-OH, LITTLE TOWN OF BETHLEHEM-
(a.k.a. What Birth Plan?)
Chapter I.
"Why's That Down There?"
Friday, August 20th 2010. A Friday like any other. I planned on coming home and cleaning up the mess my dad and I left on the deck from wainscoating the nursery. I left work and called Laura, reminding her to send me a grocery list. My mission was to pick up all of her pregnancy comfort foods for her final week of being with child.
I came home to a quiet house. Then the phone rang. One of Laura's friends from work to check up. I found her sleeping upstairs in bed, so I said she'd call back later and resumed putting away groceries. About halfway thru the refrigerated stuff I looked up and saw her standing in the dining/living room doorway. I don't remember my exact words but it was something along the lines of "Why's that down there?", referring to her belly and it's proximity to the floor.
This brought on a slight panic. Slight. She said she thinks she's had a contraction. Less slight. She wants to call Andrea. Andrea is our midwife. I agree. What else can I do? Andrea is paged and Laura checks the fridge. In there she finds water. Her water. It breaks in front of a bowl of grapes. The bowl of grapes still has a big part to play. But in the meantime, there's a puddle on the kitchen floor. The phone rings and it's Andrea. Despite Laura telling her of these events she asks us to wait. Wait a couple hours. It's now 5:30 and 7:30 seems incredibly far away. But we don't want to get all the way to the hospital and be sent away. Early = danger. So we wait.
Andrea suggest Laura go for a walk or take a shower. The walk never had a chance. Laura decided to try and make a salad instead. She barely got thru chopping one pepper. She curled up on the floor between the recliner and the coffee table and hunkered herself in with pillows and that bowl of grapes. Odd spot I thought, but what do I know of labor pains or how to soothe them. She still didn't seem appeased. So Andrea suggested a shower. That was a horrible choice. She did not like that at all. The only thing that seemed to ease the discomfort was a cold toilet. She started on the loo downstairs and migrated to the one upstairs, both newly equipped with a nearby fan, for the sweating.
After a lull (for me) and a moment of relative quiet I got out of the bed where I was biting the pillows into the bathroom and said "Now what?". She said "Get the car packed". You hear about packing for the hospital and making a "Go Bag" but we thought we still had 9 days before having to worry about a mad hospital dash, so while our checklist of stuff was in the early stages of collection, it definitely was by no means packed. I ran around the house, upstairs, downstairs, outside, upstairs, downstairs and grabbed any and everything I thought we could ever need. Pillows, iPod dock, extra clothes, carseat, tennis balls, a bowl of grapes, a box of triscuits, the camera, a book, I think when I was trying to decide whether or not to grab the rice cooker when I finally just yelled up to Laura "Okay let's just go!".
So we got in the car round 7:45, and I'm not gonna lie, I thought we'd be in and out and back home in time for the Daily Show. Silly boy...
Chapter II.
"Traveling In Transition"
We got in the car at 7:45 on a Friday night and headed towards the main roads. We live in an area that becomes highly populated on weekends, especially during summer, for all the hiking, camping, antiquing, sightseeing... you get it. So this is a bad time to be on the road nonetheless on the road and in a hurry. I asked her, "Would you rather sit in traffic on the short route, or take the long and windy route on barren backroads?". She let loose an enormous sigh that sounded a lot like "MOVE!" so that's what I did. In my mind I knew traffic would be infuriating so I decided stay moving on the backroads.
It got dark quick and these roads had no streetlights, but I think that helped the situation. As we wound thru roads overlooking mountains with the sun setting behind them I tried to relieve some tension by commenting on the purple & the pink and how lovely it all looked. She told me to shut up. That was the extent of the temper, so I let it slide and handed her some grapes. The grapes got us thru to the hospital.
Chapter III.
"My Wife Is In Labor"
I pulled up to the emergency room and ran inside and like seen in millions of films yelled "My wife's having a baby!". Then I laughed. Can we try that again? A nice blonde woman jumped up as I wrestled with a wheelchair. I came out half expecting to find Laura asleep in the car, but she wasn't and she needed help. I yanked her out of the car and plopped her into the chair and ran her in to register at the window there. I ran back out to park the car across the street and grab at a bunch of bags and loose items in the trunk. I flitted back across the street and burst thru the automatic doors in time to hear Laura scream "June 15th 1986!!!". I wondered why she was literally screaming out her birthdate but I thought it was a conversation best kept for another time.
