The Experience

Some Great Things About the Birthing Experience

Uh . . .

The dining staff did bring us a cake and a bottle of sparkling cider afterwards. (Of which I did not partake from either. I think the Look Up Lodge summer staffers may have, however. It's okay, guys. I really didn't want it anyway.)

The remote control to myself ? No. I didn't even want to watch endless, mindless television. I was pretty sleepy.

The doctor's anatomy lesson directly following the birth of my beautiful son. Gosh, I wish I could really go into details here but I am not entirely sure who reads this blog and I don't want to gross anyone out or offend their genteel sensibilities. (Just be sure to ask me later because it was weird and funny, but surprisingly interesting.)

Well, sure - the exact moment AFTER Otto Fox Wilder made the journey from IN the womb to OUT of the womb. He's much cuter out here!

Some Less Than Great Things About the Birthing Experience

How about the experience itself ? I mean, let's be honest here. It really hurts. And it lasts a while. And it's really painful. And then there are the pains AFTER childbirth. But we won't get into all that. Suffice it to say, it's less than great.

A bed with the jerkiest up and down button ever. I want to lie down and so . . . . bump, ouch, ache . . . here we go. Up? Crunch, shake, jerk, jerk . Oops. Shoot. Too far up. Here we go again.

The hospital food. Cocoa Puffs for breakfast. Unsweetened tea at every meal and a carton of white milk. Like in a grade school cafeteria. It's the Labor and Delivery unit, for goodness sake. Why do you think we are all here? Shouldn't the food at least attempt to reflect a grown up's choices?

The fact that some nurse comes in, bless her heart, every two minutes throughout the already sleepless night and pokes and prods you, takes your temperature with the world's slowest thermometer (why can't a hospital and research money do something about THAT?), takes your blood pressure from the same arm that is aching from the IV and pushes your distended belly using creep-out words like "fundus" every other second.

(By the way, I'm pretty sure I spelled "fundus" wrong. But I tried looking it up in a dictionary - a real live dictionary - but could not locate the word. Is it some crazy "ph" spelling or something? Was my nurse very Southern and mispronounced the word the entire time? I don't know.)