"I'll meet up with you in a little while, Steph. I'm gonna stop downstairs first." It's our lunch hour now and while I am pretty hungry, my mind is on one thing and one thing only. I honestly didn't expect today to be as tough as it's turning out to be. I really did miss working. I missed the smell of adhesive bandages and god, I really missed having blood on my hands. But more than I missed work for the last three weeks, I've missed my kid for the last five hours. I stick my pager in my pocket and carelessly jog down the flight of steps, opposite the way Steph just went to get to the cafeteria. Earlier today, I heard Alex talking to Meredith about how he wanted to go down around lunch time to go see her too and Dr. Grey told him that they don't let the adults come and go into the daycare because it's tough on the kids. Well oh well, I'm going to go see my child. They're not going to tell me that I can't come in and see my child. While I'm running down the steps, I sling my arm across my body and hold my chest so my boobs don't fly all over the place since they already ache pretty badly.
I miss my baby so much. I've spent the last three weeks sitting at home taking care of her. Boards are next month so I don't want to fall too far behind, otherwise I would've taken a much longer maternity leave than three weeks. After spending three weeks in the house with my baby, it was so hard to leave her this morning. It was so hard to trust somebody else to take care of her while I work. Nobody can take care of her the way I can but I just had to place my trust in these strangers to take care of my baby while I can't. It was actually the weirdest thing I've ever experienced this morning because while she was sleeping soundly in her car seat, I was crying at the thought of leaving her. It was just weird how I was crying and she was sleeping. They don't tell you how screwed up your body gets after having a baby. They don't tell you that your boobs ache and throb. Nobody told me that my boobs were going to leak and my nipples were going to crack and bleed. I expected to hurt down below my waist because after all, I pushed a baby out. But my butt hurts too. Three weeks after giving birth and my butt still hurts. Having a baby is no joke. Don't get me wrong; I love my baby with every bone in my body and from the moment they put her on my chest, I was in love. But I'm not having anymore babies for a very long time. My body needs a good two or so years to recover and plus, me and Alex need a while to enjoy our first and only baby. I pull open the yellow and green door to the daycare and walk inside. It's quiet in here which means that it's probably nap time. It's never quiet in daycare...ever.
"Hey." I greet the same lady that helped me sign in this morning at the front desk. The lady smiles at me and starts typing something into the computer she's sitting in front of. I think she's typing in the code to buzz me in which oddly enough, makes me feel somewhat comfortable. Even though I don't like the idea of my baby being taken care of by a bunch of strangers, I will admit that the hospital has the daycare pretty secure. The door in front of me buzzes and when it does, I take it upon myself to open it up. "Thank you." I thank the woman and she raises her hand at me and waves. I shut the door behind myself and walk down the pastel pink hallway. There are two hallways in the daycare; the toddler hallway is blue and the baby hallway is pink. I make my way to the door that leads into the baby room and open it up. As soon as I walk in the door, I see Alex standing next to a rocking chair with his arms full of the little purple bundle I dropped off this morning.
The daycare workers don't even bother to tell me that I can't be here because I warned them this morning that I was coming back to see my baby at lunchtime. Not to mention, if they kick me out, they have to kick Alex out as well and for some reason, everyone in the hospital loves him. Probably because he's "devilishly handsome", in his own words. Call me crazy or weird, whatever. But my arms are starting to twitch. When I see my beautiful, brown-haired baby sleeping in her daddy's arms, my own arms start to twitch just a little. I can't wait to have her in them. Like I said, I've spent three whole weeks at home holding her, nursing her, rubbing her back, listening to her cry. It's just strange not to have her in my arms. With my hands in my pockets, I walk over to Alex and put my head on his arm. "Hey you two..." I greet my two favorite people in the world with a smile. Alex takes his eyes off the baby and looks at me for a brief moment and smiles. "You beat me here." I put my arm around his waist.
"Yeah, I got outta surgery and had ten minutes until lunch, so I just figured..." He looks down at her with so much love in his eyes. He's really good with her. I had no doubt in my mind that he would be good with our children because he's just amazing with the kids he works with every day. But it's a totally different feeling to see him with our kid. "I was missing her and she's actually here with me, you know? It's the first time she's actually been in the same building as me when I started missing her." He has his index finger rested in the palm of her tiny little hand and he strokes her fingers with his thumb. "How are you doing?" He checks on me.
"I'm alright. My chest is kind of achy, so..." I shrug my shoulders. "But that's it." I reach my hand over to her face and gently press my finger to the inside corner of her closed eye and pick off an eye-booger. Of course me and Alex made a beautiful baby but every time I look at her, she's even more beautiful than the last time I looked at her. She has perfect eyebrows, perfect pink skin, chubby cheeks and a chubby little body. She had a well-baby appointment last week and they told me that she's a little bit overweight but it's only because I nurse her. "What kind of cool surgeries did you have today?"
"Eh... umbilical hernia repair on a two year old, bowel obstruction on a four year old...nothing real cool today. It's been slow." He puts his lips to the top of her forehead and rocks her back and forth. "I would much rather hang out here with you, though...yes I would." Like a natural, he pats her on her butt and bounces her up and down very softly. "What about you? What's your first day back been like?"
"Charting, mostly. Catching up on some things. Dr. Bailey thinks I need to brush up on the basics so really, all I've been doing is placing central lines all day." I take my hands out of my pockets and prep my arms to hold her. "Alright, it's my turn...give her to me. Mama needs a moment."
"Go away." He turns his back towards me and hogs our baby all to himself. "You've been with her all day every day for the last three weeks. It's daddy's turn."
"Alex, I came down here to see her too. Gimme. You had your turn, lemme see her." This actually isn't the first time we and Alex have fought over her. We fight over her all the time, actually. I would probably lose my mind with twins but sometimes I wish I had twins so I wouldn't have to share one baby with him. He always just wants to hold her all the time. Even when I'm sitting in the rocking chair at home nursing her, he wants to take her off me and hold her. She's spoiled between the two of us—really spoiled. She only sleeps in our arms. If we put her in the crib, she'll scream bloody murder. "Give her here. She wants me."
"Bull. She loves her daddy." He kisses her pacifier and keeps rocking her.
"Fine. But she's all mine when we get home." I raise up on my tiptoes and kiss him on his cheek before I turn to leave the daycare so I can go eat lunch.
"Yeah, we'll see." He chuckles.