The Meaning of Life Part II

Part II - Birth

Once the IV inducement was given, Oxytocin, that meant she was essentially confined to the bed area... aka no more jacuzzi for her. I was also discouraged from it. This was a bummer as we'd looked forward to insisting on and then getting a jacuzzi room.

The inducement seemed to take hold in that the tightening/contractions seemed to increase. I followed along on the monitor and watched the graphs rise and fall. After a few hours of this (and more reading of Noble House), the intensity of the contractions was reaching uncomfortable levels and Julie finally relented and asked for an epidural. The extraordinarily young looking anesthesiologist arrived and worked for some time to get in what he needed to do... after it took hold, Julie slumbered through several intense-looking (on the monitor) contractions.

A nurse would come in every 30-45 minutes to adjust the level of the oxytocin... a resident (doctor) would check in every 3 hours. I attempted to sleep on the comfort-opposed hospital chair/bed:

This is not comfortable. This is why there's physiotherapy and massage therapy.



By early the next morning, between 5-6am, still nothing had happened and Julie was now becoming very nauseous from all the drugs pumped through her system. The one unimpressive nurse was on duty during this 30 minute stretch. Unimpressive in that she reported she was on modified duty (back problem apparently) and did not seem to grasp the importance or human decency of cleaning up after a nauseous patient. However, we survived her and returned to the rest of the absolutely stellar nurses responsible for us.


By 8am, still nothing was happening.. there was an issue of the baby's heart rate taking a sudden drop and many hospital staff rushing into the room... all during the roughly 1.5 minutes I was in the bathroom. The attending doctor then told us that given that there'd been little to no progress overnight and in the last 2 days, c-section was an option. We talked it over, and agreed it would be the best thing given her fatigue, lack of food or drink.

At about 8:20am, they wheeled Julie off to the operating room and gave me my scrubs (really really comfortable by the way, I need to get some), funny hat and booties. They then instructed me to wait outside the door until they called for me. I waited in that corridor for what seemed like an hour... I was actually convinced of two things... first that they'd forgotten I was out there and went ahead and second, that I could very conceiveably be waiting outside the wrong door. However, they eventually brought me in and I was given a stool beside the head of my wife. Everything else behind a nice drape.

The scene was very much like an episode of Grey's Anatomy. There were maybe 7 or 8 people in the room, all performing various activities, 4 or 5 of whom were clustered around Julie's stomach. But in the middle of all this activity, they're chatting amongst themselves about some restaurant they recently ate at, the weather... everything under the sun. I wondered, fleetingly, who was sleeping with who.

And then he was out. Crying almost immediately but both Julie's head and I watched as he was brought to an incubator on our left to be cleaned off and checked out. It occurred to me, suddenly, that I needed to know the time. It was exactly 9:00am.

Staring at him, it was kinda surreal. I mean... there was this crying little person who, moments before, was inside another human body. And he was ours. We did that. Wow!

Julie was brought to a recovery room and the baby brought to us all swaddled up but still crying. I was told I could fetch the grandparents from the waiting room, 2 by 2 so the grandmothers were brought in first. All this time, Julie desperately wanting juice. Juice became a paramount priority.



After an hour or so... we worked out a schedule with the grandparents. Julie's mother stayed at the hospital with her... I left to go home to sleep for a few hours. My parents went back in the afternoon and I returned around 5:30pm for the overnight shift. Then our exciting 3-day stay in the maternity ward began...

The Meaning of Life Part 1

Part I - Prelude

I'm very pleased to report the arrival of Zachary James Frank Robertson... born here in Ottawa on Thursday August 17th, exactly 9:00am!

Now, 9am... immediately raising questions about whether or not he's really mine. However, there's enough of a resemblance so I can relax...

I tried, unsucessfully, to update this blog via email. Turned out, I had the email address slightly incorrect. So... here's the story, picking up from the last entry.

We did indeed go home following the inducement. Julie said her stomach felt tighter but didn't really think any contractions were happening. We didn't do much that night... thinking (as we had for a couple of weeks) that this was our last night of freedom. By the next morning, she reported her stomach getting pretty tight for about a minute and then it would go away. A couple minutes later, she'd report the same. I consulted the copious notes from the pre-natal class which described these symptoms as 'active labour'. Under the handy arrow drawings I did, it said to go to hospital.

