I won’t pretend to know what it feels like to be in labor. I was one of those C-section moms due to valid medical reasons. But I’ve witnessed deliveries of a friend and a sister and I can imagine that distractions during labor could come in handy.

Maternal belly dancing

What about belly dancing in the delivery room? Check out this novel pregnancy work out –maternal dancing. Dance instructor Suzanne Cesar combines yoga with dance movements, fun and function that helps expecting mommies to keep fit. Her routines are meant to exercise muscles of the lower back and abdomen, muscles which are burdened during pregnancy and labor. Women can even do the movements in the delivery room during labor, not only giving them a distraction, but it supposedly helps them with the delivery as the movements help ease the baby into the birth canal. I mean, most delivery rooms allow women to bring their music CD for relaxation. So why not bring your own dancing music and move for two?

Snacking

Are food and drinks allowed in the delivery room? Can you still take this last chance of snacking for two before the baby is delivered? Health experts can’t agree whether eating and drinking during labor should be allowed or forbidden. Here are the pros and the cons:

• The American Society of Anesthesiologists thinks it’s best to stick to clear liquids and eat no food to avoid maternal complications.
• In many European countries, snacking during labor is allowed to help women get through the strenuous physical activity.

So what approach is best? This group of UK researchers decided to find out by recruiting 2426 moms who were

• delivering for the first time
• delivering singletons only
• have no major medical risks

Half of the laboring moms were invited to nosh on fruits, biscuits, sandwiches, burgers, chicken, chocolate and other treats. Half were asked to stick to water only. Now, here’s the interesting results:

• 29% of those invited to eat decided to fast.
• 20% of those forbidden to eat decided to eat anyhow.

And oh, the birth outcomes? No significant differences between the eaters and the non-eaters.

The conclusion: leave the snacking to the laboring woman’s discretion.

Any other delivery room distraction tips?

While a first-time labor and delivery usually lasts around many hours, sometimes, babies just decide that they are coming out. Now.

Babies are occasionally born on airplanes, on the subway, on the front lawn, and more often than you would think in a car on the way to hospital.

A mom in Cambridge, in the UK, delivered her baby in her local post office this week. She went in to top up her cell phone, and delivered a healthy baby girl before paramedics could arrive. The little girl weighed 5lbs 15oz. How do we know? Because the post master weighed her on the mail scale.

And then another new arrival made her debut on New York’s Fifth Avenue. The mom was being driven to hospital, and dang that midtown traffic, didn’t make it in time. She was expecting twin babies, and the first was born in the car outside Central Park. Paramedics made it to the scene in time to assist with the birth, and get the mother to the hospital where the second baby was delivered. The twin were born seven weeks prematurely and are expected to stay in hospital for a couple of weeks, common for preemies. One of the paramedics described the birth as “fun”. I can’t help but wonder if the mom felt the same way?

A lot of moms worry about going into labor and delivering their baby right there on the floor in the laundry detergent section at Target or in Jiffy Lube. But actually, births like these are very rare and being rare is what makes them newsworthy. The average first time labor lasts for hours, 8 to 24 hours is a normal range, with 16 hours being the average time from first contraction, to holding your baby. So almost all moms have plenty of time to get to the hospital or birthing center once labor starts.

I am only slightly showing with my child, but I am already wearing maternity clothing. My teen asked me why this was the other day. Because I feel the need to make it obvious to the world that I am slightly larger than usual because I am pregnant, not because I am almost 40 and gaining weight. That is why. My teen said she agreed. Rather for people to know you are pregnant than think that you are gaining weight.

My husband asks me why I even care. I don’t know, but I do care. I also care about the stupid remarks I know will inevitably come during this pregnancy. Here are some of my “favorites”:

Are you having twins?- Seriously. Most pregnant women already feel extremely large. Even if they are large, they don’t need a stranger to validate that fact.

Your due date is in a few days, right? – No. No it isn’t.

Can I touch your stomach? – No. I am pregnant, but I am not public property.

