When we reach the exit for the hospital, I let out another curse. Of course the exit is packed full of cars. “Who the hell is on the highway at eleven o’clock at night?” I snap. “Bunch of idiots!”
Jace laughs and slows to a crawl, eventually coming to a stop behind a row of cars that backs up from the upcoming red light. “Well it is a Friday and it’s two days before Christmas. Last minute shopping, parties, stuff like that.”
Oh God another contraction is happening. “Stop sticking up for these assholes,” I say. “I hate every single car on this road right now. I hope all of them get coal in their stockings.”
Jace puts his hand in mine and leaves the other one on the steering wheel. “Just squeeze my hand until it’s over,” he says. I do, and he doesn’t even flinch.
After what feels like five thousand hours on the road, we pull into the parking lot of the hospital. “Should we go in the emergency room?” Jace asks. “Or just the regular entrance?”
“I don’t know. Is this an emergency? I mean I’m not dying.” Why didn’t the doctor tell us this kind of stuff? Mentally I scan through all the baby prep books and the brochures I read in the waiting room at my OB-GYN. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. People should really tell you this kind of stuff.
“It’s not that big of a hospital,” I say. “Just park and we’ll walk in the regular door since the elevators are right there.” I do know one thing, and that’s to go straight to the third floor. The maternity ward.
I have another contraction in the elevator but luckily we’re the only two people in here so I get to make an ugly face of pain in front of the only person I will allow to see me looking ugly. When the doors ding open, we step out into a pastel colored hallway with a gigantic stork painted on the wall. I would give anything for the stork to be real right now. How wonderful would it be to have a creepy bird walk into our house and drop off our baby, no pain involved?
A fake Christmas tree sits in the corner, decorated in a half-ass kind of way with blue and pink ornaments and a few obviously fake presents placed underneath it. It’s kind of weird to think that Christmas is just two days away. Well, one day, because I think it might be midnight already. Christmas is so far out of my radar because the only thing that’s been on my mind for weeks is this baby.
We follow the arrow stickers on the floor that turn left and take us straight to the nurse station. Two nurses in scrubs sit behind the counter, both watching something on a tablet and commenting on how fat an actress has gotten this year. I clear my throat. One of them looks up and the other one touches the tablet to pause the video.
“Hi, how can I help you?” the first one says.
Um, seriously?
Who the hell asks a question like that?
Jace and I are standing here in our pajamas, Jace holding two big bags that are clearly packed with all the things we’ll need during a hospital stay and I’m so pregnant I’m about to burst and we’re standing right in the middle of the maternity ward…
“We’re wondering if you could point us in the direction of the nearest amusement park,” I say with a fake smile on my face. “I was hoping to go ride some roller coasters.”
The woman doesn’t seem to get my sarcasm.
“She’s going into labor,” Jace says. “Contractions are four and a half minutes apart.”
“Oh!” She bursts into action as if, oh I don’t know, it was her job or something. “This way,” she says, guiding us into a delivery room. “Who’s your doctor?”
“Doctor Qi from Mixon Medical,” Jace answers. She gets me settled into a bed that’s not totally as uncomfortable as I had feared and then leaves us while she gets everything else ready.
“Your sarcasm is on point lately,” Jace muses. He sets the bags on a table and then sits on the edge of the bed. “I think pregnancy has made you exceptionally quick-witted.”
I laugh. “How can I help you?” I say in a mocking voice. “I mean seriously? Who asks that to a pregnant woman in a maternity ward.”
A little while later, the anesthesiologist comes into my room. He’s a short Asian man with long black hair that’s tied in a low pony tail. He’s wearing dark blue scrubs, which is a drastic contrast to all the pastels that everyone else seems to be wearing. “Are we ready for your epidural, Mrs. Adams?”
I nod. Over the last few months of checkup appointments with my OB-GYN, I had heard a lot of women talking about pain management during labor. Some of them were staunchly against epidurals, claiming that natural child birth is the way to go. Sure, it sounds heroic as hell to have a baby with no drugs, but sorry. I’m not that kind of person.
