September 3rd
You were supposed to be born on September 3rd. A conveniently sandwiched Saturday of Labor Day Weekend festivities. I would've been more-than-ready for September 3rd.
September 3, 2016. 38 days old.
When I say the words "September third," they are very marked. If you're a fan of Gilmore Girls, you may connect it with the way that Lorelai says "June THIRD" - the date of hers and Luke's wedding that did not in fact happen on June the the-IRD. "You wanna know what day I'm not getting married? June THIRD." "Do NOT save the date on June THIRD."
Spoiler Alert: though much delayed, their wedding indeed took place.
Spoiler Alert: Our family's plan didn't quite make it to September 3rd.
I wanted potato chips. They say pregnancy cravings are irrationally detailed and they're correct. Potato chips. We hardly ever have potato chips in the house. But that's just what I wanted on that specific day. My long-stretch pregnancy craving was mac-and-cheese, ironically now my son's favorite food in the whole universe. But that particular not-September-third-afternoon, I really wanted potato chips.
I deep-dived napped for no good reason that afternoon. Around 1pm, I was suddenly so fatigued that I couldn't even brush my wet hair from the shower I had just taken, and just horizontally surrendered to a four-hour nap on the edge of the bed. It was blissful sleep that I now dream about sometimes, four years later. The last "before" sleep. When I woke up, I had very specific, irrational feelings.
"Do we have potato chips?"
"Um, maybe? I can go check."
"OK. But, can you stay up here?"
"Yeah....I can come right back."
"I wanna eat dinner up here. Is that OK?"
"Yeah...that's OK. What else might you want to eat?"
"Potato chips. I just need to stay here, OK?"
"OK."
But he didn't move. Which was good, because about a minute later I was suddenly on all fours, yowling in pain and shock.
"I'm OK, I'm OK."
"Are you sure?"
"Um......"
"What happened?"
"I'm OK."
"Are you in pain?"
"Uh...no. Not now. I was...but...I mean, if that happens again then maybe we should call the doctor."
"Maybe we should call the doctor now."
"No. I'm fine. Do we have potato chips?"
I don't remember which one of us called but I'll never forget Dr. Felucca's gentle words: "okay, you're gonna want to drive to the hospital in the next hour. I'll meet you there!".
I remember asking Matt, who was frantically but yet in slow-motion packing his duffel bag, "how are you?"
"I'm fine, how are you doing?"
"I'm fine. But how are you really doing?"
My water partially broke during the walk from the parking lot into the hospital. The rest of it broke in the triage restroom while I was trying to change into a hospital gown. The gown had those small diamonds on it - the ones that are not fully closed for some reason. Maybe it's known to pass the time more easily to ponder that when you're stuck in the hospital. I remember that tying bows to keep it closed on the side was challenging and that I wasn't exactly sure how to clean up the mess that was now on the floor of the restroom so I awkwardly apologized upon exiting..."um, I'm so sorry but I think my water is breaking and I'm not sure how to handle it."
The triage nurse was so sweet. So calm. So deliberate. My first question after getting hooked up to all sorts of monitors was, "is the baby going to be okay? This is early. Is it okay?"
Her name was also Angie and we shared a split second of eye contact over that fact as she was simultaneously hooking me up to heartbeat monitors and contraction monitors and calling the labor and delivery floor to clear a room. She has no kids, but loves dogs. She showed me pictures of hers. I found it sweet that she works on the labor and delivery floor of a hospital.
"You're already four centimeters. Honey, you're in labor."
"No.....but....it's early....I'm not having regular contractions. I mean, I had one...at home...but that's it...is the baby OK?"
Angie was also my L&D nurse. I honestly don't remember anything about the elevator trip upstairs, how my husband got up there, how I got from the triage cot into the hospital bed, how the TV was turned on to some nondescript channel cycling through exactly 20 minutes of various human-interest stories like cooking, immigration, fishing, home remodel, weather...each getting equal time, watching subtitles scroll by, thinking I should turn it to something I'd enjoy but apparently I was having a baby tonight so don't I have more important things to think about than what I'd rather watch on television?
I was told to "labor down" and try to get some rest before the main event - predicted to be around 1am. "Try to get some sleep so you have energy." I won't mention the difference in sleep between my husband on the pale-pink couch vs myself in the lush hospital bed with remote controlled raise/lower functionality. Let's just say that one of us got some sleep and one of us was a little miffed at the suggestion.
I did text my friend back to tell her that I couldn't join her for pedicures that next day. I sent an email attempting to cancel some theater tickets and ask for a refund I would never get. (It's okay because it's theater and I forgave them.) I did eventually try to scroll through the odd programming between 11pm and 3am to see if I could distract myself into getting drowsy. I did ask Angie to adjust the bed a couple times because I was feeling strangely at odds with the lower half of my body, despite the beautiful epidural I unapologetically asked to get.
Sometime close to 4am, the main event started. About ten minutes into it, something was said about the NICU team being on their way to the room and what was my plan about breastfeeding? Oh yeah...breastfeeding. I was gonna read up on that during the next five weeks before...
