birthday(s) finished

OK. The thrilling conclusion of Zoe's birth story (minus the car chase):

Now we'd resigned ourselves to having a hospital birth. At least we were assured of meeting Zoe in the very near future. I started to gather up our things which, after 26+ hours at the Birth Center, had been scattered everywhere. We're not normally a messy family, but then again, we're not normally in labor let alone for a full day. We'd brought 2 bags of clothings and things and a couple bags of food. I don't think I reassembled it properly, but at that point, I didn't really care.

Sarah had explained that we were to drive to the hospital on our own and meet her in the labor and delivery ward on the 4th floor of the Women's Hospital at UNC. She was going to call ahead and have us checked in already so all we'd have to do was roll up and ask where we could drop off the baby. I'd worked at the hospital next door to the Women's hospital, the Neuroscience Hospital, while we were saving up for our wedding so I knew how much fun parking was going to be. When I asked Sarah, she said that there was "stork parking" available right out front. I got specific directions twice to be sure I knew where this mythical parking lot was. I had no idea it was really just a drop off point. I thought we were going to pull right up to the front, point at Kimmy's belly, high-five the parking attendant, and be on our way. Yeah, no. Like so many other things with this labor, it was not that simple.

So it's about 11:30PM on a Monday night and we'd reloaded the car with all of our birth paraphernalia and food stuffs. The cookies were mostly gone, but the lasagna was still intact. Our first midwife was the only one to have tried any of it, including me and Kimmy. I drove up to the hospital and started looking for "stork parking". I must have missed the sign by the front doors because I was looking for an actual parking lot. I found a likely little lot just off to the left of the front doors, but I didn't see any signs saying "expectant mothers" or whatever that would indicate the all clear to park for child-popping moms. In hind sight, I think we'd found the doctors' parking lot, because all of the parking spaces said "Reserved for Director of Center for Doctoral Parking" or something like that. For a wonder, I found an unclaimed/unmarked space in this tiny lot. Well it was almost midnight so it's not too surprising, but this is Chapel Hill.

We didn't have to walk too far, maybe a hundred yards to the front doors, but Kimmy was completely exhausted by this point and were had to walk about .000005 miles per hour. I felt so bad for her. I just wanted to get her in a bed and hooked up to the epidural, but she wouldn't let me go ahead and get a wheelchair until we got to the front doors. I just walked with her very slowly, carrying all of our bags and supporting half of her weight. After all of our insistence on natural childbirth, it was oddly comforting to be going to the hospital at this point. We knew things weren't going to be exactly as we'd planned them, but by this point we were just letting go of our preconceived notions and working towards having our baby the healthiest way we could. The end goal was the same. We had to let go of a lot of things about this pregnancy and delivery, and I think it made us better people.

So I got Kimmy in a wheelchair at the front doors and the guards asked about whether or not we wanted valet service of not. I was a bit confused and explained to them where we'd parked and they told me that the hospital would call in a giant robot to come smash my car into an artful metal sculpture if I didn't move it from the super special lot soon. They were kind enough to let me take Kimmy upstairs first. We got up to the fourth floor and rang the nurses at the locked doors for labor and delivery, apparently every hospital unit is hermetically sealed to ensure freshness. They waved us right in and lead us back to our room. Sarah had already had us signed in which was good because I wasn't in the mood for paperwork. I put Kimmy in her room and helped get her in her gown. We met our nurse, whose name escapes me now. I shall call her Pollyanna. She came in with Sarah and started getting things set up for Kimmy.

Once I saw that she was comfortable enough I bolted down to our illegally parked car. I really really didn't want to go. I'd only left Kimmy for about 1-2 minutes during the entire labor and I wanted to be as supportive as I could. I just realized that it would be a little harder to be supportive when we left the hospital if our car had been impounded. I ended up parking in the deck across the street from the hospital and running back. I was in such a hurry, I forgot the lasagna. It ended up chilling in the car for the rest of our stay in the hospital. Not the best air freshener in the world, but it wasn't an altogether unpleasant smelling car when we left.

I'm going to digress here a bit to emphasize the magnitude (emotional and logistical) of this lasagna. You may think you know the size limits of a 13x9 casserole dish, but this particular lasagna defies conventional physics. The recipe is one that was passed on to us by a good friend of the family, Walt. To begin with this recipe calls for 2 and 1/4 lbs of meat, 3 lbs of cheese, 90 oz of sauce and tomatoes, a pound of noodles, an onion, spices, and a partridge in a pear tree. That's over 12 lbs of ingredients! With the casserole dish, it ended up being about 15 lbs. We cooked it the week before we went into labor. Now I love lasagna with an undying passion that will never die so I was very tempted to Garfield it down right then and there, but I put it in the freezer because I knew that it was for our special day after Zoe was born so the delayed gratification was so going to be worth it. I sigh. Nope, not even a taste. It was my one major regret for the whole delivery. OK back to the hospital.

I found a space somewhere in parking land away from the hospital and ran back in. The guards made me sign in and take my picture for a giant visitor sticker that I had to wear to keep the sentries from firing. All in all, I was gone about 15 minutes when it felt like an hour. I got back in to the room and it looked like things had calmed down a bit. They had Kimmy in her bed hooked up to an external fetal monitor and they were in the process of hooking up her IV. They were explaining all of the monitoring stuff to us, and I'm sure I understood it for the most part, but I've forgotten a lot of it. Pollyanna told us how the evening/morning should progress. We were going to have the anaesthesiologist come in shortly and hook up the epidural then they were going to administer the Pitocin which would jump start Kimmy's contractions again then pop goes the baby.

