Awake.

 

I was really nervous about Olive’s c-section- more so than the other two.   In part, because I had a particularly rough time with Milo’s c-section.  I experienced one long, continuous panic attack on the OR table with him, and I was so loopy and nauseated from the drugs that I didn’t even want to even look at him or hold him for the first couple of hours.  When I first went to see my OB, I had asked her to please let me try to VBAC with this delivery- even though I knew it was considered much more risky to do so after two previous c-sections.   As much as she could empathize (having had a c-section herself), she told me she just didn’t feel comfortable with it, given the risks.  I understood and from that point forward, tried to mentally and emotionally prepare myself for another OR experience.

 

Fast forward to February 18th, 2014- baby day!  We drove to the hospital at 5:45 that morning on top of sleet and slick roads.  I exhaled for about the 40th time on that short fifteen-minute drive and told Jake that I wished I could “just go to sleep and wake up and have her be here.  You know, like the “good ol’ days.”  

 

We got into our sauna- I mean, room (it was set at a balmy 82 degrees), I put on my gown, the IV was started, and then, time almost seemed to stop.  Olive was moving all over my belly and giving the nurse a heck of a time trying to monitor her heart rate.  We’d get the belt positioned and she would move.  We’d reposition it and lose her again.   It became a sort of joke and provided some much-needed levity.  Jake started nodding off in the corner of the room while I vigorously fanned myself- partly because of nervous energy, but also because someone must have missed the memo that pregnant women tend to get hot and nauseated when thermostats are set above 80 degrees.   A nursing student who was coming to sit in on the section came in the room and we made small talk for a few minutes while I eyed the clock and ignored my gurgling stomach.  I tried to imagine myself in recovery- on the other side of the sterile OR, bright lights, pulsating machines, and the sting of the spinal.  I imagined her crying- what it would sound like to finally have her on the outside, to know that she was here and safe.  Try as I might, though, the what-if’s creeped in.   What if she didn’t cry right away?  What if I barfed all over the OR table?  What if she had some fluid in her lungs?  What if I started to hemorrhage?  What if….

 

Then the phone in the room rang.  It was the anesthesiologist.  The nurse walked over to the computer, clicked on a screen and I watched her jaw open just a bit.  “Oh, wow,” she said.   I really wanted to like the tone of that “oh, wow,” but, come to find out, it’s generally not something you want to hear your doctor or nurse say as they stare at your chart.  When she hung up, she told us she was going to go and talk with my OB and the anesthesiologist- that apparently, my platelet count was very low.  I don’t know much about this kind of thing, but I do know that it’s not a new issue for me in pregnancy.  It was discovered that I had a borderline low platelet count when I was in labor with Ella and wanted to get my epidural.  Because of my gestational thrombocytopenia (take that spellcheck), I had to wait a painfully long two hours for it while they ran some lab work to check and make sure it was safe for me to have it (which it was, thankfully).  When I went in for Milo, I was, again, just barely at the safe cut-off for a spinal for the c-section, but everything went ahead as scheduled then, too.  So, in this instance, I wasn’t particularly alarmed to know that history was repeating itself.

 

A few minutes later, the nurse returned with my OB, the anesthesiologist, and even more nurses.  Tthe anesthesiologist explained that a typical low platelet count was anywhere between 100,000 and 150,000.  Mine was 77, 000.   Neat.   And I knew what it meant: there was no way they were going to do a spinal- the risk of hemorrhaging was too great to chance it.

As I tried to absorb the curveball, I looked at my OB, hoping for some sort of cue as to how I should react.  Was she worried?  But when I looked at her, I didn’t see worry.   There was confidence.  But then also, I saw a genuine sadness.  The empathetic look of a momma, herself, who understood exactly what I was going to miss when I went to sleep.  She looked as genuinely sad as I felt.  I listened as they promised me that it would be over in the same amount of time as a regular section, that they would get Olive out quickly so she wasn’t sedated for too long, and that I’d still have skin-to-skin time as soon as I was in recovery.  Of all the things I had prepped myself for, this really wasn’t on the list.   Jake was then told that he wouldn’t be able to be with us at all until we were in recovery, and the reality of it finally hit me while I laid on the OR table and they began to place the catheter (NOT my favorite part, by the way).  Dr. Tyson held my hand and stroked my hair while the tears streamed down my cheeks and I squeaked out, “I’m scared, I’m scared.”  And just before the anesthesiologist told me I was about to go to sleep, my OB looked at me and said, “Just think, you’ll go to sleep and wake up, and she’ll be here.”

