KD Robichaux- Wish he was you (The Blogger Diaries Trilogy Book 2)

by Unknown

  A woman in dark scrubs and a white coat comes into the room after knocking lightly on the door, and when she approaches the bed, she reaches out her hand and shakes mine. “Hi, Kayla. I’m Dr. Snowdon. I’ll be delivering your baby.”

  “Nice to meet you,” I reply. Being a military hospital, you don’t see the same doctor at every appointment or get to pick who is there to deliver your baby. It’s whoever is on duty that day. The woman is very pleasant though, soft spoken, and she immediately puts me at ease.

  “Nurse Vest has caught me up on all your adventures with your little one the past couple of days,” she informs me, nodding at Jamie. “So why don’t we kick this thing up a notch and add some Pitocin? The baby is doing great, no worries there, but since your body has been going through this for such an extended period of time, we don’t want to take any chances.”

  “Sounds good to me.” I shrug.

  “All right. We’ll add that to your IV, and then you can try to get some more rest while you can. She winks at me and then nods at Heather, who disappears behind me, I’m assuming to add the meds to my tubes. I’m beginning to feel like a science experiment, but if all of it gets me through this with a healthy baby girl in my arms at the end, then I’ll be a guinea pig all they want.

  A short time later, when I’m starting to doze off, there is a quiet knock on the door, and I could cry I’m so happy when it opens and in walks my mom and granny. Suddenly, everything is right in my world. I feel an overwhelming strength fill my entire body just at the sight of the most important women in my life. If it was time, I feel like I could push Josalyn out in one try. My face splits into a huge grin as Mom hurries over to me and Granny shuffles along behind her. They both wrap me in a hug, being careful not to hit the IV attached to my wrist.

  When they pull back, Mom takes one look at me and gets to work. She gently pulls my hair out of it’s messy, tangled knot on my head and works her fingers through it, pulling it back into a bun that keeps it all blissfully out of my face. She pulls out a pack of gum from her pocket and hands me a stick of the minty goodness, and my mouth immediately feels ten times better. She hands Aiden the empty cup on the rolling table next to me and instructs him to go fill it with ice chips in a way that scolds him for even letting it get low. All the while, Granny is walking around the bed and making sure I’m all nice and tucked in.

  Jamie comes in, and seeing the newcomers, she introduces herself and then updates everyone on what’s been going on. She also tells me Susan called her, saying to tell me she is so very sorry she has to miss the birth. We knew it was possible for this to happen. I’m in labor a full week before my due date, and Susan had told us if one of her clients went into labor before me, then we’d get a full refund for the $600 we paid her to be my doula. I was just grateful she pulled strings at the hospital and got the nurse to check for the scar tissue. That alone was worth the money to me. God only knows what could’ve happened if it had gone on any longer.

  After eating a few ice chips, exhaustion wins out once again, and I feel myself drift off to sleep.

  “KD…KD girl…wake up, doll.” I hear as something tickles my face. For a second, I think I’m ten years old in my bed at home, my mom annoyingly feathering kisses all over my face to wake me up for school. I swat at the tickling on my nose, and I hear her laugh lightly. “KD…you gotta wake up, baby. You’re ten centimeters. It’s time to bring our little doll into the world, sweet girl.”

  That brings me out of it. I jerk all the way awake with a gasp, opening my eyes and seeing not my childhood bedroom with it’s pretty cream wallpaper with tiny pink hearts, but my delivery room. The lights have been turned down low, but there is a bright lamp being set up at the foot of the bed. I see Jamie, Heather, and Dr. Snowdon prepping, putting on fresh gloves and tying masks around their faces.

  I look off to my left and see Dr. Williams standing near the machine that controls the epidural and IV. My mom and granny are next to the bed, Mom stroking my hair, and Granny rubbing my thigh, which I see but can’t feel. Aiden is to my right, looking nervous, not knowing what he should be doing.

  I’m so out of it I have no idea how much time has passed since arriving at the hospital, so I look up at Mom and ask, “What day is it?”

  She smiles at me again, answering, “It’s Monday, baby. April thirtieth.” She turns around to look at the clock on the back wall. “It’s about 3:30 in the afternoon.”

