The Labor

You already know that I was awaken from my tent around 12:30am. Cari's water broke and we went to the hospital. It was roughly five weeks too soon. The emergency room got us up to the birthing floor immediately and into a room.

It's now almost 1:30am. I'm sitting in a chair across from Cari. I've been through this twice before and knew my role for the next several hours would be to sit and wait. Not much happened until 4:30am. Cari wanted an epidural. I really enjoyed the part where they had to call the anesthetist that was on call. The guy was scheduled to work at 7am and asked the nurse if he really needed to come in now. She told him yes. Something about being on call was very amusing to me. When we had arrived at the hospital around 1am, they called Cari's doctor to let him know we were there. I was loving that part of it.

When they came in to prep for the epidural, a nurse told me I would not be able to stay in the room. I laughed. Was there something that lead her to believe I wanted to see this? I barely survived the IV getting put together. I told the nurse that I volunteered to leave even if she asked me to stay. They told me it would take twenty minutes. I decided to move the car away from the emergency parking.

Have you ever seen an empty hospital? This hospital was silent as I slowly (hey, I had to kill thirty minutes) wandered the halls. I made my way downstairs and moved the car over to the main visitor lot and walked up to the entrance. It was locked.
I had to walk around the outside of the entire hospital to the emergency entrance. Maybe some of you would have driven the car back around, but remember, I still had time to kill.

Epidural done, it was around 5am when I got back to the room. I had been up for almost 24 hours except for the two hours I slept while camping. I was starting to crash. I slumped sideways on the arm of the chair and slept off and on as nurses came in. I'm sure it looked uncomfortable, because it was. I didn't really want the nurses to see me all twisted around in the chair. I tried to sit up when I heard one come in. Cari was leaned back and couldn't see me very well. I think one time she asked a nurse about me and the nurse said I was sleeping on the chair.

We made it into morning this way and through a shift change of nurses. The day shift nurse met me first while I slept crooked on the hospital chair. For some reason I felt a little embarrassed. The doctor finally made his way in to check progress. He was only there for five minutes.

I think it was 11:30am when the doctor came back in and ordered some pitocin to speed things up. I'm glad he did, I was getting a little bored. Don't take that the wrong way. Cari wasn't requesting any help from me at this time. We both kinda listened to the monitors of the baby's heartbeat and watched the graph of contractions all night. We've been in the hospital for over ten hours.

With only a little bit of the drug, the nurse checked Cari again. She said that not much had changed and that the baby was up high still. Another nurse in the room didn't seem to believe that and checked Cari as well. Having a baby pretty much opens up your privates to inspection by anyone in uniform. Just another reason guys wouldn't be good at having baby's. At least twice during labor, a nurse we never saw before came in to check Cari. "Hi, I'm ____, I'm going to check you," they would say.

This second nurse said that Cari was complete and the baby was not that high. The look the first nurse was giving her co-worker could kill. They asked Cari to push twice or three times. Then the nurse in charge, Beth, asked Cari to stop and directed some others to get the doctor in there.

She said the baby was ready NOW. They got the room ready for a delivery. Beth, stood by Cari and gave orders to the others. Cari started asking for her doctor. "He's at lunch," they said. Then they assured us that he was on the way. Cari continued not pushing and you could tell she was in some pain at this point.

Beth said that with every contraction, the baby was getting lower. She even brought me around to to see the top of the baby's head getting closer. The doctor still wasn't there and Beth ordered another phone call to him. She certainly knew what she was doing, but I felt like she was getting a little anxious. She was fully ready to deliver this baby without a doctor.

Cari tried hard not to push, but her body continued contracting and Brenna's head came out. Beth had control and kept giving direction. The door popped open and the doctor walked in. Still in plain clothes, he ran over and finished delivering our baby. He was there for about thirty seconds. Cari told him he was late.

Brenna was born at 12:54pm. It had been just over twelve hours since the water broke and about the same amount of time of labor for Cari.

I spent the past twelve hours sleeping in an uncomfortable chair, walking around the empty hospital, and waiting. It was well worth it. My friends ask me if I watched Brenna being born. I did. I did for all three kids. For the first, I think I was scared to watch because I thought it would be bloody and nasty. If you never saw a baby being born, it's not like that at all. They come out clean for the most part. It is quiet awesome to watch. When Randy was born, I remember being confused at what I was seeing. The head, shoulders, etc... all blurred together. I was on the verge of passing out.

This time it almost happened in slow motion. I saw every moment. I saw Beth sweep her finder around the umbilical cord to get it away from the neck. I saw her hold Brenna's head as she gave a little tug to get the shoulders out. I saw my daughter's birth.