These contractions are killing me. I can’t even fathom the pain of having a kid. Mom had told me there was nothing to be ashamed of. She’d had me with no drugs because they arrived at the hospital late and then with Bentley she’d opted for an epidural and said it was the greatest thing ever.
The anesthesiologist goes through a tray of medical supplies and tells me to sit up and swing my legs over the side of the bed. It occurs to me now that I have no idea what an epidural actually is.
“Um, what are you doing?” I ask, glancing back over my shoulder.
“I’ll be inserting a needle into your spine,” he says. “It doesn’t take long.”
“Oh holy shit.” I swallow. A needle into my spine? Gross. I have about a thousand more questions but I’m not sure if I want to know the answers. Why did I have to send Jace on a snack run? He had to go all the way down to the cafeteria on the first floor so he might be gone forever. I need him here. There’s about to be a needle in my freaking spine!
The doctor numbs the area first with a small needle prick. It’s not so bad. He tries telling me every step of what he’s doing but I ask him as politely as possible just to leave me in the dark about this. I really don’t want to know. There’s a slight knock on the door and Jace enters. I can’t see him because my back is to him but I can tell it’s him by the sound of the gasp he makes when he enters the door.
He nods hello to the doctor and joins me on the other side of the bed. He has sour gummy worms and pizza flavored pretzel snacks. My favorite. I smile at him and reach for his hand. He looks like he’s seen a ghost.
“You okay?”
He does this half shrug half grimace thing. “I’m…I’m okay.”
“What is it?” I ask.
“Hold still,” the doctor says. I can feel his hands on my lower back but that’s about it.
Jace swallows and the look of having eaten something rotten stays on his face. “I’ll tell you in a minute,” he says, closing his eyes.
“We’re all done,” the doctor says, closing the opening on the hospital gown I’m wearing. “You’ll start to feel it soon. And congratulations on your baby,” he says, patting me on the arm. Then he leaves the room and we’re all alone again. Having babies in the movies always makes it seem like nurses and doctors are surrounding you all of the time. Here, I’m kind of left alone a lot.
I turn to Jace. “Are you getting sick?”
He shakes his head. “I’m okay now. I just…ugh. I walked in right when he was shoving a needle the length of my arm into your back. It was so gross. Wasn’t that painful?”
“IT WAS THAT FREAKING LONG?” My eyes almost burst out of my skull.
Jace nods. “Pretty much.”
Now I feel like throwing up. Although a nice warm sensation is slowly filling my lower body. I sigh. “It didn’t hurt. He numbed it first.”
“That’s good. Babe you’re the strongest person I know.”
He was probably just being nice. In most cases in life, I am a total weenie. But his words fill my heart with happiness anyhow. I lie back on the hospital bed, resting my hands on my huge belly. Another contraction is coming on but I can’t really feel it. Damn, this epidural thing works fast.
Chapter 4
Doctor Qi enters the delivery room, pulling a badge on a lanyard over his head as if he’s been getting dressed on the walk ov
er here. “Hello, hello,” he says with the big smile he always has. “Looks like baby Jett just couldn’t wait a few more hours until I’ve had my coffee.”
I smile and Jace shakes his hand. I think it’s so cool that my doctor remembers what we’re naming our baby even though he has a ton of other patients. I wonder if he remembers those things about everyone.
By this time in my pregnancy, I am used to being poked and prodded by doctors and nurses so I don’t even flinch when he puts my legs in the stirrups and starts feeling around in there. “You’re nine centimeters dilated,” he says. “He’s almost here. Then I can get back to my coffee and start my day at a reasonable hour.”
For a brief moment, I lose all the anxiety of childbirth and start getting really excited about it. Soon, I won’t be a waddling whale of a person. I’ll have my body back and I’ll have an adorable baby to love and care for.
