Since it's Saturday night and I have nothing better to do, I thought that I'd give you guys the recap of us having our kid. Not that you care, but you've been bitching about no one else contributing, so watch out what you ask for.
3:30 AM - Katie wakes me up telling me that she is having contractions. Tells me that her water broke at 2:30AM and she's been timing the contractions for the last hour. Bless her for letting me sleep, but I could not be more confused at this point. The doctors tell you that you have to be having contractions for a while and they have to be coming pretty frequently before you call them. I guess that they get a lot of people coming in and actually send a lot of them home, because they could be in labor for hours before it really gets to the point where they need to act. From 3:30 AM to about 4:00AM I am get up, get dressed, get my contacts in, and try to figure out just what the fuck is going on.
4:15 AM - We call the OB/GYN and let her know the deal and they we are headed to the hospital. She confirms everything and OKs us to head to the hospital.
4:30 AM - Leave for the hospital. It's not really as hectic as the movies would make you believe, but contractions sound to me like Katie is getting stabbed every 10 minutes. Doubling over in pain--not screaming--but it really looks like it hurts. The nice thing about going into labor at 4:30AM is that there really isn't much traffic on the roads. Which is a real bonus if you know anything about the DC area rush hour. I'm debating in my head how fast I can drive without Katie noticing that we are speeding excessively. Turns out that you can go just about as fast as you want when you wife is in labor, but I settle in at about 90 mph.
5:00 AM - We're checked into the hospital and in the labor and delivery room. The nurse checks Katie out and says that she's 5 cm dilated. You gotta get to 10 cm to deliver the kid, so we're actually doing pretty well. BTW, you don't want to know how they check to see how dilated you are.
6:00 AM - Contractions are coming pretty fast and furious, so they call for the epidural. Probably about 6 cm at this point.
6:30 AM - 7 cm and moving fast at this point. Guy comes in for the epidural and has somewhat of a hard time with it. An epidural is when they inject the painkiller via a big-ass needle directly into the spine in the small of your back--just above where the slut tattoo would be. I get queasy around needles, so this guy repeatedly sticking a big needle into my wife's back is not good times for the home team. He gets it to go just in the nick of time, for me and Katie. He promises that it will take effect within 15 minutes, and damn if he isn't right on.
6:45 AM - Sitting pretty. Epidural has kicked in, and we're at about 8 cm. The thing about the epidural is that it slows down the contractions, so the OB/GYN stops in around this time and checks everything out. She predicts that we'll have the kid by noon.
7:00 AM - Calls go out to family members, contractions slow and the pain is minimal. Better living through chemistry.
9:00 AM - Katie's mom shows up. Katie stops reading US Weekly long enough to talk to her mom and they discuss how hard she had it when she had Katie. Blah, blah, blah. I'm tuning out and wondering if there are any hot nurses in this place.
10:00 AM - OB/GYN (Dr. Anderson) comes in and tells us that she's got a hysterectomy (sp?) and she'll be back by 11 AM to deliver the kid. Still sticking to the noon prediction.
11:30 AM - She shows back up and we start to push. The only way I can describe it is that it's like trying to take a dump if you were really constipated. Imagine trying to take a 6-8 pound dump. (Might be easier for some of us to imagine than others--Derek, I'm looking in your direction.)
12:00 PM - No baby, but we're making progress. Looks like we'll have something within the hour. OB/GYN (Dr. Anderson) leaves and another doc from her practice tags in. I've heard about the "hot doctor" and here she is. Dr. Manaavi is probably 40-43 years old, 5' 8", 125 lbs, and blonde. She's not stopping traffic, but she definitely is hot.
1:00 PM - No baby, and we're starting to wonder what is going on. The baby's head gets right to the end when Katie pushes and then, when she stops, the baby goes back a couple of inches. We do this back and forth for the next couple of hours.
2:30 PM - They tell us that we've been pushing for about 3 hours and they usually don't let people push more than 2 hours. We're getting to the point where we need to make a C-section decision. It's something that we wanted to avoid, but it looks like it's increasingly likely.
3:00 PM - We've tried just about everything and we can't figure out what's going on. It seems like something is holding her back and the doctor guesses that the cord may be wrapped around her arm or something and may not be letting her out. We schedule for a C-section and they wheel her to the OR.
