Dear Piper,
Your arrival is uniquely yours and perfect for the warrior
that you are. I’m almost positive you don’t know who Ted Kennedy was, but I
spent the week of his memorial service shacked up at California Pacific Medical
Center in San Francisco 27-28 weeks pregnant with you. Not nearly
pregnant enough the doctors’ faces read while they told me everything would be
“just fine”. I was hopped up on all sorts of medicine –Magnesium, Morphine and
some other stuff -- trying to keep you inside while the contractions kept
coming. And coming. While I was attached to monitors that registered your heart
rate and mine, your father slept next to me on a rickety old metal cot with
wires poking up at him. Takeout food boxes and slowly wilting flowers littered
the room. I watched CNN and listened to at a funny story told at Ted’s memorial.
Ted aggressively persuaded a friend of his with no sailing experience to assist
him in manning a sailboat into an intense, fierce storm off Martha’s Vineyard
after eating a bellyful of salmon sandwiches. The clear metaphor for the storm
happening to the two of us on dry land with a bellyful of only a little chicken
soup broth escaped me at that moment and I laughed.
The doctors wanted me to try to keep you in for another 10
weeks laid up in the hospital. But together we didn’t do so hot with the whole
bed rest scenario. I couldn’t focus enough to read books or really send emails.
And you didn’t really seem all that comfortable either. Your uncle Caleb came
by frequently. So did your west coast grandmother, Stephanie. She brought me
cut up organic peaches that were delicious. I couldn’t really hold up my end of
conversations, so many times I gave up and just fell asleep while they worried
near us. At night when the visitors left and the drugs kept me awake but
mentally fuzzy, all I could do was watch CNN, the same stories over and over
and over again all night long.
Your east coast grandparents arrived in the middle of all
that first week to keep me company in the hospital. On Tuesday, it became
increasingly clear that you were going to arrive that that day, September 1,
2009. The contractions wouldn’t stop and were intensifying, even though Dr.
Katz convinced me I just had to go to the bathroom, that I wasn’t in labor at
all. Whatever. “Get me OUT of here!”” you seemed to say.
That afternoon your grandmother called your Dad on the phone
and said: “Melissa is having the baby!” Long pause. “Now?” No pause. “ Yes!”
And your Dad tore out of John’s Jaguar Service leaving the
guts of a classic car strewn about his work space, hopped on his motorcycle and
donned his silver helmet. He rushed from the Mission District to Laurel Village
to put on his hospital scrubs and join your grandma in the delivery room. Grandma
held one of my legs. Your Dad stood behind me looking extremely pale and
coached her on how to best hold my leg out for a speedy delivery. I saw her
discretely roll her eyes. And then you arrived. 2:37pm PT at 2 pounds 7.5 ounces.
Screaming!
The neonatal ICU staff whisked you away to give you oxygen
and check everything since you were not really supposed to be outside of me for
a long time. The news was cautiously
optimistic. You were doing very well for a baby of your gestational age. “A
rock star baby” the neonatologist said. But you would need to spend a couple
months in the hospital growing.
It was awhile before I could see you. Hours I think? And
when I saw you, you were so tiny and attached to all sorts of wires. You were
so small in fact that I wanted to bring you home and photograph you next to
regular household items for scale. (“Yep, she’s smaller than a ketchup
bottle!”) The nurses said you were “feisty” which I now realize is code for “excessively
squirmy and vocal.” And you were soooo thin. As your grandmother and I peered together
into your glowing incubator, she said: “Well, she’s not going to have cellulite
problems now, will she?” However, I was quietly concerned that your feet seemed
so very out of proportion with your teensy little body. “Man feet,” I thought.
And I blamed your father.
We’ve had many days of good news since then. You were
discharged on October 24 with a clean bill of health. You’ve since learned how
to smile and coo. And you’ve totally grown up around your feet so they no
longer look like “man feet” and they look just perfect.
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