I’m Beautiful Like Me.

Can you believe I have no pictures of Joy as a baby on the computer?! When she was really tiny, we didn’t have a digital camera. I lost a nauseating amount of images of her when a transformer down the street that powered my computer randomly exploded one sunny afternoon several years ago. If you learn nothing else from reading my blog, I sincerely hope you take me for my word at this: back up your images!!!

At around 2pm, September 30, 1998, my water broke. At first I thought my already-questionable bladder had completely failed me, but I quickly realized that wasn’t the case. No one ever tells you that when your water breaks, it isn’t just a gush. It does not stop trickling! I called xSO at work to let him know and excitedly paced the house, calling people. After three and a half hours and still no labor pain, we headed to the hospital and yes, I drove.

Even though I pre-registered, it still took forever to get in. University of Louisville is a learning hospital, after all, and it’s my guess that everything must be documented just so. I was first checked to make certain that labor had in fact started. It was around 9pm when I finally got a private room to labor in, but still no pains. I was terribly annoyed with the various attachments the hospital staff insisted I be wired up with - blood pressure cuff, two belts around the waist (one to measure the baby’s heart rate and one to measure my contractions), and numerous electrodes on my chest for reasons I either never knew or cannot recall.

Around 11pm, when normal contractions still hadn’t started, they insisted on starting me on Pitocin, a synthetic version of the hormone Oxytocin, which triggers labor. We shant discuss the hell that quickly followed. My intentions were to have as natural a labor as possible in the hospital, but I was young and inexperienced. No one spoke on my behalf and I was crazy from pain and not taken seriously by anyone with any sort of control over my situation. I asked for some pain relief but it made me vomit. I was completely miserable that things were going so completely differently than I had hoped and by 3:30am, I had requested an epidural. It took forever to get it, too, because someone lost my blood and had to redraw more, then the anesthesiologist had the hardest time getting into my scoliosis-plagued spine - contracting and vomiting and having that man yell at me to sit still made me hate him. That is, until the epidural worked its magik - then I was ready to name this baby (whose gender was still a mystery to us) after him.

I slept, finally. Around 7am, a new nurse woke me up and told me it was time to start pushing. She was much nicer than the nurse that took care of me all night and she reminded me of a cheerleader as she coached me through pushing. Then I was made to *OMFG* stop! They wheeled me down several hallways into a delivery room and helped me onto another bed with the baby crowning!

Jackasses…

Anyhow, I pushed for all of maybe 5 more minutes and heard my baby cry. No one cried out “It’s a girl!” as I expected, but then nothing went as expected. I inquired if the baby was a boy or a girl and finally I got an answer. There was so much commotion and xSO left my side to follow her where ever they took her off to clean her while I delivered the placenta and got an episiotomy (against my wishes, no less). Finally, they handed the swaddled tiny babe to me and upon seeing her, my reaction was “Oh! It’s you!”

It’s hard to believe that it has been 10 years since those moments, since my baby girl was born!

Happy Birthday, darling. I love you!