To Noa is to Luva!

Here's the story.
Strap yourself in.

Tuesday, April 3rd - 10:30 PM
Raegan's contractions are suddenly five minutes apart and coming on strong. We called the doc who said it was still early, give it an hour, and then come on down to the hospital. Most of you probably know already that it was Raegan's wish to have a natural childbirth, with no drugs, using the Hypnobirthing method. I, myself, wanted to be heavily medicated, but that's neither here nor there. Soon Beth, our doula, showed up and quickly helped Raegan put herself into a deep state of relaxation.

April 4th - 2:30 AM
Three hours later we were all still in our bedroom. And then Raegan threw-up, which apparently is typical of the Transition Phase of labor. When this phase is over, the woman is completely dilated! Fortunately, our hospital is only a mile away. So while I was pannicking to find my keys (which I felt sure I had lost even though they were in my jacket pocket), Beth relaxed Raegan even further.

At Winchester Hospital I was thankful to be given a series of mundane, but time-consuming, tasks, which included: emptying the car, filling out the paperwork, and decorating the room. When I returned to Raegan's bedside she said she was already 7 cm dilated. All through self-hypnosis. Only three more to go!

Hold on. Let me backtrack. Just before we took off for the hospital, Raegan called down to me from the upstairs bathroom:

"Steven, the nightlight is out, can you fix it?"

Which doesn't sound like anything worth mentioning, except that our upstairs bathroom nightlight is a plastic Mother Mary figurine we bought at the 99¢ store primarily for the kitsch factor and secondarily to — what the hell — cover our bases. Just at that moment, as I was relieving myself in our first floor bathroom, the nightlight there winked out, this one a plastic Jesus figurine, of the same 99¢ store variety.

So, that's just a weird spooky thing that makes you go doo-doo-doo-doo. I thought I'd mention it because for a second there we took it as a sign that maybe we were having some kind of devil-baby or something.

With a couple LED candles and an iPod of surprisingly tolerable world music we attempted to transform the hospital room into something less clinical.

The first thing the nurse did, after getting Raegan comfortably reclined, was to start her on an Ampicillin drip to combat the strep-positive environment. Almost immediately, Raegan starts complaining:
"Something feels weird."
"Here we go," I'm thinking.
"My eyes feel puffy."
"Yup. That explains it. This is why the night-lights went out."
"I'm having trouble breathing."

The nurse quickly shut-off the antibiotic drip and I shakily handed Raegan an inhaler. We talked about giving Raegan some Benadryl, but she waited it out and in a few minutes was back to normal, whatever that means.

At 9 cm, they let Raegan and me take a soak in their laboring tub, which was relaxing for the both of us. I was glad I packed my snorkel. In an effort to regain her former relaxed state, we spent as much time in it as Raegan was comfortable with. Then, wrinkly but sedate, it was back to our room. The nurses couldn't believe Raegan was able to walk down the hall medication-less at 9 cm dilated (my cousin Bobbie's nodding her head now — of course she could!). Before too long, Raegan entered the active phase of labor and started pushing with each contraction.

For some reason, neither the doctors nor the nurses felt compelled to remain in the room for very long, so most of the time it was just the three of us - Raegan, the doula, and me, with Raegan pushing at each contraction and me at the party end, expecting at any minute to have to play catcher. I didn't get kicked out of med school for nothing!

5:00 AM
An hour or so later, the doc finally decides to take a closer look at things. It turns out the baby's head is still caught on a tiny rim of cervix. All Raegan's pushing was for naught. To try to move things (persons) along, she breaks Raegan's water (which didn't result in the deluge I'd seen on TV). Raegan pushes for another hour or so, but it doesn't help much.

"I want to give you an epidural and start you on some pitocin," the doc says, "to relax the muscles and help the baby pass through the cervix."

Which of course was the last thing we wanted to hear. Well, second-to-last anyway. But Raegan says she's exhausted from all the pushing and graciously goes along with the plan. The nurses start the pitocin drip and Raegan responds by immediately throwing-up on them — projectile-style a la The Exorcist. The demonic possession begins.

