The morning after my last entry, I woke up with contractions and headed for the birthing center. After a heavily medicated two night hospital stay, a week of heavily medicated bedrest at home, another hospital stay, and one last day at home, I finally had the baby. It's been quite a learning experience: Magnesium Sulfate isn't as bad as everyone led me to expect, at least not for me. Terbutaline is the most miserable stuff on the planet. C-sections are not easier to recover from than natural childbirth...
And don't go to the hospital without knitting!
Quinn was in the special care nursery for 18 days, and once I was discharged from the hospital myself, I spent endless hours in a room upstairs, waiting for it to be time to go down and try to feed him. I knew everything I needed wasn't in my knitting bag, and I wasn't even sure exactly where in the house the bag was, so I couldn't get my husband to bring it to me. He did bring me the Michael's ad from the Sunday paper, though.
I'd sit there in the special care nursery, trying to figure out the construction of the little knit hat that my baby was wearing and wishing I could make him something myself. From our little alcove, I had a perfect view of a big basket of knitted hats.
A couple of days later, Mom went shopping and got me three skeins of Woolease in gorgeous colors and a new set of Lion Brand DPNs which I was surprised to discover are a lot easier to knit with than my bamboo set. I've gotta get more of those! I made him a hat that afternoon, but without a pattern, it left a lot to be desired. Everyone made fun of that hat! But what do you expect from a new mommy with no pattern or measuring tape?
One of the nurses did offer to let me borrow some hats and try to figure out a pattern from them, but I called my daughter and had her pull together my notebook of patterns that I'd printed off the web and my WIPs. Pretty soon, I had yarn piled all over my hospital room. And it really did help me feel better. I made a waffle stitch hat for the baby, then cast on the Cathedral Window Shawl and got more than half of it finished before I decided that I needed to frog back and figure out how to make my windows on the second half look the same as the ones I'd started out with. It was a good start, and I love what I've got done so far.
So does Mom, who'd like one just like it for Christmas. And thinks my sister would too. If there were more days left til Christmas, or more hours in the day, or I had a little more energy, I'd love to make them shawls. But it'll have to wait until next year. And it'll have to be a different pattern, because I can't imagine doing this one three times.
Michelle
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