 
Sometimes, things have a funny way of working themselves out.

 

And at 8:31 a.m. . . .

 

 

 

 

 

Anesthesia is a crazy thing.  I swore I had only just dozed off when I heard someone calling my name and then someone else said, “Olive is here!”   And I remember thinking, for one split second, “who the heck is Olive??  Let me go back to sleep.”  Then, as the fluorescent lights started to become less hazy above me, I suddenly felt an intense, searing pain in my belly.   And then I heard her cry, from somewhere behind me.   Baby.   My baby.   My Olive.

 

7 lbs, 1 oz and 19 1/2 inches of pure, screaming, pink, perfection.

 

 

My first time holding her in recovery.  (And also, if you must know, our first ever selfie).

 

 

 

 

Girl was hungry.  She wasted no time gettin’ the goods!

 

 

 

And here’s where I need to give a huge shout out to the team that was with me that morning, for a couple of reasons.   As I mentioned, I was initially told that Jake wouldn’t be able to be with me at all during the surgery but that he would be able to join me and Ollie in the recovery room as soon as I got there.  It was only later in recovery that I learned that someone had pulled some strings (my OB, no doubt) and had sent someone to bring him in to the OR right before she was born.  The nurses told me that basically NEVER happens.  So, as it turns out, he got to be in and take pictures and I was able to at least see her first precious minutes in the world through those pictures when I otherwise never would have.  I am so incredibly thankful for that, and for the fact that they went above and beyond to do that for us when they didn’t have to.

 

Daddy meets Ollie for the first time.  I wasn’t yet awake.

 

Oh, my heart.

 

The day that I was discharged, Dr. Tyson came into my room to check on me and we chatted for a bit.  We were laughing about how apparently, Olive hadn’t exactly cooperated during the surgery.  Dr. Tyson had to push several times on my belly- HARD- to get her to descend, then use the vacuum (which failed), THEN use the forceps to finally get her little head out.  (Jake later told me that my body had been flopping around on the table like a rag doll).  But the more disturbing thing was what she told me next: when she cut me open, she noted that I had a uterine window.  Apparently, my uterus was so paper thin, she could see right through it to Olive’s face, as well as the amniotic fluid.  She told me that had I gone into labor on my own or tried to VBAC, I would have almost certainly ruptured.  I thought of the many hours of contractions I’d had in those final weeks- all of which eventually fizzled, but how- at the time- I prayed they wouldn’t.  I remembered my first appt with my OB and my list of (what I considered valid) reasons that I wanted her to let me VBAC.  I still shudder when I think about what I could have lost had either of those scenarios actually come to fruition.  Olive’s birth didn’t go according to plan, but it went exactly how it needed to go, down to the smallest detail.    Grace.  Providence.  Protection.

 

Every time I’ve given birth- even amidst the abundant joy and celebration- I’ve wrestled with the intense vulnerability and sense of mortality that it brings.  After doing it three times, I still struggle to put it into words.  All I know is that with each 7-ish pound bundle, I was actually handed the weight of the world in a most profound way.   Each one has awakened me, and given me more clarity on who I was meant to become, what parts of me were okay to let go of, how sacred this life is.

 

This is my OB- Dr. Katherine Tyson at Virginia Women’s Center.  I couldn’t have asked for a kinder, funnier, more down-to-earth person to have been with me through this pregnancy and delivery.

 

Not even a month after Ollie was born, Dr. Tyson’s son was diagnosed with leukemia.  He’s four years old, just like my Ella Bug.  And though I don’t know her outside of the appointments and my time in the hospital, in a way, this has felt so very personal to me.  I think it’s because of that vulnerability.  That precious, divine weight that we all, as parents, experience when we hold our babies for the first time.   For some, the weight is so much heavier than others.  The fight is so much harder.
But Team Callen is fighting the good fight and the Seward clan is fighting with them in our thoughts and prayers.  And I continue to be thankful for this woman, doctor, and mother who took such good care of me and Olive.   And may we all stay awake and present.