Inconceivable (28 page)

At the PR firm, the television crews from the various local stations were in each of the four conference rooms. Every fifteen minutes, we moved to meet with a different crew. We finished our interviews right on schedule. I called Dr. Read’s nurse, who, as expected, sent us straight to labor and delivery.

“Does that mean we are doing the C-section today?” Sean asked.

“No. We have to get to the hospital and wait to see what Dr. Read says. I assume she’ll want to run some tests.”

“Should we call Shannon and Paul?” Sean asked.

“Not yet. Let’s wait until we know what’s going to happen.”

Sean dropped me off at the visitors’ entrance, and I walked right past admitting and straight up to the maternity floor. I checked in at the nurses’ station and found a friendly and familiar face waiting for me.

“We heard you were coming in, so I called dibs!” It was Colleen, my nurse from MK’s delivery, who had since become a friend.

“Great. Have you heard from Dr. Read?”

“Yup. We are doing it today. Three
P.M
.”

I stopped dead in my tracks.

“Really?”

“Really. Are you ready?”

Was I ready to say hello and good-bye to my baby? How could I be ready for that? But I would honor this child. I would demonstrate our love for him today. We had done everything we could to prepare for this moment. I nodded to Colleen, picked up my phone, and started to inform everyone else who needed to prepare.

My first call had to be Shannon. I’d felt so dumb for calling her the other night with a false alarm and getting her all excited. She’d arranged for the care of her girls, only to get a call from Sean less than an hour later to report that I’d been discharged. I swore I’d never alarm her again unless I was certain, and now the certainty had arrived.

“Shannon, we’re having the baby today,” I said.

“Really? When?”

“Dr. Read is going to do the C-section at three o’clock. Can you get here by then?” It was 11:30
A.M
., so I thought they could make it.

“Don’t wait for us. If they have to do it now, don’t wait for us.”

“We will wait for you. That’s not a problem.”

“Okay. Well, I was supposed to get my hair done and then give an interview to Fox National at 1:00
P.M
. I guess I could cancel the hair appointment, pull my hair back in a ponytail, and do the interview and just leave straight from there?”

“Okay.”

“Well, I don’t want to cancel because I don’t want them to know the baby is coming today.”

“I get it. Do what you need to do. We’ll wait.”

“Okay. I think we’ll be there in time. This is so exciting!”

I could hear the joy in her voice. I hung up the phone chuckling to myself about Shannon frantically running around trying to figure out how to wear her hair. She was clearly excited!

I made the rest of my calls. My neighbor would care for the kids, my mom and dad were en route, JoAnn was also coming to pray and boss people around (which I asked her to do), and my friend
Kathleen was coming with her camera to document the delivery. That was it. No one else was to be told where we were. We didn’t want a soul to learn that Little Man was here until we knew he was healthy and safely at home with Paul and Shannon. We’d even made arrangements for the Morells to get their own room in the NICU because it is a very secure place. Only people who were buzzed in by the staff could enter.

I had an alias, Diane Strick, which was also on my hospital wristband. The hospital provided us with security guards who only allowed those who knew my alias to come in contact with me. We were also concerned that the Morells might be mobbed by the press if they set up outside the hospital. The hospital arranged for them to park their car away from the normal hospital parking lot in a place where they would be greeted by the head of the hospital team.

By 2:00
P.M
., my family and friends had arrived. They all sat around my bed, and we laughed and talked together. It was a new experience for me. I had never entered into a delivery feeling so healthy. As the Morells arrived, Shannon called me.

“Carolyn?” Shannon was crying.

“Are you okay? Are you crying?”

“I want you there when we meet the baby. I think you should be there.”

I was touched by her offer.

“That’s very sweet of you, Shannon. But I can’t be there. I have to stay in the OR and get sewn up. Sean will come. Is that okay?”

“I really think you should both be there. But yes, that will do.”

I hung up and appreciated the gesture.

Once we knew the Morells had arrived at the hospital, Dr. Read said it was time.

