With my son. Just wanted to type that.
He was known as Frank Breech, but after a C-Section and a few days of toiling over his official name, Frank “Buster” Breech became Nathaniel James.
He was born 7.7 pounds, and when he came out, he looked purple like a bunch of grapes held up at a Sunday farmer’s market. I don’t know who it was – a doctor, a nurse, the anesthesiologist, someone announced, “He’s a chunky monkey” and I’ve never been more excited to hear the first fat joke about my son. I knew no one would be joking if he didn’t have all of his fingers and toes and appear to be in good working order. You don’t start rhyming and referencing Ben n’ Jerry’s flavors when things are going awry. Even someone with a spinal block, restraints and a nasty case of Hebrew panic knows this on some visceral level. Especially, maybe.
To say I’ve never been more relieved is such an understatement it’s kind of a shame; I should probably not be allowed to write until I can actually pass a reasonable stool. Maybe normal movement of one’s colon is critical to self-expression not involving lame cliches and semi-obvious declarations. Please, humor me until the Colace and prune juice kick in.
So, after he was pronounced a chunky monkey, and the doctor said, “He was definitely breech … and definitely a boy …” (guess he presented with a big rump and typically swollen baby balls) I started bawling right there on the table, tears pooling around my oxygen mask, trying not to choke on snot and shock and the weird mucus that collects when you’re on your back and pregnant. Until the second they brought him over to me and let me kiss his goopy, red face, I was convinced that setting up a crib, and buying a rug for his nursery and occasionally imagining he would be okay would all have cursed him, and that I would never, ever be lucky enough to get a real live healthy baby.
No matter how many tests told me otherwise and how often I saw his heartbeat, even moments before they removed him and I could hear his heart thudding steady and strong on the fetal heart monitor, I was sure this was all a big mistake and that something would be wrong and everyone had missed it.
All that being said - and I promise to say more once I’m back in business – this C-Section was gnarly. I know some people find them easy, I am not one of those people.
The recovery was and is more difficult than I imagined, the surgery was terrifying and maybe this is just me, but I think I even caught a 24-hour bout of PTSD.
And I’m glad no one really gave me the nuts and bolts of the C, because it would have freaked my shit out. So I feel funny saying too much if anyone has one of these on the horizon, because you will be fine. Again, more to come, but I’m just so grateful to those of you who have followed this blog and sent your well wishes that I wanted to let you know that baby, mom and dad are doing great. Dad has changed every diaper and burped every burp because though I’m up to breast feeding the little guy, I can’t do much else with breaking doctor’s orders to avoid BLT: bending, lifting and twisting.
I’m yammering.
Sometimes it’s kind of nice to find yourself living a cliche, deliriously happy and deliriously tired mom. That’s me. Mom. I’m someone’s mom. He is my son.
For someone who wasn’t baby crazy, who didn’t really get babies at all, I do all the disgusting things like smell his head and take pictures of him incessantly and become convinced that I’m not biased at all, but that my baby actually is extra adorable with fantastic hair.
It’s my first day out of the hospital and like I said, I’m feeling pretty wrecked. Haven’t even had a chance to check out my new slice but I have run my fingers over it and I will tell you, they need a little extra room to remove the frank breech types. Seems about five inches or so. I’m okay with it, I just don’t want to look. And I still appear almost as pregnant as when I went in there. And my legs are swollen. On and on. Hard to wrap up this post which as far as prose goes is kind of a disaster. Time for a feeding, and yes, time for the boy to exploit me, as I have been doing him for the last six months.
Again, thanks for all of your kind words and well wishes and more than that, all of your very specific advice and recollections from everything to car seats to nipple pads to latching to morning sickness.
I read every single thing you wrote, and I often took your counsel and many times I dragged my husband over to read what you posted, because I was touched or consoled, because your experience was just like mine, and that made me feel less lonely. And I know that the sensations I’m having now, the baby “high” and the rubbing his velvety arms and the crying cause I can’t poop or sleep and the sad sack thoughts when I catch my bloated reflection and the surreal smacking myself over being his mom, and him not being in my stomach anymore, but instead sitting there in his bouncy seat, I know this has all been said and done and felt. Maybe by you. Instead of that taking away from its value, today, somehow it seems to add to it. Instead of scoffing at the human experience, I’m just giving in.
There aren’t that many main courses on the menu in this life, when it comes to the big experiences.
So, despite wanting to be terminally unique, at some point you order the chicken or the steak. Maybe the surf and turf. Because there are only so many dinners available at the cosmic table. The real comfort, and the big bombshell, isn’t how I felt too good to have what the rest of you were having, but not good enough. And here I am with my baby, like a billion and a half mothers before me, and we all want to hear that our children are chunky monkeys, and that we are not, and that’s where I find magic where I least expected it, right in the hackiness. There aren’t many offerings for dessert, either, and that’s the sweetest part, that we’re all telling the same stories and scooping our cold spoon into one infinite pint.
