I figured it out.

When my husband and I kept hearing the song, “Don’t Bring Me Down” by ELO, we joked that we should name the baby Bruce. In retrospect, I think the message we were supposed to glean was “Don’t bring me down, Bruise.”

We got home from the hospital last Friday. As we settled in, I reacquainted myself with the bedroom where I spent nearly a month. The bed was clean and made as if no one ever lived, seethed, or crumbed the sheets with snickerdoodles. I had more resting to do, but this time with my buddy clutched to my chest and no Netflix streaming endless mediocre movies. I’d watch him.

Before I laid down, I considered my body in the bathroom mirror. It was startling.

My belly is one massive bruise, dark at my incision, lightening as it spreads away. My back is bruised from the spinal. My arm is bruised where a vein blew. I don’t remember looking or feeling like this after my last two c-sections. When I mentioned to my husband how my belly looked like it tried to steal Mike Tyson’s tiger, he asked what I expected it to look like, considering…

Considering Theodore’s birth story.

I knew the last possible day for me to stay pregnant was August 23rd. That date was fixed in my mind as days and weeks were lost to bedrest. I doubted we’d make it that far. But we did.

We arrived at the hospital’s Center for Women and Infants at the agreed upon time and was taken straight to a surgical prep room. I was having uncomfortable contractions every 3-4 minutes. I watched them rise and fall on the monitor and enjoyed the feeling that if my surgery hadn’t been scheduled for that day, I would be delivering that day. In other words, that day was The Day. I drew a lot of comfort from that alignment of the surgical and the natural.

The nurse inexplicably tried to put an IV in my left upper forearm. This is a terrible place to put an IV if you are going to breastfeed because it was exactly where the baby’s head rests when they are in a cradle hold. When my vein blew, I was annoyed until I realized it saved me from having it moved later. She moved it to a more sensible location.

I scribbled on papers, consenting to all sorts of things. I rode in a wheelchair to Operating Room 1, the same room where Archie was born 19 months ago.

Everything was familiar. I was relaxed and focused on the big moment when we’d hear our baby’s first cry.

I knew the moment was close when the doctor said she saw the baby and he was definitely a boy. Our breech boy was backing his way into the world.

Then it got quiet. Really quiet. I could hear the doctor grunting and the nurses at the warmer whispering. He should have been out and crying by that point. Tremendous pressure was applied to my belly by many sets of hands. Finally, someone called out the time.

10:29

But there was no crying.

I had to ask if he was out. He was, and he was okay, they assured us. My husband craned to see from his station on the stool next to my head. I asked him to go take pictures.

I realize I am not a good judge of time in a tense situation. It was too long before I heard his squeak, then his grunt, then a little cry.

They said he had a tough delivery and that he was a little shocked, but he’d be fine. His lungs weren’t unfurling like they were supposed to, but that could be due to the c-section.

Later, I learned, his head was stuck. Really, really, really stuck. The umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck, tightly. The placenta was at the top of my uterus, so there was a tug of war between my body and the doctor’s hands. The doctor had to rotate his body with his head still inside. His neck had a ring around it from the cord. To get him to breathe, they had to force air into him with the bag.

He needed oxygen, he was burbling tons of fluid, and he wasn’t perky, so they took him to the special care nursery where Archie was admitted. I wouldn’t nurse him for another six hours.

And then, the attention was turned to me. I was having complications of my own. It would be almost two hours until I was patched back together.

There was extensive scarring and adhesions binding my uterus and bladder together in several locations. They had to cut those away. During the process of freeing my bladder, it was cut and began to bleed. A lot. A bleeding, lacerated bladder was never on my radar, but hey. I signed the papers.

They had to fill it with blue dye after they stitched it closed to check for leaks, from what I understand.

About then, my spinal wore off.

I could move my feet and knees. I could feel two sets of hands tugging in opposite directions as they put my uterus, which had been completely OUT, back into my belly. I felt it, expressed my extreme dismay, and the anesthesiologist said he’d take care of it. Goodbye, Gretchen. I took a nap of sorts. I could hear things. I couldn’t open my eyes. I felt no pain after that point because they injected my open area with local anesthetics, apparently.

But we weren’t through!

