March 10 - 11 years ago today.

March 10 is the day that I welcomed Benjamin into my life, he arrived bluntly and unexpectedly.

It began at 2 am during my hourly visit to the bathroom (at 36 weeks gestation the bathroom is visited hourly FYI) and noticed bleeding. This is one of those situations where too much knowledge is both a good thing and a bad thing. Good thing because you automatically know what to do and bad thing because I knew this kind of bleeding is not the gentle let's-get-going-with-this-whole-birthing process but the kind of bleeding that is a dangerous harbinger of a placental abruption.

I woke Michael up and said "Things are not looking well, we've got to go to St. Paul's". The man bolts out of bed saying "I am sure there is nothing to worry about"  ahhhh .... ignorance is bliss so he dresses slow as a snail while I throw on my "last 4 weeks of pregnancy uniform", black overalls and white turtle neck, (women will get this, there is not much to wear at the end, is there?). I waddle my way to the van while every 3 seconds looking down  at my belly and anxiously asking: "Benjamin (we knew it was him already) can you please move? Can you move please? Can you let me know you are okay?" while getting no answer from the child.

We arrive at St. Paul's with me terrified and in tears. I get strapped to the heart monitor and I am instantly reassured by the solid 140 beat per minute strip but still no movement. The "du jour" medical student is there looking like he is 12 and very kindly and politely asks: "Hello Dr, Lopez, I am the medical student (nice kid), can I examine you?" Let me tell you at this point my level of distress is so high I wouldn't have cared if it was the gardener who examined me as long as I got some information.

Now, what is coming next, this right here that I am going to describe is why we need 4 years of undergrad plus 4 years of medical school and 3 of residency before being good doctors. Remember, this kid is a medical student, still a good 4 to 5 years away from being really good at his craft. Anyway he gets a speculum, puts it in and .............. GASPS!!!!!! GASPS!!! After he is finished training he will have learned that in medicine you DO NOT gasp, EVER!! Particularly NOT in front of your patient. Because, you see, now I KNOW something is really wrong and I very loudly ask: "Is it the cord? Can you see the cord?" while lifting my hips as high as my pregnant belly will allow and start giving stern do-exactly-as-I-say directions: "Listen carefully, put the table on Trendelenburg (feet, or in this case hips, high and head low) and go get a nurse." In comes GOD ie. the head nurse, who confirms my suspicion, yes, Benjamin has decided to come into the world cord first (you should know this is not right, baby needs to arrive BEFORE the cord, ALWAYS, ALWAYS) and proceeds to use all of her might to push Benjamin toward my chest and coax him to climb back up.

20 minutes later he is surgically removed from my body. Now he is out in the world and struggling to breathe. I hardly get a glimpse of him before they whisk him off to the nursery in a little plastic box. By 10 pm he is no better so he is transferred to the Children's Hospital Special Care Nursery. I see him once again at around midnight when the Infant Transport Team comes to my room for me to see him off. He is in the transport incubator on top of a gurney so I don't even get to touch him and off he goes - alone. Alone. Alone. Alone.

The next morning I haul my 24 hrs post-C-section ass to BCWH to go see him and end up in exactly the same room where I stayed when #1 was born! What are the chances? Out of dozens of rooms I end up in the same one??!!. My mother automatically decides this is a sign that everything will turn out okay and I want to believe her.

I go into the Special care Nursery where I have been a hundred times before but this time to see my own baby. There he is, first incubator on the right. By now his head is shaved off, IV's on his head, NG tube in place, heart monitor beeping and CPAP mask on his face because he is still struggling to breathe. That afternoon I go see him again and his doctor, my colleague, says "Oh, he is much better, we intubated him and he is doing much better." In another I-have-too-much-knowledge situation I am thinking "You INTUBATED him??!! HE IS NOT better! If you had to intubate him he is worse, much worse." Visions of all kinds of respiratory and cardiac disorders now swimming in my head.

With time, he makes slow progress, 4 doses of BLES later and he starts breathing without support. He gets moved to the "growers" section where again my breasts refuse to do their evolutionary job. However, he manages to guzzle happily on the bottle so I leave the ornaments alone - no pumping, no Domperidone, no breast feeding guilt. Finally, on March 20th, 10 days after he was born he gets to come home and my Dad is here from Mexico documenting his every move. Thankfully, otherwise I would have had no memories of his first days at home since my mind is temporarily parked in a blurry post-partum haze.

Today he is 11 years old, Candid, forthright, articulate, eloquent, outspoken, Benjamin. Irreverent Benjamin. Hockey loving Benjamin. Self-assured Benjamin. MY Benjamin. One of the two true great loves of my life.Happy birthday.