The Modernish Father

One week later we’re knee-high in diapers and formula, but there are no complaints. It’s fun to have a newborn in the house again, even if it means getting about three hours of sleep a day.

With all the feeding and diaper changing, I guess I haven’t told the tale of The Girl’s birth yet. Well, here you go.

The day began bright and early at… well, it didn’t really begin per se. It just kind of morphed out of the previous night. Knowing that we were about to finally get this baby born made it impossible for either The Wife or me to get any sleep.

Let’s get this party started

At around 4:45 a.m., we both threw in the towel and got out of bed and started getting ready. The Wife took one last photo to document her pregnant rotundness and we headed down the road and made our way to the hospital around 5:45.

We checked in quickly (more or less) through the emergency room as instructed and found ourselves in the very utilitarian labor and delivery room about twenty minutes later. Although we were slightly afraid of the ominous “staff only” door in the corner, we decided to stay and by 6:15, The Wife was in her gown, hooked up to an IV line and channel surfing one click at a time with one of those stupid little hospital bed remote controls.

At 7:30ish, the doctor arrived to break The Wife’s water and tell us that it could be several minutes or several years before anything else happened. Fortunately, it was closer to the former and within an hour or two, The Wife was “enjoying” some decidedly intense contractions.

Around 9:30, The Wife’s favorite person at the hospital arrived – the anesthesiologist with the epidural. Five minutes and no doubt hundreds of dollars later (the bill hasn’t arrived yet), The Wife was in happy-warm-numb-tingly-leg-land and all was well again.

There was a brief concern about The Girl’s heart rate following each contraction, but that was quickly remedied through some sort of voodoo. Well, probably not voodoo. I kind of dozed off during that part.

And then not much happened for a while. Family members started to trickle in around 10:00 and visited her in the room. The Boy came up to the hospital and discovered that nothing of any interest to him was going on. He and I walked to a nearby McDonald’s to purchase some breakfast, whereupon he became quite miffed that they don’t do Happy Meal toys in the mornings. Really, the whole thing was dangerously close to turning into a Seinfeld episode.

Okay, let’s really get this party started

Finally, at noon things started to get going. The Wife, whose epidural was starting to wear off a wee bit, started feeling somewhat nauseous. A couple of minutes after that, she became intensely aware of some pelvic pressure and the need to push.

I went to go tell the nurses at the desk, but they weren’t particularly interested – it was lunch time. After bugging them twice more, they decided it was time to shut me up, so our nurse was called away from her lunch to “discover” that our child’s birth was imminent. I believe this is what I had been telling them all along.

Within thirty seconds, five more nurses appeared, the bed went from horizontal to disturbingly vertical, bright lights appeared out of nowhere and the room suddenly became extremely crowded. Someone even came out of the mysterious “staff only” room. They just opened the door though, it wasn’t like the Kool-Aid Man busting through a wall or anything.

Once everyone was in place (except for the doctor), The Wife started to push. Unlike her experience five years ago with The Boy, she didn’t need to have an oxygen mask and she had her glasses on and could therefore see. These were both vast improvements over last time.

The Wife also reported later that she was much more aware of what was going on this time. With The Boy, she was so jacked up on her epidural that she probably could have been lit on fire and not have noticed it. This time, though, she was actually able to feel the contractions and push with them. She said it was a good thing. I say it means the epidural guy short-changed us on the happy juice.

Introducing The Girl

After maybe four or five minutes of pushing, the crown of The Girl’s head started to make it’s grand appearance. At this point, I started to worry because the doctor still wasn’t in the room. Fortunately, he dashed into the room just about then to catch the baby and collect his paycheck.

After witnessing it twice in person, I can honestly say that the process of giving birth is the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen. As long as I live, I’ll never forget watching my two children being born. I’m extremely glad that I live in an age where fathers can take part in the process in the delivery room and not just sit around smoking cigars in a waiting room somewhere.

During both deliveries, there was a point where I realized that The Wife just really wasn’t in the proper state of mind to be given the unfiltered truth. With The Boy’s birth, this meant not revealing just how blue he was after he was born. He had some breathing problems during the labor and came out looking like a smurf. Fortunately, he pinked up immediately and I’m happy to report that he’s quite pasty five years later.

During a natural birth, there’s a point right before that final contraction where the baby’s head is sticking out of the mother, but the rest of him/her is firmly inside. To be honest, it’s kind of goofy looking. This time though, it was even more goofy because of my child’s ginormous noggin.

As soon as I saw The Girl’s head, I knew this was going to be a big baby. After staring at it for a few seconds, I realized that she was going to be bigger than The Boy had been – a lot bigger. I was somewhat scared to think just how much more baby there was to be delivered.

Given the situation and The Wife’s state of mind, I chose not to divulge that information at the time. Sometimes silence is the best policy.

But then that final contraction came, the last push was made and The Girl made her entrance into the world at 12:23 p.m. – just a little more than six hours after we entered the hospital. Far preferable to the 25 hours The Boy’s birth had required.

The after-party

Once they got her on the scale, my expert guesstimation was confirmed – she was a big baby. Nine pounds and eleven ounces to be precise. About two pounds more than we had anticipated and just a smidge less than one of those bags of ice they sell at the grocery store. That’s a lot of baby.

After getting checked out by the nurses and spending some alone time with her parents, The Girl thirstily chugged down her very first lunch – a bottle of formula. Following that, it was time to meet the family, including her brother (who was a little hesitant at first but has since warmed up to her).

We opted to spend a couple of nights at the hospital. Why throw away an extra night of nursery supervision and a chance to get some sleep if you don’t have to? On Saturday, somewhat rested and definitely sick of hospital food, we went home.

So now you know.

As a special reward for reading the whole story, here’s a photo gallery of The Girl’s hospital adventure for you to look at.

Gotta go, it’s nearly time for another bottle.