I have been sliced and diced.

Ok so the c-section.  I always joked that I'd totally end up having one, because Krueger babies are LARGE babies (Joel was 10 lbs 2 and his little sister was ALMOST 12 LBS) and they have large heads and I am regular-sized, particularly about the hips.  But Dr Ross kept telling me I was having a nice, medium-sized baby and now we see her with her skinny chicken wings and teeny round head and I think, I could have pushed that out.

And I'd been in prodromal labor for a week by the time we went into the hospital on Saturday morning, and even though I was having surrious contractions I wasn't dilated at all, so they sent us home to go have a shower and watch more Parks & Rec.  When we came back hours later and I was all EGADS MY WOMB IT RENDS ITSELF I was still only dilated maybe a centimeter.  What I'm saying is, things were progressing slowly.

Anywert, when my water finally broke there was meconium (i.e. baby poops) in the fluid, which means that something has happened to give her the Stressed Poos in there.  It's not usually a big deal, but she also had a heart deceleration, which put everyone on the alert.

When she had another heart deceleration and I was only dilated 3 cm, probably still 10 hours or so from delivering, they decided to go in and fetch her out before her heart rate plummeted and stayed down.  One prefers an orderly, leisurely c-section to a c-section in which people are shouting things like 'stat.'

I  was super-high for all of this because they had given me some sleeping pills when they'd sent me home and I am a notoriously slow metabolizer of drugs (I was Incredibly Sentient for my entire wisdom-tooth-extraction but have completely misplaced the hour that followed).  I am also really wonky when it comes to being prodded and sliced, pain entirely aside, but the pills made me flippant and probably inappropriately blithe.

They also make my memories of that whole day a little hazy, but I remember being distinctly relieved when they announced a baby girl.  Every store clerk and aqua-fit senior since I started to show has told me that I was carrying a boy, and sketchy Russian ultrasound techs that you find on the internet can be wrong.  Joel went to cut the cord and then brought her back to me, swaddled and weirdly alert, so that I could kiss her face.  Most of my skin-parts were behind the blue curtain being manhandled, so he held her cheek to my cheek until they took me away.

Then the pills kicked in and I slept and awoke in recovery, and this is the worst part about the c-section, worse than the stitches and the inability to roll over in bed or lift my baby out of the bassinet, because I missed the introductions.  I missed everyone meeting Eleanor and my parents seeing their first grandbaby and this may be the hormones speaking (my hormones are loud and clamouring) but if I keep thinking about this I'll cry.  I cried in recovery because everyone was out in the waiting room and my baby was in the nursery and they wouldn't let me leave until I could move my legs and feel the ice packs.

So I lied.  I lied about feeling the ice packs, and I moved one leg voluntarily and the other out of sheer perversity, because it was still completely numb, and then they let me go.  I had a 3-person room, because who can afford private rooms these days, but I had it to myself so there was plenty of room for all the freshly-minted grandparents and aunties and uncles to visit.

And then they brought me my baby and I held her and kissed her skinny chicken neck.  It is her kissablest part, out of many kissable parts.