3:30 PM - Katie's in the OR getting prepped and I'm in the hallway pulling the paper scrubs over my clothes and waiting for the nurse to let me into the OR. They let me in and I try not to look at the incision. There are 2-3 nurses around Katie plus the doctor, with nurses walking around doing all kinds of other things. Add in an anathesologist (sp?) and we're talking about approx. 8 people in the room doing all kinds of things. I walk in and Katie is gulping for air like a fish out of water. The anathesologist assures me that she is OK, but it looks like she's had the wind knocked out of her. Scary as shit. Turns out the epidural wore off and they had to give her what they call a "spinal", which is another shot directly into the spine. The catch is that they put it up around the area between the shoulder blades and it means that you can't feel yourself breath. Scary, but she's getting enough oxygen and the feeling will wear off in a minute or so.
3:38 PM - Sydney is born! The doctor pull her out and holy shit, it's a bloody mess. We didn't find out the sex, so the doc hold her up and asks me if it's a boy or girl. First of all, newborns are this weird purple color until they breathe a couple of times to get oxygen and pink up. Second, they are covered in blood and this weird white-ish crap that protects their skin while they are in the womb. Third, she's got the cord draped between her legs and into Katie's gut. With all of this, I'm supposed to tell you if it's a boy or a girl?!?!? "It's a...girl?" I say/ask timidly. Correct answer! As I stand up to follow her to the clean-up area, I sneak a peek into the incision. Wow. I won't go into it here, but it's amazing to see the insides of another person.
BTW, it turns out that the cord was wrapped around her neck twice and that's what was holding her up. Yikes.
4:30 PM - Katie is out and in the recovery area and they leave us with the baby. Just weird and surreal. They really are just leaving us here with this kid? One of us just had major surgery, and the other one barely knows which end of the baby to hold up. This is already looking like it might end in disaster.
7:00 PM - We are checked into our recovery room--what an experience. And it's just begun.
So that's what I've been doing for the last three weeks or so...
4 comments:
funny how two years ago, i wouldn't have taken the time to read this, but having gone through a slightly similar story 7+ months ago, it warmed my heart to think back on our story. good idea. rather than bog this thread down, i'll do a quick summary at my blog.
and i'm impressed that you remember times! maybe a little less impressed that you were thinking about hot nurses and doctors when your wife was in labor!!!
Wow. What a great story.
You are a bigger man than I, Leland, in doing what you did during teh C-section. For our first one - Freddie - Janice had an emergency C-section.
They asked me where I'd like to sit; I said I'll be with Janice and comfort her nstead of helping out. So she's laying down, and they put this 2' high curtain on her chest so none of us can see what's going on.
Well, the suction tube - kind of like teh suction tube used at the dentist's office, btut much wider - ran under the table past us into the drain. So as the operation was going on, you'd here a sucking sound - and then a mass of this red and white goop that goes whizzing by on the floor. I don't know how I avoided throwing up.
Every story is different - ours was much quicker (it seemed) and I remember these details about each one:
Freddie:
- Janice interrupting the 1st half of the Duke-St JOhn's game b saying "Um, I think my water broke". None of us knew for sure! How do you tell?
- Leland is theoretically right about the contraction thing - but it didn't work that way. The first time I timed then, they were 4 minutes. I panicked.
- All was going well with the epidural and everything - and then 6 doctors came in - 5 of who were strangers - and they started studying Janice. Then it was decided - a C-Section
- After the birth, they rolled us fromthe operating room to the recovery room - where Janice, under the effects of the pain killers - threw up in transit. Janice and heavy-duty pain killers don't go together well.
- First sporting event we watched: Cincinnati-Marquette B-Ball game on ESPN that night.
Warren was a more normal vaginal birth:
- we arrived at the hospital to find out that the staff lost our file - WE WERE JUST THERE LAST NIGHT IN A FALSE ALARM! What the hell did you do with it?
- after the drugs kicked in, we settled back to watch 4 hours of the "I Love the 70s" marathon on VH1. Maybe Warren will be scarred by this.
- So the staff put a mirror on the ceiling to allow Janice to look at the birth canal. Once the heavy-duty pushing started, Janice yelled out:
"Eric, move that *#&%^ *#&*#^#* mirror! NOW!"
Apparently, mom's don't want to see what is going on. Who knew??
- Freddie came down that night to see his brother. We still have a grat picture of Freddie holding his little brother hours after the birth.
You will never forget details like this during these moments.
Great story Lee. Now since its a girl, go and answer the question posted yesterday.
And I would like you to expand on how they check the dialation?
Wow, that was impressive.
I would pay $100+ for a DVD montage of the faces of physicians as they go to inject the epidural and realize they have to inject it above a tramp stamp/slutto.
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