  “My girl wanted diamonds,” I say tiredly.

  “What?” She chuckles, probably thinking I’m talking through a stupor.

  “Her due date was May fifth, which would have been emeralds as her birthstone. She’s coming out early, but very last minute, just in time to have diamonds,” I explain with a sleepy grin.

  “Ah, sapphires and diamonds. What a pretty mother’s ring you’ll have,” Granny says, and the three of us laugh, knowing Granny loves any excuse to buy jewelry off QVC.

  Jamie comes up to the head of the bed and starts raising it using the remote. “All right. We’re going to sit you up, and then someone needs to hold each of your legs. When we see a contraction coming on the screen, Dr. Snowdon will tell you to push, and you push as hard as you can for ten seconds. I know you can’t feel what’s going on down there, but if you just focus on pushing down and out, you’ll be doing exactly what you need.”

  My heart starts pounding rapidly, and all of a sudden, I get very scared. I grab Granny’s hand on my thigh and look up into my mom’s eyes, and I know she can see the fear there, because her face goes soft. She leans down right in my face, her beautiful blue eyes boring into my green ones, and she says low but clear, “You can do this, baby. We’re right here, and we’re going to help you. All you have to do is push. And then we’ll get to hold our girl.”

  I take a deep breath and then nod vigorously, drawing on the strength I hear in Mom’s voice and feel in Granny’s grip on my hand. I look over at Jamie and tell her, “Okay, I’m ready,” and before I can even prepare myself, Dr. Snowdon says, “Perfect timing, because here comes your contraction. Positions, everyone.”

  Mom and Granny take ahold of my left leg, and Aiden grabs the other, their grips on the backs of my thighs, my heels pressing into their opposite palms, and when the doctor says, “Deep breath…and push! Ten…nine…” and continues to count, everyone counts along with her, and I push with all the strength in my little body. If I have to do it this way, the only thing going right on my birth plan being my favorite two women in the world are here, then dammit, I’m going to do it right. No pussy-footing around. And I feel a little bit of pride in myself when the doctor reaches one, and tells the room, “There we go! Good girl! She’s already crowning.”

  I see Granny peek over the sheet across my knees, and a grin splits her face. “She’s got a headful of dark hair, KD. That’s why you had all that heartburn!”

  I cough out a laugh, catching my breath while I can before I have to push again. Holding my breath for ten seconds never felt so long before. Tears fill my eyes imagining what Granny is seeing.

  What seems like only moments later, Dr. Snowdon says another contraction is coming, and we all tense for her signal. She repeats, “Deep breath…and push! Ten…nine…” and again, everyone in the room says the numbers excitedly, but I notice an annoying loudness to my right that makes me very angry, distracting me from the hard work I’m trying to do at the moment. When they get to one, I turn to Aiden with his impending death in my eyes, and say through my panting breaths, “If you do not stop screaming in my ear, I’m going to grab those umbilical cord scissors on that tray and cut your damn dick off.”

  I vaguely notice Heather guffaw behind Dr. Snowdon, but in this moment, I’m not embarrassed in the slightest. I’m dead serious. Aiden must see it in my glare, because he quickly apologizes, “I’m sorry, baby. I was just in the moment. It’s so exciting. I’m sorry. It’s just so intense! I’ll quiet down, promise.”

  “Okay, let’s make this one count. No yelling in Mo
m’s ear, Dad,” the doctor scolds teasingly. “Give me a really good one like the first one. All we gotta do is get her shoulders out, and it’ll be a homerun.”

  My mom smooths some hair that has come loose from my bun out of my face and then leans forward to kiss my forehead. “You’ve got this, baby girl. You ready?”

  “Yeah, Mommy. I’m ready to see her,” I whisper.

  “All right, here we go, folks!” Dr. Snowdon calls, and they begin the countdown once more, Aiden much more quiet this time. Instead of holding my breath this time, I growl out with all my strength, not caring about embarrassing myself, and when the doctor says quietly but clearly, “That’s it…that’s it,” I feel the most overwhelming sense of relief I’ve ever felt before as I open my eyes and see her pull Josalyn all the way out and then up above the sheet across my legs.

