The "just after"

Our doctor immediately put the baby on Andrea's chest and he gave a little wimper. I haven't mentioned this previously, but there were a number of times throughout the process that I got teary eyed---at times actually crying. When we were told that Andrea was 10 cm dilated, I was so incredibly proud of and impressed by her that I got teary-eyed. When the head first appeared, I had troubles continuing my counting for similar reasons. However, when the whole baby was brought up onto Andrea, there was no holding back. I was so amazed by Andrea to have gone through what she had without any sort of pain-relief and I was so happy for what looked to be a real baby, even with a little bit of a cone head.

Andrea, however, is a little different. Her sister calls her the "ice princess" as Andrea is not one to get teary for much of any reason and she actually kept dry eyes for the arrival. This, of course should be tempered by the fact that she had gone through something extremely painful and difficult, but even without tears it was very obvious that she was an extremely happy mother.

The rest of the "immediately after" was pretty much as one would expect: a quick wiping down of the baby with a towel, the attachment of a hat so that we would still love our child with his cone head, the cutting of the umbilical cord (although the texture is as gross as I imagined, yes, I cut it), and general clean-up. With a pretty much effortless push the placenta came out, and the doctor then went to work stitching up the not insubstantial tearing that Andrea had suffered (it is amazing the medical work that can go on a person with little notice if that person has her newborn in her arms).

We kept the baby on Andrea for about an hour before I went with him to do have a few procedures performed: weighing (7lb 13oz), measuring (20"), vitamin K shot, and eye treatment. We passed on the Hep-B, the anti-bacterial washing (benefit for nurses: they don't have to wear gloves to handle baby. benefit for us: they have to wear gloves to handle baby...plus antibacterial stuff is icky when not needed), and circumcision. After the stitching was completed, Belinda, Nick, and Luisa came in and there were few dry eyes in the house (Andrea's only?). Happy times indeed.

The big push

Andrea started out pushing on her back sometime around 5:45am with only the attending nurse and me in the room. There were a number of things that didn't seem to be clicking for the pushing---the goal was three 10 second pushes per contraction and Andrea was on her back for this stage. She was getting very dizzy with each push and would only get one or two full pushes per contraction. Additionally, her technique was a little off so she wasn't getting the baby far down the tube (it started at -1cm pre-pushing for those in the know). At about 6:45 a couple of things changed: the nurse decided that Andrea should give pushing while on her side a try and our ob/gyn showed up (after the change of position). The nurse had called our physician a little earlier without telling us why, so I had a feeling that something was wrong as the pushing wasn't going anywhere. However, when Andrea went to her side some progress was made so that by the time our ob/gyn walked in the door it looked like the baby really was going to make its way out, easing my fears.

Not long after our physician's arrival, the head made its first appearance (a quick side note: if you would have asked me a few months ago I would have never thought that I would have anything to do with any action taking place south of Andrea's belly button. I don't have a great fondness for some medical procedures, so I figured I would spend all of my time being a cheerleader in the face region. However, not long after Andrea was up on the table, I was peeking down to the action region). The head was a hairy, strange-colored, pea-sized mass that only peaked through for a second during a contraction and then went back into hiding, and without a professional by my side I am not sure I would have identified it as a head. The excitement that the doctor and nurse showed at the appearance of what they said was a head was infectious and their encouragement that the baby would be out in a few minutes was great news. Not long afterward another nurse showed up to relieve the first nurse (somewhere around 7:15 I would guess), and as the first nurse left she told Andrea that with a few good pushes the baby would pop out.