Now, in order to receive the epidural, Raegan has to sit up, hunched over, her back round like a mad cat. Raegan had to sit absolutely still that way through a contraction and the only way she was able to pull it off, she told me later, was by "leaving her body." Which I'm guessing is probably why they threw Beth and me out of the room first, though frankly I would have preferred being thrown out before the barf-party.

So now Raegan's got a couple tubes in her, but she's still relatively mobile considering she's got an epidural needle stuck in her — getting up to use the bathroom, sitting up to grab the squat-bar, etc. Then it was back to the pushing. This time, several nurse-coaches were there, each of which had her own advice to offer:

"Make more noise. Instead of that whimpering, make a deep gutteral noise."
"Get mad at it!"
"Push it all from your bottom like you're trying to poop."
"Deep fast breath and hold."
"Swear!"
"Longer! Push for longer!!"
"Now! Hold your breath!!"
"Noise! More noise!! That's it!!"

Despite their claims that Raegan was progressing beautifully, apparent, they said, by the rounding of her bottom and the unfolding of her labia, the baby made it to Plus One and would advance no further. Several hours and about a hundred positions later, the baby had only made it to Plus Two. The nurses were dumbfounded. They applauded Raegan's efforts and said that the way she was pushing, any other woman would have given birth long ago. But what had happened was that the baby was facing the wrong way, that is, up instead of down, and for that reason her head wasn't able to pass through the pelvis. "It must be a big baby!" the doctor said.

1:00 PM (somehow)
"At this point," the doctor said, "the baby's been in there awhile. And while she's doing great, there's a chance she could aspirate meconium..which is the last thing we want to happen. We're going to have to do a c-section."

Which was the last thing we wanted to hear. The doc asked if we were okay with that, but it wasn't like she was giving us any other options. Raegan was dead-tired and I reminded her that she should be proud of herself and not feel bad. She had done as much pushing as she would have in a natural birth, and she had done most of it without drugs, not to mention she had a small ovarian cyst the docs would have to remove at some point. We'd have to go back for that surgery, anyway, who wants to do that when there's a baby at home? Might as well get it all done at once. It just made sense. Besides, in the end, it's really all about the baby, right, not about how you delivered her. Let's just meet this person already.

In response, Raegan threw-up again, which I took as meaning that at this point she was up for anything. And then, like a superhero, Dr. Gittinger (Raegan's own OB - the one in the video) showed up and said she would be performing the c-section herself, which was a great relief and made the whole thing feel a little pre-destined.

We signed the necessary papers and were again separated as they prepped Raegan for surgery. By the time I was allowed in, they were hard at work. Raegan looked at me with one droopy eye and, as I held her shaky hand, said she'd been joking around with the doctors:

"While you're in there could you maybe take a little off the sides?"

2:15 PM
"Almost there," Dr. Gittinger said, only minutes later.
"What is it?" Raegan asked.
"So far, it's just a head."
"A head, that's good," I said.
Then all the doctors announced at once: "It's a girl!"

And then of course Raegan and I laughed and cried at the same time. "A girl???" we said. Because it all made sense: we'd been hoping for an April Fool's baby, and for the last few months assumed from our personal ultrasound-scrutiny, from our doctor's own educated sense, and from the strength of the baby's kicks, that we were having a boy. Now that's what I call an April Fool's joke!

Well done, devil-baby!

They escorted me over to where Noa lay in a little incubator tray, under a heatlamp like a Whopper. I did my best to introduce myself, let her know how long we had been waiting for her and how much trouble she had caused us (what with the near-suffocation and the projectile vomit). Then I regaled her with songs we had sung her while in the womb, timeless classics like "Countdown to Boobies" and "Hey there, Monkey-nuts." She looked at me the whole time with alert, unblinking eyes. Who knows, but it sure seemed like she recognized me! Here's a video of the first few moments. Judge for yourself.



UPDATE: First of all, congratulations for making it this far. Second, Noa is doing fabulously. She's breast-feeding like a pro (can you get paid for that?), is already above her birthweight, and her umbilical-cord stump fell off without incident. The pediatrician was so happy with her health and progress he said he doesn't need to see us for a month (which, of course could also mean he's just a real shitty doctor).