  I immediately burst into tears at the sight of her, my arms jutting out to welcome her as Dr. Snowdon stands and places her on my chest, exactly how I had dreamed. As I look down at Josalyn through the tears in my eyes, I barely notice as one nurse towels her off while the other suctions fluid out of her mouth. And that’s when I hear her voice for the very first time. She gives one loud wail, and then it is nothing but sweet newborn baby noises.

  At some point, Aiden cuts the umbilical cord. Maybe it was before she was even handed to me; I’m not sure, because my mind is so blown from both the birth of my daughter and from pure exhaustion.

  The next few minutes, I’m in a daze. Everything going on around me is a blur. Josalyn is taken from me, but Aiden and Granny go with her to oversee her first bath. I’m confused when Jamie asks if I want to see my afterbirth. I must say yes in my stupor, even though I have no desire to see it, because she lifts the pan and shows me the most god-awful looking thing I’ve ever seen in my life. What has been seen cannot be unseen, and I’ll have to remember that sight for the rest of my life.

  I finally notice the doctor is still working between my legs behind the sheet, and I mumble, “Everything all right down there?”

  “Oh, you’re fine. Just a little tear, because you Hulk’ed her out of you,” she jokes. “I’m just putting in a couple stitches. These will dissolve on their own, so you don’t have to worry about coming to get them out.”

  “My first stitches,” I murmur.

  “Really, what about that scar on your chin there?” she inquires, nodding toward my face.

  Mom jumps in to tell the story. “That scar is from when she was seven. It was the day of her dance recital she had been practicing all year for, and this one decided she was going to sneak up and scare me. There is a step down from the carpeted landing in our family room, down to the hardwood floor of the kitchen, and when she was creeping up on me on her hands and knees, her hand shot out from under her when she tried to go down that step. Landed right on her chin. Blood went absolutely everywhere. If we would’ve gone to the hospital to stitch her up, she would have missed her recital, so she begged us not to take her. Granny, being a nurse, was able to clean it up really good and then put butterfly bandages on it to keep it closed. In her recital picture, she has all those bandages on her chin, but the biggest toothless smile you’ve ever seen.” She laughs, then finishes the story I’ve heard her tell a million times. “After the recital, we took her to the Emergency room, but they said it had already started to scab up; she didn’t need stitches.”

  “So you’ve been a strong woman all your life,” Dr. Snowdon states.

  I don’t know why, but what she said affects me. Maybe it’s the drugs in my system, or the fact I’ve only had a few hours of sleep in the past four days, but when she makes that statement, it hits me right in the gut, right where I need it. I think about the past few days and realize, Damn, I am a badass motherfucker.

  Three days. Three whole days I was in labor, the most painful thing in human existence, before I was given anything for the pain. And then after all that trauma, I ‘Hulk-ed’ my baby out in three pushes.

  No matter how weak I may feel on the inside all the time, letting stupid men affect how I feel about myself, I realize what Dr. Snowdon told me is true. In that moment, I feel better than I’ve felt in two years, since the day I left Houston, which is really saying something, since I just went through childbirth.

  Pain. So much fucking pain. Dare I say even more painful than labor, and a hell of a lot worse than delivery. When my epidural wears off, I can suddenly feel every single thing that happened to my poor little body over the weekend. And on top of all that, the small tear from pushing Josalyn out so fast feels more like I’ve been stabbed in the vagina with a machete. Sprinkle on a couple hemorrhoids, and I’m in absolute hell.

  But…and yes there’s a big but…combine all that excruciating agony, and not even it can compare to the torture that is breastfeeding.

  Dear God, what about all those beautiful pictures of mothers blissfully breastfeeding their babies, a look of pure love and contentment on their faces? If someone were to take a picture of me right now, they’d see a woman being masochistically tortured. As Josalyn nurses away at my right breast, I wail at the ceiling through my suffering, tears streaming down my face, running down my neck, soaking the blanket she’s wrapped in.

  I no longer feel very strong.

  When I look down at her though, all my motherly instincts go off, and I quiet my crying so I don’t scare her. She looks so happy, her tiny little fist resting at my cleavage, her eyes at half-mast as she suckles away. I concentrate on how soft her skin is as I run my fingertip over her pink cheek, and it almost…almost makes the pain lessen.