By this time, it is worth noting, Andrea had the art of pushing much more under control. She was not getting dizzy with the pushes and would survive three and sometimes four pushes per contraction---she was really quite amazing. However, progress was very slow. The pea-sized 'head' made its way to black bean, garbanzo bean, kidney bean, and so on over a series of very painful contractions. The new nurse brought with her a very positive and encouraging demeanor and every time the head would climb the bean ladder before returning into hiding I was convinced by her words that the next push would be the last one. This was not to be the case, however, and there would be another set of pushings, another appearance, another disappearance, and another wait for the next contraction. At one point I commented to the doctor that it is kind of surprising the the body, once pushing starts, slows contractions so much from their 2-3 minute spacing during the earlier labor. She let me know that I was crazy and showed me the chart that had the contractions maintaining the same frequency, and I realized how strange this all was where you pass from one part of labor where you dread the contraction giving the feeling that they come too fast to the part where the baby is on its way and you (as observer, not as mother, perhaps) get so excited for each contraction and the possibility of the child popping out that the time between contractions feels like an eternity.

Something that I forgot to mention is that the first nurse mentioned that the baby had a bit of a cone head. That will be an important detail soon. Anyway, the visible part of the baby's head continued to get larger with each push, and though the doctor, the nurse, and I were more excited with each little bit more that showed (and encouragement that the next push was 'the one'), Andrea found it difficult to share in the joy we had as she was paying dearly in pain for each increase in appearing bit of head. Apparently Belinda, Nick, and our friend Luisa (who we didn't know had shown up at the hospital as further support) had a very different impression on the other side of a closed door of what was taking place, as there would be excited countings of ten and encouragement to "push through the pain" that would culminate with a not-so-pleasant yelling or screaming at the end of our counting. I didn't think Andrea was yelling very loudly, but from what I was seeing from my vantage point I thought that every syllable (even the profane ones) was well-deserved.

Somewhere around 8:15 or so I learned that a full term baby's head is not the size of a silver dollar. When our baby's silver dollar-sized head appeared it looked like the completed edges of a full head and when that appeared I was convinced that the one birthing term I knew, "crowning," would be declared and Andrea could rest, her work done. No, a baby's head is not the size of a silver dollar. The coned head that was mentioned earlier was all I was seeing and the blood, etc. that covered this bit of head shadowed it in a way that could convince those that think that a baby head is the size of a silver dollar that the end has been reached---especially when that someone can hear the agony that his wife is going through and wishes dearly that a baby's head is indeed that small.

Andrea continued to push with each push more painful than the last. The doctor applied copious amounts of mineral oil to the baby's head to ease its exit and real progress was being made. A change happened in the doctor at around 8:30---she had been massaging Andrea's perineum and adding oil, and without saying that things were actually really progressing (they had said it could be the "next push" for at least an hour now) she started putting on the full-protection outfit with booties, gown, plastic sheet for the bed, etc. The end of the table had a special fall-away section that I didn't know about which allowed the doctor in her space suit to get up very close to the action and she made that adjustment. She really believed that things were progressing apparently and at 8:49 the baby's full head (larger than a silver dollar) appeared, the doctor had Andrea slow her pushing, and in what I am confident was less than two seconds the entire baby was out. Our doctor held it up and said "here is what you got" knowing that we didn't know the gender and at once we could see that we had a new little boy.

Hospital

Belinda and Nick showed up in no time and the four of us (baby doesn't count yet) made our way to the hospital. At 2:00am we arrived and were shown to the pre-admittance screening room. Andrea was hooked up to devices to measure the baby's heart rate and contractions, and the nurse performed a cervical exam where she found that Andrea was 4.5-5cm dilated and therefore would be admitted to a labor/birth room. In the birth room Andrea was outfitted first with hard-wired probes for heart rate and contraction and shortly after cordless so that she could move around. For the next few hours Andrea endured contractions in many positions, but seemed to spend the primary amount of time in the rocking chair or on the birthing ball. Belinda and Nick were in there with us the whole time and were good support to have. The two of them and I even played a round of hangman on the room's white board during the in-between periods of Andrea's contractions when she would go to the bathroom. We didn't erase it and later during delivery the doctor was impressed that Andrea was so relaxed during labor to be playing games.