You know that if your butt gets big like yours is getting, they say it’s a girl? – Really? WHAT are you doing looking at my butt like that.

Drum roll please…..

Are you related to that Michelle Duggar chick? – OK. I have 4 children from my first marriage. I have a son with my current hubby and I am pregnant again. Yes, our family is large. There is a big difference between 6 kids and 17(or is it 18?). And, please spare me the “clever” comments.

Do you have any comments to add to this list? What are some things that you think should NEVER be said to a pregnant woman?

My son was born in Korea. When I had my baby shower, another expatriate friend of mine told me how after delivering three babies overseas, she went home so she could have her fourth in an American hospital. But the baby had other plans, and emerged in the parking lot of a Piggly Wiggly grocery store-on American soil.

It’s not all that uncommon for EMTs to deliver babies. And, in fact, Christine Springer had done an ambulance delivery before. But helping Dolores Guidice, 20, through her labor last Tuesday was different, and more was at stake. First, the baby was premature- nearly two months early. But Springer was able to help the terrified Guidice calm down. Guidice’s mother was also present. And it was she who first noticed the legs- the baby was breech. So Springer helped Guidice into a different position that would help the baby out. A third complication arose when the baby emerged and wasn’t breathing, because the umbilical cord was wrapped around its neck. And, again, Springer knew how to get the baby breathing.

But the most amazing part of all of this was the most important complication- Springer wasn’t actually there. Debra Guidice called 911 when her daughter went into early labor. When it was obvious the baby wouldn’t wait for an ambulance, Springer- who is also 8 months pregnant- coached the mother-daughter team though the delivery over the telephone!

Just after 3 pm, Dolores Guidice gave birth to a healthy, though tiny, baby girl at her Long Island home. The delivery took just four minutes, as baby Nevaeh weighed only 3 pounds, 9 ounces.

Baby Nevaeh’s name is the word ‘heaven’ spelled backward. “She’s a miracle, my baby,” Mom said. Grandma Debra’s voice over the 911 call is clearly terrified when she placed the call, describing the breech position, and then indicating that the baby was stuck and later, not breathing. But after Springer’s successful guidance, Debra sounds more poignant. “Oh, she opened up her eyes.”

Dolores and Debra were able to publicly thank Christine Springer this Tuesday. “I just want to say thank you very much because if it wasn’t for you my baby wouldn’t be alive right now,” said Dolores in a TV interview.

Do you know any miracle babies? Tell us!

Ice skating star Jayne Soliman was 25 weeks pregnant when she collapsed and suffered from a brain hemorrhage last week. Doctors at Oxford’s John Radcliffe Hospital in the UK kept the mother’s heart beating long enough to deliver the baby. Aya Jayne was born last Friday, January 9 just weighing over 2 lbs but otherwise alive and stable, according to BBC.

For the father, it was an emotional roller coaster of having to live through the death of his wife and welcoming a new daughter in a space of 48 hours.

41-year old Jayne was a professional free skater. She won the British championship for professional free skating in 1989 and ranked number seven in the world.

This is not the first time that a baby is delivered to a brain dead mother. There was the case of a  baby boy born in Spain born on New Year’s Eve 1999-2000 to a mother who had been “clinically dead” for several weeks- since November 13. The boy was delivered on the 29th week of pregnancy. There have also been reported cases of pregnant women in a coma who carry babies to term.

Could one ever be pregnant without knowing it? Apparently this Swiss teenager didn’t. Just before Christmas, the 13-year-old girl suffered from severe abdominal pains at school and was rushed to the hospital. School authorities thought it was acute appendicitis. The doctors came up with another diagnosis – labor pains. The girl gave birth to a healthy baby, much to the surprise of everybody, including the brand-new mother herself. It seems that nobody knew, not her, not her parents, not her friends, not her teachers. The girl just started the first year of secondary school in autumn. Her boyfriend, and most likely the father, is a boy of the same age in the same class. This means the relationship started when they were still in their last year of primary school.

