Month: September 2025

July 30 Cont’d…

6:30pm

Once we entered the nursery we needed Special Nursery Policies and Procedures/ Outerwear Training 101.  First you scrubbed your hands till they hurt (were we going to perform surgery, ya think?). Then you donned a one size fits all Johnny Jacket, a shower cap affair and mask so all your face was covered, except your eyes and a fancy pair of slip on booties to slide over your slippers or shoes, again, one size fits all. 

Seems I was ready to launch…, I felt like an astronaut and moved just as clumsily… as if I was in a time capsule, circling the earth at break neck speed.  Ok, good I’m ready for you – they sit me down and bring you out – you are sucking on your 2 middle fingers of your right hand – OMG – we used to see you do that on the ultrasound. The Johnny Jacket is on backwards – duh, I can’t breast feed you… never mind, you have lost 10oz. in the last couple of days (pretty standard for babies to lose weight after they are born) so Dr. D. has ordered formula, along with you being breast fed.

Sometime during the night my IV was pulled – the following morning and thereafter, I got to the nursery on my own steam. Wheel chairs are for those who need them.  Don’t worry, I won’t file a law suit if I collapse halfway down the hall.

August 1

Dr. D. is lollygaggling, sitting on the end of my bed regaling me with stories of babies born to mothers in Ireland wherein the mother took a half hour break (to eat a lunch and pass the afterbirth?) then went right back to picking potatoes.  All those Moms in Waiting and New Moms were so jealous that I had what seemed like a friendship with my doctor but it was mainly because of living in the trenches with him last summer when your Dad was so sick.  Still it comes with a price.  He flips me the bird as often as he would to those he is close to in life. 

I interrupted his tale to ask, “Uh, Dr. D., I having been wondering – should we get Wonder Boy circumcised?”  He jumps off my bed in a miff, I suspect since he hadn’t finished his potato picking story and archly reply,  “All along I thought you were Scottish”, slaps his hand on his forehead and continued – “but of course, you are related through King David who even today lives in Queen Elizabeth !!’s bloodlines”.  Those Catholic Irish, always got to shoot a salvo at our Royal Family. “No, no, I just read something, it is more hygienic, causes less problems later in life, you know”, I trailed off.  He walked out the door, flipping me that bird, “Give your head a shake. Your not Jewish, Quite Contrary.  It is an archaic procedure.  I am not putting Wonder Baby through that”, as he stomped down the hall.  Dam, maybe I should have had a Jewish doctor…………oh, but I do – your pediatrician.  Now that specialist sails through like a gale in a blizzard… all business… no camaraderie… today or any day. 

July 30… Cont’d

As I looked closely I saw how very dry your skin was.  It appeared like you had got a sunburn, or had been in the bath too long. Layers of dead skin peeled, you had wrinkles on wrinkles, yet the spark of who and what you were, overshadowed your woes.  The dry skin would be explained by our Angel Delivery Nurse who took the time to come up and see us, a few days after you were born.  She explained to me she had never seen a baby survive who had so little amniotic fluid to live in – “a teaspoon, I tell you, a teaspoon”.  She also told me my placenta was very sparse, and it had been sent out for analysis to see if there could have been any contributing factors – so odd – why would my doctors not tell me this?

I was oblivious to what happened in the Delivery Room so was astonished to hear the who, what, when, where and whys.  Like Nurse Florence Nightingale from ICU, she cautioned me to not have another baby in case it was hereditary and was not so lucky to have a live birth the next time around.

6:30pm

I insisted to your Dad we must go to the nursery and feed you, but I am still on IV so I need a pole, which in turn means we need a nurse, to point us in the right seek and find direction.  Bad news is I am not allowed to walk, good news is they have a wheelchair with a pole that Dad can push me up to the nursery in. 

Trust me, I felt foolish, like a Drama Queen seeking sympathy – after all, so many times I saw Moms who had their babies two hours before, hobble down the long hall to the nursery with out any help.  I have been there, done that, having spent so long in the hospital before Wonder Boy was born and never saw a mother in a wheel chair.  What was that all about? I saw the other Moms look at me, in confusion but I imagined there could be snide comments behind my back  – “You saw her, she didn’t even look pregnant, no wonder a person who doesn’t even eat is in a wheel chair after the baby is born.  And where is her baby, anyway, Oh, in that Special Nursery.  It figures.”

