The Road Least Traveled

Well Vincent you were two weeks old yesterday, and I tell you, what an adventure you and I and your mother have been on. I’ll recap the highlights for you.

For the past two months before your birthday I have not slept. I have been anxious with worry, having questions boggle my mind.

What do we do when the water breaks? How do I help your mother get through labor? Will I survive labor? Will your mom go into a bad transition and use her karate on me and hurtle me out the window? What will Vincent be like? Will we harvest the cord blood properly? Do we have all we need to start raising a kid? Will we sleep?

For several weeks before you were born, your mother would wake up and go to the bathroom near dawn. In the end it was getting painful – she would gasp, whine, whimper, and sigh as she battled her way to the toilet. Hearing these sounds, from within whatever slumber I had managed to work myself into, I would start up in bed, asking, “Is everything all right?”

Everything was always fine. It was the waiting game, and we were playing it.

I had originally bet my money on you being born on September 23rd. This is because, being the steadfast record keepers that we are, we knew the probable date of your conception, and working the math, determined the latter half of September to be the target date. The doctors disagreed, stating that all first babies are late, and nailed the date down at October 4th.

I was further reinforced in my belief you would be born in September when we had your 4d pictures made. We, thinking you were at 34 weeks, went in for the ultrasound. The nurse performing the operation looked at you and determined you were not 34 weeks, but 36 weeks, and labeled your pictures such. At that time, if you were 36 weeks, the suggested target birth date for a full 40-week term would be, you guessed it, the end of September.

But September 23rd came and went. Your mom’s target date, September 25th, also came and went.

Every morning I continued to hear the grunts, moans, and sighs. But nothing.

September became October, and the two of us were getting excited. It was an “any-day-now” situation. I think it is kind of like getting on a roller coaster ride. When you’re standing in line, you worry about the ride. You worry if it will scare you, or if you will get sick. You think about jumping the rails and running away. You think about how nice it would be to sit at one of the boring street cafés and spend an hour watching people walk past. But you stay the course, getting closer to the ride dock, and berating yourself the entire way. Then it comes. You climb in, get strapped in, and off you go. There is no turning back. And, then, you start to climb the big hill.

We were going up that hill for several days. October 4th came. You decided it must’ve been too cold outside, and as the sun set, your mother again told me to give you a stern talking to. It seems your aunt Rachel and uncle Scott were concerned about your cousin Byron tarrying in the womb, and Scott gave him a “stern talking to,” after which Byron popped right out.

So I did it. “Vincent, if you don’t come out of there this instant, you’ll be grounded.”

Well it wasn’t that instant. But when the sun came up on the morning of October 5th, I heard from the bathroom…

“Oops.”

No sighs. No whimpers. No scream of pain. Just an “oops.”

“What is it?” I asked.
“I think my water just broke,” your mother replied.

So I looked at the sheets. There was a big, round wet spot and some dripping on the floor, but nothing that couldn’t be explained away as a momentary lapse of control. There were a few drops of liquid on your mom’s leg that looked like strawberry kool-aid. It was nothing gushing like we were told happened on average.

Neither of us were sure what to do. Yeah we had six birthing classes. Maybe in one they told us what to do, but standing there in the bathroom at seven-thirty in the morning, our minds were as still as an empty room.

So I did the best thing I knew to do. I called John Hartman.

If you were coming, they needed to know. Marvis was support person number 2. She had an idea, but wasn’t really told I think, that she was coming primarily to support me and not your mother. Odd, yes, but I was afraid I would freeze in labor, and I didn’t want Becca to feel alone.

But I digress.

“We think her water just broke.” I told your Grandpa Hartman on the phone. I must’ve been on speakerphone, which is often the case when you call the Hartman house, because I heard Grandma Marvis scream with delight.

As the scientists we all were, I felt compelled to provide evidence that would support my hypothesis.

“There’s this red liquid dripping down her leg.”
“Call the doctor and see what they say to do,” said Marvis, “but you probably should go to the hospital.”

So we called. They said they’d get back with us, and we waited.

“Oh wow,” I heard your mother exclaim. “I think that’s my mucous plug.” So I looked, and called John Hartman again.

“There’s this snotty stuff all over the place now.”
“Yes,” said Grandma Marvis. “You really need to go to the hospital now. “

So we were reassured. The time had come. I went and jumped in the shower. As I got my clothes off, the phone rang. The doctors, having finally decided to give us a return call, told us that there was no time to lose, that to keep you at the lowest risk of infection, we had to leave for the hospital, right then, right now. So I dressed, and off we went.

People ask me about that drive to the hospital. I was nervous, yes, but I was not on edge. I drove calmly and carefully. We chatted about you finally coming, and how anxious we were to see you. We talked briefly about breathing, focusing, and working through the pain. I also did my best to avoid the bumps and potholes in the road, because as you may discover one day, potholes, speed-bumps, and laboring women do not get along.