The little alpine country of Switzerland was shocked at this event. Although teen pregnancies do happen here, the rate is very low (122 cases last year, they said) and definitely not considered as problematic as in the UK, record holder in Europe in terms of teen pregnancy rates. This brought up the question- How could no one have known, not even the teen herself?

That question has also brought up the debate about the effectiveness of sexual education in primary schools. Some politicians think that sex education should start even earlier, long before the girls get their first period.

Now, I ask you. How can one be pregnant and not notice? At what age should children be informed about sex and procreation?

And the most difficult of all: How do you go about telling your kids?

Folks, here is another amazing New Year Baby story.

Six years ago, I, my sister-in-law, and another friend, were pregnant in the same year and delivered within four months of each other. I’m sure this happens lots of times but it was fun for us. But what is the likelihood that twin sisters would deliver hours apart in the same hospital?

Martha and Dorothy from Memphis, Tennessee did just that, according to FoxNews! Dorothy was due on January 3 and Martha on January 11. Somehow Martha labored early on New Year’s Day. Dorothy rushed to the hospital to be with her twin and then started to have contractions herself as well! It ended up having the twin sisters having contraction back to back. Both delivered their babies on the January 1, 2009 within hours of each other.

As mom of identical twins, people are always asking him whether there is any truth to the so-called “ESP” or “special communication” among twins. And I honestly reply “I don’t know.” I know however that my twins have a special bond that goes beyond the usual inter-sibling bond or the even the parent-offspring bond. I’m sure Dorothy and Martha also have this bond that led to the almost simultaneous yet unplanned deliveries.

What a story that would be for their kids!

Babies Online will be selecting someone to receive a FREE copy of Twin Sense: A Sanity-Saving Guide to Raising Twins. All you have to do is share your opinion by leaving a comment about this post. That?s it! Leave a comment and you?re entered to win.

I just saw a news article about a woman in labor driving herself to the hospital. She was ticketed for speeding, but incredibly, the cop didn’t buy her story. She had to provide him with proof of her pregnancy!

In all fairness to the cop, I suppose he’s seen and heard just about everything. I assume that there are people who lie about labor and pregnancy just to get off without a ticket. I feel so sad for this woman because, I’ve driven myself to the hospital while in labor. It isn’t easy to do.

This brings up a good point which isn’t normally a topic of conversation–just how are you getting to the hospital? Perhaps your spouse is in the military and is deployed and you are “alone”. Perhaps you are a single mom without any family support. I knew of one woman who planned to take the bus to the hospital as she had no car and lived a long way away from her family. Taking the bus isn’t the best strategy.

I know of military families who have a relative come to stay with them during the last few weeks of the pregnancy to be available for the inevitable. I know of women who have asked their neighbors to take them to the hospital and I also know of women who have taken a taxi when “the time” arrived.

I can honestly say that driving while in labor was a scary and very dangerous thing for me to do. Can you imagine being pregnant and getting into a car accident on the way to the hospital? At the time, I just didn’t feel I had a lot of options though and wasn’t thinking very clearly. I’d made arrangements for a relative to take me to the hospital and when I ended up going into labor very early on a holiday no less, the person wasn’t available. Some folks asked me why I didn’t just call an ambulance, but I was worried about co-pays and insurance deductibles. How could I pay $500 for the ambulance ride?

If I had to do it again, I’d have prepared for labor a  little better. I’d make sure to have several back up plans and if those plans fell through, I’d call the amubulance and make payment arrangements on that $500 fee. I guess hindsight is always 20/20!

As you begin to enter the home stretch of your pregnancy, you?ll want to start thinking about packing a bag for the hospital. Not only do you need to pack for yourself, but your new baby and your birthing coach(es) will need a few items as well.

For You

When I packed my bag the first time around, I went a step beyond simply preparing for labor. In fact, there was little I didn?t bring along. Not only did I have an iPod docking station, but the iPod was loaded with playlists for delivery, birth, infant and many other events. Not only did we barely listen to it, but it was one more thing to have to haul out of the hospital and home upon discharge.

