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...