And Then It Hits You

In August 1996, I lie in my Syracuse hospital bed with
infant Gabe and Minky, the teddy bear my mother had
tucked into his bassinet on the day he was born.

When my son Gabriel was born, it felt like an eternity before I was settled into my recovery room with only my new baby.

Well, and a roommate.

While her delivery had not taken three days like mine, hers had left her with a gruesome tear. I faulted her not at all when she opted to let her baby stay in the nursery as much as possible, and we both were grateful when the nurse pulled the curtain between our beds so that neither of us would have to suffer the other's obligatory chatter.

I did want to snuggle with my baby, though, especially after all the hell I'd gone through to get him. With my family members finally cleared out that first (third?) evening, Gabe and I relaxed in my hospital bed, tucked away in the privacy of our curtained cocoon.

As I was holding him, it occurred to me that I hadn't yet said "I love you" to him. A mother should tell her child that she loves him, I figured. So I did, sweetly but rather casually. "I love you."

A torrential flood of emotions took me so off guard that I don't think I've yet to recover. I started sobbing, as silently as I could so as not to disturb my resting roommate, and just kept whispering, "I love you ... I love you ... I love you ..." over and over to the tiny angel who had made me a mother.

When I went to deliver my second son, this time thankfully by a quick operation, I wondered what kind of moment like that I might have with him. It wouldn't -- couldn't -- be the same kind of moment I had when I first became a mother, but I had no doubt there would be a moment.

In May 2012, I lie in my Maumee hospital bed with infant
Max in a knitted beanie donated from an area group.

I happily had a private room, and even though my husband was irritated it was one of the smallest on the ward, I started to appreciate the cocoon setting again. At some points it was overflowing with family, but eventually it was just me and Maxwell. While I couldn't get enough of holding him and marveling at how super cute he was, and I told him right away how much I loved him, my maternal feelings felt more like a comfortable slipper, something warm and fuzzy and easy to slip on.

On the second day, The Moment came.

I was in my hospital bed in the afternoon, holding Max in a sitting position on my lap. The light from the window attracted his gaze, and I shifted him so he could get a better look. "There's a whole world waiting for you out there," I told him.

Whammo! The emotional freight train rushed by, and I dissolved into tears. Here was a brand new person to love and raise, to teach, to send forth. He had his whole life ahead of him, from that day forward, and there were myriad experiences waiting to enrich his life. I cried the better part of the afternoon.

My sons learn early that I'm a weeper.

Red, Black and Blue ...

... make purple!

Which is still the color of my left forearm. The bruise from where a nurse very apologetically blew through a vein when trying to insert my IV is one of the souvenirs from my hospital adventure in giving birth to my son Max.

I have a matching bruise on the inside of my right elbow, where a lab tech decided it was a grand idea to collect blood at 5:30 in the damn morning. My husband tells me the early blood draws facilitate results in time for doctor rounds. But those tend to come after bedtime, so perhaps these people need to get their acts together.

Other than that, I have very little complaint about the medical professionals who cared for me and my baby. The maternity staff at St. Luke's treat new moms with an incredible amount of dignity, which is impressive considering where they have to shave you and how often they must inquire about whether you're passing gas.

They took excellent care of my baby. I went to the nurse's station once to collect him and was slightly surprised to find his little rolling tea cart empty. My poor nurse chose to say, "I'm not sure where he is right now." To restore the color to my face and the strength to my knees, she quickly said, "He's just so cute, someone is always stealing him!" Again, the word "steal" was disturbing, but sure enough, around the corner a nurse was sitting at her desk computer with charts in one hand and Max in the other.

It wasn't just the medical staff displaying such decency and kindness. The women who cleaned my room and bathroom, one a regular and one a fill-in, were extremely kind and offered sincere congratulations. It was a pleasure to chat with both of them.

"Dietary!" was a lovely call to hear on the other side of my door, because it meant someone was bringing me food. The food was pretty tolerable, as hospital food goes, and my choices ranged from cream of asparagus soup to spinach salad (both quite good). But the smiles of the food staff were the best seasoning.

The most special meal was the "gourmet" one the dietary department plans for moms and their significant others the night before they head home. The staff had set a table in my room with lines and real flatware, and used the little vase of flowers from the hospital auxiliary as a centerpiece. While the nurses stole Max again, my husband and I enjoyed a nice, quiet time together. He had steak, shrimp, baked potato and salad, and I had popcorn shrimp, steak fries, salad and coleslaw. (I had eaten enough asparagus and spinach, it was time for something fried.) We both got big slices of something cheesecakey-moussey too.

