Page 54 of Midlife Woes (Ex)

I knew it was too good to be true, that things had gone too smoothly and now I’m gonna die and leave those poor babies. I know the women would take care of them but still. “I’m sorry!” I started to apologize to Damon when the doctor yelled for me to push. Push what?

Damon lost his shit. I’ve never heard someone ream a roomful of people out without raising his voice an octave while rubbing my hand for comfort. He threatened all kinds of mayhem if anything happened to his wife.

All the while the labor team was back at it and I was wondering why the placenta I thought I had already passed was now trying to kill me.

* * *

She was biggerthan her brothers and damn near gave her Daddy a heart attack. That little miss is a whole three pounds four ounces. She came out screaming bloody murder, looked around the room like we had interrupted her nap, stretched and went back to sleep.

What the fuck just happened? There was pandemonium in the other room and Damon and I were in a daze. “Is that a girl?”

“Uh-huh!”

“Well fuck!”

“Yup!”

JOLENE

Ifound out why this room was even more luxurious than the last. It’s because it’s a birthing room attached to a parent room, which Damon reserved because we knew in advance that the babies would he staying here for a couple weeks to months.

Now, all I would say about this is that there’s a vast difference between rich and wealthy. I couldn’t have afforded something like this before and I’ve always had the best. Damon had gone all out which I appreciated and the preferential treatment should be embarrassing, but I can’t lie, I loved that shit.

The room looked like a florist shop. His ex-teammates along with the team owners and other personnel sent huge luxurious bouquets and more gifts than the ones that were already at the house from the shower.

The others were constantly running back and forth to take things back to the house each time they came for a visit. I guess Damon had started his activity chart early, because he had everyone on rotation. The kids were home for the summer so they were added to the roster and because we had the private room, it was easier for more of them to spend time with the babies at once than if they all had to go to the NICU.

The specialist had brought her own team to watch over the babies to be sure that everything went as fine as could be. So far, there were no major issues other than their weight, which had been expected and prepared for.

Now that that’s out of the way, there was one aspect of my labor and delivery that was a hot topic and was to be avoided at all costs unless Damon was out of the room, which only happened when he was in the bathroom. Our daughter.

Now, maybe it’s because he didn’t prepare for the possibility of a daughter, or maybe it’s because he knows nothing about little girls and have never been exposed to any. Or, maybe it’s because he took advice from my dad, and Dalton.

For some reason, he has had my child already live a whole-ass lifetime even before she left the NICU. Here is a partial list of all the things his daughter is ‘not’ allowed to do. No ear piercings until she is older. No sleepovers no fucking where ever.

No beauty anything until she’s eighteen, no male friends until she’s twenty-one. Oh and he's going to sit in her kindergarten class for the first year. I know you think I’m kidding, but these are the conversations we have until I fall asleep at night, praying for peace. These first-time parents are a pain in the ass.

He on the other hand, never sleeps. He’s either in the room checking on me, or in the NICU annoying the staff. He wants to be part of every weigh-in, every mealtime and bath time, while I’m not allowed to do anything but eat, sleep and get poked at by doctors to make sure that everything is fine.

Now, this is when I knew he had lost his mind. He called a breeder somewhere in the Midwest to order a pony. According to him, these things take time and by the time she’s ready to ride it’ll be ready.

“You didn’t order one for the boys.”

“I already took care of their stuff because I knew they were coming, she’s a surprise so I have to make sure I don’t forget anything.” He’s obsessed with forgetting things and making her feel slighted.

I try to explain that she’s too young to care and won’t know either way, but apparently he’s been listening to my kids bicker with each other and I’d be amazed at what kids remember and hold onto. No amount of telling him that they’re just ragging on each other won’t suffice. He just knows he's going to screw up and his daughter is going to get the shitty end of the stick.

To hear him tell it, I’m going to be a boy mom, something Savanna had to explain to me, and his precious little darling is going to get shafted. I have no idea what the hell happened to him or what he’s been reading but he’s nuts.

Since she was the biggest she was the first one taken off of the feeding tube and the first one I was able to safely hold and nurse. That’s when I got to nurser her. Her Daddy hovered over me like a bad penny every time that child opened her eyes and I just knew she was going to be spoiled.

He walks around the room having these long-drawn-out conversations with her because as he told me late last night, he feels guilty because he only talked to her brothers while they were in the womb and she must feel left out.

I asked the specialist to either get him to calm down or give himself to put me out of my misery, something that would make him sleep until it was time to go home.

That wasn’t going to work because he was still ripping into the poor woman each time he saw her because of the surprise baby. When I joked that seven was his lucky number and he should’ve expected it, he wasn’t too amused.

I’ve been on some kind of plane that I’ve never visited before. I don’t know how to describe it, but maybe it’s because I’d done this four times before and this was a different time compared to when I last gave birth, but I didn’t feel any of the anxiety I had in the past.

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