All happy births are alike

Steven: I wish I could say it was a happy birth.

First, the end: Aaron Gilbert Hair Ralston, known as "Gil", was born at 7:46am on 8/4/10 (Barack Obama, Calvin Chou, Louis Armstrong, and Percy Bysshe Shelley have the same natal day). He is beautiful, sweet, perfect, and already loved (too?) much by all of us, even Kofi. It's hard not to bond with babies, even before the legal stuff has been finalized. Trying to enclose ourselves in a protective shell in case LeSahre has a change of heart is difficult, at best. The baby is in your arms, you hold it, feel it breathing, you smell its cleaner than clean, fresher than fresh smell, and how do you stop from falling in love? I remember it with Kofi. And it's happening again with Gil.

But poor LeSahre. A victim of substandard obstetrics intersecting with discrimination against the mentally ill (my conclusion, sociologist that I am) led to a cesarean section (this would have been her 7th vaginal delivery) when she was halfway through her labor. Not that she was completely innocent: she was belligerent and abusive, but how much of that was her and how much was inappropriate use of pain medications (What?? Doctors misusing drugs? Say it ain't so!) we will never know. So now she is recovering from a surgery she probably didn't need. The obstetrician (surprise, surprise) was arrogant and as far as I can tell, the nurses were not advocating for her.

Or for us, for that matter. It was a fairly isolating experience as adoptive parents. Until we started being able to see the baby (which didn't happen until he was almost 4 hours old -- can you imagine??), we were pretty much ignored by everyone.

I hope it doesn't lead to LeSahre being angry (she doesn't deal well with anger, I'm afraid) and I hope she doesn't take her anger out on us or the baby and that she follows through on her commitment to the adoption. Marcus, her husband, seems to be on board still, and even LeSahre, in a haze of narcotics and antipsychotics after the surgery, expressed her desire once more to see us have this baby be part of our family.

So, we're trying not to bond, but are helplessly bonding nonetheless. Trying not to be to excited, but barely able to post pictures to Facebook and Gmail fast enough. As I said to Martha this evening: the only problem with getting our hopes up is that they'll be dashed: but, I think we can handle that. We already have the best family imaginable. The family with Gil will just be unimaginably better.