Good times

So I woke up this morning, thinking of the books I will take to the hospital for my four day vacation post baby arrival. After Ava was born, I found myself hoping my doctors were unhappy enough with my progress to refuse to release me. I think I could spend two or three weeks in the hospital without wishing for a moment to be home where the level of care is decidedly worse. I have vague memories of John complaining I wasn't doing a scrap of housework and refusing to allow me to live in the first floor great room. He was so bad!!! For those of you who haven't had a cesarean, it hurts. It is the medical version of being sawed in half and it takes weeks to heal. The newest thing is to require newly sawed in half women to get out of bed and walk around on the FIRST DAY. I gave it a try but stopped when I passed out. The next day, the hospital found two of its biggest, oldest, meanest nurses who marched into my room (in intimidating side by side formation) and said something like "okay honey, enough lounging around in bed". The fear outweighed the pain and they had me hobbling to and from the nursery in no time. On my first outing, I ventured to see how little Avery was faring in the newborn nursery. It took a good long time to get there and I was aware of fearful staring by not yet, but nearly new mothers (holy heavens, is THAT what giving birth does to a person??). They would have felt better if they'd known I didn't get around much better before.

I shuffled up to the nursery window and observed a pack of nurses gathered around my shrieking baby while jabbing her repeatedly in the foot with needles. It was an awful scene and I mustered my courage and knocked timidly at the window. While a nurse walked over to see what I wanted and I tried to think of polite ways to ask if she was killing my baby. I am too nice to be so direct so I asked sweetly "what are you doing to my baby?" Well, it turns out, pretty much nothing. They'd pricked her foot (once) for a blood sample and were having a heck of a time trying to collect it from my spirited child. They were actually finished and I got to rescue her with lots of soothing mother talk "oooh little BAYbe ... were those big mean nurses scaring you?" I shared with her later that they had been scaring me, too...

On another visit to the nursery, I found out John and I couldn't identify our child. He'd decided an African American baby was ours until I pointed to the blue (equals boy) tag on the side of the bassinet that said "Jamal". Oops. What happened to parental instincts? The biological bond between baby and mother? I didn't know, but I left with a fresh appreciation of how alike they all look and how ours, while not the cutest, was not the worst off, either. Time eventually ironed her out, or brought acceptance, so that now she is the cutest.

On our scheduled day to leave, John prepared to carry Ava out to the car while I waited to be wheeled out like a queen. Nope. Norwalk Hospital requires its newly sawed in half women to walk out under their own power. Ava, on the other hand, had to be strapped into her infant seat inside the hospital before they'd let us leave with her. I found it a little annoying ... I mean, are they available to follow us all the way home to make sure we are doing things properly there? Whatever. We obediently strapped her in, carried her out, unstrapped her and tossed her in the trunk with our other children and drove straight to the store to return the car seat.


I could reserve an entire post to discuss car seats, but let's just get it out here. There are a number of interesting things about car seats to which I will draw your attention. First, as a start, my own mother kept me alive by holding me on her lap in the car, probably sometimes while also driving the car. I'm just guessing that there were times she was alone with me and needed to leave the house. But the world has changed. Car seats, in my state, are mandatory for children weighing less than 80 pounds. Astounding. Also, the newest, safest car seat of yesterday is a mortal hazard to today's children so that it is recommended that you NOT reuse them. Lastly, car seats take up entire rows of automobile seats.

When I was pregnant with Claire, John and I thought we'd plan ahead and buy an SUV for our growing family. Ha! The second car seat/child decimated our backseat entirely, leaving us with the equivalent of a two seat sports car without being at all sporty. It was possible to squeeze one of John's skinny parents between the two car seats, but it was a tight squeeze. And that grandparent was in such close proximity to both darlings that it was aparently impossible for that grandparent to keep hands OFF long enough for either baby to sleep. Those were trying times. Enter one year used, monster GL450 with THREE rows of seats. It was big enough to prompt the ecologically minded to throw cups of fake blood at us as we drove by. Things were better for a while. The car seats went to the farthest back row, leaving the middle row for two regular or three skinny people. Aah, no more caravanning with two cars to take the in laws to dinner. But now, enter "new baby". The infant car seat will go in the middle row, leaving us again with one "guest seat". In the end, our car situation may determine our family size.