Sugar and spice

One week ago today, my beautiful niece made her dramatic arrival into the world. My little brother and his wife endured 12 hours of labour and three intense hours of pushing before this little girl was guided into the world with some giant salad tongs.

Seeing my brother become a daddy was such a wonderfully bizarre experience: Watching him support and encourage his wife through labour with loving devotion; seeing the utter relief and the explosion of stress releasing tears once the baby arrived safely. It's a side of him that I rarely get to see but it's one that makes me love him on a whole new realm whenever I get a peek.

I've been to visit the new family twice since they went from a couple to a trio. The absolute ease that they seem to be handling new parenthood has blown me away. My own first week of motherhood seemed to be filled with endless tears (both mine and Hayden's) and so many fumblings and unknowns. In contrast, my brother and sister-in-law have fallen into an easy rhythm and silently take over from each other when needed.

I see in my brother a whole new respect for his wife. He talks about her with undiluted pride and praises her openly for everything from managing a long labour to successfully nursing and balancing the various needs of a newborn. I think for many couples, having a baby for the first time can sometimes be a dividing experience. As you try to figure out your role in your child's life you can often struggle to determine your place in the world as a parent, spouse, housekeeper, milking cow and the child of your own parents. It's a confusing and overwhelming time to say the least. But these two have certainly surprised me by taking that discovery journey together, hand in hand.

I'm not sure if she knows it yet, but little Ella Rose is one lucky little girl. Congratulations Lisa and Ben. She's beautiful. And you've both taken a huge but confident step in the long road of life.

Motherhood uncensored

I stayed in the hospital for two days after Hayden was born. He had a cone-on-cone head from the vacuum and his face was pretty bruised, but he was perfect and he was mine. I learned how to change a newborn diaper (things like using the hospital-supplied facecloths for getting the tar off his bum instead of expensive wipes), how to nurse him (although for the first day all he wanted to do was lick my nipple) and how to distinguish his cry from the other dozen babies in the ward. I slept best when he was in my arms – which would become the norm. We had many visitors and I healed quickly and almost painlessly from the tearing.

The day we brought him home, it was drizzling and cool, but it was all sunshine to me. My mum was waiting at home for us and my husband surprised me by finishing Hayden’s nursery. He had spelled his name out with wooden letters and put some pictures from those first few days in the hospital in frames. It was a wonderful, thoughtful gesture and sent me into a flurry of tears.

My mum was our saving grace during those first few days. She fed us and helped us clean and took care of the thousands of details that go out the window when you’re new parents. She helped to keep me sane as my hormones adjusted and taught me all those things that you can only learn from your mother. When she left, I bawled at the thought of having to be a mum without my mum there to guide me. And being the great mum that she is, she told me that I was already a great mother and I’d be fine. And if ever I wasn’t, she was only a phone call away.

Hayden was not the easy-going baby you see in commercials or in the carefully edited Baby Story shows. He cried often and needed to be held constantly. After some research, we determined he was what the experts called “High Needs.” Dr. Sears had phenomenal information on how to help these sensitive babies to adjust to the world outside of the womb. Lots of love, lots of contact and responding to their cries as often and as quickly as you could.

One of my girlfriends bought me a sling as a gift and it is quite possibly the thing that transformed my relationship withHayden and his relationship with the rest of the world. With the sling, Hayden got that close comfort he truly needed and I got the necessities done (like brushing my teeth and eating)! I became quite adept at doing just about anything with a baby strapped to my chest.

About three weeks after I brought Hayden home, I began to break out in boil-like lesions all over my thighs. It started with one and within a week I had a dozen of these painful b@stards. After a trip to the doctors and a subsequent trip to the ER, I was diagnosed with MRSA: a highly contagious and drug-resistant infection that comes from the hospital. Somehow I had been infected when I gave birth to Hayden. I had to wear a portable IV drip for a week to get the massive doses of antibiotics into my body. It was truly awful. On top of tending to a wonderful but high-need baby, I now had tubes coming out of my arm, very painful open sores on my legs and I had to go back to the hospital with my newborn (who was nursing almost every hour) every few days to get the lines checked and blood work done. Every day the VON would come to change my dressings and change the IV bag. Really, it was a very stressful time. I look back now and wonder how I managed to get through it all. I think I was just numb. Numb and also blessed with a very caring and supportive husband.

Adam did everything for me and for the house after Hayden was born. He cooked, he cleaned, he did laundry, he gave me pedicures, he did the banking and the shopping, everything. All he asked me to do was to take care of Hayden. Adam gave me license to just love that little baby all day, every day. I spent every waking minute just tending to his needs and not worrying about anything else. It was wondrous.

Hayden and I slept together after a few weeks of failed cradle attempts. With him safely nestled in the crock of my arm, we could both fall into a secure dreamland. My poor husband had to learn not to throw his arms around in his sleep, as per his usual routine. While it only garnered me a painful knock on the head, his giant arms could do a lot of damage to a newborn. For this reason, I also slept in one position all night, keeping Hayden safely away from Mr. Flaily.