When packing for yourself, think about what you really need ? do you need a nightgown? The hospital will have you in a gown for the duration of your stay, and most likely you?ll need to change it a few times over that period. Do you want to have to bring several nightgowns that may end up stained?

My necessities list includes:

• A camera
• Pad of paper and pen
• Phone list of friends/relatives to notify
• Shampoo and other toiletries
• Change of clothes for the ride home (note: these clothes are maternity clothes; most women continue to wear maternity clothes for at least a month after delivering)
• Magazines
• Lip balm
• Makeup

For Partners/Coaches

Your partner and/or birthing coach will probably be there a while; bring along a magazine or two, as well as bottled water and snacks.

For Baby

Newborn babies need very little, and much of it will be provided by the hospital, including receiving blankets and diapers. However, there are some items to make sure you have, and a few that you will be required to have. My list includes:

• Car seat
• Blanket to put over the car seat in case it?s cold outside
• Outfit for coming home
• Pacifiers

Don’t wait until it’s too late for those last minute things to do. Making a checklist and completing early will give you much needed peace of mind.

What are your hospital essentials?

I have a friend who had this long-lasting grudge against her OB because the doctor ordered an emergency C-section while she was laboring, thus denying her the privilege of delivering her first born naturally. I have to hand it to her, she was determined to do it “right” the second time and thus delivered her second-born the normal way – with another OB understandably. Still, I couldn’t understand this continuing anger at her first OB – anger which manifests in her maligning the doctor to every body she knows. Though I didn’t know the full details of the story, I always thought there must have been some mitigating circumstances why the OB ordered the emergency procedure.

My sister labored for almost 24 hours before her doctor decided for a C-section. By then, the baby had fetal stress and had to be taken out fast. She had a difficult recovery afterwards, not from the C-section, but from the prolonged labor. On her second delivery, she went for the C-section right away. She’d rather spare herself the pain and the baby the stress, she said.

Then came my turn. I really wanted to go for the natural way, what with this talk (and research studies!) about bonding and feeling of fulfillment. However, my doctors (yes, there were several of them) advised me against it for 3 reasons: I was one of those 35+ mommies, I was pretty small (still am actually), and I was carrying twins.

Yet in the end it was all up to me whether to try it the natural way or immediately go for the cut-and-out procedure.

The considerations are as follows:

1. The ideal scenario: I’d go for the natural way and get the babies out successfully, we will have our bonding moment and I will be proud and feel truly fulfilled.
2. The not-so-ideal (and very likely scenario): I’d go for the natural way, and with luck manage to get one baby out after a couple of hours of labor. By then the other one would be truly stressed by weight of his brother and the pushes of his mom. With luck, he will survive the ordeal and make his way out as well.
3. The not-so-perfect recommended scenario: I’ll a have schedule C-section that will take out the babies in a couple of minutes, one after the other, to be taken straight to the neonatal station where incubators have been prepared for them. However, I won’t have that emotionally overwhelming bonding moment and (since it was my first and last pregnancy) will never experience natural childbirth, said to be the most beautiful and self-fulfilling life experience.

In the end I went for scenario # 3 and I think I made the right decision. F, who was the smaller of the 2 had breathing problems and had below-normal APGAR scores when he taken out. But the little fighter caught up with his bigger and more robust twin brother R in no time. The doctor said that from the way they were positioned in my uterus, it was likely that R would have made it out first naturally, while F had to wait till his brother got through. At any rate, it was doubtful whether he would have survived the waiting time.

There are many reasons why a C-section delivery is performed. It may for convenience, it may be to avoid pain, but most of the time, there are sound medical reasons behind choosing this option

A friend who had her 3^rd C-section a few months ago says she sometimes feels guilty, at the same time resentful when she hears and reads about natural birth experiences of other moms. In her playgroup, she feels unfulfilled, inadequate, and left out when other moms talk about labor experiences.

