Emma’s Birth Story

TUESDAY – July 9

Meg regretted eating ribs for dinner. Granted, they were delicious, but having ribs prior to having a baby seems a bit ambitious.

We arrived at the hospital at 8:30 at night. We were swiftly brought back to Labor and Delivery room 189 to start the induction process. Emma was six days late, so Meg’s doctor wanted to get the process started.

Meg got settled into a hospital bed and a nurse started an IV and gave her Cervidil. This is to soften… things and junk. It takes 12 hours to work its magic. The nurse also strapped two monitors to Meg’s belly—one to measure contractions, the other to listen for the baby’s heartbeat. Emma’s heartbeats sounded like a racehorse galloping along a racetrack.

Meg’s parents and brother Ryan visited to make sure we were settled in.

Everything was good until 2 AM, when Meg started to have contractions. She figured that it was just back pain from the way she was lying, but the monitors said otherwise. Emma vigorously fought her heartbeat monitor. It’d register thirty seconds of her heart galloping along, then Emma would twist and the monitor would lose her. The computer screen showed jotted lines where Emma was supposed to be, and the nurse would bust into the room and rummage around Meg’s belly trying to locate the baby. Meg didn’t sleep well until she got Fentanyl.

Meanwhile, I lay on a narrow couch with a hospital sheet. The couch got increasingly narrower as the night progressed. At a certain point, I took out the seat backs by the roots, laid them on top of the seat pads, and slept on top of the whole uncomfortable mess. I didn’t sleep well, and I didn’t get Fentanyl.

WEDNESDAY – July 10

Then I pulled the window curtain chains to reveal that morning dawned. Meg’s mom came to visit and took me to Peppers Café for a somewhat appealing breakfast sandwich of eggs, bacon, and cheese served unenthusiastically on English muffins. We bought an extra one for Meg, along with a fruit bowl filled mostly with slimy cantaloupe.

Meanwhile, Meg’s nurse allowed her to get up and shower (IV tubes dangling from her like a jellyfish), and then eat breakfast. The nurse checked Meg’s nether regions and determined that she was far enough for Pitocin, a drug that starts contractions.

“Your doctor’s here with some med students,” the nurse said. “Is it all right if you have a crowd of people look at your vagina?”

“Sure, no problem,” Meg said cheerfully. I think she had gotten more Fentanyl.

When the doctor and his entourage arrived, he announced that Meg’s vagina wasn’t five centimeters dilated, but indeed, four. He also said that he’d break Meg’s “bag of water” at noon. An image of a water balloon exploding in the doctor’s face came to my mind, which I quickly dismissed.

The doctor and company departed and the nurse announced that she was going to start Meg on Pitocin.

“Can I have an epidural first?” Meg asked the nurse, who had turned into another nurse named Leah at the 7 AM shift change.

“You want it before the Pitocin?” Leah asked.

“Yep,” Meg said.

A nice anesthesiologist bustled into the room and had Meg sit up while he produced a horrifying array of medical paraphernalia. “A little sting and a burn,” he commented as he injected Meg’s back with a gigantic needle. “A little pain,” he soothed as he pushed the catheter into Meg’s spine. Meg’s neck twitched once when the Lidocaine injection took. That’s just how much pain Meg can handle.

The rest of Wednesday was boring. Meg and I spent most of the day looking at the monitor. Blip, blip, blip went Meg’s contractions. She could feel them happening by feeling her belly, which turned into the rock hard abs of an infomercial model for Bowflex. The baby continued squirming off the monitor.

NURSE: Your baby’s off again.
MEG: Yeah…

NURSE: Let’s try to find the baby. [Moves monitor. Moves monitor again. Moves it again. And again. Ah, a heartbeat.]

NURSE: There we go.

MEG: Great!

NURSE: [leaves]

BABY: [squirms off the monitor]

NURSE: [returning] Your baby’s off again.

The doctor returned promptly at around 12:43 PM (his definition of “noon” differs from mine). He inserted his entire arm into Meg. It came out dripping from something clear. (At this point I tried not to faint.)

He then returned into my wife’s lovely lady parts and placed an internal monitor to the baby’s head. Try to squirm away from that, baby! Henceforth, the monitor showed a nice reading on the baby’s heartbeat, galloping away like a stallion across the untamed west. (Too prosaic? Meg snorted at this part.)

As far as I understand it, once you poke the amniotic sack with a stick, the baby needs to be born within twenty-four hours. It’s an infection risk to go longer than that. “We’re going to have a baby!” I announced hopefully to Meg.

