Baby Story

It was Monday morning at around 2:15am. I had settled in at about 1:30am with 3 Unisom sleeping pills and my MP3 music player and headphones trying to get back onto a normal schedule for the work week ahead and had probably been asleep for about 15 minutes when I heard Vicky informing me from the bathroom about something about water and something being broken ("Honey, I think my water may have broken."). I was only slightly conscious when I heard her.

With visions of broken water pipes in the bathroom flooding the carpets I asked, "How can you tell?" to which she replied, "My underwear are wet." With this, I begin wracking my brain trying to figuring out how in the hell pipes break and then get your underpants wet. Did the toilet spring a leak and spray Vicky in the tush? Was a pile of underwear laundry in the path of floodwater?"

Then it clicked. Vicky says my face went beet red, and a smile crept from ear to ear across my face.

We stood and analysed the evidence and convinced ourselves that this wasn't a case of poor bladder control, so I called the OB floor at the hospital and informed the nurse that we would be arriving shortly. We finished packing our baby bag (about 150 lbs of stuff), loaded the car, and were off!

We arrived at the hospital at around 3am and checked her in, and I unloaded the car. The nurse did a test confirming our suspicions. We were having a baby! And I had 3 Unisom in me and 15 minutes of sleep. Great!

They hooked Vicky up to a baby monitor and a contraction monitor so that we could monitor the baby's heart rate and Vicky's contractions. Vicky stuck through the contractions as they increased in intensity until she was between 3.5 and 4cm dilated. This is the minimum required dilation for calling in the anesthesiologist for giving Vicky her epidural (wimp). I was able to squeese in about 2.5 hours of fragmented sleep during this phase. Fortunately for us, our good friend, "Nanna Ev" stopped in in the morning and was able to keep Vicky company while I slept.

FYI, the epidural is a catheter (tiny hollow plastic tube) inserted next to the lower end of the spinal chord via a BIG NASTY NEEDLE. This tube is used to inject a cocktail of drugs which numb the lower half of the body so that the labor contractions are bearable or even painless. The catheter remains in place throughout the labor and delivery so that the cocktail can be altered and/or replenished as needed by the anesthesiologist. The typical procedure is to numb the mother-to-be's lower parts with this epidural then start a drug called petocin in her IV which induces labor contractions and speeds up the labor process. The contractions thin and dilate the opening of the uterus (called the cervix). The cervix must be fully afaced (thinned) and dilated (opened up) before the mother can "push" the baby's head into the birth canal. After the mother is fully dilated, the "active labor" begins which is where the mom starts pushing the baby bit by bit out of her body. This last phase of labor usually takes 1-2 hours and is where moms are notorious for saying, "YOU DID THIS TO ME!!" to their husband.

Anyway...the anesthesiologist arrived and Vicky greeted her with a sincere, "I love you." She completed the procedure at roughly 1:30pm. With Vicky's lower extremities numbed, the petocin was started in Vicky's IV at around 2pm. The nurse informed us that typically the petocin would cause about 1cm dilation per hour but could be more or less. I did the quick math and deduced that she'd be fully dilated at around 8pm.

At 2:45pm the doctor arrived and checked Vicky's cervix to find that she was 9.5cm dilated. She asked for one good push which put her at 10cm. So much for the 1cm/hr nonsense!!

And so began the push/breathe/push phase. Vicky chose her "Closet Monster" stuffed animal as a focal point, so we put him up on the mirror. We tinkered with the placement of the contraction monitor (a device strapped around Vicky's waist that can indicate contractions) so that we could tell when the contractions were occurring because Vicky couldn't feel them (all hail the anesthesiologist!!!). Then we were able to coordinate the voluntary push with the involuntary contraction. The nurse's regular checks indicated progress. Yay us (okay mostly Vicky)!! So far so good.

As the labor progressed, Vicky began feeling nerve pains on her right thigh which were only soothed by pushing. This was our new sign of a contraction; leg hurts = push. Soon, the doctor returned and checked the progress. She then let us know that she suspected that the baby was "sunny side up". To clarify, a baby is supposed to emerge facing the floor. If the baby comes out facing up (sunny side up) the labor is much more difficult, and is typically avoided. So the doctor told us that she could attempt to rotate the baby's head 180 degrees (I would hope that she'd go the right way, too!!), but if this didn't work, they'd have to do a c-section (cut mom open and pull the baby out of the incision). The doc brought in an ultrasound machine so that she could "see" the baby's position, and this confirmed the "sunny side up" hypothesis.

