One Year Ago: An Essay
One year ago, my life changed forever.
I was finally finished with medical school - three days before had come home from my last brutal, grueling 12-hour day on OB/GYN. I was very pregnant and very happy to be done. I stayed up late that night in bed reading while Levi slept beside me, not knowing that I should have gone to sleep early, as it would have been the last rest for me for more than 24 hours...
At 1am (it was a very good book!) I felt...weird. I thought maybe my water had broken, but it wasn't a large gush like I was expecting, like you see in the movies and described in novels. It was just enough to catch my attention.
I got up, went to the bathroom. Still uncertain, I jumped up and down gingerly to see if anything changed. This woke Levi up, and he was immediately concerned because I was out of bed and - of all the crazy things - jumping.
"What's wrong?" he asked.
"Um...I think my water may have broken. But I'm not sure because nothing else is coming now."
At this point, he sat up and asked if we needed to go to the hospital. I was torn - if my water had broken, we needed to go, but if it hadn't...they'd just send us home. It would be close to 3am by that point, and Levi would have to work that day. I didn't want THAT to happen. So I told him that I'd rather wait an hour to see if anything changed.
"Just go ahead back to sleep," I told him, "I'll wake you up in an hour."
The look he gave me was priceless. "You really think I can just fall back to sleep NOW?!"
So we waited up together. Every now and then I'd get small little surges of fluid, so we decided that was enough to give it a try. Levi took a shower, I got things ready, and we left for the hospital about 2am.
Sure enough, my water had broken. They checked us in, hooked me up to IVs and baby monitors, and told me to get some sleep if I could. Of course, they also started a Pitocin drip in my IV to get contractions started, as I wasn't really doing anything on my own other than leaking fluid. Once those started I wasn't able to sleep. Contractions are different for every woman - for my cousin they were deep back aches; for me they were like the worst period cramps of my life, ones I couldn't breathe easily through. They grew stronger and closer very quickly and I was soon very uncomfortable.
At 2.5cm dilated I got my epidural, even though I'd wanted to wait for 4cm. Later, I was glad that I didn't...I finally able to take a short nap with the pain gone, and when I awoke I was 5cm. Two hours later my OB came in and said the monitors looked like I was progressing quickly, so I was checked again - 9cm! Soon it was time to push, and 45min later Olivia was born. 2:46pm on Feb 26th. She was blue, blue, blue. Like a smurf. I wanted her to cry but she only whimpered at first. My OB laid her on my chest and I remember thinking, "Is she really mine? Are you sure?" despite having just pushed her out of my body.
Later, Levi and I would talk about how she didn't seem real to us for the first couple of days. Everything was very surreal at first. Though it surprised me, I didn't cry until the day we took her home and I saw her in her carseat, strapped into our car. Then it hit.
(And unfortunately, the crying didn't stop for several weeks - she was a terrible feeder, my breastmilk took forever to come in, and she cried constantly.)
And now it's a year later and I can't believe it. My baby girl has grown so much. While I was pregnant, I always thought that the first time I saw her there would be this overwhelming love that would fill me, spill out of me, leave me changed in some definable way. It didn't. I loved her, but I didn't feel overwhelmed with it. I didn't feel different. NOW I realize that I am overwhelmed with love, I have been. I am different. I am a mother.
When I am gone from her for long periods of time as I often am, it hurts deeply. When I speak to other people, I speak of her. I simply cannot imagine life without her in it. I have found that while I'm in a better position to do so, I can no longer empathize with the parents who are losing their children - it hurts to much to imagine it.
Happy Birthday, Olivia. Sweet pea. Baby girl.
Mama loves you.