The story, continued…
On Friday morning, at some point the pediatrician came in to check Anna (as yet unnamed). He confirmed that I was nursing her, and said “I understand that you have done this before?” And I said yes, and then he asked how long I had nursed the other 2 kids. When I said four and a half and three and a half years, he pretty much exploded with excitement. He literally could not contain his glee. “That’s SO great!” he kept saying. The statistics regarding nursing just kept pouring out of him. Peter found it to be so funny. He said later, “it must have been great to get that sort of recognition and confirmation from him” and I agreed. It is nice to have the backing of the doctors, though I have never had any of the difficulties or judgment that other women have experienced. Several hours after she was born, they got me up for a shower and to move me to a postpartum room. Walking after an epidural is very strange. I managed to do it, but only a few steps. I was cleaned up, moved to a teeny tiny postpartum room, and that was where Peter and I absolutely collapsed into the deepest sleep ever. Anna was on Peter’s chest, and I really remember very little. Later in the day, the kids and Nana joined us, and it was a really amazing moment to sit on the bed with all 3 kids. They were both so excited and so happy to see her, and it was just perfect. Both of them were completely excited to see the baby. Then the kids and Peter left to go to the hotel, Nana went back home, and I fell asleep for 12 hours, interrupted of course by the mandatory checks of my vitals and the baby’s vitals.
The next day, I was hot to trot to go home. My doctor gave me the thumbs up, and then the pediatrician came in. It was a different doctor this time, and I had been warned that he was pretty conservative about letting babies go home a day early. But somehow, despite my frumpled hospital-gown, messy hair, clearly not pulled together state, I managed to convince him of my competence as a mother, and he decided to let me go. So, all that was left to do was get my rhogam shot, take care of some other details, and of course, name the baby. Peter and the kids arrived, Ava decided to hang out with me, and Peter took Carter back to the hotel to swim for the morning. And thus began a series of conference calls, all in an effort to come to a 4-way agreement on what this child should be named. We managed to all agree on Anna for a first name, and then it took another 2 hours or so of wrangling over a middle name. Meanwhile, I was absolutely desperate to get out of the hospital, and I was feeling more and more like a caged animal. Finally we agreed on Sophia, and we were able to complete the paperwork, much to the relief of the administrative staff. Somehow we managed to get out of the hospital, and on our way home.
Once home, there were a series of events that triggered the release of all of Ava’s pent up exhaustion and stress, which was pretty vast, given that she had held it together for 48 hours straight, despite the pretty real trauma of Mom disappearing, and she completely melted. We managed to repair the damage, get some dinner into her, and hustle the kids into bed. The following morning, all was fine again. And then the task of figuring ourselves out as a family of five actually began.