But I have to admit that sleeping with Hayden was one of my favourite things. Listening to his tiny, quick breathing, smelling that baby scent and feeling his warmth against me fulfilled my every hope of what motherhood would be. He lay ever so still when he was in my arms. Together we would sleep for hours on end until his belly told him it was time to eat. By the time he was a few months old, he was sleeping for up to five hours straight a night (though this wouldn’t last). Co-sleeping, as the experts call it, was one of my favourite parts of being a mum. Until he was a year old, we cuddled all night and I breathed in his fresh baby smell as I drifted to sleep.

The grand entrance

He came into this world on a cool and rainy day, two weeks before his due date. The night before his arrival, I excitedly timed mild contractions as I came to the realization that unlike previous experiences – this was the REAL THING! I waddled into the living room around midnight to alert my husband that I was having regular contractions and he may want to get some sleep. I went back to bed and tried to sleep myself, which was nearly impossible as the thought of actually becoming a mum dawned on me. Around 3am I woke again as the contractions strengthened and found Adam’s side of the bed was still empty. Again I penguin walked to the living room and told him to get the hell off of the computer and come to bed. I punctuated this order with the thought that this would be the last time he slept for a couple of days so he’d better take advantage of it. I then took my own advice and fell into a fitful sleep.

The next morning I was thrilled to find that I was still having contractions. I ate a big plate of leftover Chinese food for breakfast and picked through my hospital bag to make sure I had everything. Around noon, we called everyone to let them know that labour was in progress and we’d soon be heading to the hospital. By about 2:00, my contractions were strong enough that I had to breathe through them so we packed up and drove to the Queensway Carleton. Once we arrived, we found out that with every contraction, the baby’s heart rate would drop dramatically. Even though I was only a centimetre dilated (WHAT? Only ONE centimetre after 12 hours of labour?!?!), they admitted me so that they could keep an eye on the baby.

We called my mum as soon as we were admitted. And God bless that woman: despite the fact that she had been up all night with my nephew the night before while my sister moved, she hopped in a car to drive for five hours to be by my side.

The next six hours were absolutely brutal. My progress was so slow that sometimes I thought it was going in reverse. The pain was so intense that I was losing my mind. I recall flopping around that hospital bed, moaning and wailing and not caring that my ass was exposed to anyone who walked by. My husband kept himself entertained by playing solitaire and occasionally asking me if I was okay (Note: this is not a question to ask a woman in full labour.). For whatever reason (nerves, fear, who knows), Adam was not a very successful labour coach. Thank goodness I had the forethought to ask my mum to be there too!

After the longest quarter day of my life, the nurse announced I was three centimetres dilated and could have an epidural if I wanted. Seemed like a dumb question to me. YES! The difference after that wondrous medical intervention was like night and day. While it took me six hours to move the first three centimetres, after the epidural, I expanded to seven centimetres after only an hour. I had to call my hubby and tell him to hurry back as my nurse assured me that I’d be ready to push in no time (he was off letting the dog out while my mum kept me company).

In the next hour I went another two and a half centimetres till I was nine and a half. My nurse was practically giddy as there were six of us admitted to give birth and I was progressing the fastest. This observation must have been a jinx as things just stopped at this point. Hour after hour, she would check me and report no progress. She would then evilly tell me of another woman down the hall who was pushing. One by one, those other preggo’s beat me to the punch until I was the last one left. All I could hear as I waited were tiny cries as they delivered their precious cargo into the world.

Finally my nurse had had enough and told me to try and push past this little lip. We easily managed to bypass the last of my cervix and I spent the next two hours staring in a mirror at what must have been someone else’s disfigured private parts. No matter how red my face got or how hard I squeezed that little gaffer, he refused to budge. The doctor came in after two hours to assess the situation.

She casually asked me how I was feeling and felt around my belly and vajiji while we chatted. She then looked at the baby’s heart rate print out and her face went stony. She turned to the nurse and asked for a Paed RU (or Paediatric Resuscitation Unit – how I know this, I can only guess that it was my constant TLC watching). She calmly explained to me that we needed to get the baby out now and she was going to employ a vacuum. If it didn’t work, they would have to do an emergency C-Section. I had a momentary thought of “Oh great, now my belly and my vajiji will look like a war zone” before coming to my senses to think that whatever it took to keep this baby alive is what I would do. A flurry of staff and equipment piled into the room as they attached the vacuum to the baby’s head. With the doctor and nurses encouraging me, I pushed with all my might and sent healing, surviving vibes to my baby. As they wrenched on the vacuum with what seemed like excessive force, my baby was pulled and pushed into the world after only two contractions.

I was terrified that the baby would be purple and lifeless. But as they cut the cord and took him to the warming table, I saw that he was pink and he gave a tiny little cry. My husband, who was supposed to announce the sex, was speechless. The doctor waited a beat before warmly smiling at me and telling me I had a beautiful son. They placed him gently on my chest, he was red and whimpering and blinking madly at the bright lights. My mum, my husband and I all had tears running down our faces as we gazed for the first time at this tiny perfect being who grew inside of me for ten months. We named him then and there – Hayden William.