  I sent Aiden away a while ago. When he tried to comfort me when she first latched on, I went absolutely ape shit. I didn’t want him near me, much less touching me, and I told him to go away and leave me the hell alone, and while he was at it, to tell the nurse to call the lactation consultant.

  It’s been almost exactly twenty-four hours since I had my girl, and I haven’t been able to part with her except to let them run their tests, telling them to bring her back to me whenever they were done. Having her inside me for the past nine months, it felt strange, uncomfortable, to be away from her.

  There’s a light knock on my post-partum room door, which I got lucky and had my own. A cute brunette pops her head in, asking if it’s okay to come in. I nod, wiping at my cheeks and nose. She hurries to my bedside table and grabs a couple of tissues, handing them to me. “Hey, sweetheart. I’m Erin, your new nurse on duty and lactation consultant.”

  “Oh, thank God,” I breathe.

  “Nursing not going so well, huh?” she asks, standing up on her tiptoes to look down at Josalyn. “She’s got a very shallow latch. Take your thumb and press it on her chin to open her up, then shove more of your nipple in her mouth,” she instructs.

  I press my thumb to her chin, but nothing happens.

  “Don’t be scared. You aren’t going to hurt her. Just push down with enough force to break the suction, and when her little mouth opens, lean forward and get as much of your areola in there as you can. It’s hurting that bad because she’s only sucking right on the tip, where all the nerve endings are,” she explains.

  Using a slightly more forceful hand, I get Josalyn’s mouth to open wide, and then do what Erin said. Immediately, the pain lessens exponentially, and I breathe a sigh of relief. I look up at the nurse with a thankful smile.

  “Girl, you look exhausted. How much sleep have you gotten since you had the little gremlin?” she asks.

  “I sleep when she sleeps, so an hour or two here and there. But a lot of the time I just hold her and watch her sleep,” I confess.

  “You go home tomorrow. If you want my advice, let us take her to the nursery. We’ll bring her to you when she needs to eat, but if you don’t get some sleep, you’re going to be miserable. Take advantage of us while you can. Trust me. You’ll have plenty of time to watch her sleep when you go home.”

  She has a point. I feel slightly crazed. I could do with a good, long, uninterru
pted sleep. I let out a heavy sigh and let my guilt release along with it. When I look down at my little girl again, I see she is sleeping, her mouth no longer suckling, so I lie her down between my legs on the bed and re-swaddle her in the blanket. I then lift the tiny bundle to my face and kiss that tissue-soft cheek before handing her to Erin.

  “Oh, my goodness, what a cutie. She is gorgeous! A lot of babies are so tragic looking when they are first born, but this one? What a beauty,” she coos, and my chest fills with pride. I did that. I grew that perfect little princess. “Do you need anything? It’s close enough to the hour that I can give you your pain killers, that way I won’t have to wake you up to give them to you.”

  “Oh, hell yes. Please. I never thought sitting up in bed could hurt so bad,” I tell her.

  “What’s going on? You had her vaginally, yes?” she inquires.

  “Yeah, but I tore a little, and every time I go from lying down to sitting up so I can go to the bathroom, I feel like I’m going to pass out from pain.”

  “All right. Let me take her to the nursery, and then when I bring your pills, I’ll bring you my magic potion,” she promises, and with that, she leaves the room, taking my baby girl with her.

  I ease myself back from where I was slouching and look around the room. I don’t know what to do with myself. I’ve gotten so used to having Josalyn inside me, always talking to her when no one else was around, that I feel utterly alone and empty. I try to enjoy the quiet, try to turn the feeling of loneliness into one of content solitude, but it doesn’t work. So I sit there, wiggling my feet and tapping my fingers on the bed, antsy until Erin finally returns. But unfortunately, in walks Aiden right behind her.

  Bless her heart, she has no idea what our relationship is like, and I can imagine any other couple would feel great about her doting, but it just makes me feel awkward. “Y’all made such a beautiful baby. What a proud daddy you must be! Your wife is a champ. Any husband with a woman who can survive all she went through is a lucky man.”