We navigated thru a labyrinth constructed only to annoy and confuse those who come to the hospital and are in a hurry to be out of the cold halls and into a warm cushy bed surrounded by medical professionals. We finally got to an elevator, which is always a good sign. At this point we were able to breathe for a second, at which point the woman guiding us to the maternity ward tried to comfort our worried souls and said, "Don't worry, I've delivered babies in the elevator before". That didn't work.
We got to the counter at the maternity ward. It was quiet. When we came for our orientation and tour it was hopping like McDonald's on classic car night. I finally took a good look at poor little Laura and noticed she had been squeezing the metal frame armrest on the chair so tight she had bent them a little. There was also a liquid dripping from the seat, as I guess this is something that is connected to the human being trying to squeeze themselves out of her. This is the moment where I realized that we may not be going home tonight. I suddenly felt very distressed.
But we had an obstacle. A young girl was at the counter before us. She was around 20 weeks pregnant, cute young thing and she was feeling kind of funny. She was calm, no emergency, and the woman behind the counter was taking her time writing up some information and clicking away on her keyboard with her nails, the length of which I found inappropriate for our present surroundings. In a brief but obvious pause I recited my line, "My wife is in labor". She assured me that she'd be right with me. I didn't feel assured.
In this woman's defense, the counter separating us was quite high and the fact that Laura was hunched over in a now disfigured wheelchair was probably not seen by her. Also I'm sure that women come in and are in labor all the time and there usually isn't a big rush, but... there are exceptions. This was an exception.
I tried to console Laura, let her know we were getting a room, and she confirmed to me that the seat she was sitting in was soaked thru, as were her pants. I took it up a notch by telling the woman behind the counter that we'd really like to get a room so that we stop leaking all over her nice carpeted floor. The next words out of her mouth were "You ain't havin' no baby at my desk! Not tonight! Uh Uh!". In seconds a nurse was there whisking us away.... where we had no idea. A nice cushy delivery room no doubt.
Chapter IV.
"She's Done"
We ended up in a triage, where I momentarily placed the 90 pounds of luggage I had been carrying to try and find a phone and attempt to alert some family of our situation. I turned around for a moment and turned back to see Laura in the middle of the triage, and having dropped trough and ripped off her top, was naked, eyes closed and hunched over. A humorous moment only for me. The nurse managed to get a gown on her and into an exam bed and then she left the room. It was at this moment, just Laura and I alone in the exam room, that Laura felt the urge to say to me "I'm gonna push!". I yelled down the hall. Probably something in gibberish, but it worked. Moments later a man with glasses and thinning black hair walked into the room and without stopping did a two-finger exam and proclaimed "She's done!". We'd never seen him before and never would see him again.
This is where things got crazy. Apparently all 20 delivery rooms in the ward were taken, and all they had was the postpartum recovery room. A slightly larger, oddly shaped room, with dim lighting and none of the equipment needed to deliver a baby. So they rolled us in and as if on cue there were 20 nurses pushing equipment and machines and running cords and and passing tools and asking questions and plugging lights. I heard the Benny Hill theme song and laughed again (I'm having a good time with all of this, if you didn't notice). Then a familiar face appeared. Andrea; our midwife! Glory Glory Hallelujah. She took control and finally some peace entered our lives. Or at least my life.
The nurses tried to run an IV. Andrea said no time. They offered drugs. Andrea said no thanks. I stood to Laura's right, up by her head, but those were the front row seats. There was a young blonde girl standing next to me receiving directions from another nurse. She looked more scared than I was. I don't know what became of her. There was about 4 other nurses around the bed, holding legs and bestowing moral support. I must've had a look because one nurse tried to reassure me.
Andrea asked Laura to push, and just like that I saw a head. I saw that she had hair and that made me happy. I don't think I blinked for the next 7 minutes. It was at this point I noticed that Andrea was also chewing bubble gum. After the first push Andrea decided to go for a new position. She asked for Laura to be on her side, so with an adrenaline rush I picked her up and flipped her like a pancake. "Like that?" I said. Another push came. Nothing really happened. The head looked the same. There seemed to be a hush that came over the room. This made me nervous. Laura was whispering something about not having a contraction. I now got uneasy.
