Labor Day - Part III

She never would have made it past my cervix.

The rush of the scrubs being put on my head. The assurances by the medical team that I wasn't actually a failure myself for not being able to push this baby out ("Maybe she's more than 8 pounds?").  Watching Viking pull scrubs on and being wheeled around the corner of the hospital on a gurney.  Asking "so what the hell I am supposed to do now that I need to KEEP Pushing?"  These are the hazy dreamlike visions I have of these moments.

And then I am in the operating theater.  And the sucky anesthesiologist on whom I have to fight a keen distrust is back, and I am suddenly panicked that she won't numb me properly and I will be sliced open and feel every gruesome second of it.  "I still feel you," I keep saying, and she keeps responding "You won't feel a thing, I promise."

They proceed.  And I feel tugging and pulling, but not actual pain.  And I hear my doctor say, "Oh wow, look, her head is completely tilted backwards, she was never going to make it through the cervix,"

And I suppose they pull her out and eventually hand her over to someone because I hear a cry. The most beautiful sound in the world.  Then I hear a stronger cry.  She's out.  She's actually out.

"Six pounds, ten ounces.  Wow, your girl has a ton of hair!"

She wasn't big at all.  She's in the same range as Niblet was.

And I am being sewn and stitched up and suddenly I am freezing.  Like ice cold, and shaking and this is the anesthesia actually working.  And YES, I want more warm blankets, my teeth are actually fucking chattering, and yes, please, I want to see her.  Viking carries her over next to my side and I don't have my glasses on so I can't see much, but I see her eyebrows. Or at least, her brow muscles, because she is blond. They are furrowed in a way that is entirely familiar to me. 

As with her sister, nine years ago, there is absolutely no question as to paternity with my daughter.

She looks exactly like her father.