Part 1 - SURPRISE!

So it happened.
The day we've been planning for, for almost 9 months. Notice I said "almost 9 months".
Our little one seems to take after Dad and decided to arrive a few days earlier than expected.
But that's neither here nor there, so let's get down to business.

The following is the birth story from the Dad's [and mom's] point of view. [Dad-2-b is in orange, mom-2-b is in blue]

For those of you who might be expecting or are planning on expecting or are even remotely curious about the idea of expecting sometime in your life let me give you a bit of sage advice.
SLEEP!
[no shit....]
This cannot be more pointedly expressed than in the events of the birth of our child.

I had gotten word the night of the 25th that I would not have to work on the 26th so I spent more time messing around until after 1am (I usually go to bed at 10). I had done the same thing the night before because it was the weekend, but I had gotten up at my usual time of 6am both days.
[My sleep had been off as well. I called in sick to work on Friday the 24th. Like I said, I hadn't slept well, and felt kind of weird. Then through the weekend I stayed up as well, working on the shelving unit (check previous post). Then Sunday night I still didn't feel any better.. so I called in sick again.]
During the day of the 26th Mom-to-Be and myself took a short 2 hour nap around 4pm.
[thanks to me... I had to MAKE him, now who's the genius?]
So as you can see we were both a bit sleep deprived as the events started to unfold.

As the evening of the 26th approached we had a bit of snow so I headed out to shovel. Mom-to-be wanted to help and over my objections she spent some time shoveling a path from our house to the driveway (30ft).
[what?, I felt fine.. leave me alone]
When she got to the driveway I really had to tell her to stop. I mean if people thought I condoned my wife’s shoveling at over 8.5 months pregnant I'd never hear the end of it.
[he really did make me stop]
So while I shoveled Mom-to-be made mini snowmen on the hood of my car.

After the shoveling we were very hungry, but I had a little project to work on for the wife so I set out to do that around 8pm. Mom-to-be said she’d make sandwiches and bring one down to me.
[I did...and this is when we first should have realized something was up.. when I went to the basement and gave him his sandwich I realized my breasts were leaking.. this was new to me. I am in no way saying that leaking is an indicator of labor... but who knows???]
It wasn't until just before 10 that I learned that although she made me food, she hadn't eaten. Well, I had some harsh words with her on our intercom phone via the basement to the upstairs computer room (2 floors away).
[He was right though.. I needed to eat a long time ago.. but got busy doing something else]
Then just after 10pm I heard a faint whistling sound. The same whistle that we use to find each other in stores (it's kind of an audible ping we've worked out). But this was strange because we have the phone intercom system. Then it hit me, if she wasn't calling on the phone, then she must not be able to GET to the phone.
[So I'm sitting at the computer, we get off the phone, and I stand up to go get myself something to eat, then as I turn I see something on the floor of the closet, one of the LED lights we put up had fallen so I went to fix it. I bent over to pick it up and GUSH!! well, not really, more of a light trickle. Yes, it's just like everyone says.. you question yourself to see if you just wet yourself or if its the real thing.. so I get to the bathroom ASAP. YES SIR... WE HAVE RUPTURED MEMBRANES!!!!!!!! So then I'm sitting there, and I yell.. PATRICK!!!........... no answer.........PATRICK!!!!!!...... no answer......... PATRICK!!!!!!!!!!!......... no answer... shit.. how am I going to ge...*ding* light bulb, *whistle*....*whistle*.... then I hear him coming up the stairs]
I walked up the first flight of stairs calling her name with a sort of questioning tone in my voice.
She responded with, "Umm, I think my water broke".
"Oh really?" I replied.
"Uhh, yeah....” she continued with an explanation of what happened.
Yep, it was true the baby was on the way.

What happened next was a kind of blur. Not that I was in anyway panicking. Ok.. at one point I did have a bit of an oh-shit fest, but this was well out of earshot of Mom-to-be as I didn't think she needed to see me starting to unravel. After I composed myself (only minutes mind you) I called the midwife and gave her the low down. She asked us into the hospital ASAP as Mom-to-be needed to start some antibiotics.
I didn't like the idea of going in early as contractions hadn't started and I knew it would be a long night, that might be followed by an induction with pitocin, something Mom-to-be and I really opposed.

So, we spent time going over our check list, getting a quick shower in, packing a few more foods into our second bag and just really taking our time to be sure to have everything we needed.
[Dad-2-b really wanted to get going... I wanted to "putz" around the house and make sure that every last thing was ready for baby. He had to literally pull me out of the house. The funnest part for me was calling work to say... MY WATER BROKE, CALL THE SUB!!!!]
We left home at about 12:15 a full 2 hours after the midwife had asked us to. I was a little nervous about this as I didn't want her to start to worry. Little did I know, it would be the quick email to my family that would start the "Panic Train" down its tracks, (more on that later).
[I only had to call my mom, and we agreed to call her from the hospital to let her know how urgently she needed to get to the hospital]
The road to the hospital was pretty snow covered and not well traveled. Actually it looked like a very long snow covered football field. It is normally a 45-minute drive to the hospital, but this night it took over an hour. All I could do was stay between the trees and hope I was on the road.
We got to the hospital a little after 1am. We were met by a staff that was very relieved we were there. It turns out one of the Aunt's-to-be started a rallying cry from across the country to find the missing couple. Later after reading the email I sent out I could see how it might have incited panic in a person, so next time I'll a be a bit more specific with my info. The Aunt-2-b enlisted a henchman, so my brother showed up at the hospital shortly after we did!!!!