We went to the hospital.

Once again at the triage station for labour/delivery, she was assessed on the monitor, eventually examined by a resident who agreed that yes, things seemed to be moving along finally so that they would admit us. Geez, the things you have to do to get into this club... We were advised to walk around the grounds for a couple of hours "to really get things moving" and then come back.

I got lunch.

I have to say... even though I grew up around hospitals (both parents nurses) and should've known what to expect, hospital food is every bit the stereotype it purports to be. This feeling would be re-inforced over the several days we were there.

Julie walked around a lot, the tightening seemed to be increasing and she was getting a lot of lower back pain. When we went back, a few minutes shy of the two hours, they got us a room... and after a bit of insistence, moved us to a room with a jacuzzi. The jacuzzi helped her back. I was discouraged from having a jacuzzi of my own. There was also much bouncing on an exercise ball, highly preferable to lying in bed. I'd brought 'Noble House' by James Clavell to read. If you've ever seen it, you know it's a sizeable novel. I got through a lot of it. After a few hours of this, not much seemed to be happening.

So they gave her a second inducement, this one via IV. Then more fun started...

Inducement (again)

Clever me, tried to use the handy "email your blog entry from wherever you are" feature... and it didn't work when I tried it from the hospital. However, I found the correct setting... apologies for the lack of updates in the past two weeks.

Here's an entry I wrote originally on August 14th...

So we've discovered that even when you go in to be 'induced', it's entirely common for nothing at all to happen. It's a bit of a letdown really... I mean, there you are, already at the hospital for a few hours... Being monitored, belted down, things beeping, the machine that goes 'ping', the whole nine yards... And then a "ok, you're free to go" Go? Go where? Aren't we where we're supposed to be?

So we head back home... "See you tomorrow" sounding odd for the occasion.

So we must coax him out...

Ok, well, Smidget is now 10 days late... and, since it's too late to change our minds, we're going to need to coax him out in the medical sense.

As our doctor told us, we could go 10 days post due-date and then we'd induce... although how that gets going is still a bit vague. We're guessing the hospital will call us at some point tomorrow (or, later today as I look at the clokc) and off we go. My work isn't expecting to see me again for a while.

This 'living each day like it's our last' feeling has been quite strange. But hey, we've seen all the movies we want to see... had a few more restaurant meals than we thought we would... it's almost too good a roll to spoil! But hey, we signed up for this parenthood thing and the sooner we get started, the sooner he can go to university and move out ;-)

So, c'mon already... time to see the world! Quick, before we get cold feet!

Mommy's impatient

4 days late now... the long weekend, here in Ontario, went by without so much as a "I'm on my way soon" from Smidget. At least we got to do some of our short-term plans, like see a movie, swim etc...

Mommy is definitely impatient now. She's reached the "Ok, I'm done with this part, let's go" stage which oddly enough has not improved my sleep patterns. Anytime she moves now in bed, I semi-wake up and think "is this it?? Is it time??"

Myself, I was two weeks late. They won't let that happen anymore. At most, 10 days. I can say with absolute certainty that his birthday will be "early August".

What do you do during this waiting period? I feel almost like a doctor... never completely able to relax when on-call. I haven't been more than 5ft away from my phone OR line-of-sight of my wife in quite some time. I haven't seen my loveable dog (being watched by my parents in Toronto) in over two weeks... We make plans with the caveat that we can't really commit. Feels like I should be doing something... just not sure what!

I can't read any more books on fatherhood, or labour, or being the 'birth partner'.

It's kinda boring, really. I'm sure I'll be craving this period of peace soon enough...

The waiting

Well, the due date for Smidget has come and passed.

This waiting is an odd experience. At the same time, I both am anxious for the big day to arrive and spend much time picturing it... and yet, I still want to be out and doing things! It's quite strange not really being able to make plans or commit to anything. We make tentative plans... and then I want him to hold off because I then want to do those plans! Back on the other hand, I'm eager to get this new phase of life started so I/we can figure it out and get accustomed to it so we can shape the rest of our lives around it.

So we sit, and we wait.