“Do you want a wheelchair?” Colleen asked.

“I don’t really need one,” I said. “I’m not sick.”

“If you want to, you can walk,” Colleen offered.

“I can?” I asked, delighted. My previous births were such madness. I’d had to be wheeled in on a gurney in an atmosphere of disaster.

“That’s what most women do when they are having a scheduled C-section,” Colleen said.

As I stood up, a big grin spread over my face. I would walk into the delivery room with my head held high. This was going to be a beautiful birth to honor my precious Little Man.

I turned to say good-bye to my family. We all hugged, and the last in line was my dad. He held me tight in a great big bear hug and whispered in my ear.

“I love you, sugar. We are so proud of you,” my dad said.

I knew he was. I knew they all were. I winked back at him and smiled. I had made my daddy proud, and there’s only goodness in that.

As I walked down the hallway it was like a parade. I was with Dr. Read and the security guard, plus Kathleen, Colleen, and some of the other people who would be assisting in the C-section.

As we walked past the nurses’ station, they all stood up, as if in respect.

The operating room was very cold, and I shivered as I lay down. Sean came in all suited up in hospital scrubs and took my hand as they raised the drape between my chest and lower body so that I couldn’t see the C-section. The room was crowded. There was a team from the NICU to evaluate the baby, including a nurse-practitioner I remembered from Mary Kate’s birth. Dr. Read had asked another surgeon to attend the delivery because she wanted to be careful about any problems with the placenta, which was still sitting very low in my uterus. Plus there was the anesthesiologist and his nurse. Quite a party.

I was concerned about the spinal because the one I’d had when Mary Kate was born wasn’t very good. I felt a lot more of that procedure than I thought I should. As the anesthesiologist tapped into
the base of my spine and I felt the drug spreading through my nervous system, I didn’t think he’d given me enough.

“I can still move my toes,” I advised him.

“We’re not operating on your toes,” the anesthesiologist said.

“Well, I’m glad we cleared that up,” I joked.

I looked at Sean, so funny in his puffy surgical hat. He held my hand just like he had that night we met, when we walked through campus. Here we were, twenty years later, in this unbelievable situation. How could we have known when we were that young how severely life would test us? Sean had protected us so well. We could focus completely on this moment. Maybe there would be horrible emotions on the other side of this delivery, but for this instant we could appreciate all that we’d been through to bring this life into the world.

As soon as they started to cut me open, I felt nauseous. The anesthesiologist was quick to give me something for that so I wouldn’t miss anything. I felt the tugging and pulling that I remembered from MK’s delivery. The rearranging of my insides and the feeling of all those hands inside of me was awful, but it was mercifully quick.

“We are taking the baby out now!”

I shut my eyes and felt the pressure that I had carried for the past eight months lift off of my chest as my lungs reinflated. In a matter of moments, I heard Little Man take his first breath in our world and let out a huge yell. He was the feisty little guy who had been doing back flips in my womb.

“Do you want to see him?” one of the nurses asked.

Of course
, I thought. I later thought they were probably trying to be sensitive to me by asking. Perhaps, like a woman who is going to have her baby adopted by another couple, I might not want to see him.

“Yes, yes,” I said. “Of course I do.”

One of the NICU nurses brought him around the drape, and I
saw him all pink and covered in goop. He looked huge! So much bigger than Mary Kate and Ryan had been. They rushed him into a room to my right to evaluate him as Kathleen snapped dozens of pictures. After a few minutes, they brought him back to me swaddled in a blanket and wearing a little newborn cap.

“His APGAR score is a nine on a scale of ten,” the nurse reported. “And his lungs are working beautifully.”

Yes!

Exactly what we’d hoped, planned, and prayed for.

A few minutes passed before a nurse came over and placed our tightly swaddled infant in Sean’s arms. I looked up at Sean’s face and saw that he was crying as he studied Little Man. I think his tears were tears of joy, but for me, my joy resulted in a smile. I was thrilled.

