This Was Us

A few weeks ago, Tim and I were watching a Tivo'd episode of This is Us, and although we've kind of had a love/hate (or love to hate it) relationship with the show these last couple seasons, we keep coming back. It has its moments, notwithstanding all the melodrama and this season's emphasis on COVID precautions obviously intended for the benefit of us dummies. What I've always found compelling about the show is the way they take kind of ordinary moments in the life of the family and make a whole episode out of it, between the two generations and among the three siblings. I like thinking about what's changed over time. This most recent episode was about the first time going home with a new baby/babies, then and now. It alternated among four couples as they began their day in a hospital room and then embarked on a long, angsty trip home that would last most of the hour-long episode.

As we watched we had a nice trip down memory lane, remembering the day we left the hospital with Delaney in 2007. When the nurse told Jack and Rebecca (in 1980) with a wink that she would be leaving the room for a minute and they might want to help themselves to all the diapers, I recalled that we were told we were welcome to all the diapers in the room, but with no winks. They were included with the cost of the hospital stay. I said I also didn't think nurses wore scrubs in 1980; here's a picture of my Aunt Liz in her starchy white nurse's uniform (in 1979) in my baby photo album. A quick Google search tells me that nurses switched over to wearing scrubs in the '80s. Maybe they started phasing out the white uniform in the late '70s -- it wouldn't surprise me at all if Liz had been one of the last holdouts. I should ask her sometime.

Just home from the hospital; Mom was taking care of me and Liz was taking care of Mom. I love it. I also love Mom's blouse and Liz's perfect posture.

On the show, Jack (then) and Kevin (present day) bumbled haplessly as they tried to install car seats. Tim chuckled, remembering how he had his police officer friend Brian install our car seat base. He watched, hoping to learn a thing or two. "That's it?" he asked once he was done. He'd expected it to be complicated. "That's it," Brian said. I remember Tim telling me that Brian had also said that when we put her in the seat, we should cinch the straps down as tight as they'd go, maybe being able to fit one finger underneath.

Tim and I, miles away from and blissfully ignorant of, the challenges and the humbling messiness of raising actual children, approached impending parenthood like Marines with a checklist. If you'll excuse a bit of campiness here, preparing for a baby was like preparing for a deployment, an operation, exercise or PCS (permanent change of station). The flesh-and-blood baby still gestating inside me was an abstract concept, impossible to imagine as reality, even with all the kicks and rolls I was feeling. Unable to fathom what was really about to unfold, we still thought of her more as an event to be ready for than a child. The months ticked by, my belly grew, and we did all the things one does to get ready for a baby (probably not limited to this list): go to appointments, get maternity clothes, set up the nursery, get all the gear, attend childbirth classes, attend breastfeeding classes, have the car seat base installed by a certified technician, and make the most of the freedom we had left. By the end of my pregnancy, there was only one item left uncrossed, and that was the hospital tour. As we checked into Labor and Delivery the morning of July 8, my water having broken hours earlier, Tim joked, "I guess this is the tour."

Two days later, having completed another checklist -- the one for discharge -- I was told someone would be there shortly with a wheelchair. Earlier that morning, I had wheeled Delaney in her little bassinet to the nursery so that I could have a shower and make myself feel human again. I'd shampooed and conditioned. I'd brushed my hair and applied some makeup -- foundation for my blotchy skin, a generous amount of concealer underneath my bloodshot eyes, a little mascara for what it was worth. I put on one of my stretchy maternity tops, and if I had to guess what I wore on bottom, it would have been my boot-cut yoga pants from Victoria's Secret. They were the comfiest. Our new daughter, having been fed and changed, was bundled into the infant car seat that she had been deemed that morning just big enough to go home in. A nurse had made two attempts at strapping her in while I watched with bated breath. If she wouldn't fit, what then? We had watched the Shaken Baby Syndrome video, and I'd dutifully recorded all her feedings in the log they'd made me keep for the past 48 hours. We'd been visited by my OB and her pediatrician that morning, and both of us had been pronounced fit to be released out into the world. Tim was loading up the car with everything we'd brought, along with all my hospital swag which included Similac samples, a diaper bag, my sitz bath that fit in the toilet seat, peri bottle, witch hazel pads, Dermoplast, little donut pillow, and of course all the free diapers.

"Shortly" ended up being around two hours. There was a knock at the door and someone with a wheelchair. I lowered myself gingerly onto the seat, and the car seat containing Delaney was placed in my lap. We were wheeled out the door and out of Labor and Delivery, down a hallway, through a lobby, to an elevator, and then out the automatic doors that led to the parking level of St. Vincent Hospital in Worcester, Massachusetts. I remember being a little dazed as I was pushed out the door and into the rest of our life. The sun was so hot on my face after the climate controlled environment of the hospital. We waited for a minute or two at the curb, and it was just like waiting to be picked up at the airport.

Tim drove up in our Jeep Liberty and got out. He took the car seat from me and clipped it into its expertly installed base. I was transferred without incident from the wheelchair to the car. I got in the backseat next to her, because I'd watched shows like A Baby Story and Bringing Home Baby for years, and it just seemed like the thing to do. Delaney would not be alone in the backseat for her maiden voyage. Then we were off. 

We stopped at the Subway on 122A in Millbury for lunch to go. This would never happen today. In the intervening years, Tim has become a complete snob when it comes to fast food. Fortunately he's also a great cook! Nowadays he'd just take me home and whip up a feast. If sandwiches were what I was in the mood for, they'd be done right, with a foil-wrapped brick as a makeshift panini maker. But 13 years ago, Subway was still good enough for us. 

The rest of the ride home was quick and uneventful. I watched our baby's face a lot. It was so crazy that she was actually here! Her brows sometimes knitted in her sleep as if with worry, and her face was framed by all that dark hair. The hospital-issue snot bulb was tucked into the fabric of the seat, ready for me to grab if it was needed.

Things had gone according to plan, albeit a couple weeks earlier than expected. My labor and birth had been routine, even though I certainly didn't think of it as such; and we returned home the same three souls that had had left for the hospital two days earlier. On the show, Rebecca had gone through something way more traumatic and earth-shattering than I had, what with the birth of triplets, the death of one of them, and then adoption of another; still, when she said upon arriving home, "I feel like a different person than I was the last time I got in this car," I couldn't have agreed more.