Birth of Boy.Imp(or better known as stalling day 3)

I am relating this story about the birth of our boy.imp, because I am stalling until I can keep a Promise and I have been afraid of forgetting any of the details.

Let's just say that we went about things a little differently from the birth of our girl.imp:

Late Friday night Nov 7th 2003, the wife.imp's contractions started getting a bit stronger and more regular and she decided to try to get as much sleep as she could. We assumed that there would be a trip to the hospital the next day and figured if the pain became so intense that she couldn’t sleep we would start timing contractions. We woke up around 5:30 am – ALL OF US including g.imp (who normally is a late sleeper) - and started timing the contractions about 6sh.

The wife.imp and I had not really gone through advanced labor pains because with g.imp we went to the hospital early and also got the epidural (which made both of us firm believers in drugs over natural labor).

We put off going to the hospital all morning because the contractions were fluctuating from 4-5 minutes to even 10 minutes apart - silly us. We thought the contractions would become more consistently close together. It wasn't until 8am that wife.imp asked me how many we have had in the last hour - turned out there had been 13 contractions, which meant we were averaging contractions less than 5 minutes apart!!

Doctor’s instructions were to call when we are 5-6 minutes apart, with 45-60 second durations. At that point we were hitting 75 second durations on a few of the contractions. When we called the doctor, he said he was going to be at the hospital all day and that we should go. However, I let the wife.imp make this call. After all, she was the one in pain. When she said ‘Go’ the car was ready!

At this point I would like to emphasize that the doctor stated he was going to be at the hospital all day and that we should go. The wife.imp interpreted his instructions to mean that whenever we were ready we can go. Again, we didn't realize how far along we were because she could still manage the pain. This meant we did not have to worry because wife.imp's pain threshold is not particularly high and she is a whiner by nature.

We have since considered trying to blame my sister for our late start because she was supposed to be at our house to watch g.imp. But she had not yet arrived (of course we won't admit that we didn't realize the urgency of the situation and failed to communicate that to her!). Around 9sh a.m. we decided we had to go and dropped g.imp off at the neighbors' house. Of course this is when my sister arrives!!

The contractions got stronger and closer together in the car - our house is about 12 miles from the hospital downtown. Two items of interest here, a) my dad advised us to take towels in the car in case a delivery occurred en-route, b) Ohio State University’s stadium holds over 100k fans and on this day it was a home game.

We were slowed down to just below a crawl several times because we were stuck in game-day traffic (the football stadium is easily 5+ miles north of downtown and that it was at least 4 effing hours BEFORE kickoff!). However we arrived a few minutes after 9:30 a.m. Because the front entrance of the hospital is about a block from the parking garage, I had hoped to use the hospital's valet service (yes, you read it correctly 'I had hoped to use the hospital's valet service) but it wasn't available until 11 a.m. So I dropped wife.imp off at the entrance and went to park the car in the parking garage (remember, we still thought we had plenty of time).

While I was parking the car, wife.imp got the first indication that time was not necessarily waiting for us. The first BIG contraction hit her as she approached the elevators and almost dropped her to her knees. But wife.imp was able to make it to the Labor and Delivery ward where she proceeded admitted herself. While she was struggling with the paperwork, I was sitting in the parking garage trying to decide whether or not to bring the luggage in or go out later to retrieve the bags. Remembering our last delivery when we were in the hospital over 10 hours, I opted to carry the bags in with me (down 3 levels, across the road, around the hospital to the front door, through the lobby, waiting for the elevator up to labor and delivery).

When I arrived wife.imp was nowhere to be seen. However the nurse manning the check-in did hustle me down the hall…

Back to wife.imp:
As she was signing papers the second BIG contraction dropped wife.imp on all fours in front of the nurse’s desk. Things started to get blurry for her here, but she clearly remembers hearing the admissions person say "She was just here in front of me a moment ago.” Then the nurses spotted her on the floor and whisked her into one of the L&D rooms.

Back to me:
When I entered the L&D room, I saw two nurses standing over wife.imp, who was on all fours still fully clothed and groaning in pain. Instead of trying to get her ready for the impending birth, one nurse was asking her for her personal and medical information while another was telling her to change into the hosp gown.

My first thought was to drop the bags and plant one of my sized 10 boots into each of their...I forced myself to resist the urge to tell them what their jobs were and helped wife.imp to her feet. After she changed and and climbed into the bed a nurse checked on our status.”

“She’s rimming!”

Next to ‘There’s a bomb in here!’ I can not imagine any other combination of words that would have caused the amount of activity that erupted with the nurse’s pronouncement.

At this point wife.imp turns to a nurse and asks if she can get an epidural. The nurse patted her hand, smiled and lied. She then proceeded to move all the epidural equipment approx 3-4’ from the bed.

A few minutes later the doctor came and asked wife.imp to push. B.imp came out after 4 sets of 3 pushes, officially at 9:56 am. Remember I was parking the car in the parking garage a little after 9:30 a.m.! The nursing staff had no time to put in an IV or attach the finger monitor!

What really rocked was that wife.imp was lucid through the whole thing and felt decent afterwards. Plus the whole thing was over in time for us to watch Ohio State beat Michigan State!!