So the plan was to first attempt to rotate the baby's head manually (ouch). Then the plan was to attempt this using a vaccuum extractor. This is just a cup with a tube connected to the bottom. They put the cup on the baby's head and have the husband suck on the tube (just kidding...there's actually a pump that the nurse operates). The suction causes the cup to stick to the baby's head so that the doctor can pull on the baby and even try to turn the head at the same time. The invasive nature of this warranted the epidural to be "topped off" which required the anesthesiologist to be called back in. However, Vicky was having increasingly painful contractions and was not allowed to push. "Where in the hell is that $%#^ing anesthesiologist!!!!????". What happened to the love?

So the anesthesiologist arrived and the epidural was topped off and Vicky again professed her love for the anesthesiologist. They tried the manual turn method. Nope. So they tried the vacuum extractor. Baby went into distress (heart rate dropped in half). To all medical personnel in the room, baby distress is nothing to mess with, so they stopped the vaccuum extractor effort and gave Vicky some oxygen to snort. Baby heart rate went back to normal. At this point, the doctor announced that although she had successfuly rotated the baby's head, they were going to have to do a c-section.

By now, it was about 6pm, Vicky was extraordinarily unhappy, and the nerve pain in her leg was back; the anesthesiologist apparently only topped her off just enough for the head turning procedure (pun intended). I did my best to console her, but the pain, disappointment, and fear were mounting. We had to wait for the OR team to be called in, so Vicky just had to wait. Eventually, they wheeled her out of the room, on to the elevator and toward the operating room. They sent me to a separate room to don my paper goloshes, cap and suit so that I could witness the surgery and birth and offer support for Vicky.

After an extremely anxious and stressful period of 15 minutes of pacing (and watcing Ally McBeal - so sue me! I wanted to find out how Ally unknowingly had a daughter, and it sort of related to my predicament) the nurse arrived to escort me into the operating room. She gave me my mask which I tied to my face, and we went into the room. The doctors had already made considerable progress on Vicky's abdomen. Vicky was very groggy, but she was a real trooper. Not being very squeamish, I split my time between consoling Vicky and peering over the paper screen to observe the progress of the operation.

Eventually, they "hit paydirt". Then they were struggling with trying to grab the baby's head to pull it out. And then...there she was! First her head in its blue and bloody-mucousy glory popped through the wound. I took a picture as they suctioned her nose and mouth. Then they pulled her shoulders through. Then her hips and legs. I hollared, "It's a girl!!!" and took another picture. No nursery redecorating for me, no sir!! She cried! It was 8:11pm.

They cut the cord and quickly wisked little Lydie over to the curtain so that mom could see the blue, bloody, slimy creation for herself! Then they took the little screaming girl over to clean her up and vaccuum out her nose and mouth some more. I took some more pictures. I got to cut the already cut cord...a nice gesture, I guess. They then swaddled her a bit and let me carry her over to mom. They helped me place her on mom's chest. I took a picture. Priceless picture if I do say so myself.

And that was pretty much it. I was a daddy all of the sudden. Vicky was a mommy. They had me carry our newborn daughter down from the 3rd floor operating room to the 2nd floor nurse's station, but the only thing I saw the whole way down was my precious little daughter's face. We could've taken the stairs instead of the elevator for all I know; all I remember was staring uncontrollably at Lydie's beautiful little face while floods of realizations saturated my mind. It will undoubtedly go down as the best moment of my life.

So they weighed iddy biddy Lydie: 8 lb 0.1 oz. They stretched her out in a basin with markings along the bottom: 19.25 inches long. I counted her fingers and toes: 5 per hand, 5 per foot. Two eyes, a nose, mouth, cheeks, chin, two ears, and light brown hair all perfectly arranged. They had me clean her umbilical cord, put on a diaper (only 9,999 to go!), and then put on her first outfit. I answered, "I don't care." to the "What color outfit?" question with the defense that this was Vicky's area. So Lydie wore yellow first. That's Grandma Kenamond's favorite color, so that's just fine.

I was then able to go up and finally set my mind at ease by seeing how Vicky was doing. She was out of surgery and everything had gone just fine. She was very tired and informed me that after Lydie and I left, she'd slept through the remainder of the surgery. Sleep? What's that?

After seeing that she was doing well, I went back down to start calling friends and family with the wonderful news. Eventually, they wheeled her back down to our room so that she could see her daughter all clean and dressed.

It was all over. It hadn't gone necessarily as planned, but the outcome was as good as anyone could have imagined.