The room was silent for a good minute and then things seemed to be starting up again. An older nurse who had been setting up equipment on the opposite side of the room came over to Laura and got right in her ear and with clenched teeth said to her "You're gonna push now and you're gonna push harder than you've ever done anything in your life and you're gonna push this baby right out on the next push so you're gonna do it right now". She kind of freaked me out, but it seemed to work for Laura. I went with it. I got on board the tough love train and repeated her orders.
Sure enough, one push and out slipped an entire whole baby. Head to toes. Covered in slime and actually a little blue. Slimy Smurf. Laura now said the letter "O" about 137 times as I laid my head on her chest and felt a teacup full of unbridled tears roll out of my eyes, which I never took off the little girl. I was on defense but also in awe. Interesting mix. I said to her "You did it. You did so well." She just cried and they placed the baby in her arms. We spent a few moments, a new family, as the room cleared out and quiet took over, in the room and in our heads. It was nice to think nothing and just look.
Chapter V.
"Then, After"
Fairly quickly Andrea said she had some work to do on Laura before things could be called done. Still a placenta to deliver and some patch up work to do. I followed the baby around the room to all her stations to be weighed and measured and footprinted. Then I got to hold her. I was surprisingly calm and took a seat on the dark side of the room and spontaneously sang her a song. It's our secret which. I got to take a few pictures of her, something I almost forgot I could do until our nurse reminded me. That's uncharacteristic.
Here is the first ever photo taken of Yuula Ondine...
And her footprints...
And the second time she looked at me...
The first look I saw with my own eyes.
I sat, new daughter in my arms, wife, new mother's eyes on us and ate some grapes.
(a.k.a. What Birth Plan?)
Chapter I.
"Why's That Down There?"
Friday, August 20th 2010. A Friday like any other. I planned on coming home and cleaning up the mess my dad and I left on the deck from wainscoating the nursery. I left work and called Laura, reminding her to send me a grocery list. My mission was to pick up all of her pregnancy comfort foods for her final week of being with child.
I came home to a quiet house. Then the phone rang. One of Laura's friends from work to check up. I found her sleeping upstairs in bed, so I said she'd call back later and resumed putting away groceries. About halfway thru the refrigerated stuff I looked up and saw her standing in the dining/living room doorway. I don't remember my exact words but it was something along the lines of "Why's that down there?", referring to her belly and it's proximity to the floor.
This brought on a slight panic. Slight. She said she thinks she's had a contraction. Less slight. She wants to call Andrea. Andrea is our midwife. I agree. What else can I do? Andrea is paged and Laura checks the fridge. In there she finds water. Her water. It breaks in front of a bowl of grapes. The bowl of grapes still has a big part to play. But in the meantime, there's a puddle on the kitchen floor. The phone rings and it's Andrea. Despite Laura telling her of these events she asks us to wait. Wait a couple hours. It's now 5:30 and 7:30 seems incredibly far away. But we don't want to get all the way to the hospital and be sent away. Early = danger. So we wait.
Andrea suggest Laura go for a walk or take a shower. The walk never had a chance. Laura decided to try and make a salad instead. She barely got thru chopping one pepper. She curled up on the floor between the recliner and the coffee table and hunkered herself in with pillows and that bowl of grapes. Odd spot I thought, but what do I know of labor pains or how to soothe them. She still didn't seem appeased. So Andrea suggested a shower. That was a horrible choice. She did not like that at all. The only thing that seemed to ease the discomfort was a cold toilet. She started on the loo downstairs and migrated to the one upstairs, both newly equipped with a nearby fan, for the sweating.
After a lull (for me) and a moment of relative quiet I got out of the bed where I was biting the pillows into the bathroom and said "Now what?". She said "Get the car packed". You hear about packing for the hospital and making a "Go Bag" but we thought we still had 9 days before having to worry about a mad hospital dash, so while our checklist of stuff was in the early stages of collection, it definitely was by no means packed. I ran around the house, upstairs, downstairs, outside, upstairs, downstairs and grabbed any and everything I thought we could ever need. Pillows, iPod dock, extra clothes, carseat, tennis balls, a bowl of grapes, a box of triscuits, the camera, a book, I think when I was trying to decide whether or not to grab the rice cooker when I finally just yelled up to Laura "Okay let's just go!".
