birthing story

a post over at flotsam & jetsam gave me this idea to conjur up my memories on keira's birth. some of the visitors here have heard it, others may have not.

we knew as we approached the due date that the doctors would not let suze go past it. the baby had a two vessel cord (there's supposed to be three - 2 arteries and 1 vein; she lacked an artery) so they watched her growth and progression a little more closely than usual. or that's what they told me.

so we went in on March 9th to be induced. they stick this creame on the cervix and its supposed to soften it up and start the contractions. we sit in the room for a few hours while they check in from time to time (either by looking at the monitor read outs or by doctor bigfinger poking around).

while we're just waiting for the cervix to start, there's another woman in the same room getting the same shit done. but she has sisters with her (and i do mean that in both the literal and borderline racist terms). and they are loud as shit....not really respecting the fact that this type of procedure is done in a shared room. farting. burping. fuck this, fuck that. loud as shit tv. granted, i didn't really care that much, but it was a shame how rude they were.

so the white nurse says something to them about respecting the others in the room. they in turn play the racist angle. its kind of ugly; kind of ridiculous at the same time. funny...i hadn't thought of that in months.

so back to the cervix. the gel is working, but very slowly. the monitors indicate that she's starting to have contractions, but she doesn't exactly feel them.

so they schedule a second gelling for the next day and send us home.

we eat out that night and are just getting ready to go to sleep and they start in for real around 11ish. definitely uncomfortable but she's able to get a tiny bit of sleep for like an hour.

around midnight, it gets tougher on her. moaning, groaning. not much i can do but lend a hand of support. we get her in the shower and put hot water on her back. she's leaned over and i'm using the hand-held shower head to massage different parts of her back. for an hour and half!

she calls the doc around 3, who tells us to go on in. we're getting ready. i put a towel in the car so her water doesn't break on my seats (great tip from a co-worker who cares about silly shit like i do), but as she's getting her coat on, she gets a funny look on her face, and does a little hip swivel thing (it would've been kind of sexy if not for the bulbous belly and the next 20 seconds).

" and that would be my water." she drops her pants around her ankles and does the duck walk to the bathroom. i jump up a flight of steps to get her some new clothes. well not the entire flight, but enough steps at a time to make me now wonder why the hell i didn't pull a hammy doing it.

phew, so that's not going to get my seats sticky at least. what a selfish prick i can be.

so we're driving to the hospital around 3:30 and i'm going well over a hundred. i'm just daring to get pulled over because i want a police escort. but there's not a cop to be found. damn. its actually funny to think about fathers-to-be driving like a bat out of hell rather than being overly cautious. its not as though getting in a high-speed accident at any time is good, but now that i think about it, i'm fairly certain it could be devastating to someone in labor, or the child itself. oh well.

we get to the hospital and i drop off suze so i can park the car. suze does what we've been practicing for the past few weeks....when admission asks her name, she replies epidural. good girl.

she gets checked first and she's at 6cm (10 starts delivery for those uninitiated to the process), which is pretty cool. she got to get a sense of the pain (although i'm sure that it's nowhere near what it like to deliver the watermelon through there without chemical help) but is smart enough to realize that she can't do it all on her own. i'm glad because it probably made my job a lot easier.

so, check in 4. in a bed by 4:05. i'm back in by 4:10. the nurse checks at 4:30. epidural administered at 5. takes effect shortly thereafter. so we're just hanging out.

the delivery room is awesome. huge even. soft lighting, big easy chair. mini fridge. corner room with views out two windows. one looked west towards the susquehanna and the other window looked out to three mile island. what? yeah. it took a bit to realize it, but there were the stacks and plume in all their glory. fuck harrisburg.

suze gets a popsicle. i decline. she falls asleep with it in her hand. i then eat it. i'm awesome.

but wait....i did say that she fell asleep. how incredible is that? it goes from fucking uncomfortable as anything to complete hindu cow meditation through the science of a slow drip into her spine. gotta love it.

i call into work to let them know that its happening. since suze is asleep, i realize that i was smart enough to bring the camera but forgot batteries. so i go for a short walk to wake up a bit, grab some extra juice for the camera and to pass the time. i see a coworker driving to work and we chat for a bit. this becomes a favored joke around the office that my wife is in labor and i'm just wandering the streets.

after i get back, i then fall asleep watching "i (heart) huckabees" on my laptop. which is good. that seemed to have so much potential, but either because i watched the first half in the groggy morning of this mess and then the second half two days later, i'm way too confused and decide that i hated it.

so around 10, we're both awake and the doc says that she's ready to start pushing. i'm helping her through contractions. she slighly feels them, but we're mostly just going by the monitor. the doc says that its about time and assigns me a leg. birds eye view of all that is happening, i guess. i didn't realize i signed up for that, but love the fact that i did.

the doctor gets ready by putting on this giant welders mask type of thing. that was fucking weird. face completely shielded by plastic. i guess he either really gets in there or there can be some squirting that they didn't tell us about it baby class.

it is way gross down there. the nurse tells me that the baby has a ton of hair. she points to it, and i see my wife's 'gina all gooey and a nasty mess of clumpy, mucous infused strand of hair sticking out. how can you even tell its the baby in all that mess. great. image burned to memory for life. then i see something a little further south that's perhaps a little more disturbing. and the smell. wow.

but then as she's pushing -- and i swear that suze must be born to bread because it seems so naturaly and easy for her -- the head is getting closer and closer to coming out. one more big push and the baby's head is out. they turn it a bit and i can see it. they actually clean up the face, get the crap out of its mouth and nose. it won't breathe on its own until its fully out. so its very fucking weird to see the baby's head just sitting there, half out of the vagina, lifeless, all nasty from the gunk, and yet still kind of looking at you. another image burned.

another hard push and the shoulders are out. fuck an a. tears start then just as i'm trying to fight them back now as i think back on it.

what the fuck is that? i never knew that umbilical cords were whitish. i'd always seen them on newborns and they were black. well, that's after they put iodine or something on it to make it dry up and fall off. that's kind of in the way so its hard to see what sex just yet. they pull it to the side and i see the little minge. baby girl! born around 11. fuck if i can't remember the specific time right now. does that make me a bad dad?



wow. what a day. and what a great time its been thus far. she is so fucking cute, its pathetic. i know i'm going to be a pushover and she'll get anything that little bitch asks me for. oh well. you only live once.

i just hope that she doesn't turn into a white trash yinzer now that we're moving to pittsburgh.