And, God bless their hearts, dietary had found a big bottle of diet Coke for me. It's a Pepsi product-stuffed place, so the gesture was very appreciated.

Could Mother's Day Be Any Happier?

Me and my mother, Deborah Lynn O'Leary Conklin.

This is quite a special Mother's Day for me, as I will be heading home from the hospital today with my new son, Max.

Today has a tandem connection with the very special Mother's Day last year, when I married Max's daddy and gained a sweet mother-in-law.

My very first Mother's Day was celebrated in 1997, when 9-month-old Gabe snuggled me into bliss.

All of these Mother's Days were made possible by the mother who taught me how to be one.

Here's to my Mama, who is as beautiful today as she was back in 1974. I love you!

For Unto Us Another Baby Is Born

The first ever Kleiboemer family portrait.

Our little sailor has finally come into port.

Maxwell Charles Kleiboemer was born at 2:50 p.m. May 10, 2012, by C-section in the surgical room of the Family Birthing Center at St. Luke's Hospital in Maumee, Ohio. He weighed 8 pounds 15 ounces and was 20 inches long.

When at 2:50 p.m. the next day, his daddy held him and sang "Happy Birthday" to him for being exactly 1 day old, I thought my heart was going to burst into a firework display of love and gratitude.

The event to bring Max into the world went fairly well, and my recovery is going better than I thought it would. I am taking the advice of several who have had this surgery and keeping a steady pace with Percocet and Motrin, and reportedly my incision is healing "beautifully." This would be the only reason anyone would smile like that after checking under my gown at this point.

A macabre homage to some rather
unfortunate military photos.

My M.O. before such big deals as this is to be the calm before the storm. I do not bother worrying or fretting because I am powerless before the impending nature of major surgery. I just sit back, relax and laugh my face off with my sister, mother and husband.

When the medical professionals take over, sticking me with needles and such, I just ask that they tell me exactly what they are doing as they do it and why it is important. My comfort level always increases with the amount of information I have. The staff responded really well to this, and in many cases enjoyed getting to talk shop a little with someone who cared.

While I was bemused by the hilarity of what it must have looked like as I floundered from my bed to the operating table like a beached whale, I reminded myself that this team sees big pregnant women all the time. Certainly there is a spectrum of grace but I didn't need to worry about my placement on it. I just needed to keep following their directions and note with some detachment what steps they were taking.

When we got to the part where needles were going into my spine, though, I knew this was the point of no return. My excitement actually started to rise here, because this was the step that really felt like it was beginning the procedure, even though other steps had started about an hour beforehand. Once I was numbed, a first cut was going to be made, my husband was going to be ushered into the room and our baby would emerge, all in a relatively short order.

Here's where I lost my composure.

The injection for the local burned far more than I had expected, and it didn't really seem to do all that much when the spinal needle started jabbing me. The anesthesiology team assures me that it is normal to take several attempts to secure this injection, but by the third time of a very painful sensation off-center of wherever they were aiming, I started to cry.

My OBGYN and two nurses were all over me, touching me and patting me and holding my hands, trying to reassure me. It was sweet that they were being so concerned, but I eventually communicated something along the lines of "please just give me a minute." The needles stopped jabbing, people backed up, I blew my nose on a sheet and pulled up my big girl panties.

Gabe is enamored with baby brother Max.

I had spent so much energy on not spending energy up to this point, that the perfect storm just boiled over. I was surprised that this is where things would get halted, right where I wanted them to accelerate. I thought it must be my fault, that I wasn't arching my back enough or was being too big of a baby myself.

Then the doctor told me with all the sincerity in the world that I was doing a great job helping him do his, telling them whether he was on target and such. A tiny part of me wondered if that was just bullshit, but a bigger part of me truly appreciated his approach to helping me get back on track. One more big breath, and I was ready to start all over again, even as far back as the burning local.

But after that, it took just one more jab for the spinal, and soon my butt started to get all warm. (Thank goodness my nurse had warned me that would happen.) They laid me back, and my legs started to tingle and then quickly turned ... I don't know ... funky. It's difficult to describe. It's beyond being numb, like when a leg falls asleep, and the immobility is trippy. But you can still tell when people are touching you if they apply enough pressure.

A nurse poked me with a sharp stick up and down my body to check where I could feel it, and I was surprised that my armpit was as high as I could sense. Very shortly after that, I became queasy at the realization that my chest also was numb, and had no conscious control over breathing. But as soon as they explained to me what was happening and I had some physiological understanding of it, I relaxed and the sensation went away. (I believe I also was aided by an injection of some anti-pukey thing in my IV at that moment too.)