“Uh huh,” she said with epidural bliss, and settled in for a nap.

Meg’s mom and I went to grab some tasty dinner at the cafeteria. When I returned, Meg asked if I heard a cat.

“A cat?” I asked.

“Yeah, a cat. It’s mewing.”

We listened motionless and I focused past the beep of the heartbeat monitor. “I can’t hear anyth—” I began, and then:

“Meow.”

“That’s it,” Meg said triumphantly. “Do you hear that? I think it’s coming from that corner.”

I peered at the corner of the room near the window where there was a wooden cabinet. I considered searching within on the small chance there was a cat in there. I cocked my head and listened for another feline utterance.

“Meow.”

“I think it’s the epidural machine,” I said.

“Oh thank god,” Meg sighed in relief. “I thought I was hallucinating from the drugs.”

Every so often, the nurse would come in and check on Meg. “Can I get you anything?” she’d ask. Then she’d stick her hand up Meg’s vagina and announce a number.

“Five!”

“Five-Six!”

“Five!”

Something like that. Around 5 PM they placed an internal pressure monitor to see how effective the contractions were. It was also around 5 PM that I began to wonder if the baby was going to ever be born, or if she wanted to just stay inside where it was nice and comfortable, albeit squeezy.

Shift change brought another nurse. This one was “older and a bit flakey” according to Meg. I don’t remember much of her, as I was sleeping on my ever-so

-comfortable “cot.” The nurse encouraged Meg to change position frequently, legs akimbo, in hopes that the baby might decide to pop out while we weren’t looking.

BABY: Oh, hi Mom.

MEG: Oh… you’re out?

BABY: Well, the leg was propped in a stirrup, so I thought I might as well.

MEG: Well, all right then.

This didn’t happen.

What did happen is Meg’s epidural wore off in a leg that was propped up, along with that whole half of her body, allowing her to feel the severe pain of childbirth. “Get me the anesthesiologist,” she moaned to the nurse.

The anesthesiologist would come in, give Meg a bolus of narcotics in her epidural, and then leave. (I slept through this part, but it happened twice overnight.)

THURSDAY – July 11

Meg finally fell asleep until 3:30 AM when the nurse came bustling in, arms full of equipment, consent forms, and a white bunny suit for me.

“We’re doing a C section,” the nurse announced. “I called your doctor and he doesn’t like how the baby looks on the monitor.”

I groggily arose from my slab and suffered a rush of adrenaline. Or low blood sugar—the feelings are identical. I peered at the monitor screen and saw that Meg’s contractions weren’t as strong as they had been, and the baby’s heartbeat slowed every time one hit.

I called Meg’s mom and mumbled, “They’re doing a C section” into the phone.

“Okay, I’ll be right there.”

I hung up without further explanation and wondered what I should do about my shaky feeling. While Meg signed consent forms, I rummaged in Meg’s purse and got the glucose tablets, which Meg keeps around for when I have low blood sugar. I ate most of them, and then tried to put on the bunny suit.

A bunny suit is a neck-to-ankle white zippered jump suit only worn by expectant dads and fastidious house painters. I put mine on backwards. Meg looked up from her form to enlighten me of this fact, and I think the nurse laughed.

“At least you put it on over your clothes, unlike some guys,” she said. “There was this one guy who stripped down to his boxers and put it on.”

(The zipper goes in the front, in case you ever need to attend surgery.)

I struggled putting on my mask (I hate masks ever since my dad made me wear one when he forced me to help him varnish the kitchen table one Sunday morning). Should I put it on now, and look like an idiot, or leave it hanging around my neck choking me like an angry monkey? I opted for the monkey look and donned my hairnet.

The nurse arranged Meg’s IV tubing and then the anesthesiologist came in and the two of them wheeled Meg for the OR. “You’ll sit outside the room until we’re ready for you,” the nurse told me.

The doors to the operating room hallway swung ominously open and while Meg was wheeled toward the inner sanctum, I was shown to a metal stool near a cabinet. OR staff passed by me. One put on booties that went halfway up her shins. “I’m the dad,” I explained when she glanced at me, in case she was wondering.

I sat alone on the stool for approximately an eternity. During this time, I contemplated if I should be wearing booties too. I wore my tennis shoes, which were rather ancient. They’d been speckled with paint, they’d been grimed with dirt, mud, and who knows what else. Surely bringing them into the operating room was some kind of sacrilege. I walked over to the cabinet and inspected the boxes of footies. Then I looked at the other boxes of footies. Then I returned to my stool empty-handed, unsure what I should do.

