A New Baby

No, not us! Tim would be highly suspect after his little surgery if I sprang that news on him!

We have some friends that we've gotten pretty close to over the last several months and after they left from hanging out one night I said to Tim, "I think she's going to ask me to be with her when she has the baby." Tim didn't believe me, it's such a personal thing and I've only known her for about a year and a half. While we really like each other, we're not what I'd call close.

The next couple of times we got together, I got the same feeling and indeed she ended up asking me to be with her during labor and delivery of their first child. I was honored and accepted. After all, I've had four of my own and helped a little bit with my sister.

As the time grew near she'd send me text messages of her progress from her doctor visits and then one morning she called at about 7:00 AM and said she had woken up at 2:00 AM with contractions about 10 minutes apart.

I called in to work and headed over to her house. She was doing great and she labored at home like a champ, I didn't feel like I was doing much good. We had a fun day, or at least I did. Her husband was cracking me up. Her doc was out of town so after lunch he called the hospital just to see if they needed to do anything different before heading to the hospital and when he was talking to the nurse she asked, "Has she had any discharge?" He stuttered around and then said, "Uh, yeah, some miscellaneous things."

She and I about wet ourselves laughing so hard. Miscellaneous things? Like what? Toys? Tools? Food? The rest of the day we'd just laugh and say, "Miscellaneous things!"

By 4:00 PM her contractions were getting stronger, as in more difficult to talk through, and were between 3-4 minutes apart so we told her husband we thought we should head to the hospital. He had been piddling around and didn't realize we meant NOW. I said, "Like now, we need to go now." You should have seen him scurry!

At the hospital she was dilated to 4 cm and they broke her water about 5:30 which got things really rolling. She was wanting to go natural and was doing really well. By 7:00 she was dilated to 7 cm but she was starting to get tired. She had rested some during the day, but she was really excited so she didn't sleep any after 2 AM.

Every time they checked her after 7:00 pm she had made no progress, still at 7 cm. With her being so tired she got discouraged quickly. I tried to ward that off, but it was no use. She just wanted it to stop-I told her that was good and meant she was getting close. They started pitocin at 10:30 to help with dilation, but after about 40 minutes and no dilation change they turned it off and called the doctor.

While the nurse was in there my friend said, "I know I shouldn't say this, but let's just do a c-section." Her husband and I very quickly tried to get that out of her head; there was no need for that extreme. We told her she could get some relief with an epidural and then she could sleep and be ready to push in a while.

When the doctor arrived I was out updating my friend's mom and by the time I got back to the room they were already prepping for the c-section. I felt like she [the doctor] should have given the pitocin a chance to work and suggested an epidural to let my friend get some rest in an effort to avoid a c-section.

I guess since the patient mentioned the c-section and it's "easier" for the docs, that's what they went with without any discussion of other options. Her husband was pretty upset, and I did what I could for him, but at that point all I could say was, "Oh, I'm so sorry!" and give him a hug.

From there it went very quickly and by 12:38 AM she had her bouncing baby boy at a whopping 9-5 and 21 1/2 inches. It probably would have been some hard pushing! She's tough though, I think she could have done it, she never took any pain medication after her c-section! She was not disappointed at all, just a little frustrated that she labored so long and it ended in a c-section.

When they were getting ready to wheel her to the OR I was upset had to take some time to compose myself before I could go and talk to her mom and let her know what was going on, I just could barely choke back tears. Was I upset? She wasn't upset, why should I be? Maybe I wasn't upset at all, I cried when Mary had Sean, maybe I was just emotional? Bringing in a new life to this world is a beautiful miracle. One that amazes me every time no matter how the baby arrives.

Since I've helped with two births it makes me wonder if I should look into being a doula? Although I don't know if I'd like to help people if I didn't already know them, but who knows? Maybe it'll be a second career once I get my little fellas grown. I think that would be good.