What about me? Did I regret the decision not the try? Do I long for that fulfilling bonding moment? No, I don’t. I feel proud of delivering my boys minus the pain and the pushing. I was convinced and still am convinced that though C-section may not have been the best experience for me, it was definitely the best for my boys’ well-being. If I were to do it all over again, my decision wouldn’t have changed.

A C-section doesn’t make me less of a mother. We are all moms regardless of the method of delivery.

At least in some countries.

Today, August 8, 2008 is a very special date for the German-speaking world. It’s called “Schnapszahl” which can basically be translated as a “multidigit number with all digits identical.” In mathematics “Schnapszahl” is called repdigit or repunit. When a date such as today is a repdigit, it’s considered a lucky date to deliver a baby or to get married. For this reason, government offices all over Germany and parts of Switzerland have been inundated with requests to get married on this day. Hospitals are also expecting to have more mothers scheduled for C-section opting for this date.

In China, where numbers play a big role in daily life, today, 8/8/8, is also special. The icing on the cake is the fact that it also marks the start of the 2008 Olympics. No wonder moms are trying their best to deliver today – there are ways to induce labor, mind you – and doctors have to warn women about the dangers of premature delivery.

The “Schnapszahl” has become especially popular at the start of the millennium with single-digit years (01, 02, etc.) so that each year, there is one special “Schnapszahl” date – January 1, 2001, February 2, 2002, March 3, 2003, April 4, 2004, May 5, 2005, June 6, 2006 (though this – 666 – one wasn’t so popular), July 7, 2007 and today – August 8, 2008 when everybody is scrambling to get married or give birth. And this will go on till December 12, 2012 and then we’ll have to wait for 989 years before the next “Schnapszahl” comes.

I spent the last eight posts going through the story of the birth of our daughter for a reason. I wanted everyone who reads this blog to know exactly where we (my wife and I) were coming from with our anticipation (arguably trepidation) of our second.

Since that experience, my wife has seen her obstetrician several times, and discussed subsequent births. Although there was a possibility that she could have a successful vaginal birth after cesarean (VBAC), our concern was that it wasn’t necessarily the R.O.P. that was the cause of all our problems last time. We believe that there is a good chance that my wife’s pelvis may have been the issue that necessitated the c-section.

So, after much internal discussion (and admittedly some tears), we have decided? to have a scheduled c-section for baby number two. It wasn’t an easy decision, but we think it will be the best thing for us.

This decision means we will have a very different experience than last time. There will (likely) be no discussion of whether she’s feeling constipated or contractions. There will be no water breaking in the middle of the night. We will be able to prepare ourselves as well as our daughter for the baby’s arrival, and I think that will work out well for all of us in the end.

What are your feelings about VBAC, or just scheduled c-sections in general? How do you feel about the (supposed) recent rise in scheduled c-sections?

This is the final part (part eight) of the story of the birth of our daughter.

Read Part: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7

He leaves, and my wife looks at me with panic in her eyes. I am feeling terrified (and not just because I have dirty dishes around the house and my underwear hasn’t been put in the hamper) but tell her everything will be OK. We’ll figure it out. Foolishly, she believes me.

We call my in-laws to come help with the process. In the end, they wheel my wife’s wheelchair down while I carry my daughter in her infant car seat. I leave my daughter inside the hospital with them and go get the van. Doh. It is snowing heavily outside. The snow is not staying on the ground, but it is not melting either. It is making a thick slushy paste that is both slippery as anything and able to saturate the entire lower half of my jeans.

I roll the van forward and hop out to place my daughter in her seat base. By the time I get around to my wife she is in the van safely. I thank my in-laws and tell them to meet us at the house. I get in the car and squeeze my wife’s hand.

The normally five minute drive home takes almost fifteen that night. It is dark, visibility is next to nothing, and the brakes on the van seem to be more like the hand brake on a “big wheel”, designed more for spinning you into a skid than stopping. Later I would look for grip marks on the steering wheel, convinced I had held it that tightly.

I get home and carry my daughter into the house. My wife is assisted by her parents. Amazingly, no one slips and falls, and we are finally a family in our home.