At one point Andrea and I walked down the hall a few steps to mix things up and she was hit by a strong contraction. While bent over on the wall's railing (a great addition for a laboring hall---these places think of everything) a nurse who we hadn't met came by and told Andrea something along the lines of "you don't have to suffer like this...we can give you something to ease the pain," which was a little bothersome as Andrea wanted to try to do the birth without medication, but this offer wasn't taken and we headed back to the room as walking wasn't all the fun it was advertised to be.

Back in the room contractions continued. They had a running paper feed of the monitoring similar to a seismograph with one half dedicated to the baby's heart rate and the other Andrea's contractions. It was actually kind of nice to have this monitor around so Belinda, Nick, and I knew (should Andrea's breathing, wincing not betray it) that a contraction was beginning or ending. Somewhere around 5:00am or so the contractions' representation on the sheet switched from the smoothly increasing and topped mountains that they had been to very jagged-topped contractions. In our pregnancy class, the stages of labor were described with pictures showing the rise and fall that were smooth and then jagged and I thought that this was just supposed to be a representation of how the contractions become very painful to the point of being overwhelming, but apparently they really change in a measurable way and that is what these plots were showing (I found a pamphlet and took a picture, below---the cartoon faces were actually pretty accurate).


When this change happened Andrea started to question if she could continue on without pain relief. However, the nurse who was monitoring from the nursing station came in about that time saying that she would like to do another cervical exam (second of the evening). The nurse found that Andrea was 9.5cm dilated, however she still was examining when the next contraction came and that one pushed Andrea to a full 10cm. The nurse started preparing the room for the actual birth and Belinda and Nick went to the hall to wait out the pushing.

The lead-up

At 4:30pm, Tuesday, March 4, I got the call at work. Not THE call, but the call that alerts me to the fact that Andrea, who has not felt so much like donning clothes and attending big social situations, felt like going to her school's annual Board appreciation dinner and that I would need to rush home to get ready for the event. Attend we did, and Andrea's appearance was an extremely well-received surprise to those there. We both were provided much information for general baby care and given a list of many tricks (some of which we had already employed) to speed the baby's arrival. The party was fun, though Andrea was feeling a little strange physically. We arrived back home at around 9:30: Andrea went to bed to read and I went to the living room to finish disc 2 of "Les Enfants du Paradis" due back to the library the next day. At 10:30 I heard my name called out from the back of the house and when I got back to the bedroom to find Andrea, still dripping, standing in a puddle of clear liquid telling me "I think my water broke." This water breaking, the gusher kind seen in the movies, left little doubt to even the untrained such as ourselves that a water breaking had indeed occurred. Andrea told me that she was in bed when "something felt a little strange" and she headed to the bathroom. Three steps away from the bed was where she was when I found her and where the source of the strange feeling had made itself known.

In the next 20 minutes calls were made to Angela for advice (expect contractions soon---same sudden water breaking had happened to her), Belinda as a warning of the impending trip to the hospital, and various other friends and family. At 11:10 I started a journal of the contractions (science degrees pay off for something) watching as the first 30 second one was followed by a 50 second one 13 minutes later, and after that there would be no more than a 9 minute gap between any two. For the next two hours I tried to help Andrea through each contraction and spent the in between time taking care of all of the last minute tasks (collecting food and cell phone chargers, cleaning cat boxes, putting the infant seat back in the car, take a last picture of a full-term Andrea (shown to left) etc.). Luckily Andrea had packed the hospital bag on the day previous, so there wasn't too much for me to do.

By 12:15 the contractions had started at a regular 5 minute spacing. It was actually quite amazing that they would show up really close to five minute spacing on the nose. Andrea was a real champ through this time and did a great job of relaxing in between. At 1:15 she passed the required mark of one hour of five-minute-spaced 60 second contractions and I called the doctor. We were told to come in, so I called the excited Belinda and Nick who hadn't yet slept and told them that the time had come to make our way to the hospital.