I was, for the third child in a row, in RPO rehearsal when I got the text from J.
"My contractions are pretty steady at six minutes apart. I think it's going to be today."
I waited as the rehearsal let out and let the appropriate parties know that I probably wasn't going to be at the concert that night, and that they should start contacting the subs I'd lined up for just such an event.
When I got home she was in a lawn chair in the front yard, mystified that her contractions had somehow stopped. Then, after being up and walking around (and after I sent out a round of messages indicating that I might be available to play the evening concert after all) the contractions were here for real. We loaded up the kids in the van, packed up the hospital bags, thought through the contents of the hospital bag and realized that we probably should have prepared more thoroughly, and then set off to drop James and Owen at the Hamways.
In attempting to avoid the many potholes along Empire Boulevard I realized just how many there are, and how futile it is to swerve around one, only to plunge into another. If I wasn't already aware of each bump, J made a pained and frustrated sound each time the van rattled over any deviations of flat pavement. But we made it to the Hamways and unloaded the kids. James, apparently, told Alexa and Jane about how excited he was that the new baby was coming. He must have used up all of his excitement in that afternoon, because we haven't seen any more of it since.
And then we drove off to Strong! We had to wait too long to be seen in Triage, and J's discomfort was probably amplified by the horrible sounds coming from down the hall. (Someone was performing a convincing audition for the part of "woman in agony.") We heard voices outside her curtain discussing which patient was due to have anesthesia next, and who was how far dilated. "Come and check ME!!!" J kept muttering under her breath between contractions. When a nurse finally came in to give her an exam and confirm that she was truly in labor, she commented that J was "so zen!" ("She gets calm when she's angry.")
We were whisked into the delivery room and more than once had a conversation along the lines of "You look familiar...have we met before? Oh yes, you helped deliver our last boy!" After some more waiting and a needlessly long introduction and explanation of potential risk factors and procedural step-by-steps, J finally got her epidural. And then came the real labor.
She was amazing. Speaking as someone who performs professionally, you don't get more clutch than how J did in labor. She kept her head and saved her energy, she listened to the doctors, and when the baby was out of her, she had energy and concentration to spare. But, of course, at that point, we were both looking at the baby that had just come out of her.
Dark hair, and lots of it. That was the first thing we noticed. And then his voice. I'd been wondering for so long what he'd look like, and then wondering what we ought to call him, that I hadn't given much thought to what he'd sound like. There's something about hearing a baby's little voice that makes you realize it's a little person that's just entered the world.
This little person was bigger than either of our other two weighing in at eight pounds. He looked like James right away. His fingers were strikingly long, and he opened his eyes and looked around as soon as the doctors put him on his mother's chest.
"Quincy Felix, or Felix Quincy?"
Quincy was non-negotiable. He was J's fifth pregnancy, and he would forever be the subtle nod to the two miscarriages between James and Owen. He would be the fifth member of our family, and he was born on the 5th. Felix came from some Csehy friends, had a biblical reference, and made good sense in Latin. "Happy, lucky, or fruitful." Maybe the most direct English comparison is the way we use the word "blessed." But deeper. We looked and looked at him while the nurses waited for a name.
Felix Quincy.
James, by his request, was the first to know. By this point Nama had picked them up and taken them to Albion, so we made a phone call and asked for James to be put on. We told him the name, and apparently he hid under the swing and then ran away. Owen was mildly interested, but also playing in the sandbox.
Then, because J didn't get the full four hours of antibiotics before she delivered, we had a beautifully quiet 48 hours in the hospital together. Our nurses were great, and we had several visitors in to meet the little man. We spent lots of time two-on-one with him (which he'll probably be very short on now that he's home) and then sent him off to the nursery guiltlessly when we needed to sleep. I played a concert, and came back.
Our only hitch with the hospital staff was when the insurance "specialist" came up to help us enroll Felix in a health plan.
I am well aware of the complications and frustrations of the New York State Health Exchange. I've spent far too many hours wrestling with its backwards and clunky pages trying to explain how our income situation works, or to upload documents, or to prove that my sons are genuinely related to me and not blind or eskimos or any of the other odd questions that the website is compelled to ask.
The woman who was sent to work with us (J, after spending the first hour with her, texted me "Phyllis from The Office?") was on her first day back after being out on a year of disability. I assume we were her first clients as well, since it took her almost 45 minutes to get her computer unlocked. (She had to call back to her office to figure out which combination/uppercase-lowercase arrangement of her dog's names she used for her password.) Then she had to log into the health exchange (and couldn't remember her oldest first cousins' name, which was her security prompt) and then had to go through our entire family's application to add Felix to our coverage.
It was painful to watch her work. It's painful for me fill out these applications, and I have some instinct for how computers work. This woman, most unfortunately, had no idea. She regularly misclicked, or misunderstood the question, or clicked past an important question that she should have answered. I tried to stay out of the way. But then she finally needed me to actually look at something on her computer screen, just at the very end. And I am deeply relieved that I did, because I saw that she had spelled our son's name, for his permanent insurance application "Fleix Smith"
And that's why she had to click back through all seventy pages of the application to start over again.
Five days later, we're still undoing the damage that she did to our health insurance profile, but he did end up being insured by the end of it.
He gradually found his voice and figured out how to nurse as our time at the hospital drew to a close, and then we brought him home. Some brothers were more excited than others to meet him.
Owen has handled this just about how we expected. He's been smotheringly loving at times, and stridently obnoxious in his competition for attention at others. He regularly demands to "hold the baby" or to "snuggle the baby," and then either crawls on him or puts a limb into Felix's face. Also, he can't remember Felix's name, no matter how many times we remind him. He's just "the baby." If you ask him the baby's name, he'll say "I don't know!" Or "What should it be?" Or "Whatever you want!" He wants to be held by whoever's holding the baby, and if he's interested in the baby, he wants to see his belly-button.
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| "This pillow isn't for the baby. It's OWEN'S pillow." |
James, on the other hand, took an initial cautious sniff at the baby, said it was a good one, and then expressed his relief that "it didn't have black skin." He has largely disappeared to his room since then, although he did excavate some stuffed animal monkeys from a bin in the basement and made sure that they were in Felix's bassinet before bedtime.
