Gulp

So I spent the afternoon at the hospital. Holding a 4-hour old baby. For 4 hours.

I wasn't exactly sure how it would go, and I wasn't at all sure that I wouldn't start sobbing. But it actually went quite well, I think, and I didn't cry at all until I was waiting for the bus to go home.

See, I thought I'd just drop by, bring a snack, wave at the baby from behind the glass and head home. You see, I've never visited a baby in a hospital (just like my baby shower was the first and only one I've ever been to). Except that after 30 hours of labor my friend's husband looked up at me walking in, nodded sleepily, and announced that he was off home to nap. And my friend asked if I could hold the baby so she could rest. Which is how I happened to find myself in a 4th floor post-partum room with 3 post-partum women holding a 4-hour old baby. All afternoon long.

And yes, of course the nurse asked if I had any experience with babies and I told her I had my incredible fusspot at home. And she asked if holding a newborn made me want another and I said of course and she quipped something about "Well, you can do that tonight" and I snipped back at her "Oh, my husband's out of town" and left it at that. As if that was the biggest of our issues.

I am sure it will take me days to work through my thoughts on this one - really the holding of such a new little person is so different from reading baby announcements or visiting a friend's new 2-week old (like moths to a flame folks, I attract them bumps so I have a lot of preggo friends at the moment). Actually, I think the highlight was when I told JD online that I'd held a new baby and he said "Oh, cool." Let me assure you he never would have said something like that a year ago (New readers can be caught up on JD's infamous tact with an adorable little story from when I was about 8 months pregnant. His friend was trying to ask if it was scary to be responsible for bringing a new person into the world and JD just gave him a blank stare and said: "You know rats reproduce too." Needless to say I find JD's tact charming, and others don't).

But here's the other thing I realized. Our group of friends in NYC and our birth classes and our midwife all prepped me to do battle with the medical establishment over the fusspot's birth. And I really think I had to given that I was labeled high-risk and high-liability from day one and every doc I spoke to wanted to slice me open and take the fusspot out sooner rather than later. And in the end I had a lovely, intervention-free delivery and went back to work (with a 4+ hour commute) 5 weeks later. But maybe it wasn't all that necessary, or maybe some of those things I was fighting for just aren't that important.

I had GD. And the hospital staff kept threatening to feed the fusspot sugar water when she was born if my blood sugar was off. And not only did I fight that, but I also found another patient of my same midwife (so the midwife could confirm HIV status and Hep status without violating medical confidentiality) who was pumping and asked if we could have a couple of ounces of breastmilk so that the fusspot wouldn't have to get sugar water and formula. And in the end none of that was necessary because no one thought to check the fusspot's blood sugar levels in the hospital because she looked just fine.

Here in Lalaland they don't test for gestational diabetes. Or Group Strep B. At all, not even if you ask for it. My other friend said that no one weighed her during the last month of her pregnancy. Not once. [And YES, their infant mortality is much lower than in the U.S.] So the baby told was big, really big. And the hospital decided that it was a suspected case of untreated gestational diabetes, so they started her on formula and blood draws every 4 hours. I actually fed her today and held her through a blood draw. And basically my friend shrugged and said it wasn't a big deal to her and wasn't worth fighting about, and it really wasn't. They used a SNS to feed the baby (so no nipple confusion issues), it wasn't much formula, and after pushing out a rather big baby my friend was unconcerned about the baby suffering through a few heel pricks.

It's hard to think back about how many hours I spent worrying about feeding the fusspot formula, calling our pediatrician, calling the hospital, calling the insurance, talking to the LC. And really? It's probably just not that big a deal to give a baby 10 ccs of formula a couple times the first day.

So in short, I want another baby. Now. And I need to be more calm about the process.

Oh, and good thing we had our 12-month check-up in the U.S. before our 12-month check-up here in Lalaland. Because while my baby is in the 30th percentile in the U.S. she's only in the 1st percentile here. Babies here are tall, blond, and apparently born healthy despite rather nonchalant prenatal care.