When the surgical assistants were counting the instruments used during the delivery, they came up with one MORE than they counted before the surgery started. There was some debate over procedure when the count was off. Finally, the doctor, I believe, ordered that an x-ray be taken of my belly to make sure there were no instruments left behind even though there were more than originally accounted for per hospital policy. We had to wait around for a rolling x-ray machine to be brought in and positioned over me. No, I was not trying to smuggle a scalpel out via my handy dandy uterus.

In the meantime, my husband was with Theodore and was anxiously awaiting my arrival via rolling bed. He asked for my whereabouts. A nurse called the recovery room, assuming I would be there. But I wasn’t. There was much worry. He was taken back to the OR, where the doctor came out at one point to give him an update on why it was taking so bloody (ha! see what I did there?) long for them to get done.

Many hours later, the three of us were reunited. He was bathed, dressed, and ready to chow down. It was good. Theodore’s breathing was even and a little juicy, but okay. He latched on after 3 or 4 tries. It was the football hold that did the trick. It always does.

Theodore’s birthday was a doozy of a day. He’s a good, growing, healthy baby boy and I could not be more blessed.

I’ll have a lot of fun with his name, based on the clever title for this post. Here are some photos I took of Theodore before we left the hospital. We came home yesterday.

I am still working on the birth story, which has been hard to corral into neat, punchy paragraphs.

My husband came to me where I carved out my bit of bed. He knelt his body, he knelt his head, and he did what any boy who loved the grand woman of his youth would do. He cried.

She battled Alzheimer’s disease for years. Despite the cruelty of the disease, our memories of her lovely warmth were never diminished. A Saturday morning phone call brought the news she was gone. We hugged and cried with each other. Sometime during the previous evening, the world lost Dorothy and my husband lost Grandma Dodo.

He left to tell the kids, who were downstairs. I remained in bed, where my second week of bedrest was taking a vow to be more patient with our situation. What a strange, bittersweet week for my husband’s family.

His brother and his wife had their first baby on August 3rd. Death dealt a blow on August 6th. I was carrying a little cousin, a little great-grandson, doing my admittedly-fitful best to see it through to a happy ending. It was almost overwhelming to consider how and why these collisions of life and death occur until you are forced to consider that the world would be a terrible place if they never occurred.

Grandma Dodo would have loved her two littlest ones and there is no doubt they would have loved her.

Our baby boy was born on Monday, August 23rd at 10:29am. He needed a name. She has a name, even now. It can never be taken away, but it can be honored.

Dorothy means “gift from God” and Theodore means the same.

We weren’t considering Theodore as a front-running name until she was gone. Then it seemed right and full of gravity—not in the stern sense of the word but in the freedom only gravity can provide. It’s the freedom to look back through years we’ve never lived, but can claim because we were loved by those who came before us. It’s an anchor thrown by people like Grandma Dorothy ahead to the future. We caught it. We caught him.

Miles is Theodore’s middle name. We simply liked it as a middle name with several of our possibilities. Miles also happens to be the name of Grandma Dorothy’s father. I did not know that until after he was named. I like Miles because it makes me think of a journey made by foot. Why I don’t think of a journey made by stroller or chuckwagon or 1967 Dodge Charger, I don’t know.

By foot, by force, by sole propulsion. Though forests, over hills, ever moving. That’s Miles in my big imaginary baby name book.

Our little baby has a name. He also has a birth story, which I will share soon.

Hubby here for Gretchen to announce Mr. Baby backed his way into the world this morning at 10:29. I’m also instructed to give his measurements. 7 lbs and 15 oz. 19 inches long. 14 inch circumference head.

Gretchen and baby had a rough delivery, but both are well. All are tired but sick of bed. I’m sure she’ll post a much more thorough and more eloquently written post within the next couple of days.

Thanks for all your prayers.

I had to go to the hospital today for bloodwork. It was a surreal hour where I was offered 4 wheelchairs by various volunteers and staff members. I declined every offer, but wished in retrospect I had said yes. To all 4.

I could have sat in one, propped my legs in two other chairs, and the fourth chair could have held my purse. I can’t ask my husband to carry my purse. It doesn’t match his shoes.

But no! I had to be like a 12-month-old new walker, showing off each waddling step with a grin. See, world? I walk! Looky me!

