The golden hour was one of my most anticipated moments. When I first wrote my birth preferences, I knew I wanted to protect it at all costs, and to do and direct whatever I could to avoid my baby being whisked away from me.
In reality, I was honestly content with the few short minutes I had.
While taking in the bliss of our baby’s arrival, I couldn’t understand how this tiny being could somehow feel so heavy on my chest. And then I felt it: blood draining from my head, dizziness, trouble breathing.
“I feel woozy.”
And that was the first time I considered that maybe all this time I was so focused on making sure the baby would be all right, that I never considered my own wellbeing and ability to make it through.
I can’t quite remember the exact timeline of events. That’s something I would notice in the days after — my sudden inability to gauge time and keep track of it. My recovery the next hours and days was a whirlwind of hemorrhaging and “She’s gushing again!”; nurse after nurse striking out in their attempts to put in second (and third and fourth and fifth) IVs; sooo many transfusions of blood, platelets, cryo-something, iron and steroids; realizing Adam’s “don’t go towards the light” pleas were not dramatic but justified; constant labwork and praying to see better numbers; meeting new nurses and midwives and OBs during my 5-day hospital stay only for them to reveal that they remember me, because they were there.
We still don’t know exactly why my body reacted the way it did to all my blood loss. But I am, thankfully, much better now.
It is hard to reconcile the trauma of my recovery, with the feeling and conviction that I’d do it all over again, in the same exact way, in a heartbeat. Not that this birth was perfect — just that it was so wonderful in so many singular moments that I wouldn’t want to ever give those up.
A whole new reality
Those five days at the hospital were like a time capsule in itself. We were in our own little world, dressed in hospital gowns and baby blankets, tethered to the hospital bed with hourly blood pressure checks, and left to ourselves most of the time with the few things we had.
After so many trials and checks, we were finally handed discharge papers. It was time to go home.
I hadn’t left our hospital room in all that time, so finally stepping out of it felt strange — the novelty of breaking out, but not quite confident in where I was going.
The last time I had walked that hospital hall, I was mid-contraction and welling with tears from nerves. I was still pregnant. Now, it was surreal to be leaving with our baby, whom we were still getting to know, bit by bit.
On our drive home, I mentally retraced every minute of our trip to the hospital. What was familiar suddenly felt so new. Each song on the playlist forever attached to certain sights and sensations from that day. The rural landscapes that we’ve driven past so many times before, now taking on new depth. The last time I was in our car, it was just the two of us. And then there were three.
And over the following two weeks, I was continuously pulled back in time. I came home to little remnants of the morning I had left — the only set of pajamas that still fit me in my third trimester crumpled on the floor of my closet, my desk frozen in time from when I was writing during those early hours of labor, my yoga mat still set up for my daily birth prep stretches and squats.1 All the things we had set up and staged, from his bassinet and car seat, to diaper caddies and sterilized bottles, brought me back to those moments of nesting and preparing the registry and obsessing over getting everything “just so.”
The period I tended to visit the most in my memories was last fall. Stepping into my bathroom transported me to that October morning, when I first saw those two lines and knew, despite all our losses and dashed hopes, that this time it would be different. As I took care of our days-old baby while still in the midst of my own recovery, tapping into strength and energy reserves I didn’t know I had, I’d think back to the version of me during those first few weeks of the first trimester, when I felt my most hopeful and ready yet so delicate and vulnerable. When it was all just beginning.
I found myself looking back on those “eves” of anticipation as I adjusted to our new reality with C here and out of the womb. I was processing the end of a journey, this particular journey. I knew I’d miss being pregnant. I just didn’t realize how much these past two years would hit me — every moment we spent hoping and praying and then preparing and growing.
Our journey ended so beautifully, and a new chapter is just starting. And I don’t take it for granted. Every cycle we tried, and every day that went by wondering if and when our family would grow. It’s scary not knowing, heartbreaking at times. But I know why we keep on going, all of us who are in this season of life. We do it for the hope of it all turning out better than we ever imagined.
Even my Notes app, which I like to keep impeccably clean and cleared out, still had my individual notes for Code Blue and Birth Affirmations. They served their purpose well, and I am no longer in need of them, but at ten weeks postpartum, I am still not ready to say goodbye.