The anaesthesiologist, we'll call him Dr. Feelgood, came in not too long after I got back around 1AM and began explaining the epidural process. Dr. Feelgood was telling us all of these potential side effects and hazards of digging around in someone's spine with a needle. They range from headaches to paralysis to super powers. He gave all of the statistics on each, which were very low, so we weren't too worried about Kimmy contracting pyrokinesis. He then made Kimmy sit up all hunched over in her bed and swabbed her up with iodine and magical doctor soap and proceeded to jab her with a needle and a little tube which hooked up to the drugs that shot into her spine. We then waited for about 15-20 minutes for the drugs to take effect then Dr. Feelgood busted out some ice chips and tested Kimmy's feeling in her lower torso and legs. The reason they use ice is because the nerves that feel pain are very closely related to the ones that feel cold. Kimmy was starting to feel much better from about her waist down which was where the party was happenin'. We now had the go ahead to begin the Pitocin.

After all of the drips and drugs were going and the monitors were in place, Kimmy was starting to get very sleepy and I decided to take the opportunity to scrape the funk off of me with a shower. It was about 2:30 on Tuesday morning and I hadn't had a shower since Sunday morning. I almost cried with relief after I was able to peel my clothes off for the first time in 2 days. The shower was made for pregnant women so I had to contend with a bench and a shower head at about chin level. Also the towels were inexplicably small. I would have run around the hospital wet and naked for a while if I had to. I was getting my shower. Freshly cleaned, I felt like a new person, albeit a ridiculously tired new person. Things seemed well in hand with Kimmy so I decided to take a nap. They told us it'd probably be about 4-5 hours before things progressed enough for Kimmy to begin pushing. Sarah had even gone to catch a nap so I felt safe enough resting. Pollyanna and other folks were in periodically to check on things. Kimmy was drifting in and out so I unfolded the handy couch/bed contraption they have there for exhausted fathers and passed out within seconds.

The next little bit of the birth story was dictated to me by Kimmy who was actually awake for it:

We were expecting the baby to come around 8AM or so. Kimmy had the external fetal monitor and the external contraction monitor running. About a after a half hour they came in and told her that Zoe's heart rate was dropping with each contraction so they were concerned because it had been almost 40 hours since her water broke. They thought the baby was getting overstressed because of the lack of cushioning. They decided to hook up a saline catheter to inflate Kimmy's uterus up like a pair of Reebok Pumps. Pollyanna left again, about 3:30AM she came back in and said things were super with the contractions but the heart rate was still a little dodgy. They decided on an internal monitor, not the kind that screws into the infant's head (I'm totally not making that up they really do that) but one that sits next to the infant. They told her to relax and get some more rest. Kimmy says she didn't sleep at all. It was about 4AM and Kimmy was staring at the monitor screens because she was worried about Zoe. The red line was for the contractions and the blue line was for Zoe's heart rate. Whenever the red line would go up the blue line would go down. As tired as she was she didn't want to risk falling asleep. She spent the time patting her belly and singing softly to Zoe in between contractions.

After a while Zoe began to level off and her heart rate was improving. The contracts started to change. Kimmy couldn't feel pain, but she could feel pressure changes. They were getting much stronger. She finally was feeling that pressure sensation that Hypnobabies had promised. They didn't tell us in childbirth class that you needed an epidural to get to this point. It was about 4:45AM and Kimmy felt that she had to push. She said that it felt like whatever's in your body just has to come out unlike anything else. At first it was a mild pushy feeling, then next it was like, "hey there's something happening", and finally DING DING DING!! This is totally happening and you need to expunge a baby. At this point Kimmy was pushing the nurse button for all it was worth. She tried to not push which proved to be very very tricky for her, especially considering the subtle cues her body was giving her like, "PUUUUUUUUUUUUSSHHHHH!!!!!" The nurse answered the intercom inquiring after Kimmy's needs. "I think I need to push now." "Oh, OK." Maybe two minutes later Pollyanna and Sarah came running into the room with another nurse, we'll call her Nurse Ratchet.

It was at this point that I finally woke up. I was a little groggy and somewhat confused, but it looked like a party I wanted to join. Sarah did another pelvis check and felt the top of Zoe's head. "Oh we've got a baby head" I certainly hope that's what it was. This triggered a scrambling of activity that resembled a carefully choreographed Keystone cops routine complete with a half naked lady in a bed. They sat Kimmy as upright as she could get in the bed. She had one leg up on me and one on Sarah. Sarah took my hand and brought it down to Kimmy's pelvis and I was able to feel Zoe's head for the first time. I was entranced. This was my child. I was touching my child! I couldn't believe it.

Zoe's head was in the birth canal, and Kimmy was given the go ahead to push. That's when she really started bearing down. It got more and more intense each time she pushed. Kimmy could literally feel her pelvis opening up. Then her head started to crown. Sarah brought the mirror over so Kimmy could see. She pushed about 4 more times. The last time she pushed, even with the epidural, she felt like she was going to die. She describes it as being torn apart. At this point Sarah was prepping me to catch the baby as she came out. I was supremely focused, more so than I should have been able to manage at that point. I wasn't so much intimidated as I was just bowled over by the enormity of what was happening. I wasn't nervous as she guided my hands as Zoe's head came out. I held on for dear life and the next thing I know she slipped right out. I caught her. I totally caught my daughter. She didn't cry right away, but we put her on Kimmy's chest and started rubbing. She was crying within a few seconds. The life affirming sound of her crying just washed away every bit of exhaustion I had. It was the most awesome moment in my entire life. There was this little squiggling bluish thing covered in vernix and blood on Kimmy's (mommy's) chest and she was the most beautiful thing in the entire world. I was now daddy.

Zoe was 19 and 3/4 inches long and weighed 7 lbs 1 oz and she was perfect.