This is part seven of the story of the birth of our daughter.

Read Part: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6

The remainder of the day and the whole of the next passes without any significant incident. My younger sister comes up the first night and visits (transit to get her from her apartment to our town wasn’t servicing the area after midnight). Of course, my in-laws are there frequently.

The day after that we begin to wonder what the protocol is for discharging a c-section patient. Our nurse informs us there was “no way” we would be discharged today, and that Sunday is unlikely as well, given my wife’s slow recovery and that she had just begun to move on her own without someone holding on to her.

My older sister and her family come in the afternoon. We pretend to be ignorant of the rule that no children are allowed to visit except for siblings, allowing my niece and nephew to meet their cousin. About half an hour into the visit, our nurse comes and offers us a private room that has just become available. We jump at the opportunity (a private room means I can sleep in the room with them) and get my siblings to help move rooms.

We visit with them for another half hour or so in the new room, and they leave. About ten minutes after their departure (4pm-ish), the insensitive ob-gyn arrives and says, “Are you ready to go home?” Shocked and more than a little frightened, my wife replies, “No.” The doctor furrows his brow and says, “What’s wrong?” my wife says (holding back tears) that she is just not feeling physically ready. The ob-gyn replies, “Well, without a medical reason I have to discharge you today.”

Read Part Eight

This is part six of the story of the birth of our daughter.

Read Part: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

I call my parents from the house as I sit in our office uploading the photos of our new daughter to a photo sharing site. I cry and avoid telling them the bulk of the story. I am saddened by the reality that they cannot travel to see their new granddaughter because of my mother’s health. It would be almost two months before my wife was well enough to travel.

I get to bed around 3:00am and sleep soundly until my alarm wakes me at 6:30am. I shower quickly and head back to the hospital. My wife would later tell me that my entrance into the room was like a ray of sunshine. I arrived to find my daughter screaming in her bassinet and my wife pressing the call button for a nurse. I pick up my daughter and she quiets immediately. My wife begins to cry. She (my daughter) had been screaming for over an hour, and she (my wife) could not get up to get her because of her incision. After ensuring my wife is OK with my daughter (she was needing to nurse) I go out to yell have a calm and rational discussion with the nurses to find out what was going on. Two words are returned. Two words that become the bane of our existence in the hospital: shift change.

We spend the early morning as a family. Well, my wife sleeps and I cuddle my daughter, but we’re all in the same room. Eventually our nurse arrives and introduces a college co-op student who will be shadowing her today. We are told to call for either of them if needed.

The student returns with a tub and some cloths and towels, informing us it is time for my daughter’s first bath. She instructs my wife to lower her bed flat and sit up, cross-legged, so she can watch. Incredulously, my wife looks at her and says, “I just had a c-section. I can’t do that.” The nurse seems perplexed. Obviously the school had given her strict instructions about how to perform the bath. She attempts to cajole my wife into trying, at which point I step in and tell her to put the tub at the end of the bed and do the bath, please.

Mid-afternoon they come to us and offer a “door side” bed in a semi-private. My wife asks me to take a look and make the call. I assess that there is little more space, but it is significantly less crowded, making it seem larger. So, the student and a couple of her student friends begin to navigate the bed (in which my wife is holding my daughter in her arms) out of the ward room while I move the bags and stuff. I arrive in the hall outside the new room watching them try and align the bed with the door. I see them bang the bed into the wall, and my wife winces. I clench my fists and grit my teeth. A few moments later, the three of them still can’t master the laws of physics and again the bed is jarred, and again my wife winces.

I step forward. “I will do it.”

“No sir. It’s OK. We’ll get it.”

“Step away from the bed. Now.”

The three of them move away slowly. I take a quick look and carefully roll the bed away from any walls. I then lift the lower half of the bed and rotate it (think like a wheelbarrow), aligning it with the door frame. I slide the bed about half way in and turn back to the trio of gape-mouthed students and say, “Can you handle it from here?”

Read Part Seven

This is part five of the story of the birth of our daughter.