So we got in the car round 7:45, and I'm not gonna lie, I thought we'd be in and out and back home in time for the Daily Show. Silly boy...
Chapter II.
"Traveling In Transition"
We got in the car at 7:45 on a Friday night and headed towards the main roads. We live in an area that becomes highly populated on weekends, especially during summer, for all the hiking, camping, antiquing, sightseeing... you get it. So this is a bad time to be on the road nonetheless on the road and in a hurry. I asked her, "Would you rather sit in traffic on the short route, or take the long and windy route on barren backroads?". She let loose an enormous sigh that sounded a lot like "MOVE!" so that's what I did. In my mind I knew traffic would be infuriating so I decided stay moving on the backroads.
It got dark quick and these roads had no streetlights, but I think that helped the situation. As we wound thru roads overlooking mountains with the sun setting behind them I tried to relieve some tension by commenting on the purple & the pink and how lovely it all looked. She told me to shut up. That was the extent of the temper, so I let it slide and handed her some grapes. The grapes got us thru to the hospital.
Chapter III.
"My Wife Is In Labor"
I pulled up to the emergency room and ran inside and like seen in millions of films yelled "My wife's having a baby!". Then I laughed. Can we try that again? A nice blonde woman jumped up as I wrestled with a wheelchair. I came out half expecting to find Laura asleep in the car, but she wasn't and she needed help. I yanked her out of the car and plopped her into the chair and ran her in to register at the window there. I ran back out to park the car across the street and grab at a bunch of bags and loose items in the trunk. I flitted back across the street and burst thru the automatic doors in time to hear Laura scream "June 15th 1986!!!". I wondered why she was literally screaming out her birthdate but I thought it was a conversation best kept for another time.
We navigated thru a labyrinth constructed only to annoy and confuse those who come to the hospital and are in a hurry to be out of the cold halls and into a warm cushy bed surrounded by medical professionals. We finally got to an elevator, which is always a good sign. At this point we were able to breathe for a second, at which point the woman guiding us to the maternity ward tried to comfort our worried souls and said, "Don't worry, I've delivered babies in the elevator before". That didn't work.
We got to the counter at the maternity ward. It was quiet. When we came for our orientation and tour it was hopping like McDonald's on classic car night. I finally took a good look at poor little Laura and noticed she had been squeezing the metal frame armrest on the chair so tight she had bent them a little. There was also a liquid dripping from the seat, as I guess this is something that is connected to the human being trying to squeeze themselves out of her. This is the moment where I realized that we may not be going home tonight. I suddenly felt very distressed.
But we had an obstacle. A young girl was at the counter before us. She was around 20 weeks pregnant, cute young thing and she was feeling kind of funny. She was calm, no emergency, and the woman behind the counter was taking her time writing up some information and clicking away on her keyboard with her nails, the length of which I found inappropriate for our present surroundings. In a brief but obvious pause I recited my line, "My wife is in labor". She assured me that she'd be right with me. I didn't feel assured.
In this woman's defense, the counter separating us was quite high and the fact that Laura was hunched over in a now disfigured wheelchair was probably not seen by her. Also I'm sure that women come in and are in labor all the time and there usually isn't a big rush, but... there are exceptions. This was an exception.
I tried to console Laura, let her know we were getting a room, and she confirmed to me that the seat she was sitting in was soaked thru, as were her pants. I took it up a notch by telling the woman behind the counter that we'd really like to get a room so that we stop leaking all over her nice carpeted floor. The next words out of her mouth were "You ain't havin' no baby at my desk! Not tonight! Uh Uh!". In seconds a nurse was there whisking us away.... where we had no idea. A nice cushy delivery room no doubt.
Chapter IV.
