day he was born. And honestly, I've just been putting it off, not for lack of time, Keegan does a lot of sleeping right now and I could have easily sat down and typed it out, but because I knew it would be emotional. (For me... I don't expect many of you to break down in tears over this post.) You see, I have not fully let myself just sit down and think this whole thing through. Starting with June 1, 2009 when I looked at Travis and said, "Well I just finished that pack of birth control pills, should I just not get anymore?" And we agreed not to. To the moment where Keegan was placed in my arms and he snuggled up against my chest. (You can't see it, but the eyes just started tearing right there...good thing I bought that waterproof mascara the other week!) So tonight, as I eat my nightly poptart and Keegan is cuddled up with Travis, I am going to attempt to type this out. Hopefully I can make the sequence of events make sense, if not I apologize now.
So it started on November 9th at 5:00 am. That was when I was supposed to meet A and her mom at the hospital so they could start the induction. (She was 11 days past her due date and still dialated to a wopping 0.) Just some random bits of information if anyone ever goes to Community East hospital at 5:00 am.
1.) The parking garage is closed, but they don't tell you that until you pull right up and see that they have it barracaded off, so you have to back up and do a 45 point turn to turn yourself around.
2.) When you finally do find a parking spot and walk up to the front doors, they won't open, because they don't open until 8:00am. So you just stand outside in the cold, standing in front of automatic doors, waving your arms like a crazy fool trying to figure out why they won't open, before you see the sign that informs you that you have to go through the emergency room entrance. (I bet I made some security guards night who was watching those cameras, as he laughed hysterically at me trying to get the doors to open...)
3.) While there are 3 elevators, only 1 takes you to the maternity floor. If you get in the 2 that don't go to that floor, you can push the 2 button all day, but you don't move.
So once I figured out all the secret workings of Community East, I got to the maternity floor and A and her mom were right there at the registration desk waiting to be checked in. We walked back to her room and the nurse came in with tons of papers that A had to sign. Some of the papers were about her and some were about Keegan. If the question was about Keegan, A would look at me for the answer which REALLY confused the nurse. Here is a rundown of how the conversation went:
Nurse: Do you want the baby circumsized?
A: (looks at me) Do you?
Me: Yeah
Nurse: ( with a weird look) ummm okay... Do you want your information given to the picture studio?
A: (looks at me) Do you?
Me: No, we aren't going to use them
Nurse: (looking almost disgusted) ummmm okay .... Do you want to talk to someone about WIC
A:(looks at me) Do you?
Me: No
Nurse (Almost ticked off at this point, looks at A and says) You don't need WIC?!?!?!
Me: We wouldn't qualify, so no we don't need it
Nurse (looks at me like she just wants to yell, "Who the H$#@ are you?")
A's Mom: (laughing) I think we need to explain to her what is going on here ladies...
So then it was explained to the nurse that this was going to be an adoption and who I was. She was much nicer after that. So all the paper work gets filled out and they get A hooked up to the pitocen and then we just sat and waited. And waited. And waited. And waited. Around 12:00 they came in to check her and she was STILL not dialated. They came back again at 2:00 and STILL nothing. So it was decided that they needed to try something else. They decided to put some sort of pill in her cervix, I can't remember the name of the pill, which was supposed to help increase contractions. They said it could take about 4 hours to start working though so we would re-evaluate at 6:00. So we just kept on waiting. About 5:30, A said she was finally starting to feel contractions, they gave her the go ahead to eat something though since she hadn't had anything to eat since 11:00pm the night before. Travis and I decided to go get some food also. As soon as we got to the restaurant and got our good A's mom calls to let me know that they were noticing that every time A had a contraction, the babies heart rate would dip so they were putting her on oxygen and if that didn't work they would have to talk C-section. We quickly ate and hurried back up to the hospital, but luckily the oxygen was helping and they weren't seeing the dips anymore. She was also feeling the contractions a lot more so she went ahead and got an epidural. At this point, I was exhuasted. I had been up since 4:15 that morning and knew it was going to be a long night, so Travis and I decided to get a hotel to try and get some sleep. We left with instructions to call or text us if anything happened and we would be right back up! We settled into the hotel at about 11:30 and at 2:30 AM I get a text that A's water had broken. So we quickly headed straight back up to the hospital.
We knew that just because her water broke didn't mean he was coming anytime soon, but we wanted to be there just in case. As I sat in A's room watching her monitors, you could see how the contractions were getting so much stronger and coming so much faster. Luckily because she had the epidural she was able to get some sleep. At about 6:00, she started saying her back was hurting really really bad. They checked her for dialation and she was at 8. We knew it wouldn't be much longer now. They started bringing in all the delivery "stuff". Tables of instruments, lights, warmer bed for Keegan, you know... all that fun stuff. At 7:30, she was ready to push. I had the honor of being in the room with her during delivery. It was me, her mom, and one of her best friends. I was in charge of holding her left leg! I won't bore you with all the gory pushing details, but let's just say she started pushing at 7:30 and he was born at 10:10. That's a lot of pushing!