The big blue sheet went up, the OBGYN made her first cut, and my husband was brought into the room, dressed like a Smurf mechanic. I could smell the burning of the knife as it cauterized the cutting, but I smartly kept that to myself. Husband Smurf would have left the room at that point. When a happy call came from beyond the curtain, "The head is out!" the anesthesiologist asked Dan if he would like to watch, and Dan asked him if he would like to see him puke through his mask. They both laughed and Dan remained where he was, seated next to my head and holding my hand.

Max, in the arms of cousin Jon.

After a fair amount of tugging, out came the rest of our baby, followed quickly by very strong shouts of objection from him. That was music to my ears. He was taken to the warming table to be cleaned up and assessed, and I thankfully had a clear view. Dan went over there to take pictures, and I saw him reach out enough to touch his little toes. Within a few minutes the baby was swaddled and placed in Dan's arms, just as I had hoped would happen no matter what kind of delivery I had.

Our healthy son with a perfectly cue ball head was soon brought within kissing distance for me, and a nurse snapped a really great picture of us. I think I should take all my photos upside down now; it makes my double chin disappear.

I was amazed when another nurse told Dan, "Come on, let's take him to the nursery and do all the other stuff," and let him carry him right on out of there. Later Dan would confide that while he obeyed the order, inside he was screaming, "I'm not qualified to do this!" But he became so in one short walk down a hallway.

I of course stayed strapped to the operating table for about 30 more minutes, being rather violently but still carefully manhandled by doctors and nurses as the placenta was removed and all my guts were cleaned out. (I heard later my OBGYN has a reputation for desiring really clean guts, and I think this is great.) Another doctor and a nurse stitched Humpty Dumpty back together again, and the anesthesiology nurse gamely responded to all my chatter throughout the rest of the procedure. Turns out we both have freshmen children enrolled at the same high school. Nice small world.

We all were shocked when Max's weight was reported to us. The betting pool had centered around 9 pounds 4 ounces, and all had remarked variations of "that's a big baby!" when he arrived. Later my OBGYN assured me that we still had made the right decision to deliver by C-section because while he wasn't anywhere near engagement in my pelvis, he apparently was patting the top of his head with one of his hands, and that could have been bad news if he had been like that if he ever did drop down.

His daddy will teach him how to properly shake hands one day, but it surely didn't need to be the first ever moment of his life.

Boy First, Brother Second, Babysitter Third

Gabe was so confident when holding infant Amelia that
he went ahead a read a book at the same time. She
looks pretty content about it, doesn't she?

Many people are referring to Gabe, my nearly 16-year-old son, as a "built-in babysitter" for the little brother I'm about to pop out.

True, he will be a good babysitter. He happens to be a professional one, serving as the nursery attendant at our church. He has a knack for getting babies to smile at him, toddlers to play with him, and youth to follow his directions.

He is particularly good with his cousin Amelia, who is about 18 months old. He recently was her shepherd at my baby shower, and she adored him so much that she called him "Daddy," which my cousin Amanda says isn't an identity confusion issue but more of a compliment that he is that good of a guy to be around.

But what I really want Gabe to be good at is being a brother. Even more so, I'd like him to be good at being just Gabe.

It's critical for any sibling to have his or her own life, and perhaps more so when there is a big age gap.

Friends who have been in similar situations advise me that while an older sibling eventually can carve out his own life, it can get quite delayed when a big part of a pre-adult stage is spent tending to a little brother or sister. We see it with teen parents, so it stands to reason the pattern would be similar in these cases.

Gabe and Amelia hang out at my baby shower.

There are still many positives to Gabe being a caretaker for his younger sibling, namely gaining the experience that will come in handy when he may care for his own baby. It may just raise his score on the attractiveness meter as well. This is the time when people start dreaming about what kind of mate they would like, and it's genetically coded into us to look for a mate who will be a good parent. "SWM, good with kids." Bingo.

But Gabe should be allowed to concentrate on being good at his video games, too. He really needs to be good at his school work, and his chores, and his driving skills. He must attend to his own development in faith, outlook on the world, political leanings, etc.

Having a baby brother certainly will influence all of those things. But it shouldn't shove them onto a back burner, and he shouldn't have to sacrifice all of the experiences of being a regular teenage boy.

Gabe is going to be a tremendous help to me and Dan as Mommy recovers from surgery and Daddy recovers from his entire world being turned upside down. He will do the same kind of chores he already does around the house, and he also will be taught how to change diapers.

He will not need any encouragement to shower love on his brother, and the little one will be blessed to get in that much more cuddling and cooing and soothing from the big one.

I will need reminders to secure other babysitters if I need one, and to let Gabe be Gabe.