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Who's kidding?

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Here she is only minutes old!!!

Vera meets the grandparents!

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Quality time with the family unit.

Vera

The first thing you have to know is that the day my wife and I headed to the hospital a bear wandered on to our beloved campus. This fact is not directly related to the events that followed; I think of it as more of an omen. It's arrival is a huge event, it's scary as hell, but ultimately it's just an untamed force of nature looking for some food. Sound familiar? The bear wandered on to the village green near the headmaster's house during one of my classes. A campus alert sounded. This was during one of my four classes that day. At the end of that day I went to cross country practice in which we, more importantly I, ran five miles. That was about the longest run I have done in a very long time. Right after I arrived at the end of the run covered in sweat and questioning the existence of God, my mother-in-law called me and informed me that my wife was bleeding, and I should come home. I ran home. That is the end of the part of this story in which I complain of my day. From here on out I had it pretty easy. We called the doctor and he told us to go to the hospital. No one at this point was seriously considering the possibility that we might be about to have a baby. This was clearly one of those times you always hear about when a pregnant couple goes to the hospital only to be sent right back home because labor has yet to start. We knew that Sophia wasn't in labor. She hadn't had a single contraction. We got there and the first thing the doctor told us was that we weren't going home. We were going to stay there until the baby was born and they were going to start an induction. For those of you who are unaware of the details of the process of induction, it starts with twelve hours of a medication called cervadil whose purpose is to ripen the cervix. After that was done they started pitocin, a synthetic form of the hormone that causes contractions. So to recap we got there at night we had to wait until the next morning before they even started the labor part of the induction process. All throughout that night they checked her blood pressure and monitored the baby's heart rate, which in layman's terms means they never let her get any sleep. The next morning after the pitocin started there was a lot more waiting. In fact the pitocin seemed to have virtually no effect what so ever. We got all the way until 10 pm that evening before she had any real contractions, but I am getting ahead of myself. In the mean time they decided that her blood pressure was too high and they were afraid that maybe she had preeclampsia. They gave her a blood pressure medication, but it didn't work. The only way that they could determine for sure wether or not she had preeclampsia was to test for protien in her urine. In order to get an untainted sample they needed to do a catheter. Fear not, catheters are just as horrifying as you would imagine them to be, especially when the nurse has the empathic capabilities of a pet rock. After that wonderful experience it turned out that the sample was tainted anyway. Oops. So unsure if she actually had preeclampsia, the decided to act like she did and put her on Magnesium Sulfate which is a medication which prevents seizure. It also causes flu like symptoms, neccessitates staying in bed, and slows the effectiveness of pitocin. A fun little side note: there is a danger of toxicity with Magnesium sulfate if the patient doesn't urinate enough, so they needed to measure precisely how much urine Sophia was producing. That means she needed another catheter, and this one had to stay in. Yea. So at around 10 Sophia started bleeding. This was the scariest part of the whole experience. The nurse came in and a doctor and they put in an internal fetal monitor. They didn't know what was causing the bleeding and with the external monitor they kept losing the baby's heart rate. They decided that his was unacceptable. The internal monitor would give a more constant direct reading of the baby's heart rate. That way even if Sophia is bleeding that can be sure the baby is ok. This monitor also necessitates breaking the water because it attaches directly to the baby's head. This is what started labor. Sophia labored for several hours, and eventually decided to get an epidural. It was at around two in the morning. The anesthesiologist put in an effective tap, that became ineffective the moment she left the room. So after an insightful discussion about the difference between pressure and pain, the anesthesiologist was called back in. She did a second epidural, which was better in that it took a few hours to become totally ineffective. During that brief respite we slept. I got more sleep than Sophia because she was awoken to have an internal contraction monitor inserted. At this point Sophia was at her maximum number of attachments. She had a catheter and two internal monitors, an IV which was dripping two bags of fluids one of Magnesium Sulfate and one of Pitocin. She had inflatable leg warmers that inlfated up and down her leg to ensure adequate circulation, and she had a blood pressure cuff on her arm. She looked like someone hooked up to the matrix. So now it's 6 am and we're up after three hours of sleep, and at this point the contractions are hard and long, and seriously pitociny. The only good news that we had was that at 7:30 our very own OBGYN was coming on. We loved him. He was awesome. He gave her a pelvic exam, and found that the baby had yet to descend into the pelvis in spite of the fact that she had dilated 5 cm. He suggested that we have a C section, and by the time he brought it up we were so spent and frustrated that we were saying yes before he got done explaining what he wanted to do. They brought her down the hall, and gave her a spinal. That was the third shot in the spine she had had that day, and the first that really alleviated her pain. They gave me some scrubs and some shoe covers that were very nearly too small, and ushered me into the OR. I was seated at a stool near Sophia's head next to a blue sheet set up to block Sophia's view. I could hear the Doctor talking about what he was doing. When he got to the part where he was going to pull the baby out I stood up to look over at the action. This was the moment for me. I was not overly emotional up to this point. I was concerned for the well being of my wife, I was eager to meet my daughter, but I wasn't welling up with tears or anything. Then her little head popped out I and could see her face. She had a face. It was earth-shattering. Not having passed through a birth canal the fluid had not been squeezed from her lungs and therefor she had to be suctioned, and they had to provide a little positive pressure on her lungs to get her breathing properly. Then we got to hold her. They sewed up Sophia's belly and took us to recovery. She is healthy happy, and if I say so, the cutest thing ever. She's the best and I love her. In the OR Sophia was feeling cold and so they put an inflatable garment over her upper body that filled up with hot air to keep her warm. It was called a bear-hugger. She's our little bear, our little untamed force of nature looking for a meal.

One last word about our Doula. Her name was Meg and she was invaluable. She stayed up with us, she massaged, encouraged, supported, and helped us through one of the most difficult ordeals of our lives. We could not have done it without her. She was amazing. She was a rock.