Urban Drool

I don’t remember 100% of those days and weeks…the last days before she came and the couple weeks that followed her arrival. That time comes back to me in teeny bits and snatches – like a surreal dream. But the small pieces of memory I do have are startlingly clear and sharp.

-The sheer weight of my enormous belly…dragging, stretching and in my opinion, not a very pretty sight.
-The bright red dots of blood in the bathroom sink after brushing my teeth in the mornings…horrible, awful bleeding gums
-The way my blue cotton bathrobe and matching slippers looked in my first hospital room…so carefully hung up by the Boy
-The sound of me peeing into that ridiculous plastic-measuring-over-the-toilet thing that the nurses insisted on me using
-The nervous giggling the Boy was unable to stop when I told him my water had broken and was dripping all over the floor
-The smell of the orange and lemon scented cold towels that my doula used to wipe my face
-The metallic sound of the bed rails being slammed together in even, steady repetition…bang, bang, bang…growing progressively faster in tempo as every contraction peaked and eventually subsided. For 23 hours.
-The dry, crinkly feel of the blue paper that hung down and tickled my mouth and throat during the C-section
-The sound of her first cry
-The very hot and very wet and very heavy feel of her body when they pulled her out of me and flopped her onto my upper thighs while they suctioned her (and me) out
-The tiny little square shaped button, very green and always lit at night, with a jaunty little white nurses cap painted in the middle. That little button on the side of my bed in my post-partum room. A push of that button and my little white percoset would be whisked in to me. Every 4 hours. Like clockwork, baby.
-The smell of the disgusting omlette with the single slice of Kraft American cheese melted on top that was the “main course” from my “breakfast tray” every morning. I never did understand why over $30,000 in hospital charges couldn’t include halfway decent food.
-The sight of my white, thick milk whizzing out of my left nipple and zinging across the living room under the industrious and very pinching fingers of the nurse who came to my house the week after we got home to examine the boo-bear and me.
-The hooting sound of my laughter in immediate reaction to the point listed above
-Her smell. Her amazing smell. Her incomparable smell. A combination of Aveeno lotion, warm milk, soft hair and pure, heavenly baby. My God, is there anything more intoxicating then a newborn?
-The sight of her umbilical cord stump, gray and shriveled and dry…after it fell off, we kind of put it on top of the TV set and then kind of…forgot about it. It sat there for weeks…right next to the never-used remote for the DVD player.

So strange. I’ll never really understand how I can simultaneously feel like I never EVER want to go through it all again, but deeply desire to have it all repeat itself starting tomorrow morning.