The Birth - the whole sordid account
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Warning: The following text contains scenes of extreme verbosity, little humour, and sexual content (sort of anyways, at least the after affects of sex). Parental discretion is advised,
(like any of you rotten kids are going to say, "MOM, Errol wrote up something on his web site which may be too graphic for my virgin ears, could you proofread it first?")
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Contractions suck. They suck in many ways, which could be greatly expounded on if I were female, but considering the only gender-specific pain I'm vulnerable to is
a kick to the groin, I can only give you my view on contractions. They suck. They suck even more if they last for 3 or 4 days. I had one male friend ask me if I was anxious to know
what it felt liked to be pregnant. I figured it would rate up there with swallowing a cat and being disemboweled from the inside. There's such a thing as being TOO in touch with your feminine side.
Birth is a beautiful and miraculous thing. Assuming, of course, that you're the type that gets your kicks outta looking at disgusting pictures in medical textbooks. To the rest of
the onlookers, we have a mucousy, bloody, mess just spilling all over the bed and which I'm pretty sure they just burn afterwards as opposed to going to all the trouble to sanitize it later. Sorry,
I have a thing against any type of thick, viscous, liquid which the body produces. Before this gets any more disgusting, and personal, however, I'll return to the birth.
Keren had, uh, a prodormal labour. I think that's what it's called. Basically, she had contractions ranging from 5 minutes to an hour apart. Now, for those of you not well versed
in pregnancy lore as I am, don't worry, because this stuff is easy. When a contraction starts happening every 5 minutes, and they start lasting for about 1 minute, and this continues
for about an hour, then you have one irritable wife. Also, it's time for you to go to the hospital. But for Keren, contractions started Friday morning around 3:00 am, and contractions didn't get to
the "go to the hospital stage" until 3am Monday morning! Good grief! So we were tired, especially Keren, because the contractions increased in pain when she lay down, and thus she
couldn't sleep.
Fortunately, when we did go to the hospital, she was 70% effaced, and the cervix was dilated 4 cm. Apparantly this is good, because Keren was happy with the news. I was happy too, because
Keren was happy, and after a whole weekend of unhappy Keren, you'd be happy too. So, we went through all the preliminary stuff and they showed us to our labour and delivery room.
It had cable, which was cool. But nothing interesting was on TLC, nor the Discovery Channel. Which are the only shows I really watch on cable anyways. They did have some silly
"Wedding Story" show on, but who wants to watch a bunch of yahoos get married? I don't know them, they'll probably get divorced in a year anyways, so what's the point? Go play Starcraft,
you may sometimes play with strangers, but at least it's a fun game.
We went to Mt Sinai hospital, which is seriously a great hospital, but it's also a teaching hospital. So there are a lot of student doctors that are learning. There's nothing bad about this, but
I was surprised at the amount of people that came in to poke, prod, and check out Keren's nether regions. Heck, if I did half the stuff that those doctors did, we'd go back to the "unhappy Keren" stage,
but there are children reading, and we won't get into that.
Since Keren had been experiencing pain since Friday, she decided to get an epidural. This is a procedure where they insert a huge needle into her back to feed a small plastic tube inbetween her
vertebrae such that they can continually administer drugs into her spine so that she won't feel pain from the top of her belly to her thighs. At least, that's what they showed on a 1970's video in
prenatal class. Surprisingly enough, I was paying attention, but that's because it was a video, and I was hoping they were showing a Jackie Chan flik. Anyways, I didn't see any of this happen to
Keren, because big needles, like viscous body liquids, gross me out.
So, it's 8:30 Monday morning. The doctor was a bit late, but baby wasn't waiting. The resident doctor comes in to do his business with Keren's nether regions, and it is decided that she should start
pushing soon. The nurse gives us a couple lessons about how to breathe during pushing, which is good, because we didn't get to this part during prenatal class and all the pregnancy books
I've read didn't say anything about this...but of course, I've never really read past the "5th month stage", because I really only read the thing in the bathroom while doing number 2,
and it was either that or playing Tetris on my gameboy. No contest really.
Anyways, if you watch dads during delievery in the movies, you may get the impression that their job is basically to faint and to freak out. This is simply not true. I had many useful and meaningful
jobs to make me feel needed and wanted:
- Get muffin
- Mommies get hungry. They need food. I needed a coffee in a big way, so wanting a muffin is a good thing
- Hold mommies foot
- You have to hold her leg up high as she pushes. Smart people put the leg on their hip and brace themselves. Stupid people hold the foot with their hand and keep it around the groin area.
- Count
- Yet another use for this invaluable skill. Those Sesame Street people sure knew what they were doing, pounding counting into our head since we were 2. Counting is useful for breathing,
and fortunately, I only missed one number.
- Getting out of way
- The room is quite big, but not big enough to hold 5 or 6 people comfortably. I got out of the way quite quickly.
- Pace
- Well, sorta pacing, considering there wasn't really any room to do much of it. In between the pushing, daddy doesn't have much to do except for fainting and freaking.
So, mommy is pushing, and it is taking all my strength to look down at the goopy, bloody mess.