Read Part: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4

Excited, I leave recovery and start toward the waiting room where I know my in-laws are. I decide against it because I figure my wife would want to share this moment with them. (Thankfully, otherwise they would have seen my daughter before my wife.)

Eventually they wheel my wife in. She looks weak and exhausted, and I choke back tears. I pass my daughter to her Mommy, and watch as my wife looks at my daughter for the first time. It is 11:45pm; over an hour since my daughter had been born. Then, the nurse does the whole weighing and measuring thing while I take some pictures. And finally, my wife gets to put my daughter on the breast (something she had wanted to do as soon as she was born). I heave a sigh of relief and offer to go get my wife’s family from the waiting room.

I go and collect my MIL from the waiting room (only one visitor at a time in recovery) and rush off to the pay phones to call my parents and tell them the news. Three successive calls go straight to voicemail (they have call waiting). I would later learn that my mother fell asleep with the cordless phone beside her and rolled over on it, pressing the “talk” button and effectively taking it off the hook. I call both my sisters and tell them the news, asking them to continue trying to call my parents. My younger sister would reach them shortly after 2am.

After my in-laws leave they wheel us to a ward (4 bed) room. I try to explain that we asked for a private room, or failing that a semi-private. I am told this is the only bed they have. It is cramped and dark (because, after all, it is after midnight by this point). The night nurse comes in and takes my daughter away. The panic in my wife’s eyes tells me I should follow the baby and not worry about my wife. I follow them to the little room where they do the assessments (you know: prick the heel to check blood sugar, test the grab reflex, weigh them, etc). When they lift her and try to turn her to her stomach (to make sure she has the reflex/strength to turn her head to the side and not, you know, suffocate herself) my daughter puts her arms out; stiff. She won’t lie on her tummy and instead does a push-up. The nurse looks at me and says, “You know, I’ve been doing this twenty years, and your daughter is the only one I have seen do this.”

I follow the nurse back to the room and am told that I have to go now. I express concern, but they tell me that I cannot stay in a ward room; it would not be fair to the other mothers. I kiss them both (my wife and daughter, not the nurse) and leave.

Read Part Six

This is part four of the story of the birth of our daughter.
Read Part: 1 | 2 | 3

They call me over to the assessment table (where they are giving her an apgar of 9) and encourage me to come see her (through the throngs of people all crowded around my little girl). I approach, and as I wander about the space in a confused daze I turn. Toward the operating table. And I see something I will never forget. You know those scenes you see on TLC of a surgery, where the person is open and you see things inside them? Those scenes that most people cringe and quickly flip the channel as soon as they realize what they are looking at? I saw my wife like that.

I recoil back. I keep saying to myself, “I did not need that. I did not need to see that.” A nurse grabs my shoulders and guides me to a stool where I can see neither my wife nor my daughter. The anesthesiologist comes over to hold me down as I am insisting on getting up. The nurse tells another that I am very pale. My wife hears a nurse call over the intercom, “Can I get a nurse for Dad here? He isn’t doing too well.”

My wife asks what is going on. No one will tell her anything. I cannot hear her over the nurse yelling at me.

I am arguing with the nurses and anesthesiologist that I am fine. I was stunned, I was scared, but I am no longer a concern. They refuse to believe me. They want me to leave. I refuse to leave my wife and child. As I sit there I hear the following…

Voice #1: one, two, three, four, five
Voice #2: one, two, three, four, five
loud clang of metal

This is repeated a couple more times before it dawns on me what they are doing: they are counting clamps or instruments or whatever and making sure they haven’t left any in my wife. I am too much in shock to cry at this point.

Finally, I negotiate the right to hold my daughter. They insist that I remain seated. At this point my wife calls out to me, and I tell her I am OK, and that the baby is beautiful (all I can see was her face as she is wrapped in like five blankets). Eventually they allow me to take my daughter into recovery to wait for my wife. I would later learn that no one showed the baby to my wife, and that the first time she saw my daughter was in recovery afterwards.