But then it’s time to push and all that happiness had I felt vanishes just as quickly as it arrived.
The pushing is a nightmare. It’s this weird feeling and even though I’m supposedly numb from the waist down, I’ve never been in more pain. And the doctor and nurses keep saying to push harder and I’m thinking I am pushing harder!
Jace is on my side, holding my hand and being the supportive, loving husband so well you’d think he’d spend his entire life prepping for this moment. I keep my eyes focused on him during what is so freaking awkward and weird and painful and surreal.
And then, somehow, and almost suddenly, the nurse hands me our baby.
Chapter 5
I don’t know what I expected. It’s embarrassing, really. The nurse puts a purplish-pink, kind of slimy baby on my chest and he cries and clenches his fists. The miracle of childbirth, right?
Yet the first thing that goes through my mind when I see my son is something along the lines of oh my god this is a baby.
Like really? Am I that stupid?
I mean, I knew there was a baby inside of me, I had seen the ultrasounds and watched him grow each week. But there’s something to be said for seeing your baby in real life for the very first time. It’s absolutely terrifying.
Suddenly it’s all real.
All at once, as if those nine months of pregnancy were suddenly gone and they never happened. Now, officially, it’s real.
He cries. It’s a little baby cry and his face is scrunched up and his hands ball into fists that are so tiny…
And then I’m crying too.
Chapter 6
“Six pounds, ten ounces,” the nurse says in a Spanish accent. She runs a careful thumb over his hair, which is a little auburn like mine and then fits a tiny little baby cap over his tiny little baby head.
“Congratulations Mr. and Mrs. Adams,” Doctor Qi says. “You have a very healthy, very handsome little boy.”
Jace shakes the doctor’s hand. He crawls into bed next to me and kisses my sweaty, disgusting forehead. “I am convinced there is nothing you can’t do,” he says. For some reason this makes me blush. He’s my husband and all, but he just watched me shove a baby out of my vagina, so yeah. Awkward.
Jett wriggles in my arms and it surprises me that I’m naturally holding onto him. That he’s not falling out of my grasp or crying or demanding that someone with some talent take care of him. I mention that to Jace in a hushed voice so the nurse on the other side of the room won’t hear.
“Are you kidding?” he whispers back as he gently strokes our son’s chubby little cheek. “You’re his mamma. He loves you more than anyone else in this world right now.”
Just hearing those words from Jace fills my heart with some kind of atomic bomb sized emotions. “I love you, too,” I whisper to Jett. Then, I add, “Jett. My sweet little Jett,” because I’m not sure if he knows his own name yet.
“That’s a pretty badass name,” I tell Jace.
He nods. “Well, with me as a dad, he should expect everything in his life to be badass.” I roll my eyes and wish I could punch him but I am so not about to move with my arms around this tiny little baby.
They move us from the delivery room into our own recovery room on the maternity ward. The walls are painted with a rainforest mural so there’s all kinds of colorful animals watching us as we fawn over our baby. That’s exactly what Jace I do. Fawn.
I sit up in bed, letting the back part of the bed rise up into a sitting position and then Jace sits at the foot of the bed and we let Jett lie all bundled up like a burrito between us. The nurse helped me breastfeed him which wasn’t as scary as I had imagined and now he’s sleeping.
“So, what a birthday.” Jace looks at his watch. “He’s probably going to hate it.”
“Why’s that?” I ask, looking up at him and then glancing at the time. It’s four-thirty in the morning. “Oh wait… what day is it?”
“Christmas Eve.”
My first thought is how cute but my second thought is, “Oh.”
How had I forgotten what day it is? We’re going to be in the freaking hospital on Christmas day. “Jett will just have to get two sets of presents,” I say defiantly. “No child of mine is going to hate their birthday.”
Jace laughs. “I knew you’d say that.”
Our nurse knocks twice on the door and then opens it slowly, smiling at Jett as she enters the room. I assume she’s here for vitals again but instead she says, “Would you like me to take him into the nursery now?”
