The Birth & Aftermath

Chronology

Deb­bie start­ed hav­ing fre­quent con­trac­tions on Sat­ur­day morn­ing at 5am. We went to the hos­pi­tal lat­er that after­noon to see what was up, the con­trac­tions were about 5 min­utes apart. We get to the hos­pi­tal and, of course, they slow down. After exam­i­na­tion, Deb­bie was still only about 2cm, so they sent us home. She was still hav­ing con­trac­tions, and we’d told the con­trac­tor work­ing on our house that we would­n’t be back for a few days, so we stayed at her par­ents house. We did­n’t get much sleep though, as con­trac­tions con­tin­ued through­out the night, increas­ing grad­u­al­ly in pain. Sun­day morn­ing we went back to the hos­pi­tal and found out that Deb­bie was at 4cm. Go time. 13 hours lat­er: Abra­ham.

Cal­cu­lat­ing labor time is not exact. Tech­ni­cal­ly we could count it from when she start­ed hav­ing her con­trac­tions ear­ly Sat­ur­day morn­ing, a 44 hour labor, but I was told that hos­pi­tals usu­al­ly count labor from 4cm, which would make the labor the afore­said 13 hours. I’m inclined to go with labor last­ing from the first signs of preg­nan­cy through the birth, because it appears to be work the entire time. Deb­bie was cer­tain­ly doing quite a bit of work start­ing Sat­ur­day morn­ing. Labor, in gen­er­al, burns about 1000 calo­ries an hour. Deb­bie’s labor plan was to keep her options open. The inten­tion was a nat­ur­al child­birth if at all pos­si­ble. Since she likes being in the tub, we aimed for a water­birth at first. The only prob­lem was that Abra­ham’s head had entered the pelvis a bit crooked. This stuck things for a few long [exhaust­ing] hours. The pain was increas­ing and her ener­gy lev­el was wan­ing, so she took a lit­tle Nubain to take the edge off. Being in the tub was help­ing, but after awhile it slows labor down. Even­tu­al­ly we got out of the tub alto­geth­er, because Deb­bie had no ener­gy left and asked for an epidur­al.

After the epidur­al, we both took a brief nap before things got going again. She was already at 10cm so it was push­ing time, for almost three hours. Deb­bie got the head very close, but it seemed to get stuck again, so Colleen, the most excel­lent mid­wife sug­gest­ed using a bit of suc­tion to get him crowned. She left, and Deb­bie decid­ed she want­ed to do it on her own, and with the roar­ing encour­age­ment of the nurs­ing staff, man­aged to get the baby crown­ing by the time Colleen came back with the doc­tor.

I stopped hold­ing Deb­bie’s legs, stopped keep­ing her focused, stopped feed­ing her pop­si­cles, and put on my catcher’s mitt. It was time to catch the baby. What looked like a ten­nis ball was already crowned, I thought, “Oh, he’s almost here”, and then after anoth­er push, a HUGE, blue-pur­ple, soft­ball-sized head popped out. My thoughts were now noth­ing more than inar­tic­u­late gib­ber­ings of shock and joy. The cord was­n’t wrapped com­plete­ly around his neck, but it was against it, and there was quite a bit of meco­ni­um, so Colleen cleaned his nose and mouth before I pulled him the rest of the way out.

My son was then tak­en from me. Tak­en. From me. But they gave him to Deb­bie, which is okay, I guess. I cut the cord with one snip. It is tough like a fleshy elec­tri­cal cord. They whisked him away to the warmer while I heard him start to scream lusti­ly. I don’t real­ly remem­ber what I told Deb­bie, but I went over to “check out” the baby. What I was real­ly doing was guard­ing him. Guard­ing my son. He was bright red and squalling. A beau­ti­ful, healthy boy. I looked over just in time to see the pla­cen­ta plop out of Deb­bie. I was­n’t much inter­est­ed in the pla­cen­ta, so I hung out with my son for a bit before going back to Deb­bie and get­ting a few pic­tures. I want­ed a good shot of me deliv­er­ing the baby, but with all of the excite­ment, it did­n’t turn out that way.

