Archives: The best day of my life

** This was originally written and posted on my FB page as a note in July 2009 **

Ask just about any married woman without kids what the best day of her life was and she will most likely say it was her wedding day.

And ask any mother what the best day of her life was and she will most likely tell you it was the day her kids were born.

I’m here to tell you, the day my daughter was born was not the best day of my life. In fact, it was downright awful. I had to be at the hospital at 5:30 in the morning, after having hardly slept the night before (I was being induced, so I was a nervous wreck). They took me in, had a hard time finding a vein for the IV, and hooked me up to the contraction monitoring machine. But alas, the stuff wasn’t working right. So while my husband stepped out (for what I don’t recall), they moved me to another room which subsequently freaked him out when he came back. As the day wore on, it just got better. The pitocin wasn’t working. The max dosage is 20, they maxxed me out at 30, and it still took its sweet time to work. When the contractions finally hit, they were all in my back – yes, my stubborn daughter may have been head down, but was facing up (to see the world!) and I was in back labor, so my hard-pressed days of “I want a natural labor” were put to rest an hour after the contractions started when I begged for an epidural.

All the while, I’ve been watching the Food Network all day long and I’m not allowed to eat a freakin’ thing. The sweet nurse did hunt me down a popsicle at lunch, but it was grape and I hate grape. I choked it down anyway, because she jumped through hoops to get it for me.

After pumping me full of fluids for an hour, but what felt like a freakin’ eternity, I got my epidural and fell in love with my anesthesiologist. Of course, you’d fall in love with a man who instantly takes away the pain too. But he warned me it went in sort of funny and a couple hours later I felt it starting to wear off. He gave me a “refresh” and life was good. Until the epidural fell out. So, here he comes again to give me another huge needle in my spine. Whereupon right afterwards my blood pressure drops like crazy, I get nauseous, and puke my guts out (well, no, just my grape popsicle) in front of my husband, my mother, and my in-laws. You know they loved that show.

The sweet nurse got off at 7. All day long I had four visitors in my room (the max is two) and she told us she didn’t really care as long as they didn’t get in her way. But after sweet nurse left, in trudged a troll of a nurse whose first words were “there are too many people in this room, two of you have to leave.” Little did she know two of them were saying goodbye, had she taken the time before she opened her big fat mouth, she would have known that.

This woman was not very nice, at all. And she screwed up my delivery. By the time she called my doctor in, my daughter was too far gone for him to turn her face-down, so the back labor continued. (Exacerbated by the fact my wonderful anesthesiologist turned off my epidural almost two hours before.) It got to the point my doctor told her to move and he handled everything – you know you’ve got a bad nurse when the doctor literally tells her to move.

After my daughter was born, evil nurse asked if I was in any pain and I told her I had back cramps and she goes, “That’s not normal.” HELLO! I was in back labor all day long woman! My doctor, God love him, patted my shoulder and told me he’d take care of it. So, a few minutes later I’m given a percoset , which I subsequently throw back up. But evil nurse won’t let me have another one, despite the fact she saw the pill come back up. Sigh.

The sweet baby nurse comes and asks me to nurse my baby for the first time. I’m in and out of sleep at this point and ask her if it can wait until tomorrow. When I mention it to evil nurse later she tells me that it’s better to do it earlier. Great, two hours as a mother and I’m already being told I’m a screw up. Thanks evil nurse.

Then, at 1 in the morning I get to move to my private room, and best of all, I get a new nurse! But not before evil nurse walks me to my room, forgetting my stuff (which my husband told her where everything was before he left – yes, I told him to go home, he needed sleep as much as I did) and holding out on me and not bringing me my Coke that my mom went and got for me right after the baby was born. (As it was the only thing that helped with the nausea.)

So, as it turns out, the only good thing about that day was really that, at 9:16 p.m., I was no longer pregnant. I was ecstatic because now I could go home and drink that bottle of wine that had been sitting at home waiting for me, taunting me, for almost five months, no more heartburn and more importantly, my ankles would go back to normal. (The joke was on me, because it took about two weeks before my ankles stopped swelling.)

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When was the best day of my life? When I finally felt that maternal bond to my daughter. Now, don’t get me wrong, I didn’t neglect her, nor did I regret having her, I just didn’t feel that “I’m-going-to-have-to-kick-your-ass-if-you-so-much-as-think-about-laying-a-hand-on-this-child” feeling for a couple of days.

Now my husband said I had it all along, I just didn’t understand it.

Whoever’s theory is correct, the fact remains that the day I realized that mother-daughter bond was the best day of my life. She needed me and I was bound and determined to make sure that everything she needed (and some things that weren’t!) would be provided so she could have the best life possible. And I didn’t think I could love her any more than I did that day.

Boy was I wrong.

As each day progresses, and she learns new things, there are habits I see that just make my heart melt. From the apparently innate love of barbeque sauce and doughnuts (two of my vices, though not together as that phrase might inadvertently suggest), to watching her neglect the food in front of her just to grab the toy car and go “vroom, vroom,” I see myself in her each and every day. (Yes, I’m a car girl, which is why it thrills me to see her taking to them.) It just blows my mind how there are some things that she does that she didn’t learn, she just did. She gives me my husband’s expressions, and has since the beginning – that’s not learned. She sleeps on her stomach with her head on her right arm like me, and that’s not learned either.

It just amazes me how much of myself I see in this little girl. And how much I want to protect her from the world, I want to protect her from my mistakes, I want to protect her from any pain and hurt that may come her way. And it was the day I realized that was the best day of my life – not the day she was born. That day pretty much sucked.