With that intro: OUR BABY HAS ARRIVED! Finally after 9 months of waiting, our baby girl is finally here. So how was it you ask (or didn't but Im telling you anyway)? Warning this is long, so I won't feel bad if you want to read the first few lines then skip down to the bottom. It won't hurt my feelings.
Like this:
My wife woke me up at 3:20am complaining of pains she had never felt before. Of course both of us were reflecting on the hoards of information we received from our baby classes. Like google we came up with every single answer (except cancer--THANKS WEBMD) to what this cause was. We thought they may have been false contractions or Braxton Hicks (which sucks women get faux contractions with the pain??!!). I continued to rub her back and try to make her feel as comfortable as possible. Do you remember my post where I jokingly put the 1980's throw up positions (would have been on the classes or training)? Well as funny as they looked those were the most comfortable positions for my wife. So we did them for a couple hours and it did help. My wife mainly laid in bed on her side to alleviate most of the pain, but she was miserable. We called our doctors office around 9:30am and they told us if we wanted to come in that we could. Now listen here, if your wife isn't dilated enough, they will send you back home. We really didn't want to deal with that. So we waited another hour and a half and finally my wife said "You need to take me to the hospital." So I grabbed our go bag, car seat and began to head out. My wife waited between contractions and zoomed out of our house quicker than I've ever seen a woman in her 3rd trimester (read that blog).
We arrived at the hospital where my wife was heaving like a fat kid doing suicides. We managed to get to the right floor where before we could get to the nurse station we were helped. The pain was pretty bad. How could I tell, well my wife was clinging to me tighter than a fat kid with a twinkie. So we got her checked out and they determined that they would keep her. We moved to a second LDR room (Labor and Delivery) where it was super spacious, had the baby warming tray, the birthing bed and a couch. Pretty swank for delivering babies I would say.
My wife was still in pain as she was having contractions every 4 minutes. She did what your wife will do as well: "Get me the drugs!" So they called for the drug guy. He came about 2.5 hours later which with a pregnant woman who is having contractions is an eternity. He made polite conversation and proceeded to make some jokes while doing his job. Note to anyone who is human--cracking jokes when a pregnant woman is having contractions is usually not the best approach. Once my wife got the drugs she was gooooooooooooooood. I said that really long to emphasize the greatness of the drugs.
Her parents arrived and waited. After the drugs it simply became a waiting game. We waited for hours for this baby to do something. It is important to know that you could wait a really long time to see your child. I continued to grab her ice chips and water. Cool thing: the hospital has free food for you when you are having a baby. Its awesome! Anyway, day turned to night and around 7:30pm the doctor came in and said that they thought that it would be a good time to try to get this baby party going.
So the doc grabs all her gear like she is about to go to war. She grabs a splash shield helmet, gloves, covers her whole body and grabs a table that swivels with tools. It actually can look kinda frightening. So my wife gets her game face on and starts pushing. At this point it gets real. I know that there was this little person growing inside of her the whole time but it really never hit me till this point.
Pushing a baby is exhausting and my wife pushed and pushed. We did have a bit of a scare during the birth. Our babies heart rate was skyrocketing to 210 (usually a heart stays around 140-50 for a baby, you and I with moderate/high exercise hit 140). So they had to stop several times. They were worried that they would have to do an emergency c section. But my wife was like heck no and she pushed our baby out five minutes later. 18 hour labor, 10 minute push birth and here came this full head of hair silly baby girl.
I can't really describe the feeling of when my daughter was born. You would think all that is happening below my wife's waist I would have no interest. But all I cared about at that moment was my wife and my baby. I really didn't care what happened outside of that. Everything could have been falling apart and I wouldn't have cared. It's a surreal moment and one that I'm am so glad I felt.
We spent two nights in the hospital. The staff and nurses were incredibly awesome. Katie had a 2nd degree tear (a tear on the perineum----yes babies heads don't always naturally fit--so check your genetics!!). I spent every waking moment I had with my daughter and in a way still do. It was a very long day, but the reward of having our daughter healthy and fully developed was worth it. As a guy I felt rather useless at times, but you are made to support your wife, love her and care for her during the long arduous process of labor.
Seeing my daughter being born was one of the greatest moments in my life. Thank you Jesus!
Oh forgot to,mention that our baby girl pooped on my wife after she was born. That was kinda funny.
The End
No comments:
Post a Comment