Other nurses walked into the OR, some with footies, others with just shoes. I read the sign on the wall that stated MASKS AND FOOTIES REQUIRED BEYOND THIS POINT. I decided to just sit on my stool. They’d made me wear them if I should be.

Meg’s doctor arrived about this time with disheveled hair and loafers without socks. He greeted me tiredly and went towards the OR. He washed his hands briefly—very briefly, I frowned—before entering the OR.

He returned a minute later and put on footies of his own—why should everyone be doing footies but me?—and then gave his hands and arms a thorough scrubbing, worthy of any TV performance on ER.

A thousand years passed before someone said I could come in. They pointed me to a metal stool to the left of Meg’s head. She was on the operating table, her arms spread out like she was Jesus on the cross. The anesthesiologist—this one somewhat of a bastard—monitored the tubes coming out of Meg’s right arm and her epidural, while her doctor and a Scottish woman doctor lined up on either side of Meg’s belly. Two NICU nurses chatted about something unrelated, a nurse took notes, and another nurse helped hand Meg’s doctor hardware. A curtain separated Meg’s head and me from the rest of the fun, which was just as well for both of us. There are some things I don’t really want to know in intimate detail, and Meg’s uterus and internal wiggly bits belong in that category.

Meg’s doctor and the Scottish doctor chatted about a fishing trip. I glanced around again, wondering where I should place my phone and camera if I needed to. I decided on the table next to the CD player. I returned to Meg, who had a weird expression on her face. I gripped her left hand, even though I knew that she couldn’t feel much pain.

They sliced her open and stopped talking. I saw Meg’s doctor’s brows furrow and his arms jostle around a good bit. He murmured to the other doctor about different positioning. He dug into Meg like a fat kid into ice cream, but without much result.

“Vacuum,” he called. He stuck in a Hoover to the back of the baby’s head, which only managed to give her a huge hickey in the shape of a starfish.

I heard snipping sounds—horrible, horrible snipping sounds, like safety scissors cutting flesh. Then the Scottish doctor leaned her entire weight on Meg’s upper abdomen, apparently attempting to squeeze the baby out like toothpaste.

Meg’s doctor wrestled some more. Meg turned her head and looked at the suction canister, which was full of blood. She read 800 ML.
“How much blood?” asked the circulating nurse.

“800,” replied the anesthesiologist, confirming Meg’s medical savvy. Also, that’s a lot of blood.

Pop. Finally something moved, and the baby started crying.

A red baby headed for a little inspection area, where two NICU nurses hovered over her. They beckoned me over.

Putting my plan into motion, I set down my camera on the table, and took some pictures with my cell phone. She was little, red, naked. Just a little thing. I started crying a little, and snapped another picture and walked over to Meg and showed her it.

&ld

quo;Aw,” she said.

I returned to the baby and looked her over. I welcomed her little cries—she was breathing air! Her heart had switched over from bypassing her lungs. She was moving her arms and legs.

And then suddenly they handed her to me, and I looked down at her face. She blinked, which I found to be the weirdest thing of all. So real. Her big dark eyes looked up at the bright lights and at me. I brought her over to Meg’s head and she looked at the baby, unable to hold her. She looked at her face and the baby’s wide-open eyes looked back at her mother.

FRIDAY – July 14

We were now in the Mother & Baby floor, which consisted of five or six wooden-floored halls stuffed with recovery rooms. We found ourselves at the end in room 138, which a nurse called a “VIP” room, since Meg’s a fellow nurse. I’m not sure if that’s true, since it seemed like a rather ordinary room. Meg said that most rooms don’t have bathrooms with travertine tile.

We spent the day getting to know Emma, and Meg stayed mostly in bed. She could hardly shuffle over to the bathroom.

Meg’s parents and Ryan and Kat visited and took me out to Chipotle. It tasted amazing.

SATURDAY – July 13

The nurse and PCT during the night shift were named—I’m not kidding—Priscilla and Griselda. “What are they, Cinderella’s stepsisters?” I whispered to Meg after one of them left.

“I know, right?” Meg said. Out of curiosity, she looked up the names on her iPhone: Drizella and Anastasia Tremaine. Well, close enough.

Priscilla came in soon thereafter and announced that she was our nurse, and that she was going to focus on us bonding with our baby. “I’ll come in every hour if you need me to,” she said, with a concerned expression on her face.