After arriving at the hospital and getting Mom-to-be checked out, on the antibiotic, and sure things were as we thought.
[We planned to not be on constant monitoring, so that meant that they needed a baseline of the baby's heart rate, and my vitals, etc. etc.. The nurse also checked me and I was at 31/2 cm, -1 station 90% effaced. the 20 minute required baseline of the baby's heart rate took about an hour. She was moving SO MUCH they couldn't track her until I held the monitor in place.]
The wonderful nurses brought Mom-to-be a little box lunch to keep her strength up. Then we set out to see if we could stimulate contractions. Walking was our best bet so we did that for a while. After looping around the circular corridor almost 40 times (2 miles) we thought it best if we go rest for a bit.
Contractions were just not happening and we really wanted to be sure things were on the right track.
[Well, contractions were happening, just not regular and NOT progressing]
We took a break and Mom-to-Be had some more food and I set out getting things ready in the room.
I had a couple of little surprises for Mom-to-be. I had gotten (from the Mother-in-law) some really nice LED candles. They gave the room a nice relaxing glow and as they weren't open flame they didn't violate any hospital rules.
[They were so nice. I really wanted the room to have a relaxing homey feel, and those LED candles did the job!!]
Mom-in-law showed up sometime after this and she got settled in as well.
It wasn't much later and we were reaching morning (6am) and the day staff was arriving. The midwife arrived around 7am to see how Mom-to-be was doing. 4cm was the results, only .5 more than the night nurse and this isn't really an exact measurement.
We were told to keep working on it, so we went for ANOTHER walk as well as Mom-to-be began some thumb sucking to help move contractions along. This seemed to work a bit, but it gave her a headache.
[I also felt pretty foolish sucking my thumb, but it worked! I was progressing the contractions, but not getting them more regular]
Then around 9 the midwife came back for another check up. Things hadn't changed much and she was talking pitocin or natural stimulation. The thumb sucking didn't seem to do it so it was on to the more interesting form of stimulation, which I'll leave to your imagination.

Next up "Part 2 - Contraction Action"

HikerDad

Sunny with a chance of showers

So we've just finished up two showers. The first was (as you've read below) put on as a male/female party.
We live several hours away from the location of the party that everything had to be done by our friends who were setting it up. And boy did they do a nice job!
We had a pool table, foosball, air hockey, food, root beer, friends... and oh yeah, baby stuff.
But really it was food and pool that most interested me.

.... Oh give me a break, yes the baby stuff was important and cool too. Shesh.. I'm not that shallow... but it really is a nice pool table.

Here is a list of all the little people we need to thank.. I've encoded their names to protect their identity.
fefyej, bream, raky, bojan, dancea, nala, nicval, nad, oje, byobb, lelchime, bro, cillechor, sejes, nanaibr, nadrami, and also the 'rents of all the above who helped as well. especially those of you who made food because as we've already established I really enjoyed the food.
Oh, and Todd you suck so I'm not encoding your name. Ok, what the hell, dotd.. I can't help myself, it's just so much fun.

The second party was held a week later by her family. They decorated like crazy and the balloons really entertained me. It was a bit more traditional so alas I was the only guy there. Yep, it was just me in a sea of estrogen.
whee.
Ok, it wasn't really that bad. I had a lot of fun and oh yes they had really good food there as well so I was set. They had a pool table, too, but sadly it was under the food. I tried to eat my way to it, but the all the meatballs stumped me. There was an unmanned bar there as well (VFW hall) and though I'm not a drinker, when the ladies started to compare birth stories the vodka started looking mighty tempting.
I was really happy about how many people showed up as they had to drive through a blizzard to get there.. -30 wind chill, whiteout conditions, drifting snow, llamas dropping dead on the side of the road (just checking if you were paying attention).

The midwife says the baby is doing well and the wife agrees. I'll have to take their word for it as I don't have the inside information that they seem to have. From my perspective the baby kicks a lot and makes Mom-2-be yelp in pain once in a while. It's pretty interesting really, to be talking to your wife and all of a sudden she yelps like someone just stepped on her tail.
Oh, and for those of you who aren't women. It's a good idea not to laugh when your wife yelps in pain. You might get away with it ONCE, but after that you are taking your life in your own hands. Trust me on this one.

As for my part, I've got my bag packed for the hospital, and I'm starting to get some of the necessary supplies together as well. The iPod has some birthing music on it, the tennis balls are packed, survival snacks are ready, and I found my swimsuit.
Now I know what you are thinking.. but trust me on this one I actually need these things. I'll explain it all later, but I'm telling you everything here is essential.

Ok I think I've bored you enough for today.
More later,

HikerDad