The post-partum suites

The mood in the delivery room is of subdued euphoria. The attending doctor congratulates us on our baby and our choice of delivery method. Cracking a smile, the once aloof resident begins to chat with us, a little nervously, as if she were relieved to have passed some difficult exam. One nurse exclaims "your pelvis rocks!", pointing out that if anyone had known in advance that this first time mom was set to deliver 10 pounds of boy child sunny side up after 30 hours of active labor, a Cesarean would have been ordered immediately. One by one, people trickle out. Soon only Catalina, Francisco, Baby Zoogle and myself remain. I crawl into the birthing bed next to my wife, cradling Piro in one hand, supported by both our bodies. We both drift off.

After about two hours, during which time Piro is reweighed and measured, anti-bacterial goop is smeared in his eyes, and vitamin K is injected in his bottom (a procedure he disapproves of vehemently), abuelo takes off and the Nuclear Family is led to the post-partum suite, a skeletal affair with bare walls, hard linoleum, and no reading lights. Mom gets a bohemuth hospital bed, adjustable in 27 different ways, all of them uncomfortable. Dad gets a crocodile-green vinyl chair that folds out into a bed whose contours are inverse to his own. Bambino gets a clinical plexiglass bassinet on a rolling set of drawers.

It's been almost 48 hours since we last did any serious sleeping, but adrenalin is a wonderful thing, and we fritter away a few hours cooing and clucking over baby, rehashing his entrance into the world. Probably a bad choice: a constant stream of nurses, doctors, and lactation consultants ensures that even if Piro cooperated, we wouldn't get more than three hours sleep at a stretch.

The rest is a blur: I remember a washing, a lot of temperatures being taken, a herd of kind hospital types verifying that things looked good and that so and so would be in later to do X, but no one came in more than twice, and everyone wore the same kind of institutional clothes, and I probably got some of that goop they lubed up Piro with in my own eyes, cause I wasn't seeing so clearly, and I certainly wasn't remembering so good, and then it was Friday mid-morning and we asked if we could go and they said yes, soon as Piro get's the go-ahead. That came at 2p.m. from a certain Dr. Pye, who took a dim view of our request to postpone injections for a bit but seemed otherwise totally amicable and gave Piro a clean bill of health.

At 3:00 we left the hospital. You have to bring your car seat up to the check out station (I guess they like to verify that you have one, and know how to use it.) We did not know how to use ours, of course. The baggage guy just laughed, and laughed harder when he learned we didn't have name for our little hairless tree frog. 'You did know you were having a baby, didn't you?' he joked as he showed us how to buckle Piro in place. He wheeled Catalina to the car, I carried a profoundly zonked out Piro in the car seat, Francisco drove, and we got home at 3:30p.m. exactly 36 hours after Piro entered the world.