The birthday

Well, the main event, the one we have all been waiting for has come. And gone. Obviously, or you might think that I am an incredible ass for sitting here blogging while my wife is laboring.

Yes, it came and went, and (as with all pregnancies) with some scary parts. Although tired from some lack of sleep, I should get these thoughts down now before I completely forget what happened (the horror! the horror!). Here are the metrics for the engineers: boy, 6 lbs 10 oz, 20 in long, and a head the size of a watermelon (just kidding; but it was 13 cm wide which makes you think about how a 13 cm wide object can fit through a 10 cm hole). Now for the more philisophical and introspective…

I have come to two conclusions (given my vast experience of participating in one birth and an opinion pole involving one other husband) regarding the birthing experience. Conclusion the first: despite what they might tell you, most women will never remember the actual birthing experience as well as the men. When the moment comes, the women are grunting, groaning, hair dangling in the face, sweating, yelling, whatever, as they push something the size of a large cantelope out of a hole the size of a small apple. It’s amazing. I am relatively certain that if men were forced to bear children, the human race would be extinct within the next 75 years.

My second conclusion: the farther the distance from the most recent birth, the more rosy the birthing experience was – at 10 years, the birth is painful but bearable; at 20 years, the mother experienced some “mild discomfort”; and after 30 years, the baby slid out of the canal and immediately spoke his/her first word because obviously her child is extremely smart and that far ahead in development.

My first conclusion is not meant to denigrate the experience of the mother. To the contrary, I am just pointing out that the experiences are different and wonderful and scary and hard in their own ways. The man looks on, a helpless observer. He is the advocate for the mother to be – he makes sure that when she has difficulty expressing her own desires, they are known and carried out to the extent they possibly can be. And sometimes, when a difficult decision has to be made, he is alone to make that decision.

The woman, on the other hand, is there to finish the job that they (the mother and the father) have started. She and she alone brings this child into the world. She is the one who must bear all of the work and the pain. Nobody else can do it for her.

This was my perspective from last night. So here is where I come from…

Yesterday, the due date, Sasha went into the midwife for her final prenatal appointment. She wasn’t supposed to get a pelvic exam, but one was done anyway (Sasha didn’t care because she was curious). At that point, she was 2 cm dilated and 60% effaced. This was around 2 pm.

At about 4 pm, she called me to tell me that she felt “crampy”, but she was probably not going into labor. She called again at 4:30 to tell me to come straight home after work. But don’t hurry. I got home about 40 min later. She was obviously contracting and was about 5 to 6 min apart. She laid down then took a bath. Just in case. After the bath she was about 3 to 4 minutes apart. And the contractions were painful. It was time to go.

By the time we got to the hospital (7:30 pm), she started to contract intensly every 2 minutes. As the nurse said, she was rockin and rollin – this baby was coming! She was 6 cm dilated. But, the contractions were too intense and too close together. Things were progressing too fast. In a period of 20 minutes she appeared to dilate to 9 cm. And then the baby’s heartrate fell. And did not recover. He was now a steady and faint 60 bpm – good for us, not good for baby. The 9 cm measurement, it turns out, was most likely due to the fact that the uterus (well developed from 8 wks of contractions) was slamming the baby into the cervix. She was actually only about 7 cm dilated.

Mom was in a lot of pain and not completely aware of what was going on. And dad was freaked out and trying to keep everything together. There were 2 obs, 2 antheseoligists, 3 nurses and one pediatrician in the room and things seemed to be progressing really fast now. They were having trouble getting a good heartrate because the contractions were starting to displace the baby. So they stuck an electrode on his head to get his heartbeat. It was still low. Something was being pinched and the baby was in distress. And now they were talking surgery. Sasha could comprehend this enough to whisper “No surgery” through the pain, but she was not fully aware of what was going on with the baby.

At that point, they decided to slow the contractions with terbutylene – a smooth muscle relaxer that would virtually stop the contractions for 30 min. With this and changing positions, the baby was able to recover and his heart rate was now in a good range (120 to 160 bpm). We were in good shape for now, as one ob put it. The crowd cleared out and the midwife had finally gotten there. The spectre of surgery still hung over us – if when the contractions started up again the heart rate began to fall and not recover, they would be forced to remove the baby quickly. It was now about 9:30.

Around 10:00 or 10:15 her contractions really got rolling again. They were intense, but the baby looked good. After a little while, Sasha said that she thought she might want an epidural. Now I have no opinion about this. I don’t honestly think it makes you a stronger or better person to go through birth without drugs. I don’t think it takes away from the experience. This is not a general anisthetic. The mom is fully aware and rational after and during the birth. And I really don’t have any good reason for thinking that Sasha should go without drugs – after all, it is not me who has to do this so I don’t think my opinion is relevant. My feeling was that I should support whatever decision she makes. And she had decided that she would see how it went.

So, when she said she might need drugs, I had no problem with this (as I said before, I really don’t think my opinion was relevant). But I did think that she needed to express this desire to the midwife if it is what she wanted. But she never did because five minutes later (although it seemed like this night was lasting forever), she was 9 cm dilated. The nurses wanted Sasha to get off the bed and let gravity help put the baby into position for delivery during the next contraction. She did. But then she got up on the bed (on all fours because it was comfortable for her), and she started saying “It feels like I need to push”.

The midwife did another pelvic exam (to make sure she would not destroy her insides and baby if she started pushing) and determined it was time to bring this baby into the world. And this was the most amazing part. Once she started to bear down, you could see groin start to flex where the baby was – our life was changing before my eyes. She pushed again and the baby was crowning. The midwife determined that she was going to need help and made a small incision on the perineum (episiotimy) to give the baby more room to come out. Another couple of pushes, and the baby corkscrewed out of the womb.

And I saw the most beautiful creature I had ever seen. He had 10 fingers. 10 toes. Still blue though (it’s a Colorado thing). And a hell of a pair of lungs. For just going through that bloody mess of a birth canal, he was surprisingly clean. But he was perfect (even with his cone shaped head. it goes away. hopefully.). I had picked up the camera to take pictures of the baby fresh out of the womb (which turned out to be obscene and out of focus). But, as I was taking pictures, the midwife told me to put the damn camera down if I wanted to cut the cord. And I did so I did.

His name is Noah Robert Richardson. He and mom are doing great. He has peed and pooped (this is good) and he appears to be taking to mom’s breast. Mom got little sleep last night (she was totally stoned), so mom is now sleeping and trying to rest up.

And I think that is enough for now. I have to go check up on them. I will have pictures up by Monday and I expect everyone to properly oooh and aaaah over them!

Matt

~ by Ephraim on September 17, 2006.