4:15am. We had very emphatically asked to be surprised on the gender, constantly reminding the ultrasound technicians to please not tell us even though there was also a bright red sticker on our chart that they are not in fact inept in interpreting. The baby was immediately taken to the corner of the room for testing and it seemed like an entire operation was going on with several people huddled around, all in scrubs and lots of beeping machines. I remember that I had the rehearsed thought of "listen for crying...listen for crying...is it crying?" I looked at Matt's face for some sort of gauge on the vibe of what was happening. I had missed the "It's a....<insert boy or girl here!>" and suddenly stopped focusing on whether or not my eyeballs had or had not popped out of their sockets for long enough to ask.
"What is it?! What did we have?"
"It's a little boy."
I'll never forget the smile on Matt's face. Or the tears I sobbed in absolute joy and relief.
I always wanted a little boy. I had prayed - begged actually - to have a boy.
They laid him on my chest, already swaddled, already with a little striped cap, and I held him long enough for a few first family pictures before the NICU team swept him away with my husband who awkwardly had to agree to go with them but also agree to leave me behind in the delivery room.
We were in the NICU for the next five nights. Six days. Rita was my favorite nurse. Matt referenced the song 'Lovely Rita" by the Beatles. She was the most real in calming us down. The NICU is no joke stressful. It wasn't until day three that I actually truly understood why we were there and not going home like the piece of paper from birthing class suggested we would be by then. Someone probably explained it but I definitely didn't hear it, much less comprehend it. There was another nurse who graciously suggested, almost mandated, that we go out to dinner our last night before taking him home. We did. We walked from Reston Hospital over to the Reston Town Center and ate at Barcelona, a Spanish tapas restaurant. I cried at least three times over dinner for reasons only hormones can explain and tried to hide this fact whenever the waitress would come to check on us. She gave us free dessert. She had had a NICU experience too, it turned out. People can be really nice sometimes. We had to be back in the NICU precisely 2 hours and 6 minutes from when we arrived to feed and that was about all I could focus on while numbly eating chorizo and dates and envying the red wine my husband was enjoying across the table. I remember Matt taking a picture of me and telling me I was beautiful and I tearfully disagreeing. I was in a pretty dark place and absolutely terrified of going home the next day.
That whole breastfeeding thing that I was gonna read up on (as if a book would've fixed it) prior to birthing a preemie turned out to be a dark hole of welcome to instant, right-out-the-gates motherhood failure. I was pumping every three hours around the clock from seven hours after his birth - as directed by a very stern nurse who wheeled a hospital-grade pump into my recovery room and wrote my new schedule on the room's whiteboard. We hadn't named him yet, so instead of the joyous news of a new human's name written there in celebratory writing, it was a rigid, hopeless-feeling assignment. She didn't seem receptive to questions - not that I had any in those first seven hours since 4:15am. I was on a first-name basis with several lactation consultants. Absolutely nothing was working. I was very confused as to what to do or at what point to change directions, how to change direction, why I would hypothetically change direction, and had no real big picture perspective because I was so sleep deprived from only resting an hour or so at a time here and there due to the whiteboard schedule. Why were there so many wires hooked up to him? What did the three quick beeps mean, versus the slower, steady, softer beeps? Are you sure he's OK? Are we gonna go home with these machines? What do we do if he won't eat?
We came home on August 2nd. By September 3rd, I had somehow mostly kept up with the newborn schedule plus the exclusively pumping schedule, plus the try to breastfeed various different ways schedule. Mostly. In an on-paper sort of keeping up. The morning of September 3rd, I basically cracked. That's the best word I can use to describe it. It was like I felt a piece of my soul give way to defeat. I looked at Matt and said, "I can. not. get. up. at. 1am. to. pump. I'm gonna skip it and instead get up at 4am. I can't do this around the clock zoo anymore. Also, I'm going to have a strategically timed beer at dinner. Just one beer."
There's more to say here. A ton more. More appointments, more checks, more trials and errors - many errors. More crying. More angst. I can barely write about it. It's traumatizing. I'm still working through the anxiety and stress of those first several months. I have a lot that I wish I'd said to myself back then but didn't. It was 100% the motivation behind taking a year off to spend with a 2-yr old Arthur and his mama's redeemed spirit. There's a ton more there, too - a more joyous redemption. The do-over I probably didn't deserve but which was perfect in every way imaginable.
September 3rd, 2016, I had my first beer since being on a trip to Argentina in December, 2015. For the occasion, we ironically sat outside at an Argentinian restaurant in Roanoke. I savored every sip. Earlier that day we took Arthur to meet his great-grandparents for the first time. I also took a few extra pictures of Matt holding him on the day he was supposed to have been born.
Every year since, I note the day more light-heartedly. The reminder that nothing ever really goes as planned. That surprises are around every corner and all you can do is accept it. That having a plan is great but having a backup plan is better. That you rarely get do-overs so you need to make the most of the first round. That the best thing you can do for yourself is to allow some grace. That maybe this kid had his own plan that was meant to reshape our perspective on planning and preparations. Maybe he's trying to tell us when he sing-songs, "but that's okay!", that it is all, in fact, okay.
Happy September 3rd to the best-laid plans.
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