“Huh?”
Jace says, “We can’t keep him?”
“Oh of course you can,” she says with her unfailing smile. “But most mothers like to take the baby to the nursery overnight so they can get some sleep. We’ll bring him back at eight in the morning.”
“Oh I’m not tired,” I say just as my stupid body betrays me and makes me yawn.
Jace looks at me and then at Jett and then back at me again. “Honey I think we should let him go to the nursery. You do need some sleep.”
I frown and pick up my baby burrito, kissing the top of his head. I don’t want to let him go. He’s mine. Why do they think I should let him go?
As if sensing my hesitation, the nurse says, “You can always keep him with you, that’s no problem. But it’s probably better if you get a good night’s rest so you’ll have energy to spend the day with him tomorrow.”
Okay, that makes sense. Frowning again, I hand him over and watch her take him out of the door. There’s a window next to the door so I can watch as she carries him to his little plastic crib thing in the nursery, the one that says ADAMS, J&B on the side of it. I assure myself that he’s just a few feet away in the other room and that he’s being cared for by an excellent team of nurses. But that doesn’t help much because suddenly I am overwhelmed with sadness.
“I miss him already,” I say to Jace.
“I know, baby but you need some sleep. You’ve been awake almost twenty-four hours.” He lowers the bed’s back into a flat position and then slides up next to me, resting on his side. I turn to face him and close my eyes when he runs his hand through my hair.
Okay, I think, as sleep overwhelms me. Maybe I am tired.
Chapter 7
I’m grateful for the sleep. Because at ten in the morning, visitor hours are officially open and everyone comes to see Jett. My mom, David and Bentley arrive promptly at ten, only I’m not sure who they are at first because all I see is a disembodied hand holding a dozen baby balloons walking toward me. Mom pokes her head out of them and I smile.
“By baby!” she says in a way that only moms can do as she throws her arms around my head, hugging me close to her. She smells like lavender and laundry detergent. “Now where’s my other baby?”
Jace is sitting in the uncomfortable hospital recliner in the corner of our room, holding Jett in his baby blanket burrito. Turns out you’re supposed to keep them all wrapped up like that for the first few days. (Apparently the baby burrito-style blanket wrap is a skill only the nurses possess because I still really, really suck at it.)
David take
s the balloons and secures them to a table, then sets down a massive vase of flowers. “You guys didn’t have to do that,” I say about the flowers, but David just waves me off as it wasn’t a big deal. He gives me a hug and I find myself thinking that I’m so glad Mom is happy now with a man who treats her right.
Bentley, who insists on being called Uncle Bentley now, completely bypasses telling me hello and heads straight for the baby. “Ahem.” I clear my throat sarcastically. “Uncle Bentley better say hi to me or he won’t get to hold his new nephew.”
“Okay, okay,” he says, trudging across the room and giving me a hug.
Even with my long night/early morning’s sleep, I’m still tired. Jace handles showing Jett to my family and around noon, they decide to get some lunch from the hospital café. I take the opportunity to step out of my bed and waddle to the bathroom. Only I’m not really waddling anymore and my steps are almost exactly like they used to be before my stomach got all fat.
I flip on the light to the little bathroom in our hospital room and sit down to pee. All I can see is my face in the mirror in front of me and I almost don’t recognize myself. My hair looks like I’ve spent the day at the beach, when in reality, I just got really sweaty and then fell asleep without washing it. My face is pale and there’s dark circles under my eyes. I make a mental note to remember how terrible I look so that I can thank Jace profusely later for putting up with me.
When I stand to wash my hands, something catches me off guard.
It’s myself.
I stand straight, letting the water in the sink run as I stare at myself in the mirror. I’m wearing a massive t-shirt of Jace’s and some flannel pajama bottoms. I don’t really even remember changing out of my hospital gown last night but I think maybe Jace helped me.
Winter Wonderful (Summer Unplugged Book 7) Page 2