The Story, Part Two

So, to continue the story...

I went to bed at a decent hour and fell right asleep. This is rare for me, as my brain is usually going 348972926 mph and it takes me at least an hour to finally doze off. I was thinking mostly about my evening with T, her thoughts, her advice, then ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ... DH stayed up late, but I don’t remember him coming in; that meant I was dead asleep by the time he came to bed.

Sunday, October 4, 2009 – 2:45am (or so)
We were both dead asleep when the house phone rang. Since we don’t generally give that number out, when a call is received at some sort of ungodly hour, we know it’s something serious. I couldn’t find a damn handset that had a charge, and when my cell phone rang, I knew that it had to be Facilitator’s backup, since Facilitator was out of town.

“Hello?”

“Allie? This is L___, with Agency? Just want to pass along that the baby is already here, it’s a boy, and all seems to be well. Congratulations! Go ahead and head on down to [hospital].”

“Oh, wow. Oh. wow. Awesome!” Half-asleep, I was surprised.

“Just let me know if you have any questions, I’ll be happy to help you.”

“Uh, yeah, I have a question – what do we do?”

And this has been a sticking point through the process: what do we do from whatever point they’re launching us from? Here, you’re certified, see ya! The baby’s born, have at it! Well, dang it, where do we go, what do we do?

I got the answers, and L___ politely ended the conversation and presumably went back to bed. I stood there, bleary eyed, then remembered I needed to get DH up, now that the baby was actually born. He had slept through the whole thing. “Honey?”

“Mmmmph…”

“Babe, wake up. That was L___.”

He murmured, “I figured.”

“[BM] had the baby already. We have a son! Come on, get up.”

Since there was no rush to be in the delivery room, we both showered and dressed, then went to the hospital. We got there a little after three (no traffic, natch), and parked. Well, how in the hell do we get in there? We had parked near L&D, but the area was clearly marked FOR PREGNANT PATIENTS ONLY… so we took a walk to find the correct entry.

The cool, breezeless pre-dawn morning was gorgeous, as October usually is in the Valley, with a full moon and stars punching the sky. It was peaceful, and DH and I were completely calm, in step with the lovely night. No panic, no rush of emotion… probably because we were so surprised at how fast it had all happened that there hadn’t been time to absorb it all.

After wandering three-quarters around the building, we wound up going through the ER and wended our way to the L&D desk. I explained who we were, and that (at that point) we only had the BM’s first name. The nurse was extremely nice – let me find out what’s going on, please have a seat over there, coffee will be ready in about ten minutes, etc. We sat on the little step in front of the shuttered nursery windows as she went to confirm with BM who we were, and call L___ to confirm that we were indeed the adoptive parents.

We sat there for about fifteen minutes when we got up for a moment. I just happened to look up, and there BM was, waving at us with a smile as she was being wheeled towards her room. It really touched my heart. She was looking for us! She said hi, we said hi, asked how she was, if everything was okay – sort of trite, I suppose, but the nurses weren’t stopping for us. They whisked her off to her room.

We returned to the uncomfortable little step after grabbing some coffee at the nurse’s station. From what I could gather, the nurses were still trying to get ahold of L___, who had most obviously gone back to bed. I can’t say I blame her, really. It isn't her case, she's just pinch hitting... but it would have been nice for her to leave her phone on.

In the end, it actually wasn’t too long. The Boy was born at about 2:30am, we got the call at about 2:45, we got to the hospital at about 3:15 or so (yeah it’s not far at all), then at about 3:45am, the nurse got the information she needed, and I was banded as BM’s “significant other.” We received our instructions, then pushed the button to be let in.

Meeting "The Boy"
We were buzzed in, and led to the little sub-nursery that I would later learn was the “special care” nursery; at that point I had no idea. Some of the incubators had hand-knitted blankets on them - I thought it very sweet. The nurse handling The Boy briefed us. We washed our hands obediently, then were led to his little cot.

There HE was, sprawled sleepily under the heat lamps (and not an incubator or the blue lights for jaundice, thank God), clad only in a diaper. The first thing I thought upon seeing him was “He’s SO TINY!” (about 5-1/2 lbs) and then, after studying him in his sprawl, Steven Wright popped into my head: “Day One: still tired from the move.” Completely silly and inappropriate, I know, but there it was. I giggled.

The silly moment passed, and DH and I merely stared in astonishment. The surreal was now real. We just stared in awe. We both held him for the first time that morning, then went down to the cafeteria in the basement while they did shift change. We returned afterwards, continuing to stare at him and hold him in awe.

Since he was only known to the hospital as “Baby Boy [BM’s last name],” the nurse turned to us and asked, “What is his name going to be?”

We replied in all honesty that things had happened so fast that we hadn’t ever gotten that far, although we had a pool of names we'd been generally bandying about. “We’ll have one when we get back,” I said, when DH and I departed to go home.

We got to the house and started to finish clearing what would be The Boy’s room. Then we went into the home office and kicked names around. We didn’t want a name too close in the family (i.e. grandparents, aunt/uncle) Many of you figured out the first name we agreed on in a previous post, but we also kicked around Christian, Robert, Scott, Brendan, Stephen, etc. One of these wound up as his middle name. We wound up picking what he is, and besides, The Boy looks like what his name is (you know how that goes…).

Now that we had a name, we made the round of phone calls. After all, how can one really announce the baby’s here when one doesn’t have a name? Of course, MIL turned the names we picked as credits to her, but they had nothing at all to do with her, personally; whatever. We have, however, gotten a great response on the names we picked. My sister calls The Boy by both of his names, she likes them so much.

Up Next, Part Three: The Week From Hell