled my eyes immediately. I didn’t want to go through major surgery. Especially after going through all of this. The recovery from surgery was hard enough—and painful. And unfair, after also enduring the full pain of labor for the better part of a day.
Adam moved to my side. “Emilia, I think the doctor might be right.”
“I don’t want surgery. It’s not fair!” I yelled, repeating my own thoughts on the matter. Some misguided people judged mothers who gave birth by c-section as not having experienced true birth, but they were idiots. Birth was birth. What I didn’t want was a large, painful incision in my lower abdomen to have to recover from while caring for a newborn.
Adam reached up to dry my tears.
It was such a sweet gesture, that I really needed. My eyes found his and he gently pushed the hair away from my sweaty face and locked gazes with me. There were tears in his eyes, too. “I’m so proud of you...you’re a fighter. But I think the doctor’s right. What do you think?”
I swallowed, feeling myself slump against the bed even as another contraction came on. When I grabbed my leg to start pushing, the nurse gently put a hand over mine. “Just breathe through this one, Mia. Let’s not push for a bit. You can take a break while you make this decision.”
“The baby...?” I asked without completing the question.
“She’s not in distress right now. But that can change quickly. You’ve been pushing for nearly an hour and a half and she’s not budging. I suspect she’s coming out the wrong way.”
“Sunny side up?” I asked.
Adam frowned. “What does that mean?”
The nurse answered Adam’s question as I breathed through the contraction. “A baby is usually born face down. The shape of the head is more conducive to navigating the birth canal in that position. But not all babies get the memo, and some even come bottom-first, which is what we call breech. Yours isn’t breech but she is obviously struggling. Or she may just have a head that’s too big to get through Mia’s pelvis.”
My eyes drifted closed. I could almost drift off to sleep if it wasn’t for these damn contractions that came every three minutes. I swallowed, forcing moisture into my throat so I could talk. “Do it, then.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that?” the doctor replied.
“Go ahead and prep for c-section. I’ll sign the papers.”
“Okay.” The doctor nodded. “I’ll send someone in. Meanwhile, I’m going to get an OR ready. And some pediatricians from the children’s hospital.”
And miraculously, all that was done within thirty minutes. I was wheeled into an operating room where Adam met me in full surgical garb. I’d just breathed through a particularly heinous contraction, fighting the almost instinctive urge to push.
My husband smiled down at me from behind his surgical mask. “How are you doing?” he asked gently.
“Better now. You look sexy in surgical scrubs.”
He laughed. “I think you just have a doctor fetish.”
“Well so do you, or you wouldn’t have married me.”
His eyes crinkled at the corners as his smile widened. “Fair point.”
Not long after the surgical and pediatric teams joined us, their work started. I was asked to spread my arms out at a right angle from my body, helping to position my organs correctly for the birth. I’d assisted in several c-sections in med school during my obstetrics rotation, so I knew the drill from the other side of the divider that separated my line of sight from the work they were doing on my lower abdomen.
Even as my OB narrated what she was doing, I knew what to expect. The outer incision, the inner one, the tugging on my body as they reached in and delivered the baby and the placenta.
Since I had nowhere else to look, I watched Adam’s face. Watched that transformation as he became a father. He didn’t watch the work the doctors were doing, and that was understandable. Few people really wanted to see their spouse’s innards on display. But once the doctor held up the baby for him to see, I watched as his eyes widened before they lowered the baby again to take care of the umbilical cord.
I was pretty sure that I’d resent him for life for being the first one of us to lay eyes on our daughter. But it would only be a matter of seconds before I saw her too.
Even if I wouldn’t be able to hold her for several hours yet.
But fair enough....
She was quiet when they lifted her quickly just above the partition so that I could see her. I stared into dark blue eyes. Her little head had a light dusting of black hair. And—oh my god—even now I could see it. She was Adam’s mini-me. She looked exactly like him.
