Finn has been alive now for almost six months and obviously, so much has changed. So much though that I am already forgetting things about the beginning and wishing that I had followed through with the journal idea and logged this process more thoroughly. At the time though, I thought I would never forget what time he was born and what I thought when I first glimpsed him or the way James slept all folded up on the cot in the recovery room and kept whining about the TV volume being so loud and inexplicably impossible to adjust.
Six months has passed and those memories seem far away. A friend from work just had her baby girl on wednesday and I realized as I heard the details of the birth how important this information is, how it offers the web to support the story. How the fact that Finn was born on a Wednesday in May is interesting because I went to the Indy 500 the Sunday before I was induced in record breaking heat and nearly fainted in the stands. James soaked a towel in our cooler over and over again and slapped the icey wetness on my neck to keep me cool. How Finn was 8 pounds 11 ounces and most of the weight was in his enormous head that still looks a little bulbous and makes me wonder how he ever came out at all. And how when I first saw him, he was sort of pinkish bluish, greyish--not in a scary he might be dead way but in a wrinkled, I've been in the pool too long way. He looked so much like James in that first instant too. Not the pool color thing, his features. He seemed like he was squinting at me just the way his dad does at the TV without his glasses. He has come to look less and less like James these last months. Or perhaps he has just looked more and more like himself and I don't notice the resemblance so much. But at first, it was uncanny.
I was induced that Wednesday morning, and we arrived a few minutes past 6am. I had showered the night before and curled my hair that morning knowing I would look hideous for pictures and figuring my hair might as well look nice. We waited in the waiting room with a middle eastern family, a chatty patriarch and silent pregnant wife with two little brown eyed girls, about two and four years old. It came out that they had four other children at home and this pregnancy was more risky, the baby was flipped the wrong way. We watched cartoons until our rooms were ready. Apparently it had been a busy night.
Wednesday was the one day my mom said not to go into labor because she had to work and had no one to cover for her. But she called in sick anyway and they had to reschedule all her patients. She wouldn't miss it. And my dad couldn't have missed it. As the putocin started to work and the contractions came on, my mom sat at my right watching the moniter and talking me through the swells, telling me when the number peaked and I would start to feel better, running her fingers over the skin of my arm and looking so concerned. James sat at my left and held my hand loosely, registering no emotion on his face apparently so that I would read relaxation in his body language. It looked like indifferent nonchalance to me at the time but has since been cleared up and the hysterical tears after the birth confirmed the presense of plenty of emotion.
My dad stood at the foot of the bed, his hands in his pockets, his camera at the ready and a ridiculous grin on his face. He looked from the moniter to me to mom and smiled with what could most accurately be called pride but also, it must be said looked nearly maniacal in its consistency and considering the circumstances, very out of place. I looked between the three of them and most often ended up staring at my dad and flexing my toes against his legs at the end of the bed as the contractions waned. He was directly in front of me, so it was easiest to look at him. But he was also the least charged one in the room. He was just ecstatic to be there and certain that all would end in a gradchild. He was easy to lock eyes with because he was so sure and so happy. He had to leave when I started to push, no one's dad needs to see that. But he didn't want to go. And he paced in the hallway outside the door until the nurses chaced him off to the waiting room. Even then, he made laps around the maternity wing and slowed conspicuously in front of our room each time until one lap, he heard my mom say "he's almost here Katie, one more push." And he stopped and he waited and ducked into the vestibule of the room where none of us could see him and he heard that first little cry after they scooped out the gunk in Finn's throat. And then he went back to tell Heather and when my mom called to give the news, "He's been born!" My dad said, "I know!" She was so mad.