Note: There is language that is excluded in the transcript but not excluded in the audio.
So my son was born two months premature through no fault of my own — was total fluke. There was no rhyme or reason why my water broke so early, and so he was born two months early. And obviously that was very traumatic for me. I had just been pregnant and feeling great, and then my water broke, and then I ended up going on hospital bed rest for 12 days until I finally ended up having to deliver ‘cause infection started to set in, which is very common when you don’t have as m- — enough amniotic fluid. It’s very easy for bacteria to get in, um, for whatever reason. So, so I had to do an emergency C-section and deliver my baby.
And I was not ready for this. I was not ready to deliver yet. I was so sure I was gonna make it to 34 weeks, which was my goal, but he was born at 31 weeks and two days, and I was not had — I had not had any birth classes. I didn’t know anything about it yet ‘cause I — the, the week that I was supposed to start taking my birth classes to learn what to do to give birth was when my water broke. Oh, and by the way, I had to put down a 30 or 50 dollar deposit for that class and they wouldn’t give it back to me. Yeah. That place went out of business not too long after that, so f*** those people. [Laugh] Yeah, f*** you making money off of my misfortune. That made me– that’s one of the things that really made me mad.
But anyways — “You know, we had to reserve this spot for somebody, and you’re not showing up, so we’re gonna keep your money.” I’m like, “Yeah, but I’m in the hospital.” Like ugh, that’s so mean! That’s so mean that you’re gonna make money off of my misfortune! It’s not that I’m just, like, not showing up. It’s ‘cause I’m in the hospital.
Anyways — which reminds me of another story, but I’m not gonna tell it because I’m still telling my first story. Ugh, okay, so I wasn’t ready to have my baby yet, so I was devastated that he had just been born so early, knowing all the complications he was facing, and, like, the long road of him not being able to come home yet. He had to do all these things. He had to learn how to breathe on his own. He learn- — had to learn how to eat on his own and do all these things in the hospital. First, being in an incubator, and then eventually, like, making it out into a crib with still — bunch of tubes, and then eventually, like, the tubes could come out, then he had to wait a certain amount of time until all the tubes were removed, and then, “Can he survive without anything, for however long?” and then, “Yes, he can,” so then you can go home. And that was 40 days.
40 days of him being in the hospital.
Okay, so I had not met him yet because they wouldn’t let me see him because when I gave birth to him, the reason I had to have this emergency C-section was that an infection was starting up, and I was getting a fever. And the rule is, you cannot have a fever and come and see a newborn baby in the NICU. And you have to be fever free for, you know, however many — 24 hours or something like that. And since I had had a fever, they wouldn’t let me see my baby for two days, and in those two days, um, he was put into an incubator, and I didn’t get to see him. But my husband and my dad got to go see him, and so they took pictures of him, and they showed me the pictures and stuff, and he, he just looked awful. Like, he looked — he was — he looked so sad.
He was hooked up with so many things. Okay, so — Hoo! I think I don’t — I think I only got to see him in an incubator the very first time I got to see him, and then they took him out of there. But I went in, I went in to see him — or, no — Did I go in to see him? No, I don’t think I had seen him yet. Okay, it’s, it’s a bit of a blur, understandably. Either I had just gone to see him, or I hadn’t seen him yet, but it was right at the beginning. And, you know, I wanna know that he’s doing well. I wanna hear good things. I don’t wanna hear that he’s unhappy.
So I asked the nurse who had just seen him. I said, “How is he doing?” And she said, “He is really, really feisty. He is crying. He does not want to be — uh, he does not want to be here, be hooked up to these things. He wishes he was back inside mommy.” And I’m like, “Okay, thanks.” She was, like, saying it in a way that was, like, he was being annoying to her, like giving her trouble. “He wishes he was back inside mommy.” Like f*** you, lady! I wish he was back inside mommy, too!