I pulled up to ER, helped your mom to the registration/admittance counter, and showed them our proof of pre-registration.

“So how far along are your contractions?” they asked.
“Three minutes.” Your mom was timing them before we left. They were three minutes as soon as the water broke.
“So what exactly makes you think the baby is coming soon?” they asked. That wasn’t their exact words, but being the lazy bureaucratic desk-jockeys they were, that is how I took it.
“I dunno, but it might be something to do with the fact that her water broke forty minutes ago,” I said. I remember saying this, but again, I don’t remember what elicited this response. I do remember, however, they looking over the desk at the red dripping on your mother’s leg, then they, wide-eyed, exclaiming, “this baby is coming, we need to get her to the triage.”

So I went to park the car.

It seems while I was gone the gushing water happened. Your mom decided the floor in front of the lazy bureaucrat’s desk needed a good polishing.

By the time I got to the birthing unit they were wheeling your mom into triage. Then the nurse looked down, saw the big swath of water behind the wheelchair, and said, “you don’t need triage, I didn’t realize your water was broke,” so they immediately moved us to a birthing room.

And that’s where it happened. We had some really good nurses. Deb was in charge; she did her best to keep the humor. Amanda was a trainee, and after she nearly drained your mom’s blood from a good jab for an IV she became one of the best helpers that was there. Your mom, too, was in good spirits. Deb told her that if your mom was still cracking jokes at this stage, the labor would come, and be easy.

Once things settled down I did my job. I’m not the best breather in the world, so I couldn’t coach by breathing. When the contractions came, I used gentle pressure on your mom’s hand as I held it to keep her focused on when to breathe in and out. I also reminded her to relax her jaw. It became a joke, but the best way she could do it was stick out her tongue. So for the next nine hours when I said, “relax that jaw,” your mom’s tongue would shoot out.

Around ten or eleven a.m. Grandpa John and Grandma Marvis showed up. Marvis was a good breathing coach, although because she couldn’t see my hands, didn’t realize that her breathing was off key to my rhythm of pressure and was causing some confusion. But your mom is a trooper and she worked her way through it.

As time went on, there was a clear problem happening. “Very bizarre,” as Doctor Peters put it. It seems your mom’s cervix was ripe and more than 80% effaced, but there was no dilation. After six hours of this they finally gave your mom a new IV with pitocin, a drug that somehow seems to speed up the process but as a side effect makes the pain during contractions more intense.

And that’s what happened. Soon, by 2:00 pm, your mother was in such pain that she was doubled over, moaning in agony, and pressing her face hard into the grip-bars on the side of the bed. It was time for the epidural. We had previously placed in our birth plan that she wanted to avoid an epidural if at all possible, but now, after the pain, she wanted it. So she got it. And she relaxed.

Life was different after the epidural. Your mom sat on the bed again, relaxed, cracked jokes, and dozed in and out. Finally Marvis and I went down to the café to get a bite to eat. When we got back, Becca was having trouble again.

“I feel like I really need to push,” she would say. She had dilated after the epidural/pitocin to 4cm, and we thought there was still time. So Amanda the nurse came in and we asked, and she checked.

“I think she’s at six or so,” was the response, and she called in Deb to confirm. Deb confirmed, but by the time she did, she added, “she’s complete now.”

So it was quick. Deb looked at your mother and said, “if you want to have this baby, let’s push it out now.”

I want to take one second to say that those nurses in that room really know what they are doing. They know how to take over when the time comes, keep you focused, and get that baby out of you.

And that’s what they did. Doctor Peters was attending a birth in an adjacent room that had complications, and you weren’t willing to wait on him. Deb, Amanda, Grandma Marvis, and I helped bring you in this world. I cradled your mom up in my arms and helped her scrunch up together and push. Marvis held your mother’s opposite leg and helped push, and Deb and Amanda got you out.

Words can’t exclaim the rush of emotion or the miraculous wonder I saw. I could never do it justice. But I will say that when your head was partially out, and your face turned up, you looked right at me. I don’t know if you saw me, but I know it was your first sight of the outside world, and I can only hope I was part of what you saw.

I told your mom repeatedly that I could see you – She needed the support. She was working hard and didn’t think she was making any progress. And then BAM the head was out. After that it was a quick turn of the shoulder and you came dropping out into the world. Doctor Peters came in just in time to hear you crying.

They cleaned you up, sewed up your mother, and collected the cord blood. Things were calming down. Happy Birthday was sung to you, and then you just sat there and looked at us.

One thing though I think I’ll always hear in my head though, to the end of time, is:

“Okay deep breath now! ONE TWO THREE FOUR FIVE SIX SEVEN EIGHT NINE AND TEN!”

Welcome to the world Vincent.

Dad