New beginnings

Finally, after a day that feels like we've stepped through the time-space continuum into an uncharted galaxy, Tempest will get to meet my parents.  Her grandparents.   Grandparents.  When did that happen?  It sounds so foreign that something so commonplace to the rest of the world has just happened to them...to me...to us.  It is a staggering transformation.  My mother and my father are no longer only my own.  They are now as much a part of Tempest's world as they are of mine and in turn, that nurturing, parental instinct has been transferred to the baby girl lying skin-to-skin on my chest.  The two people who raised me, who I heretofore loved more than anyone else in the world, have been gently wrapped up in a new package to make way for the new little bundle of joy.  I believe the transformation is mutual, if the looks on their faces as they step tentatively through the curtained threshold are any indicator.

They've waited patiently with me at the hospital since 5:00 PM.  It is now going on midnight and the moment they've been playing out in their minds has arrived: she is here and so are they.  They don't even know her name yet but I know that they are about to fall truly, madly, deeply in love with a baby by the name of Tempest.

"Tempest Felicity Caldwell Austell, meet your grandparents."

There are hugs and tears and Tess is swept up and out of my arms for the beginning of a lifelong love fest.  It is hugely satisfying to witness something so intimate and yet so quotidien: the whirligig of time spins and changes daughters into mothers and mothers into grandmothers (also, see John Mayer's "Daughters.")  I'm not a weeper but this one got me, folks.

After an emotionally exhausting day, the new grandparents head home to New Hope and Rhett and I wait for the first of the three spirits to appear.

The Ghost of Lactation Consult presents herself.  It is the Indian woman from the nursery, Rhett whispers.  She comes bearing an ungainly gift: a gigantic, wheeled hospital-grade breast pump.  It is turquoise and looks nothing like my portable midget one at home.  This thing means business.  I barely receive instructions on how to operate the thing but somehow I manage.  Better get used to having my boobs out for the entire free world to see.  There's no modesty here.

Oh, good: she's manually instructing me on how to get my baby to latch by shoving Tess, who, let's be honest, is rooting like a little piglet at this point out of sheer hunger, onto my areola.  The baby's mouth has to make an unnaturally wide choir angel "o" so that the chin is flush with the boob and the tongue clamps down to allow the nipple to glide over it for maximum suckage.  Fascinating stuff, if it weren't 1:00 AM and the drugs weren't working half as well.

Do I get it?  Sure.  Sure, this is fine, anything to just get this baby to eat my colostrum and go to sleep so I can process what the hell is happening.  The first spirit vanishes into thin air and we are left in peace until vitals time.  What feels like several hours of solitude passes.  In actuality, it's probably 90 min tops by the time the second ghost appears.  She is the either the Ghost of Repeat Blood Work (for mother and daughter) or she is the Foley Ghost who empties my plastic bladder about 12 times before the next evening.  I don't remember.  I do know that we round out the visitations with an early morning call from the Ghost of Lactation Future who vows to send one of her comrades to see us twice daily because the baby is jaundiced (still?) and they'll be checking on us frequently.  This last ghost comes armed with a plastic spoon which I use to manually express colostrum and deliver to Tess' lips.  She loves it.  Her daddy is proud that the less than one-day-old baby can manage spoon feeding.  What a love.

I will go on to utilize the pump and get 5 ml on my first try which I think is squat-diddly but apparently is quite a success.  Who knew?  This will begin my love/hate relationship with feeling like the sole provider/dairy cow strapped to the milking device.  There really is nothing to mentally prepare you for being the only source of sustenance for you newborn offspring.  On one hand...duh.  On the other, you're it, breastfeeding mama.  Good luck! 

All this before sunrise on September 17...Where the heck is the Christmas turkey?  Nope.  It's a LIQUID TRAY for breakfast.  Eff that.  I'm famished.  Not really feeling the jello cup so I send Rhett for a proper Au Bon Pain hot chai.  I get two, courtesy of my parents later that morning.  Thanks, everyone, for keeping me in baby-friendly caffeine.  Now I can greet the colostrum-soaked day with my beautiful squalling raptor baby as she attempts to nurse directly from the breast.