"She's Done"
We ended up in a triage, where I momentarily placed the 90 pounds of luggage I had been carrying to try and find a phone and attempt to alert some family of our situation. I turned around for a moment and turned back to see Laura in the middle of the triage, and having dropped trough and ripped off her top, was naked, eyes closed and hunched over. A humorous moment only for me. The nurse managed to get a gown on her and into an exam bed and then she left the room. It was at this moment, just Laura and I alone in the exam room, that Laura felt the urge to say to me "I'm gonna push!". I yelled down the hall. Probably something in gibberish, but it worked. Moments later a man with glasses and thinning black hair walked into the room and without stopping did a two-finger exam and proclaimed "She's done!". We'd never seen him before and never would see him again.
This is where things got crazy. Apparently all 20 delivery rooms in the ward were taken, and all they had was the postpartum recovery room. A slightly larger, oddly shaped room, with dim lighting and none of the equipment needed to deliver a baby. So they rolled us in and as if on cue there were 20 nurses pushing equipment and machines and running cords and and passing tools and asking questions and plugging lights. I heard the Benny Hill theme song and laughed again (I'm having a good time with all of this, if you didn't notice). Then a familiar face appeared. Andrea; our midwife! Glory Glory Hallelujah. She took control and finally some peace entered our lives. Or at least my life.
The nurses tried to run an IV. Andrea said no time. They offered drugs. Andrea said no thanks. I stood to Laura's right, up by her head, but those were the front row seats. There was a young blonde girl standing next to me receiving directions from another nurse. She looked more scared than I was. I don't know what became of her. There was about 4 other nurses around the bed, holding legs and bestowing moral support. I must've had a look because one nurse tried to reassure me.
Andrea asked Laura to push, and just like that I saw a head. I saw that she had hair and that made me happy. I don't think I blinked for the next 7 minutes. It was at this point I noticed that Andrea was also chewing bubble gum. After the first push Andrea decided to go for a new position. She asked for Laura to be on her side, so with an adrenaline rush I picked her up and flipped her like a pancake. "Like that?" I said. Another push came. Nothing really happened. The head looked the same. There seemed to be a hush that came over the room. This made me nervous. Laura was whispering something about not having a contraction. I now got uneasy.
The room was silent for a good minute and then things seemed to be starting up again. An older nurse who had been setting up equipment on the opposite side of the room came over to Laura and got right in her ear and with clenched teeth said to her "You're gonna push now and you're gonna push harder than you've ever done anything in your life and you're gonna push this baby right out on the next push so you're gonna do it right now". She kind of freaked me out, but it seemed to work for Laura. I went with it. I got on board the tough love train and repeated her orders.
Sure enough, one push and out slipped an entire whole baby. Head to toes. Covered in slime and actually a little blue. Slimy Smurf. Laura now said the letter "O" about 137 times as I laid my head on her chest and felt a teacup full of unbridled tears roll out of my eyes, which I never took off the little girl. I was on defense but also in awe. Interesting mix. I said to her "You did it. You did so well." She just cried and they placed the baby in her arms. We spent a few moments, a new family, as the room cleared out and quiet took over, in the room and in our heads. It was nice to think nothing and just look.
Chapter V.
"Then, After"
Fairly quickly Andrea said she had some work to do on Laura before things could be called done. Still a placenta to deliver and some patch up work to do. I followed the baby around the room to all her stations to be weighed and measured and footprinted. Then I got to hold her. I was surprisingly calm and took a seat on the dark side of the room and spontaneously sang her a song. It's our secret which. I got to take a few pictures of her, something I almost forgot I could do until our nurse reminded me. That's uncharacteristic.
Here is the first ever photo taken of Yuula Ondine...
And her footprints...
And the second time she looked at me...
The first look I saw with my own eyes.
I sat, new daughter in my arms, wife, new mother's eyes on us and ate some grapes.
6 comments:
It is to early in the morning to cry, luv dad
I made the mistake of reading this while at work in the library. I'm a puddle of goo and tears. Loved this :)
I love happy birth stories, and yours made my day. Thank u!
Well I wrote something the same day you sent this...but for some reason I kept losing it...and it was really good...
The basic concept was that you really did a great job of retelling of that night...But it did take me quite awhile to get thru the whole thing since it is hard to read thru the tears...
love the last 2 lines...
Wow all I can say is that you are a great writer! Where can I contact you if I want to hire you?
Thanks.
You can contact me right here.
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