reflections on a birth day

• "Hello, I'm here to check-in for my c-section." Not something you say everyday.
• Telling myself I never have to do this again if I don't want to brought a lot of comfort throughout the couple hours leading to the operation. I was a nervous wreck! Love it when they come in to talk to you and make you sign that you've been informed that there is a risk of you dying.
  
• "I love your toenail polish." Not something you expect the nurse to say as she's helping you off the bed to go walk down the hall to the operating room.
• Yes, you read that right, I walked into my own operating room. As I crossed the threshold, I definitely wanted to run away in the opposite direction. The room was smaller than I expected, about the size of my bedroom. It was COLD. I was shaking. The operating table looked so small. Are you sure I'm going to fit on there? I sat on the edge of the table and leaned over onto a pillow as they did a spinal which is slightly different and WAY better than an epidural. "What's that?" I asked as a nurse stuck a huge sticky blue vinyl pad with wires coming out of it to my thigh. "The grounding pad for the cauterizer." Hmmmm shouldn't have asked. The spinal started working within seconds and within a minute or two I was completely numb. I hadn't really emotionally prepared myself for that. One second you're shaking your legs with nervousness, the next second, you can't move or feel them. It's unnerving, that loss of control.
  
• C-section, 2nd time around. The aforementioned spinal block anesthesia--way better than an epidural. I felt much less tugging and pulling. I was so sleepy! I thought I might drift off right there on the table. And then the itchies. Oh my gosh, first it was just my nose and they finally unstrapped an arm so I could scratch and then I never stopped scratching my nose, my face, my chest, my arm, everything I could feel itched like you would not believe. I was itching so bad they put benadryl in my iv which I came to regret because it made me feel so nauseous and only stopped about 70% of the itching. And then towards the end and for an hour or so in recovery I was shaking so bad. No wonder they ask if you have loose or chipped teeth. You automatically clamp down because it's the only thing you think you can stop from shaking. Shaking so bad that I was nervous I would drop Lily. It was unbearable. I was lying there trying to distract myself so I tried to think of an analogy. 'I am shaking like a person with Parkinson's disease at Rehab' was the best I could come up with. As the feeling returned to my toes, the shaking died down. Oh anesthesia.
  
• Total disbelief that she weighed one ounce short of 9 lbs! Elliott weighed 8 lbs 13 oz and I was pregnant with him 18 days longer. And even though I gained the same amount of weight with both, I thought there was no way she would be bigger. But I believe the first words out my mouth after they lifted her out were, "Well that's a load off!" No wonder! An almost 9 pounder had just been feeling like more than I could bear the last few weeks. Incidently, the first words out of the anesthesiologist's and nurses' mouths were, "Look at those cheeks!" very similar to the doctor when Elliott was born, "Hello there chubby cheeks!"
  
• Love at first sight when I saw my little girl! So precious!
  
• After the recovery room, I went to my own room and an hour or so later Brian's parents and Elliott came to meet Lily for the first time. When Elliott stood up on a chair to look into the bassinet he leaned over her and said, "You so booaful!" (beautiful) Priceless.
  
• The rest of the day is kind of blur of asking for more morphine, begging for Sprite when all they would give me were ice chips, trying to get her to latch properly, Brian leaving to go practice, lots of people saying they liked her name, and being sleepy and sore and thinking to myself, "I don't know how I'm ever going to get out of this bed." Feats like that seem impossible after surgery. Oh yeah, and I was so hot! They had these plastic sleeve type things on my lower legs that filled with air and deflated constantly to keep the blood flowing and they were making me so hot and annoyed. My saintly nurse brought me a big box fan...and a turkey sandwich around midnight when I told her I was getting a headache from starving.