jackson & chakraborty family blog: June 2011

Tara was very excited to meet Kaya, so she came to the hospital with dida for a quick visit and wanted to take Kaya home right away, we wish we could have gone too. The room we were in for a day and a half was super warm and shared between three moms and babies. Alex and I shared the hospital bed, the planned post-baby sushi take-out lunch was a major disappointment and generally there was very little space.

On the bright side: We were home by Saturday morning, after delivering a baby on thursday at midnight! Tara didn't have to miss any of her birthday parties on the weekend! What a thoughtful little sister!

Kaya has settled down into eating and sleeping like a baby (at all kinds of inconvenient times). Her eyes are a mysterious grey-brown. The eyebrows and eye lashes are really light like the Jackson siblings, but she has dark even hair like the Chakraborty's.

She's home, she's cute and really small (but growing!) She was 6lbs- 4ozs when she came home, she is now (at two weeks) 6lbs -14.5oz. and no more jaundice either.

June 2nd was a red letter day in our household... Alex was convocating in the morning, so we dropped Tara off at her day care and set off. Delayed by several trains crossing and road work delays, we got to the Kenaston Tim Horton's only to discover that Alex was missing his wallet. So back home we went, before heading back towards the University. We were definitely a little late by this point, but Mrs. Waddle could not be rushed. Our baby wasn't due for another 10 days but she was making her imminent arrival felt. While Alex was walking in to get his Bachelor of Education degree,

I was counting contractions. We just needed kidlet to hold off until next week, we had a very busy weekend ahead of us.....but after a post-convocation barbecue at a friends house we found ourselves at home debating should we? or shouldn't we? bother the nice people at the hospital. After all we still had 10 days left and more You-tube videos of the convocation to upload. So You Think You Can Dance was interrupted with the immortal words, "Maybe we should go in, I think. Or not. They'll probably just send us back home." Alex answered "I'd rather that happen than deliver the kid on the floor." So we dillied and dallied, said things like "Nah, this can't be it" and finally set out at around 9:30 PM, leaving a fully panicked Dida and Dadu behind to babysit Tara. We got in at the labour and delivery triage, got checked for dilation (4 cm... and bulging?? but they will keep us) and hooked up to the monitors to check contractions and baby's heart rate. Contractions were regularly irregular but after half an hour we were walked to a poky little delivery room. This freed up the triage bed for the young panicked first time mom whose waters had embarrassingly broken in the hospital lobby.
Our young nurse settled us in, warned us that the attending and resident doctors were delivering a c-section, pawned us off on a different nurse and took off for her 45 minute break.
I spent my contractions concentrating on baby's falling heartrate, apparently the c-section lady was occupying the anesthetist too. By this point our experience this time had been of the plebeian sort, not what we got with Tara (this would continue after delivery as well).
By the time our nurse came back from her break, I was in extreme pain, and being fed the usual platitudes and laughing gas. Platitudes were p***ing me off but the NO2 mask kept me from expressing that.
The prodigal nurse wanted me to climb down from the back of the hospital bed so she could check me again... (I could have told her not to bother, if I could speak) so by the time she could see enough to check little Kaya's head was half out! That was when she panicked. I hard loud yells of "delivery in 4", "I need some equipment here"! Apparently there was not much in terms of delivery equipment in the delivery room yet. Alex, the panicked nurse and other available hands managed to pull the baby out after 2 pushes and in the absence of any cleaning cloths, blankets or cord cutting shears, Kaya was put on my belly slippery with baby muck. We'll call it new-age bonding to promote breast feeding.
The resident eventually arrived to stitch things up, and the doctor about half an hour later to sign off on the delivery chart. Meanwhile we women were still awaiting a clean up.
Inspite of the "precipitous delivery" Kaya and I were mostly A-OK. she got 9s on her apgar, and I was walking to the washroom for a wipe down in 30-40 minutes. But you wont see any pictures of that!