At one point, the nurse asked me to hold the fetal monitor on Keren's belly while she went to get something. I did, because it was something different and new from my other important jobs. The doctor
reached up to help, and her hand brushed against mine. Now, you may be thinking we have come to some naughty, sordid, account of the pregnancy, with one hand brushing up against another,
sorta like teenagers reaching into the popcorn bag at the same time. This is not the case.
This has a strong impression in my mind, because doctor's hand is well protected in surgical gloves. My hand is exposed and vulnerable to all sorts of gross, disgusting, bloody, viscous, easily
transferrable from one hand to the other, liquids. It was sheer luck and fatigue that kept me from doing some fainting and freaking, as I could feel the mucous drying and crusting on my hand.
The resident doctor says, "Look, I can see the head." I tried to lean down a bit, to catch a glimpse,
but this was difficult, since the majority of my muscles were focused on keeping my body rigid and not turning away in horror and degenerating into the fainting and freaking.
But it was true, with each contraction, the head slowly started to peak out. It was hairy, it was grey, and it was small! It looked the size of a kiwi, and I was shocked at how small the baby was.
The baby had some difficulty, and they decided to use the vacuum thingy on the baby. This is good, because vacuums are related to cleanliness,
and something had to be done about the huge mess on the bed.
They put this small electronic plunger on the babies head, and as Keren pushed, the doctors pulled. Finally, "POP", and out came this HUGE face! Well, it wasn't that large, but I was once
again shocked, because the head I thought was so small was just some sort of misshapened extrusion. Once the head came out, the doctor pulled some more, and
"SLUP", the baby slides onto the bed, covered with blood, and gore, mucous and...well, you know how this goes.
I looked down into the baby's nether regions, and commented, "Looks like a girl to me."
At 9:37, Monday, October 22nd, 2001, Errol and Keren had a baby girl.
The baby grunted, and whimpered. But she didn't cry. They carried her to the weigh scale, checked her out, put junk into her eyes, and stuck her with a needle. She wailed, but not loudly.
Another doctor had come in at this point to check it's breathing out. Mommy did get a chance to get the first cuddle and kiss, but the little one was soon whisked away to X-ray. I went with them,
and watched as they hooked her up to another machine to check her vital signs and get her ready for the x-ray.
She was 6 pounds, 7 ounces, and about 18". She was having a little trouble breathing, and her body was assymetrical. Something looked funny about her
chest as she tried to breathe in. They were putting an IV in her, so I went back to see how Keren was doing. The doctors and nurses were great, as they explained to us
everything they were doing. They were going to put the baby in NICU ( baby intensive care unit, why not call it BICU?) and we could go see her once Keren's legs could be used for walking.
I decided to take advantage of the cable in our room. There was an interesting program about bees on the Discovery Channel. Did you know that a drone bee DIES after fertillizing the
queen? Either bees are not that healthy, or the sex is just THAT good. They also do it while FLYING! That's like having sex while driving. Heck, they won't even let us use cell phones
while driving.
Finally we were able to go see our little one. She was hooked up in a little incubator, with wires and tubes used to monitor her oxygen and heartrate, and keep her breathing.
We could touch her by reaching through little portholes. We watched as she cried, but we could not hold her. We could see her shake and twitch, but we could barely caress her.
We could see her whimper, but we could not kiss her.
But, we were allowed 24 hour access to NICU. And when we went back again, they allowed me to hold her. She was still wired up, but they have these cool rocking chairs that I could sit in,
and I held her in my arms. I talked to her, and watched her slowly settle down as she was being cuddled.
She has red marks, as the tape used to keep the monitors on irritates her skin. Her heels are all rough and bruised as they take numerous blood tests. She spits up continuously, clearing
the mucous from her lungs. She smells like hospital blankets.
Her name is Ekko Alea Elumir. She is the most beautiful thing in the world to me.
Currently, her diaphram isn't working properly, which keeps her right lung from being used as her organs push up against it. They are unsure as to why the diaphragm is behaving
this way. I don't know how to spell diaphram, and I don't have a dictionary, so cut me some slack.
But, the support is amazing. From staff and from family and friends, there is a tremendous amount of support and prayer. Our window sill is filled with flowers ( why couldn't giving gifts
of boardgames be a cultural practice? ), and we have numerous visitors and phone calls. Many offers of help have been...well...offered, and we have already taken some up on that.
My deepest gratitude and thanks go out to those that care so much for us and our little one, and who are constantly praying and thinking about us.
Emotionally, we are raw. We only weep in the morning and evenings though, and during the day, we're ok. I have my laptop, so I can do something in between visits to Ekko. Keren's
electronic breast pump also greatly amuses me, but she told me not to get into that. Keren is still sleepy, so she sleeps, but physically, she is recovering remarkably well. I stay in the room
with her, and we sleep on her single bed. She has no control over her peeing abilities. This concerns me somewhat.
Ekko is doing well, and she is in no grave danger. It's not life-threatening, and she will be fine. We will see the surgeons today to get their expert opinions, and to see if she
requires surgery, but it is unlikely that she does. Keep us in your prayers, and thanks to many of you for your support.
I'm tired, writing about this is actually hard for me, so please forgive the spelling mistakes, the mixed tenses, the verbosity, and the non-editing.
Game night should continue next Tuesday, btw. :)
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