Ukulele, Part III

. . . . .

"Let's go. She's waiting for you."

The nurse came to the washroom door and opened it for us. GatorMan and I walked through, and she instructed us to wash our hands every time we entered and exited. She said when we were finished we could come down the hall and she would take us to our daughter.

As soon as she walked out of the room, I put my arms on the washbasin, my head in my arms, and I sobbed. I sobbed and sobbed like I never had before. GatorMan rubbed my back and told me to get it together so we could go in. We washed up and walked in. As we walked around the corner, the nurse was standing there and took us to the most beautiful baby I had ever seen.

And I cried.

This would be the start of days and days of tears. But not tears of anger and frustration that I was so used to from infertility and jealousy, but tears of the greatest joy I had ever felt. The joy I felt meeting GatorMan and then marrying him was absolutely fantastic, similar to meeting Ukulele. But meeting Ukulele was a somewhat different joy - the joy of a mother - and one I cannot compare to anything else.

The nurse came over and put the oh-so-priceless bracelet on my wrist. The bracelet that granted us access to our child 24-hours a day.

The rest of that night is a complete blur. Two things stick out, however. One, that I was the first one that got to feed her. Having her in my arms, lying against my chest, and relying on me to take her hunger away.

Second, not such a pleasant memory. We asked what her birth measurements were, and the nurse kind of paused, and then said she could not tell us. We were sitting there holding our child, but were not able to know how much she weighed. The irony was miraculous. The nurse explained that until the elusive social worker reviewed our information, we could not be told the medical information on Ukulele. This was quite disconcerting on a quite a few levels, one of which included the fact that we were the legal guardians of her at her birth. If there had been a medical emergency, we were supposed to be the ones to make the decision. However, do you really think they would have consulted with us being that they would not even tell us how much she weighed?

There were so many things that happened with this particular hospital and its bureaucracy which made it clear that adoptions were not their concern, nor their priority. There are two major hospitals in the town where we live, and the other one is the "good" one.

I'll try to sum up tomorrow what happened with everything else. There is just so much to write about - all of the joy we experienced, and a lot of the frustration as well. Something that should have been so absolutely beautiful kept getting overshadowed by the incompetents of the hospital. Try as we may to remember only the good things, we keep realizing every day things that should have happened (pediatrician assignment, birth pictures, hearing test, shots) did not happen as they should have because of our circumstances. The hospital made us feel no less than the red-headed-step-child. Complaints have already been filed against the hospital administration (by our attorney), and against the social worker on call the night Ukulele was born (by the full-time social worker who came in the next day). GatorMan and I are also writing our complaint to the Board of Directors for the hospital to give our firsthand account on how things need to change.

In the end, this red-headed-step-child got the best gift of all - the perfect baby. Hopefully our experience will make the road a little easier for those who travel it after us.

And one more thing.... we are not-so-patiently waiting for December 30. That is the day the revocation period expires.