I looked at my daughter skeptically when she said she wanted me in the delivery room. I had heard about these “birthday parties.” She didn’t want one, she just wanted me and her husband to be there encouraging her through a natural childbirth. They took the classes – and learned a lot – then they had a baby and very little turned out at as they had practiced and planned. I know, because I was there.
At 41 weeks her doctor insisted on inducing labor for safety reasons. My daughter’s followed doctor’s orders and showed up as scheduled.
The baby did not – but 12 hours later family and friends began calling. She refused to see or talk with anyone and sent her husband to run interference.
The nurses came in with intravenous bags of fluids to keep her electrolytes stable. They piled up the folded pages slowly rolling off the monitor tracking her contractions and blood pressure and the baby’s heart beat.
Late in the afternoon the doctor initiated a procedure to hurry things along. He said if the baby had not arrived in 12 hours, he would perform a Caesarian section.
I looked at my daughter’s face. This was not what she had planned, at all.
After moonrise the intensity of the contractions increased. The mid-wife nurse brought her a birthing ball that eased her tension – until exhaustion and pain took over.
The mid-wife nurse laid out several options to achieve a natural birth. First and foremost my girl needed rest. She injected something to make my daughter sleep and told my son-in-love and I to sleep as well.
We all slept until the nurse briskly entered the darkened room, pumped up a huge tube of glucose water, gave the mother-in-waiting an oxygen mask and told her to sleep in a different position – all done for the baby’s sake when his momma’s blood pressure dropped from lack of nutrition and sleep.
I silently prayed – and watched the readings on the machines return to normal.
In the wee hours of the morning, the nurse pronounced, “if you keep this up, we can cancel the C-section.”
She upped the Petocin, and my daughter decided an epidural might not be the worst thing to have.
At dawn, my little girl looked at me and plaintively said, “Mom, it hurts.”
Suddenly I felt faint, I decided I needed a bit of nutrition myself. I grabbed a handy cup of Coke and gulped it down.
In the middle of the intensity of the final two hours, the shift changed. The next nurse chattered away about herself, oblivious of my daughter until she hissed, “Stop talking.”
Outside our window the rush hour began. The doctor studied at the baby’s print-out and asked, “Shall we get this baby out?”
“Yes!” the I’m-tired-of-waiting mother shouted.
Forceps eased out a blue-skinned baby. The doctor skipped the usual end of labor rituals and quickly liberated one limp little lad to the waiting nurses.
“Bet your wondering what kind of a birthday party this, is aren’t you?” the nurse said suctioning his nose and throat. He whimpered weakly.
While the nurses measured, suctioned, poked, prodded and stimulated the baby to breathe, they called across the room, “He sure is a handsome little fellow. Whose nose is this anyway? Oh, it’s yours, Daddy.”
I went over to see my newest grandson. His weak movements and blue limpness terrified me. I needed another slug of coke. I took a few deep breaths before I went to take a picture of him sitting in a little tub for a stimulating first bath.
Finally the nurses wrapped him up snug in three receiving blankets and handed him to the mother and father. “You can hold him for a little bit then we need to get him to the nursery – he’s having a little problem with his breathing.”
In the neonatal intensive care unit, his breathing stabilized and he was moved in with his mom. That night he initiated his parents into the reality of natural parenthood – when they wanted to sleep, he kept them awake with strong healthy cries.
(Joan Hershberger is a reporter at the News-Times. She can be reached at joanh@everybody.org.)