Birthday Baby

  

It is Saturday afternoon, and  I am parked in a hospital waiting room… waiting.

One floor below my daughter, the only girl of my four children, is in labor. I am here because I can’t not be here. Though I respect she and her husband’s desire to experience the miracle of birth solo, I am calmed by the proximity of sharing the same building, albeit a rather large one.

Oh, and it’s my birthday.

Baby Girl was due eight days ago, but you know how that goes. They come when they are good and ready. All four of mine were stubborn about meeting the world.

Hannah, my daughter, was the most reluctant to leave the womb of the four. Fifteen days past my due date, I still had to be induced. Five days before her eventual birth, my husband cut off two fingertips to the bone in his circular saw. I sat beside him in the ER, measuring roughly the size of a Beluga whale, fighting to keep from passing out from the gore.

My labor for Hannah was unremarkable, and the easiest yet, but as I bore down to push her out, I felt something odd happen in my body. A loss of muscle control. Pushing felt sluggish and weirdly unproductive.

She finally slipped out with one final push and my husband, John, and I smiled when the midwife told us we had our girl. Happy calls were made to our children at home and their grandparents.

I told the nurse that I needed to use the restroom and insisted that I did not need help. I felt great! Alone in the bathroom, however, I felt the world go dark and my vision tunneled. At my frantic cry the nursing staff got me back into bed and the midwife checked me for bleeding. I could see by the look of horror on her face that something was wrong. In a flash she was gone and before I could process why, two strange doctors were standing by my bed explaining that I needed to get into emergency surgery. There was too much blood. They had to stop it, and fast.

Our precious newborn was unceremoniously deposited in her bewildered father’s arms, and I heard my plummeting blood pressure numbers being called out and was aware of a flurry of activity beside and around me. I knew I was dying. I could feel it.

Hours later, repaired and stabilized, I woke up with my eyes glued shut from an abundance of Ringer’s Lactate in my system, my tongue so swollen I couldn’t speak, and three-quarters of my blood supply replaced with transfusions. Delivery had caused major internal tearing that cut into my abdomen and hit a blood vessel. It was a miracle I survived.

I went on the develop a life-threatening infection and spend the next ten days in the hospital. But I was alive and would heal with time. My precious baby girl no worse for the wear.

Now here I sit. That same girl, a grown woman. Successful in her field. Strong. Confident. Beautiful in every way. I am proud of her. So utterly grateful that I was blessed to be able to raise her and see this day. To know that she is laboring to bring her own daughter into this world. The fact that it is happening on my birthday feels like the circle of life folding in on itself. A remarkable Fibonacci Sequence.

The hours turn from day, to night, and back to day. I step in a few times during the night watch to dispense encouragement and stroke her hair. I see her exhaustion and my heart constricts because I know there is no way around the pain of labor and delivery. I know with complete clarity what lies ahead for her before this child is laid in her arms. There is no going around it. You must go through it.

When I grow weary of trying to doze in the undozeable chairs of the waiting room, I tiptoe to the hallway outside Hannah’s delivery room and listen for sounds of progress or the first bleat of a newborn’s cry. Hours grind by. John and I watch movie after movie on the waiting room television. Top Gun. Independence Day. The final episodes of Seinfeld. Class B State Basketball Tournament. They blur together just like the hour hand on the institutional clock on the wall.

At last, Baby is born, and Hannah’s medical team finish their work of evaluating mother and baby and administering follow up care. John and I are invited by the exhausted new parents to step in and meet our newest grandchild. Vera Mae, namesakes of grandparents.

She is dozing from her traumatic ordeal when she is laid in my eager arms. Her features are fine and beautiful. Her hair a riot of dark curls. I see no trace of her forced eviction from the womb. She is unmarred and sweetly filled out. I kiss her downy head and thank the God of the Universe for this tiny miracle.

Though she missed my birthday by nearly ten hours, nonetheless, we are conjoined in birthday celebrations forevermore.

Best birthday ever.