Birthday

Forceps? NO WAY!

So, there was my motivation. Within minutes (I really have no concept of how long – it could have been hours, days or seconds – all I knew is that forceps would not be used to get Maggie into this world) little Miss Maggie made her debut at 8 pounds 6 ounces!

Dr. Rogers put her on my chest and she looked around staring from me to Barry – with both of us in awe of her little body. Eventually Nurse Trish picked her up off my chest and placed her a few feet away under the heat lamp to do the Apgar test with the Nursery Nurse.

Then she was passed to Barry.

No words can describe this. Maybe the word love, but even that doesn’t seem like enough. Not even close.

Somebody passed Trish my camera and she went wild snapping shots that will never, ever see the light of day, but I’m glad we’ve got them in the HB archives. In many of the shots Barry’s smile outshines everything – such a proud, proud papa.

After nursing and having some other business taken car of Maggie’s fan club arrived. Here is a side note about our families: over the next couple days we were told by many different nurses that our families seemed really nice and fun since they had filled up the waiting room. I’m not exactly sure what went down, but I did hear that a bottle of wine was opened and the Mariner’s game was on….I would have liked to sit around with them to wait, but I was busy doing other things.

As I was saying, Maggie’s fan club arrived – they’d been waiting  for hours for her arrival and it only seemed right that they got a little face time before heading home for the rest of the early morning.

After passing the newest member of our family around people said there sleepy goodbyes and left us to stare at our daughter. OUR DAUGHTER!!!

Instead of staring Barry and Trish gave Maggie a little bath and I stayed in bed just staring out at the Lynnwood skyline thinking about the last few hours and wondered what the next few would hold.

By five o’clock Trish had all but cleaned up the room and made sure we were set before demanding that we, like snoozing Maggie, get a bit of rest. Rest wasn’t really on our minds as Barry and I huddled under our covers – me in my hospital bed and he in the fold out bed – and talked like giddy kids at a slumber party. The lights were dim and we could see Maggie’s silhouette and her lips move as she slept. Such a beautiful baby…that we made.

I’m not sure if either of us really slept a wink, but by the time daylight emerged our room was again filled with the clatter of nurses (Trish had since gone home and we were introduced to our next nurse Darlene) and doctors to check on both me and Maggie.

I had a temperature after giving birth and Maggie was unable to maintain her own steady temp, which was of concern because it meant that she could possibly be fighting an infection that she picked up from my water breaking.

The doctor ordered a blood test to take a culture to find out if indeed Maggie had an infection, but the doctor also ordered Maggie to the Special Care Nursery for 48 hours to begin treating her as if she had an infection -as a precaution.