Sean held him as close to me as he could, since the continued surgery was keeping me restricted. I kissed Little Man on the top of his head and laughed with elation as he opened his eyes and looked right into my face.

“Hi, Little Man. Hi, sweetie.”

I said this again as I took off his cap to get a good look at that magnificent head of hair that we’d seen so many times in the ultrasounds. He looked perfect. I put my face up against his and kissed him over and over. He was born at 3:18
P.M
., and we had only a few minutes with him before Sean had to take him down to the Morells. I was nauseous again, and they gave me another shot of something to help me as Sean walked the baby over to the nurses, who placed him in an isolette for his journey to meet his parents.

The idea that the baby I had just delivered had to go meet his parents was still such a confusing thought for me. I knew that until that moment when they cut the umbilical cord, he was my baby. In those moments in the delivery room, he still felt like he was ours. I had the pride of a mother at childbirth, and I had all the love. No matter how we’d prepared, in the moment it was incredible to me
that I couldn’t keep this baby. There were many who believd he’d never really been mine, but I knew that, until the moment when they took him out of that room and down the hall, he still was.

“How much does he weigh?” I asked.

The NICU staff was so caught up in the moment that they hadn’t weighed him. They had to take all his blankets off and place him on the scale.

“Five pounds, three ounces!”

Wow. He was a whopper at four weeks early. They wrapped him up again. I looked at him as completely as I could, my heart open to our little miracle, our lucky little boy.

“Shall we take him now?” one of the nurses asked.

No, don’t take him. Let me keep him. He belongs with our family. His rightful place is in my arms. He is a part of me.

“Yes. Take him. Go, go, go,” I said. “Take him.”

C
HAPTER
19

A Broken Hallelujah

SEAN

I
HELD
C
AROLYN’S HAND
with my left hand while wiping away a tear of joy with my right hand. I leaned down really close to her ear and whispered, “I love you.” I kissed her cheek. What Carolyn had done was beautiful, and the baby that the nurses wrapped snugly in receiving blankets seemed like a gift to the world from God. To see him with Carolyn, to hold him for just a moment, was an honor. I was living literally second by second, holding on to every detail. I knew that for that brief time, and for that time only, he was ours. We might see him again. We might even be allowed to kiss him and hug him, but after this moment we would need permission to do so.

Carolyn was pale and shaky. So much of me wanted to stay by her side and hold her hand through the next difficult part of the surgery, but I felt what can only be described as a deep calling to deliver this beautiful child to his genetic parents.

Ever since we entered the second trimester I’d feared this moment. I felt fear now, and pain and anger were nearby. But those feelings were balanced by a powerful feeling of love, the same love we’d felt as the baby grew inside Carolyn, but now it seemed to touch every molecule of the air around us. And it was so clear that Carolyn’s incredible act of sacrifice throughout the long eight
months needed to be honored. The dignified way to transition this baby from the Savage family to the Morell family was in person. I could feel the love softening into surrender and a willingness to let him go. I hadn’t expected this, but I welcomed it.

Carolyn has always said that the greatest joy of giving a gift is watching the recipient unwrap it. I would be her eyes and ears as the Morells received this ultimate gift. I also wanted Paul and Shannon to see with their own eyes that other human beings were delivering their child: he didn’t just miraculously fall from the sky. This wasn’t an abstraction. By seeing the pain in my eyes, I hoped they’d have a window into the loss that Carolyn and I were experiencing and accept the child in the spirit in which we were giving him.

“Sean, are you ready?” a nurse asked.

I nodded yes. I took one more glance at my beautiful wife and watched as they placed the baby in the isolette. A nurse pushed him toward the exit doors, and I fell in line behind.

In the hallway, a security guard led the procession. I stood directly behind the isolette, with a nurse on the left guiding it and another nurse on the right. Our friend Kathleen trailed behind with her camera. The hospital had planned a route that took us down cold and dimly lit corridors with concrete floors and stark white walls. The public didn’t have access to these hallways, and we saw no one else on our walk down to the elevators. We walked slowly, silently, and in a mood of perfect reverence.