She also explained that I shouldn’t cut off my wristband with Emma’s ID number on it, or else we wouldn’t be able to leave the hospital with her. Mind you, this is after I’ve been living in the hospital for five days already, and I’d been wearing the band since Emma’s birth.

“I hate her,” I announced to Meg after Priscilla left.

“How does she expect us to bond with the baby if she’s in here every hour, at night?” Meg wondered.

“And I know what my wrist band is for,” I growled.

“Would Emma have to stay here forever if you cut it off?” Meg asked facetiously.

SUNDAY – July 14

Priscilla wheeled in a scale at 2 AM to assess Emma. To properly weigh a baby, you have to get them naked. (“Naked BABY” as Meg calls it.) Priscilla removed Emma’s clothes—which she never appreciates very much—and then her diaper too. She placed Emma on the scale and sourly recorded her weight.

In response, Emma urinated all over the scale.

Priscilla wheeled out the scale and disappeared in a puff of black smoke.

But an hour later—3 AM—she returned and announced to all three of us that she called the pediatrician because she was very concerned about Emma’s weight. And then she left again, fading into the shadows.

We were scheduled to go home on the next day, but Emma’s nurse practitioner, a snooty woman named Somebody Ryan—I’ll refer to her as Nurse Ratchet—bust into the room in the morning, poked at Emma’s chest a little with a stethoscope, and said she was concerned about her birth weight.

Emma had apparently lost 12 percent of her body weight. From what I understand, this isn’t uncommon in newborns, who are artificially plumped up with IV fluids like a frozen chicken breast and don’t eat much for the first few days after birth. Newborns’ stomachs are about the size of a marble.

But the main problem, I suspect, was that Emma doesn’t like Meg’s breasts. I certainly like them. But when faced with the prospect of sucking milk from an actual nipple, Emma starts bawling like a… like a little baby. The lactation specialist tried coaching the baby to suck properly, but eventually gave up and ordered a breast milk pump for Meg.

This worked well, and Emma took to the bottle like a pig takes to a mudbath. So we had the feeding part down, and Emma was getting pinker and fatter by the minute. But her weight wasn’t enough for Nurse Ratchet, who said we had to stay for another night.

Meg burst into tears the moment the nurse practitioner left. The baby lay in her Tupperware basinet while I tried to console Meg, who sat propped up in the bed sobbing.

“I’d like to punch 12 percent of her face,” I announced.

“I feel like I’m not good enough,” Meg said amid her tears.

“You’re good enough. Emma’s doing great. They’re just mean.”

That evening, Meg requested if we could get someone other than Priscilla for a nurse.

MONDAY – July 15

After the doctor came in and discharged Megan in the morning, we waited anxiously for Emma to be released too. Eventually, Nurse Ratchet graced us with her presence. Emma had gained 0.25 pounds overnight. I was hoping that she’d pee on Ratchet prior to leaving, but no such luck. We were cleared to go.

After Ratchet flew away on bat wings, Meg and I burst into tears and hugged each other. “We get to go home!”

Nothing happens that fast at hospitals, unless you fake a cardiac arrest or cut your wristband or something. We sat in our hospital room until late afternoon, until finally the nurse removed Meg’s C section staples and a volunteer wheeled Meg to the door.

We walked out of the hospital with Emma in her car seat/stroller. I clicked Em’s car seat into the car while Meg painfully angled her way into the passenger seat. And then we drove home.

I contemplated driving slower than I normally do—don’t the movies say that as an overprotective dad you’re supposed to drive fifteen under the speed limit? Nah. I drove home at my normal pace, which is generally around the speed limit or five higher.

And then home. The garage door opened. Parked inside with enough room to take out the car seat. Read the sign that Meg’s parents made posted to the door: WELCOME HOME, EMMA!

Into the home. Penny barks happily at Meg, barks angrily at me. The cat jogs by. The cool peace of home.

I take Emma out of her car seat and she looks around with her big purple eyes. I draw up the bedroom curtain. “It’s raining out,” I tell Meg.

Meg and I go outside, Emma in my arms, and breathe in the earthy ozone. Rain drizzles down beyond the patio overhang. “Emma’s first rain,” I say.

“Should we let it fall on her face?” Meg asked.

I stepped forward past the overhang, and let raindrops fall onto Emma&rs

quo;s face. A primal feeling came over me. My daughter, feeling rain for the first time in her life. She was out in the open, free to experience this whole big thing called life.