Our Birth Story: Part Three
This is part three of the story of the birth of our daughter.
We talk. We cry. We panic. I try to call a friend of hers who had a c-section the previous December without success. I offer the following: insanity is doing the same thing twice and expecting a different result. She agrees, and the final push is that if we wait too long, the next ob-gyn on call is someone she saw for a couple appointments while her regular ob-gyn was on holidays, and this other ob-gyn was disgusting and not who she wanted delivering her first child.
We call for the ob-gyn to tell him of our decision. He again explains that the child is large (we get it) and as such he would suggest a vertical incision instead of a horizontal. We would later learn that all his c-sections are vertical (also known as “the old way that takes significantly longer to heal but is a lot easier for the doctor”). We agree to the vertical.
So around 8pm they come and take her to the O.R. while I wait in recovery next door. The next two hours or so I pace back and forth while the wonders of medical science figure out how to get an operational epidural into my wife. (We would later learn none of the earlier attempts to get her an epidural were “right”.)
I get collected by the anesthesiologist and brought to the O.R. He directs me cautiously past the table where my wife is and around to her head, behind a curtain (we had specifically told both the ob-gyn and the nurses that neither of us wanted any details about the surgery; we wanted to hide behind the curtain and not be given a play-by-play). She is on her back with her arms outstretched, and I am immediately angry for the years I spent in Catholic school classrooms, all of which had crucifixes in them.
I try to be coherent and talk to her as the team of doctors and nurses tend to her. Eventually, the ob-gyn exclaims, “Woah! Look at her!” To which I reply, “It’s a girl?” And he tosses back, “No, it’s a girl and a half!” Time of birth: 10:24pm.
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