Check back tomorrow for Part Five

This is part three of the story of the birth of our daughter.

Read Part: 1 | 2

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.

Click Here for Part Four

This is part two of the story of the birth of our daughter.

Click here to read part one

At around noon they conclude that the baby is R.O.P. (right occipital posterior… don’t ask how I remember things like this; just go with it) which means the baby is facing sideways. Despite a pitocin drip we are stopped at 8cm with a cervical “lip” (I did not see this, but I was told to visualize a crescent moon shape). During the previous five hours, my wife has been complaining that there is a rod digging into her hip. The nurse tells her that she is imagining things and that the epidural wouldn’t let her feel that.

At around 2pm they finally give my wife the go-ahead to push (after her begging to try for hours). The caveat is that pushing will only work if the lip is lifted. Manually. By the nurse. While she pushes. I’ll give you a minute to work that visual out for yourself.

At around 4pm, after two hours of steady pushing, the nurse asks my wife, “Are you putting your feet in the stirrups while you push?” my wife replies, “Of course I am. I’m bearing down hard on them.” The nurse makes the “tsk tsk” sound and says, “Well we’ve just wasted the last two hours then.” My wife continues to complain about her hip.

At around 6pm, after another two hours of “proper” pushing, they give up on pushing and tell my wife to rest. My wife insists something is up with her bed. They roll her to her side and discover that her hip is resting on the joint in the bed frame, and that the mattress is extremely thin there (due to a history of bending the mattress at that point).

An hour later (we have been in the delivery room nearly twelve hours at this point) the on-call ob-gyn comes in and offers the following, “The baby is very big, and very healthy. We are not worried about the baby right now. However, you have been here all day and we have to consider the possibility of a c-section. You don’t have to do it; it’s your call. But if something goes wrong with the baby, it stops being your call and it becomes my call.” He leaves to allow us time to digest the information.

Read part 3

Over the next series of posts, I will share the story of the birth of our daughter. While the eventual outcome was joyous, the path there was somewhat less than ideal. I am not writing this to frighten anyone, or to lament the circumstances. I am writing to let people know that sometimes, things don’t go as planned, and even when things seem impossibly difficult, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. This is part one.

My wife was due March 29, 2005. Despite many ultrasounds (due to an “over ripe” placenta – seriously, that’s what they called it; like it was some kind of fruit or something) taken in anticipation of having a reason to induce labor, she still had not given birth on March 29. That night (March 29) she was very chatty, and we wound up talking until almost midnight (my routine is to get up at 5:30am, so this was a late night for us).

At 2am I am awakened by her feeble calls from the bathroom. I jump out of bed with a start (mostly because I was sound asleep). She tells me that her water broke (she had laid towels down on the bed) and that now she feels constipated and very crampy. I ask her what I can do, and she tells me to call the maternity ward nurse’s station at our local hospital for guidance. I call them (and in hindsight I can hear them snickering at me under their breath) and explain the situation. They tell me that the cramps are likely contractions, and that when they approach five minutes apart we should drive to the hospital.

At 5am, after a shower and phone calls to our parents, we leave with contractions in the five to six minute range. I am eerily calm. We arrive at the hospital and I drop my wife at the door and go park. She waits for me inside and we go up to the maternity floor together.

They put her on a fetal monitor in a triage room and we wait. The moans of agony continue to escalate from my wife as I stand by helpless. I watch as our assigned nurse spends ten minutes trying to start an IV without success. There is blood on the floor from the process, much to my horror. We finally get the IV started with the help of a second nurse.

At around 7am they move us to a delivery room. My wife is told that shift change is rapidly approaching, and that she has the following choices… option 1: get an epidural now; option 2: wait until potentially 9am to receive an epidural. She opts for option 1. Half an hour (and three failed “starts”) later she has an epidural line we would later learn was not properly inserted. They assess the situation, and find that she is over 7cm dilated but not effaced. Our new nurse (shift change) nonchalantly tells us we will be holding our baby before 11am.

Click Here for Part Two