Just as quickly as they flashed the baby to me, they whisked her away again to be examined by the waiting pediatric team and cleaned her up while the surgical team worked on me.
Adam left my side to approach the table where they examined the baby.
But he drifted back almost as quickly with a prominent frown.
“What’s wrong?”
“They’re putting a tube down her throat.”
I blinked. “She must have swallowed some meconium.” I reached for his hand. “She’ll be okay. It happens sometimes with long labors.”
Sure enough, after they’d worked on her for a few more minutes and cleaned her up, they brought her to us. She was this tiny red-faced bundle, swaddled in a hospital blanket. Due to the two hours of pushing, she had a temporary cone shape to her head. The nurse gently placed her in Adam’s arms.
“Here she is. Baby Girl Drake,” the pediatrician beamed, then turned to me. “She was sunny side up and had to have her airways suctioned but she’s good now.”
I nodded. “Thank you.”
“She’s still not crying.” Adam stared down with open wonder at the tiny bundle in his arms.
“She’s just taking it all in.” I said. “She’s staring right at you. See? She’s saying, ‘hi Daddy, here I am.’”
He took a shaky breath and watched as her mouth stretched. “She’s beautiful,” he said. “Just like her Mama.”
“Yeah, she looks nothing like me.” I laughed.
He turned to look at the baby even as a nurse appeared with a rolling hospital bassinet to take her to the nursery. “We’re going to put her under a warmer while you’re in recovery and then she’ll go to your room when you’re transferred.”
I turned to Adam. “Go with her. They have to monitor me while the anesthesia wears off, so I have to stay in recovery for an hour or so.”
I’d never seen a look like that on his face. All wonder and amazement and a little lost. He nodded and followed the bassinet out of the OR.
Me? I succumbed to my exhaustion and dozed off. Ninety minutes later, I was declared ready to be discharged to my room and I couldn’t wait to finally hold my sweet baby.
A half hour after that, I was in my own room and she was wheeled in, this time wearing a tiny diaper, a soft knit cap and her swaddling blanket.
Like a seasoned pro already, Adam lifted her out of the bassinet and now, at almost midnight after the longest day of my life, my little girl was finally in my arms.
“Oh, my goodness, you are precious,” I cooed at her as Adam slid an arm around my shoulders and gazed down at his daughter over my shoulder.
He leaned down to kiss my hair. “She sure is.”
I perched her in the crook of my left arm and reached my right hand to touch hers. That tiny fist immediately closed around my finger. That was all it took for my heart to plunge irrevocably in love. “What’s her name?” Adam asked. “We never resolved that issue.”
But now, after seeing her, in my heart, I had no doubt what her name should be. “Her name is Sabrina, if you agree.”
Adam was quiet for a long time and the air was thick with this special, poignant emotion. We were enveloped inside a cloud of love, this tiny, brand-new family. Tears prickled the back of my eyes and I knew that Adam fought his emotions similarly, though because of the angle and where he was standing, I couldn’t see that struggle.
Finally, with a swift wipe of his eyes and a gentle clearing of his throat, he said quietly. “I think it’s perfect. Sabrina Eloisa?”
I shook my head, laughing. “No gaming names, no matter how much we’re tempted. I was thinking of naming her after your sister and my mom...Sabrina Kimberly.”
“That’s perfect, because Kimberly is also your name.”
I nodded. “Yeah, it works. It’s her name.”
“Sabrina Kimberly Drake.” His large hand came down to reverently palm his daughter’s nearly bald head. “The most beautiful little princess in the world.”
And that moment? It was magical. I wished hard that I could freeze it in time. Just the three of us here, alone and cloaked in love.
But it didn’t last long.
Because the lactation consultant entered the room, and I was faced with the challenge of getting the baby to nurse for the first time with some strange lady tugging on my boob to get the baby to latch and help the whole thing happen.
But in the end, Sabrina and I learned together, and it was all good.It took work and I was beyond exhausted but before I knew it, she was eating like a champ.