A Child is Born

Fourteen years ago today is a day that will live in infamy, at least at the Durham Regional Hospital, for it was the day that I gave birth to my darling daughter, Carter.  But getting her into the world was not so cute.

Let me paint the picture for you, in case you were not one of the pregnant couples who were taking the labor and delivery tour that day.  It was a Monday.  I was two weeks over due so my OB/GYN had promised me that he would induce my labor on that day.  Russ and I showed up at the hospital at five in the morning ready to meet our only child.  After waiting a coon’s age for check-in I was finally allowed to waddle up to my labor room by 9:00 AM.

Making a giant pregnant woman wait four hours with nothing to eat or drink since the night before was not a good way to start the day.  Once in our room a lovely nurse came in and had me change into a gown that opened in the back, but did not tie shut.  As I lay down on a bed hardly any wider than I was, she attached at least six different wires, monitors or tube to me; mother heart monitor on my finger, baby heart monitor around my beach-ball belly, IV in my arm, some kind of fetal wire inside the place the baby was going to come out and a few other’s I can’t remember.  I resembled a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day float with tethering lines coming off all sides of me.

My Doctor came in and said good morning and told me that they were going to give me Pitocin to induce labor and if that did not work after six hours they would stop, give me dinner and try again the next morning.  That was not the news I wanted to hear and you can bet I told him so.  He had made me wait until two weeks overdue and this was going to be the day I had this baby.

For the first few hours it looked as if his warning about this taking more than one day was going to come true.  Russ read the newspaper and I tired I looked at the television without actually watching it.  It was the slowest morning of my life.  Next to my bed was the monitor, which showed when I might be having a contraction.  Watching it was like watching grass grow, until all of a sudden things kicked into gear and I went from no contractions to lots with not much rest in between.

Not being one to suffer needlessly I had an epidural, which not only numbed the pain, but slowed down the delivery a bunch.  The monitor, which also had a satellite monitor out at the nurses station became much more important at that point since I was not feeling the contractions.  While Russ and I were just hanging out alone in the room the monitor made an alarming sound, the door flew open suddenly and my Doctor rushed in telling me to roll over on my hands and knees and put my butt in the air and my head down because the baby wire that was running in the birth canal was reporting that her heart rate was going down.

On a good day, without six wires and tubes stuck to every part of me I might have been able to do this, but being this pregnant, numb from the waist down on a tiny bed it was almost impossible, but I did it.  My naked butt was in the air as my entire body was exposed, hospital gown that opened in the back lying on the bed beneath me.  Who cares, I just want this baby to be OK.  Once I had assumed the position the monitor stopped screaming at us and my Doc told me to roll back over.  Right.  I needed those six balloon handlers to come in and help untangle the lines as I tried to roll over.

Another twenty minutes went by and the monitor screamed again, the door flew open again, I rolled over again, hands and knees, head down, big giant naked white ass in the air again.  Baby fine. Roll on back.  At this point Russ went to find the pay phone to call my mother and report what my status was.  This was still back in the day when you were not allowed to use cell phones in the hospital because you might trigger a heart attack in some old guy’s pacemaker.

While Russ was gone the alarm sounded again.  I was already rolling over into the undignified position as my Doctor ran in this time with three nurses, yelling we are going to do an emergency c-section, roll her out.  Now you know these labor and delivery nurses don’t give a hoot about naked women with everything hanging out so no one thought about throwing a sheet over my bare body as they rolled me out into the hall at NASCAR speed to get to the operating room.

Right then, out in the public hallway, a tour of at least a half dozen pregnant woman and their baby daddy’s came walking through to see where they were considering giving birth.  In my typical way I said, “Somebody, please take a picture.”  I can almost guarantee that not one of those women chose Durham Regional as her birthplace.

My bed/chariot was pushed up against the operating room table and it was so much easier to roll on to it than it had been to roll in place on the first bed.  Within seconds the Doctor was ready to make the incision and he looked up and asked, “Is the father here?”  Russ came rushing in having missed all the excitement because he was on the phone explaining what an epidural was to my mother.

In a flash Carter was born and was perfectly healthy, those monitor sirens were nothing serious.  So on this day I like to celebrate not just the birth of my child, but the happiness I feel about not knowing if I caused any heart attacks or early labor inducement to the horrified pregnant woman touring the hospital. It was Pearl Harbor day after all.