A Baby Story

Monday morning I woke up on the special air mattress-tempur pedic-luxury-bed (one of my dad's specialties, along with pancakes) to a very pregnant Leiah prancing around.

Keep in mind, this same woman has a chair in front of her bathroom mirror so she can sit down to brush her teeth and a stool in front of the pantry so she can take a break while she looks for the macaroni and cheese. That is how pregnant she is.

One week overdue, Leiah had started leaking (just like Venus used to do!!) late Sunday night, but nothing like the gush we were expecting. Monday morning though, there was some gushing... not like TV caliber but definitely real life caliber.

She had a weekly checkup scheduled at 12:50 and wasn't in any pain, so we ate breakfast, got ready, and then went to the appointment. The doctor told us to go to the hospital.

Which we did after we stopped by Jimmy John's to eat lunch, ran by the house to get Leiah's things, dropped Ben off with his Dude, and made a few phone calls. Once you get to the hospital, there's no more eating, and once you get into labor, there's no room for anything else.

Once Leiah was settled in her room, we played Spades, listened to Eminem, and taught my mom some "club" dance moves.

We must have been having too much fun because the nurse came in and said, "Well, if you're up playing cards, then we're not doing our job." The doctor told Leiah that since her water had broken and since her temperature was going up that they wanted her to deliver as soon as possible and hopefully keep the baby from getting an infection. Cue the pitocin.

Also cue Leiah moaning and breathing and doing her best to get through every contraction. Alli did her massage magic on Leiah's back, Mom read poetry about motherhood and delivery out of a book called Tender Hooks, and things got very quiet. Matty G. was kicked out of the room, and then Leiah eeked out her wish for an epidural.

Leiah was like a new woman after the epidural. She could still move her legs a little, and she wasn't in any pain.

My dad stopped by to visit, and when he left, we turned off all the lights and rested. Mom laid down on one of those hospital sleeper chairs, put a sheet over her head and tried to sleep, but I was way too jazzed for this to be over so suddenly. I sat by Leiah and watched her rest. There she was, my little sister, doing grown up things that I'm too afraid to try. I thought about when she was born and I visited her in the hospital, how I knew she was my sister but how little that meant then. She was more like something my mom had to deal with, something not really relevant to my life. Four-year-olds have no idea.

The nurse came in to check her at about 11pm, and she was at 10 cm. The lights came on, an army of medical people rushed in, a mirror was put in place, the bed was dismantled, instructions were given, and pushing was started. Leiah pushed two times and we could see Lilly's head.

Now, up until that moment, I've never seen a baby's head coming out of the love tunnel. I'd seen Heather give birth, but my eyes were locked on her, the anguish in her forehead, the out of body experience she was having. It was so surreal I couldn't look away, so I never saw Cole make his way into the world. This time, I stared into Leiah's lady parts, looked at that baby's head, and just when I was thinking it, Leiah said, "Ohhh, that looks weird."

The baby's head was all shriveled and squished, so much so that it didn't really look like a head. It looked hard and gray, like a giant dried up potato. I don't know why but the word "trachea" popped into my head when I first saw it. Leiah waited for another contraction, pushed two more times, and that suspicious potato became one of the most beautiful human beings alive. Her entire torso was out after those pushes, so the doctor told us to take pictures and told Leiah to reach down and grab her. Lillian left her momma's insides, came to rest on her chest, and has pretty much been there ever since.