It’s time…
Sunday, January 14th, 2007Today was a good day. Thanks to everybody who stopped by. It was really good to see you, talk for a spell with us and Leo James. (By the way Beav isn’t going to work. The Missus and I dub him Leroy).
Leroy is his own person. That’s so obvious from the beginning. It only makes sense, but none the less astonishing to me. He’s… quiet. He doesn’t like the dark. He was asleep while we ate dinner a little while ago. We decided to catch a quick nap and when we turned the lights he started fussing. We turned the lights back on and he stops fussing. Go figure.
I haven’t mentioned this, but the Missus is beautiful holding our baby. All our children are blessings I don’t fully comprehend, but I don’t need to comprehend that. I’m just thankful.
***
I got home from work Friday evening and the Missus told me she was in labor.
“These contractions,” she said, “they’re coming every eight or so minutes.”
And they were. Then they got closer and closer.
What you have to bear in mind is we’ve never been down this road before. The others were all induced. We were hoping newbaby would come naturally, but the Missus had been sleeping so poorly and feeling just rotten. We were willing to induce this coming Tuesday, if it came to that.
But here was labor coming eight minutes, eight minutes, six and then eight again. When we got to the E.R. the contractions were coming about four minutes apart.
When the Missus was initially examined at the hospital at 9:00PM she was dilated to three cm. She was at 4cm by 10:30PM, when we were admitted to the hospital. The Missus thought for sometime she’d like to have this one naturally, but the pain was pretty intense by this point. So she ok’d the epidural and got some anti-nausea med. for the meantime.
The nurse examined her again and I forget what she’d dilated to by that point, but labor was progressing quickly. She hadn’t gone into transition yet, so they gave her stadol for the pain which slurred her voice something fierce. The nurses examined her shortly after the epidural cart was rolled in and that’s when they found out she was at nine cm. This was around 12:30AM.
It was time. The eipidural was out of the question. The umbilical cord was wrapped around Leo’s neck. His pulse was not stable. It dropped to 50 at one point. Things had to move even quicker.
Push… 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10… deep breath. Push… 1, 2, 3, ….
There he was. His head crowned. I saw his ear. His little ear. Then he was born. He cried out loud, he cried again.
He was born.