She’s here! Deignan Njeri Kristin Cleage Lomax! Our daughter was born this morning at 10:37, weighing in at a solid 7 lbs. 11 oz. When Dr. Borders held her up, she was so tiny and blue! Then Dr. Borders says, “Cry for your mama!” and the baby takes a big breath and cries. The blue goes away and she’s red. They wipe her off and wrap her up and hand her to me and she is awake and looking around at everything at ten minutes old! Babies of drugged mothers don’t do that!
I love that she was born on Kris’s birthday! Everything went great. I’m exhausted but hyper as hell. Michael did great. He was right with me the whole time. Dr. Borders was wonderful. All the breathing and natural childbirth stuff really works. I didn’t have any drugs until she had to sew up my episiotomy. I was so excited I was telling jokes and laughing. “Dr. Borders,” I said, “did you know that in some cultures they bury the afterbirth in the yard outside the house?” “Well,” she said, stitching me up like an efficient little tailor, “we don’t do that at Holy Family Hospital.” That cracked me up. She’s so serious! The mayor announced Deignan’s birth on the radio this morning and then came by to bring flowers and offer congratulations, which impressed everybody at the hospital. Daddy brought me a picture of the new Playgirl magazine with Jim Brown’s naked photo in it. “Just put this where the nurses can see it,” he said. “You’ll have more helpers coming in than you know what to do with!”
I’m so glad she’s a girl! All the traditional ways of telling whether the child you’re carrying is going to be a boy or a girl (hang a needle on a string and see if the point or the eye turns toward the mother; rest a needle on a saucer of water and see whether the point or the eye turns toward the mother, etc.) said she was a boy. I was going to name her Langston (after Langston Hughes) Albert (after my dad) Lomax (after her dad). But she’s a girl! So her name is Deignan (a Michael family name) Njeri (because I wanted her to have an African name) Kristin (because she was born on Kris’s birthday) Cleage (after me!) and Lomax (after her dad). When I wrote the name on her birth certificate, the nurse said, “Well, I guess you can’t have any more children.” That freaked me out. “What?” I said, and she laughed. “You used up all your names on this one, didn’t you?”
Welcome to the world, little baby! We’ve been waiting for you!!