I was able to see it all. I watched him make his way into this world in all his glory. He came out, the doctor cut the cord and passed him off to the nurse to clean him off. I stood right next to her and she was telling me how they were heading straight to the nursery. My heart sank because I didn't know when I was going to be able to see him again. I didn't know if he was coming back to A's room or even when. As she was pushing him out of the room another nurse said, "Who gets the bracelets." (These are the ID bracelets so they don't give you the wrong baby or you don't try and steal someone else's baby) Another nurse points at me and says, "This is the adoptive mom, give her one." I excitidely held out my wrist and she stuck the bracelet on. The nurse pushing Keegan out said, "Come on, come with me!" I was shocked! I said, "Come with you!??!?! I get to come with you?" She laughed and said, "Yeah." I asked if I could grab Travis who was in the waiting room and she said of course, so we made our way to the nursery. That was were we then found out that A had chosen not to see Keegan, which is why he was immediatly escorted out and into the nursery. I didn't know that she had made that choice and my heart sank. It's hard to explain why, as many people probably think, "but that's great! That means she doesn't have an attachment to him. You should have been thrilled she didn't want to see him." But I wasn't. Like I've said before, I didn't want to lose her in our lives, in Keegan's life. But there wasn't time to think to much about it because they were checking all his vitals and then handing him off to me to feed him.
They gave me one of those little pre-made hospital bottles with about 2 oz in it to feed him. I asked if he would take the whole thing and the nurse laughed and said, "No! He might take about 20ml." So I sat down to feed him and he immeditaely latched on and started sucking away. When I could finally pull it out of his mouth he had already eaten 26 ml. I told the nurse and she said to just burp him and see if he wanted more. I'm proud to say he did end up eating the whole bottle! He hasn't slowed down on his appetite since! He is already up to 4 oz. every 3 hours!!!! He is working hard to become taller than his dad :)
Shortly after all this A's mom ended up coming down to the nursery. I was so excited to see her and just said to her that I hadn't realized A didn't want to see him at all. We talked a bit about that and then she started crying and telling me that she hoped we knew it wasn't that she didn't want him, it was just that she already had A's other child at home and she just knew she couldn't do another. I told her I totally understood and again how thankful we were and how much we loved him already. She spent about 20 min. with him holding him and taking some pictures and then she went back to A.
We stayed in the nursery for about 2 hours and then we were moved to our own room! It was so great to have our own room so we could just spend every second with Keegan. I still felt really sad about A though and that she hadn't seen him, but knew I couldn't make her see him. I called the lawyers and told that he had been born and we set up for them to come the next day at 2:00 to get papers signed. Our lawyer asked if I could go down and let A know. So I went to A's room and gave her the information. I then also said that I totally understood that she didn't want to see him, but I hoped she understood that we didn't mind at all. I told her which room we were in and she should feel more than welcome to come down at anytime if she changed her mind.
The next day the lawyers came and everything was signed. Our lawyer said that A didn't even hesitate. He said she just seemed very sure about her decision. After he left and Travis and I had a quiet celebration with Keegan letting him know he was all ours (almost) I wrote out a note to A. If you remember I had the keychain that I wanted to give her and I also just wanted to tell her again how thankful we were. I took it down to her room and gave her a huge hug and the note and gift. I told her she obviously didn't need to look at it right now because I would start crying and she said she would too and we laughed a bit. I then told her again that if she wanted to see him, we would love to have her, but did understand if she needed space.
That night at about 6:30 there was a knock at our door and it was A. I was so so so excited to see her! Some of our family members were in the room at that time though and I didn't want it to be awkward for her so I quickly scooped up Keegan, and wheeled him down to her room. She didn't want to hold him because she said it was have created to much of an attachment, but she did interact with him by putting in his pacifier and playing with his fabulouly curly hair. She commented on how he had her nose and her hair. It was at that moment that I understood why she hadn't seen him before this point. She had always come across as so unattached and collected about this whole process that it was easy to think she didn't care, when that was so very far from the truth. She loves him so much that she knew it would have made it almost impossible to sign those papers if she had seen him first. She chose the very unselfish act of putting his needs above hers, and choosing to go over 24 hours of not seeing him, so she could sign the papers, as she knew she needed to before meeting him. I couldn't imagine how hard that had to have been for her. Keegan and I stayed down there for about 15 minutes and I let her know if she wanted to see him again to please let us know! She did end up coming back down with her mom before she was dischaged on Monday once again. She still didn't want to hold him, but we were able to get some more pictures of him for her and even a picture of her, Keegan, and me.
So there is the basics of how it went. I'm going to have to end her because Keegan is crying and I need to go snuggle up with him, but I'll add on some additional stories in the next coming days!
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