We had to go to outpatient admitting first. Sitting on a little end table next to my husband’s waiting room chair was an issue of Ladies Home Journal from August 2004. It featured George and Laura Bush on the cover. I’m thinking about writing a letter to the president of the hospital, asking that a portion of my $40,000 c-section fee be devoted to starting a new subscription to any number of ladies’ magazines. I hear you can get 12 issues for $12 sometimes.

After giving all the pertinent information to the data entry lady in her cubicle, we were pointed in the direction of the lab. Down a hallway, through the main lobby, up the elevator, to the left, to the left, to the right. This is where I was offered one of the wheelchairs. Oh, no! Me walk like big girl. Very big girl.

The lab was far, far, far from outpatient admitting. So far, it was like another hazy white galaxy because they had the August 2010 issue of O Magazine and I guarantee George Bush isn’t mentioned once inside.

My blood was taken. Then the lab tech strapped a hospital bracelet around my wrist, telling me I have to leave it on until I am discharged from the hospital, whenever that may be. I protested, saying I wasn’t really a patient yet. Didn’t matter. They need the code on the bracelet to match the code on the blood and I had no choice. So as of this moment, I on my bed, at home, with a plastic hospital bracelet around my right wrist. I’m thinking someone should be coming through the doorway any second now to take my blood pressure and ask if I’ve sprouted any hemorrhoids.

We left the hospital. My husband wisely and generously offered to fetch the car while I waited on a bench outside. It was lunchtime.

We drove toward home. I flipped through radio stations. ELO’s “Don’t Bring Me Down” was playing. I screamed. It was a freaky moment. On the way to the hospital, it was on 2 other radio stations. Same old song, 3 times, one morning. My husband said we should name the baby “Bruce” because clearly it’s a sign. The line in the song isn’t really “Don’t bring me down, Bruce!” Everyone thinks it’s Bruce, though, so we might get away with it. Then, someday when Mr. Baby asks why his name is Bruce, we can tell him that he was named because a DJ at 103.5 The Fox had a bright idea at nearly the same time the DJs from 99.5 The Mountain and 105.5 Jack FM felt inspired to do likewise.

My husband stopped at my favorite deli to pick up lunch for us and for my mom and the little ones at home. I decided to go inside, rather than wait in the hot car. We ordered everything to go and sat at a table to wait.

Here comes Santa Claus.

The man in line behind us was cultivating the same look as the Jolly Old Elf himself. He was around 70 years old and had a long white curly beard and round wire rimmed glasses. When I first noticed him, I wasn’t sure whether this was a purposeful impersonation until I scrutinized his clothing.

Santa Man was wearing a shirt covered in Snoopy Santas and Charlie Browns holding Christmas trees. He wore red satin shorts.

He noticed me sitting in a chair. We locked eyes, me and Santa. He approached me, reached out his hand, and touched my belly.

“This is job security!” he boomed.

We giggled.

I told Santa about how our younger kids were recently wondering what he does on vacations. He asked how old they were. I listed the ages. Yes, there are 7 of them. Yep, this one makes number 8, I said, patting my belly.

“Holy Cow! You must be a Mormon family!?” We said no.

“Good Catholics, then?” Nope! I thought the “good” preface before Catholics was interesting.

He was completely baffled after that. If not because of religion, what possible reason could we have for wanting so many kids?

I told him it was for the same reason he did his job. Because we love kids.

He opined that I must stay at home and had to know what my husband does for a living in order to support such a large brood. My husband hardly has a glamorous job. We’ve simply learned how to keep costs lowish and not adopt a lifestyle bigger than we can handle. We didn’t get into all of that with Santa because soon he was eying my belly again. This time, he was prognosticating.

“I predict you have 3 weeks left. You’ll have your baby in September!”

Anyone who knows me, who knows what I’ve recently been through, who has paid attention at all? September was the wrong thing to say, right? I said no, we were expecting the baby in August for sure. FOR SURE. I may have said it with enough grit in my voice to be knocked off the Good List forevermore.

To be fair, he had no idea. He said I looked too small to have the baby this month. Everyone at the hospital seemed convinced I was ready to birth in the various hallways and lobbies and cubicles, so thunderous was my stomping waddle.

He left. Our sandwiches came and we left. I regretted I didn’t insist on taking his photo with my phone, which I got out of my purse with that intent early in our conversation. It doesn’t matter.

I know what Santa looks like and what he does on his vacations.

I won’t tell the kids, though. I’ll make something up about Hawaii.