The labor of delivery

“She didn’t do drugs in college,” my sister informed my parents. The voice inside my head that says things like Don’t eat that whole bag of Reese’s Pieces and That outfit makes your butt look big or You really shouldn’t make toast in the bathtub wanted to let my sister know that her observation was funny because it was true. But my inside voice never made it to the outside. The Voice faded into the dark, and I fell into a world where the only phrases that made it to the land of consciousness had to do with Star Trek and hot dogs. I think it was drugs—the drugs that were making me crazy loopy after my emergency C-section.

Until the weekend of May 18^th, the only emergency I had ever faced was the classic “We are out of Thin Mints!” emergency. This type of Girl Scout Cookie crisis, while ranking high on the food-catastrophe scale, ranks low on the actual real emergency list. Even though I am now always prepared with extra Thin Mints, I was totally unprepared for a C-section—emergency or otherwise.

I really thought that the birth of my baby would go smoothly—like it does in every romantic comedy. Like a good RomCom, I imagined myself breathing deeply and shouting things a la Bill Cosby like, “YOU DID THIS TO ME…!” Yet, instead of a Seth Rogan/Katherine Heigl lighthearted romp where the couple barely makes it to the hospital on time, my delivery turned into more of a riveting Leonardo DiCaprio/Kate Winslet drama. This serious script came complete with the doctors using words like “stat,” and phrases like, “You need to do this now.”
After 26 hours of labor, the whole C-section section of my delivery is slightly blurry. I sort of remember my tearful husband reporting to me that our son was here. I barely remember seeing him for the first time. The only thing I do remember clearly is hearing him cry. (My baby, not my husband.) Once I heard our baby’s first cries, I knew all was well, and that’s when I drifted in and out of a drug induced haze—for the rest of the day.
Looking back over the events of the last week, part of me does wish that I’d had the more Seth Rogan/Katherine Heigl Romantic Comedy birthing experience. (Plus I‘d love for Paul Rudd to be my brother-in-law.) And really, I will never know if having “inhaled” in college would have made my drug tolerance any easier, but that’s alright. I know one thing that is undoubtedly worth it: The sweet little baby boy that smiles in his sleep at the sound of my voice.
So, let me be the first to introduce you to our sweet sweet Baby E:

Welcome to world, sir. I am excited to see what it has in store for you—and the three of us.