Deb­bie’s par­ents came over that night to meet lit­tle Abra­ham. We end­ed up going to sleep around 3, only to be wok­en for pok­ing and prod­ding around 7. The first day in the hos­pi­tal went quite well. The staff, includ­ing the stu­dents, were help­ful and com­pas­sion­ate. The sec­ond day, though, was hell. Deb­bie had been up until 5 try­ing to feed the baby and was com­plete­ly out of ener­gy. Our morn­ing start­ed with a bar­rage of loud knocks on our door, and a male stu­dent who was any­thing but qui­et for 7 in the morn­ing. Peo­ple were pok­ing and prod­ding Deb­bie for most of the morn­ing and after­noon. She was exhaust­ed and all she need­ed was peo­ple to lis­ten to her when she expressed her needs. Instead, when she said she was dizzy, they start­ed ask­ing too many ques­tions and just made things worse. All she need­ed was food. Which took about 2 hours to arrive. We’d been men­tion­ing to peo­ple all day that she was­n’t get­ting any rest because of all the check­ups. At one point she was lec­tured by a nurse that she should be sleep­ing when the baby sleeps; which she can’t very well do with peo­ple wak­ing her up every half hour. Even­tu­al­ly she was so tired that she start­ed cry­ing when a nurse asked, for about the mil­lionth time that day, how her bot­tom felt on a scale of 1 to 10. The nurse imme­di­ate­ly asked Deb­bie if she had a his­to­ry of depres­sion in her fam­i­ly. That set Deb­bie off. “I’m just TIRED!” she yelled. Evi­dent­ly after the nurse left, she final­ly spread the word [appar­ent­ly the Do Not Dis­turb sign on our door was­n’t a clue to them] and we stopped get­ting inces­sant vis­i­tors. It only took about 12 hours. Pret­ty much the only upside to the day was a vis­it from my mom. She came up for a cou­ple of hours to meet her grand­son and it was great to see her.

We let the baby go to the nurs­ery for most of the night so that we could catch some shut eye. He got bot­tle-fed once through the night so the upshot was that we got to sleep for about 6 hours, straight. I could­n’t wait to get the hell out of the hos­pi­tal by this point, they had a hide-a-bed that was lumpi­er than a toad­’s back and was too short and angled to sleep on com­fort­ably. My neck and back are killing, but it was nice to be allowed to stay in the room with Deb­bie and Abra­ham. I’d been out mak­ing errand end runs to home and the gro­cery, since Deb­bie is now hun­gri­er than when she was preg­nant. We made it out of the hos­pi­tal a bit after noon, and the day was much more relaxed after that.

Miscellaneous

We did­n’t get Abra­ham cir­cum­cised. Appar­ent­ly only 50% of boys get cir­cum­cised any­more, it is more tra­di­tion­al than med­ical. No one has vehe­ment­ly dis­agreed with our deci­sion apart from a few of my cowork­ers.

Let­ting Abra­ham sleep on and next to me makes me real­ize just how much I am an ani­mal. To him I must seem this great, fur­ry breath­ing source of com­fort and pro­tec­tion, when I nuz­zle him I remind myself of all of those nature doc­u­men­taries where crit­ters care for their young. I’ve got one for myself now, and the chal­lenge of father­hood suits me well. I’d been want­i­ng a new dif­fi­cult and mean­ing­ful chal­lenge in my life. I love him.

Sleep­dep is already in full effect. Abra­ham only needs fed about twice dur­ing the night, but it isn’t that easy. If he does eat right away, that takes about half an hour, fol­lowed by burp­ing, pos­si­ble dia­per chang­ing and get­ting the lit­tle feller asleep. Then we have a chance to use the restroom and grab a bite to eat our­selves. By the time all that is tak­en care of, it is pret­ty much time to feed him again. And that’s only if things run smooth­ly. Some­times he won’t latch, will fuss because he’s too hun­gry to sleep and too tired to eat, or just because 10pm and 3am were his favorite times to par­ty in the womb. I’m get­ting the idea that I’ll nev­er catch up on sack time.