My Birthday started early this year, even before my alarm clock had a chance to break the morning silence. “Honey, I’m not feeling good”. I was awake before she finished the sentence started asking her about contractions and pain… etc. She had started having irregular contractions around 3 am but was now experiencing some other pains. A few minutes later she was on the phone with the on-call OB at the hospital and he said to monitor contractions and come in if her contractions became 5-1-1 (5 minutes apart, 1 minute duration, for 1 hour) or her water broke. Within a minute of hanging up the phone… her water broke.
Now it was clear that I would not be heading into the office today. The car was packed with the “go-bag” and whatever else I could think of to throw in there and we left for the hospital. Before we arrived Kris asked of we should consider a girl’s name…. just in case all the tests were wrong. It’s funny that we had not remotely considered this until the moments before arriving to the Clatnoff Pavilion… we just sort of giggled.
We had been introduced to the check in process during our pregnancy class a couple months ago and had even practiced it a few weeks ago during a false alarm. So we knew right where to go to park, enter the building, elevator and check in. Kris was wrapped with the elastic baby monitoring belts in triage and the examined for dilation. Dr. Solomon (who was also celebrating a birthday that day) confirmed 4-5 cms and she was in fact having regular contractions at this point… it was game time. They moved her to a delivery room and awaited our nurse and anesthesiologist.
It was already turning in to the busy day at the labor and delivery ward and our room was a revolving door of nurses as the shifts changed and there were not enough to go around at that time. But finally Lora came in and introduced herself as our L&D nurse and shortly after, the long awaited anesthesiologist came to begin the insertion of the epidural after an IV, and catheter were put in.
Talk about a nerve wracking experience (no pun intended)… hold very very still while I insert this long needle into your spine! Kris made it through that and had much of her pain reduced… but not for long.
As it turns out, hers was one of the few epidurals that did not work properly. for the first hour and a half or so, she was comfortable and able to rest, but slowly the contractions began increasing in pain intensity until she determined that the epidural was only working from the waist down (not where the contraction pain is). She was going to be doing this “au naturale” which was never intended to be the case.
After several hours of increasing pain through the contractions, she was finally at 10 cms. It was now 3pm and she was ready to push! I felt it was a little strange that the pushing process was just Lora and I helping her… breathe… timing… holding her legs up and the occasional exam (by Lora). JP was not moving much. In two hours he had not entered the birth canal and by this point Kris was spent from 12 hours worth of contractions, pushing, and no pain medication.
Dr. Solomon came in once again and examined her and thinks that he is face up instead of down. He could still come naturally, but it could be another 20 minutes of pushing or an number of hours. So he suggested it was time to consider a C-Section. We had never been against the idea as we were going through the pregnancy, only that we keep everyone as safe as possible.
Things really started happening fast once we gave the green light. Within minutes there were 5 people in the room helping get her ready. Some working on her bed and making sure she could be transported into the OR and some working on her vitals. A different anesthesiologist arrived to give his obligatory consultation before he could admit her and get her on a different treatment called a spinal. It looked like the same thing as a epidural to me, but would work more effectively for surgery and probably cost 10x as much.
She was wheeled from the room and down the hall the operating area with me in tow. I was handed scrubs to put on over my clothes and a place to put our belongings while in delivery. The OR seemed like a medical version of a auto shop. It was surrounded by supply cabinets and filled with tool chests on wheels, lights, equipment of all shapes and sizes, computers and monitoring equipment, and of course a narrow bed with arm rests perpendicular to its length where she would be strapped down.
The insertion of the spinal seemed to take forever as they didn’t have the necessary needle size readily available. 3 nurses were looking here and there and even in different rooms while Kris sat up on the edge of the narrow bed leaning against me in considerable discomfort and pain… holding as still as she could muster. Two of us held her tightly and she flinched when the needle was finally inserted between vertebrae in her back and she was taped up. After a few moments, she was laid down, strapped to the table and I was given a stool close to her shoulders so I could hold her hand and talk her through this. I actually had no idea she would be conscious through this.
A screen was placed over her chest so we wouldn’t have to watch the gruesome aspects of what was happening and she said all she could feel was tugging and pressure on her abdomen as they worked away. I kept Kris’ concentration on me during the operation until I heard Dr. Solomon ask for me to peek over the screen as they pulled our little boy from her belly. I saw his face and his little body for the first time as they clipped his umbilical cord. His mouth had yet taken its first breath and he squirmed in their arms as the cool air met his naked skin.
He was held there for mere seconds before he was handed to the NICU nurses who were waiting in the room. He was then carried to an adjoining room to clean him up and vacuum out his nostrils for meconium while the Dr.s put Kris back together and I kept talking to Kris. After a few minutes, Lora popped her head back into the operating room and asked if I wanted to go see him. There he laid strangely content and confident under lighting that had never before warmed his skin. The nurses already had cleaned him from head to toe and watched as they vacuumed out his nostrils and checked every inch of his quivering body. I wiggled his finger for the first time while they retrieved a blanket to wrap him in and a nurse carried him to Kris’s bedside where she got to see him for the first time and we snapped a couple photos with my phone. She was still being put back together so from there we went to the recovery room just around the corner where he would be weighed, measured, feet imprinted and further inspected one more time. All of this flurry of activity took less than 15 minutes.
The clock finally came screeching to a halt when the nursed turned to me and handed me my baby boy for the first time. Tiny in my arms he looked up at me and I down at him and studied each others expressions, smells, warmth and texture. I was speechless and motionless. I sat in a chair and stared at him as he dozed off into a gentle slumber. Ryder slept in my arms for the first time.
