I'm an Aunt!

My sister had a beautiful baby girl, Samantha, at 11:18pm last night.

When I found out, I totally lost it.

Mom and I had gone down to the hospital at around 6 in the evening. Sis was having contractions about 2-3 minutes apart, in some pain, but overall not doing too badly. They had started at around 7am and progressed steadily since then. Her DH left for a while when we arrived to get something to eat, and to make calls to various other family members, so Mom and I sat and watched the contraction monitor and baby's heart-rate monitor with rapt attention. So cool! Oh, and we held sis's hand and gave her back rubs and the like as well. When DH returned, it was our turn to go and have a bite.

We got back up to the room at 7:30, and they had just given her the epidural. A CSC epidural which acts almost immediately - no 20 minute wait for this doctor! Worked like a charm for a few minutes, but then she started feeling uncomfortable (as if she had to poop) and getting pains in her back side. The doctor had also examined her just before we came back, and said she was only 2-3 cm dilated (what she had been at her 5:30 exam). The nurses said that based on how dilated she was, and how little she was progressing, she wouldn't be giving birth until the morning. So we hung around until about 10, then she started napping, and we figured we'd go back to her house and nap too.

So we went 'home', had a cuppa tea, and headed to bed. Almost 11 by this time. An hour later the phone rang, and DH said "Nico, you're an Aunt!" (As opposed to an uncle which I would have been were it a boy ;-). So we headed back to the hospital. Me crying almost the entire way.

I was happy. No doubt about it. But at the same time, I felt SO left out. I was left out of the whole pregnancy, which we were supposed to do together, and now I wasn't there when she had the baby, which was the only part I could really participate in. Couldn't stop crying. We got to the hospital and went back upstairs, I was managing to hold myself together, but barely. When we saw sis and Sami, I totally lost it. So Mom took care of Sami while sis took care of me. Not the other way round.

Apparently the doctor *finally* came in to check her at 11pm, and said "whoa, you're at 10 cm! Push!" So there was no time for DH to call us. The baby was out fifteen minutes later! So apparently the pains she had been feeling were because the baby was coming down so fast, not, as one nurse had suggested, because the baby was on her back.

Sis was totally apologetic, which I told her was ridiculous. NOT her fault. It was the stupid doctor who didn't bother to check on her for over three hours. I'm so very sad that I missed out on seeing Sam take her first breath, and first cry. Like I said, it was something that I had been thinking I would be part of, and then that was taken away from me as well.

I had called M to tell him that we're Aunts just before we went upstairs, and couldn't really do it without the 'I'm about to cry' voice. You know what I mean. So he asked what was wrong and I said I would tell him later. When we got back to the house a few hours later I called him to talk. SO not helpful. You all know what I needed - I needed him to tell me that he understood, that it sucked, that it wasn't fair, and to comfort me. Instead he tried to explain to me how I was silly to feel the way I did. Thank you so very very much. Way to make me feel better! Nico, you're really being a bitch for feeling the way you do, can't you just be happy? Argh!

And like I said, it's not at all that I'm not happy. I am. Spent a few hours cuddling with Sami while sis slept this morning, she's a treasure. But it doesn't make me feel any less cheated. Of any of it.