In any case, I held my head high, put up and shut up and down the hall we went to the Special Nursery where there were babies with different problems although none of them were life threatening.  Any baby that needed intensive care was ambulanced to our big down town hospitals where they had the machinery and apparatus to save them, if at all possible. 

July 30

4:00pm

I will never forget our first meeting.  You were wide awake, your eyes focused and drinking in everything possible and  tightly swaddled in a yellow receiving blanket. I can still feel how I was shaking (the cool, the calm, the never let her drawers get in a twist…aaaahhh but I had never encountered holding my first born before, had I?)  You had a lot to teach me, over the coming years, some slid down like a cool drink for a parched throat, other knowledge I am ashamed to say, I choked and spit out, but I learned.

I loosened the blanket to get a closer look.  Your fine hair was Dutch blond, shaved on the top of your head but long in the back and on both sides, your all knowing big pansy blue eyes were fringed with long black eye lashes and perfectly arched blond eyebrows, a nose even our Pretty Little Dutch Girl was proud of. (She lived in fear our baby would have my patrician nose – one day when I was crowing about how cute you looked on the ultrasound, she asked if I had seen the shape of your nose – she  herself had a nose cosmetic surgeons struggle to create on their patients and wanted nothing less for you, Wonder Boy). 

Your rosebud mouth, with textbook shaped lips, pursed dramatically on occasion, making me believe you understood every nuance played out. You had tiny hands with unmistakably long, musician fingers and long legs and tiny feet shaped just like your Dad’s.  You latched on to my breast with ease, as though you had been practicing this routine from eternity.  Your tiny fingers massaged my lower arm as you gazed in to my eyes, like a wise little old man, as if to say, “Well, finally, we meet”. 

Now it is only normal that every Mom thinks their baby is beautiful, but I also thought you were special. My Sister The Queen’s son excitedly exclaimed that Wonder Baby looked just like ET, which I knew was the biggest compliment he could give me – then again, my brother–in-law looked at all the babies in the General Nursery, then went to the Special Nursery and looked closely at you, Wonder Boy. He did not rave that you were the most beautiful, no, he said “The good news is, because of the C Section, his head is well shaped.  Those other babies, most of them look like someone took a sledge hammer to their head” – a compliment of sorts, that you and I had no control over, but hey, we’ll run with it.

July 30

6:00am

Someone is standing by my bed side I believe I should know, hair already covered with a Surgery Cap.  Oh, yeah, the Anesthesiologist from yesterday…surely he does not want to get another go at me. 

No, but in his proper, clipped British accent he tells me he had a  blood test run and I have something like 4 per whatever when I should have 1,000’s per whatever, in order to wake up after anesthetic.  He warns me that it is most likely hereditary and all family members should be checked – most of them were and have it to some degree although it was not quite as pronounced as my situation.  Odd thing was both my parents had countless surgeries and no ill effects – could it have been the combo of their blood lines that triggered the reaction in their children?

Anyway Dr. Proper British natters on… he still can’t believe he was not told about us until the countdown (a back handed, accepted apology) and how he is taking it to the highest level so all his colleagues have been made aware of their responsibilities – looks like my Dr.OB/GYN and Dr. D. dodged a bullet when I returned from Never, Neverland.

Funny that – not a Canadian doctor in the bunch – Dr. D. – born in Ireland; Dr. OB/GYN in Italy (the most humble Italian I ever met) and Dr. Proper British, in England.  Is it just me or have you noticed as well that Canadian kids don’t seem to grow up to be doctors……

12:Noon

My doctors decided I meet the criteria of having once more reached the land of the living and tell me I will be moved from ICU to the floor where you are, Wonder Baby, so I can see you, feel, you, touch you.  Since my blood pressure is creeping upwards to a respectable level, I am offered pain killers but I say, “Why would I want them now?  I lived through the worst of the pain already without their help.”  This is duly noted on my file and  gets me a special status, wherein nurses on the floor I am being moved to, tell the other mothers they should be more like me. I am an example to be followed, don’t you know. This message surely didn’t increase my popularity with other mothers.

3:00pm

I am taken down, up whatever to the floor you are on.  The nurses get me all prepped so that when you are brought to me I will be ready for motherhood.  You were not in the regular nursery but in the Special Care (where else would one of our family land) since you weighed 2,200 grams (4 pounds, 14ounces approximately at birth).  Your head was routinely shaved on the top in case they would need to run IV’s but they did not have to, in the end.