I remember being woken up by Angie at about 3am on May 28th. It had been roughly a day since we'd been in for a baby check-up, and we'd both gone to bed that night thinking labor could get serious at any moment. As it turned out, labor was getting serious for about three hours, but Angie was too nice to wake me up until now. She was having regular contractions about every 5-10 minutes, so I decided it was time to call our Doula, Jessica and let her know that things were happening. After laboring at home until about 5am, we both decided that it was time to get to hospital, before it became too uncomfortable.
We drove to hospital just as the sun was coming up, listening to classical radio and watching people go to work like any other day. I remember thinking that I wasn't that nervous, and Angie didn't seem visibly uncomfortable. Strangely, the only thing I was worried about was that Angie wouldn't be far enough along and we would be sent back home.
We arrived at the hospital in less than ten minutes, pulled up to the emergency entrance and slowly made our way to the birthing center (we both assumed the hospital would meet us with a wheelchair and assist us, but that didn't happen. Perhaps we looked like we had everything under control?). After checking in, Angie was placed on a monitor and told to wait until a midwife could perform a check. Shortly after this, Jessica arrived and made Angie more comfortable while we waited. Good news! Angie was already dilated to 6 cm, the result of her many hours of uncomfortable labor at home. At this point, we moved to the labor room to continue the process.
The labor room consists of a fancy hospital bed, bathroom, and a whole bunch of medical equipment. In our case, it also came complete with a birthing tub, 2 nurses and 1 midwife. It was still early morning and we had just started what was going to be a very long day.
Although most of the labor has become foggy to me at this point, the strength, courage and calm that Angie showed me is impossible to forget. She labored in the birthing tub until the water was no longer hot, more times than I can remember. She walked in the hall, the pain stopping her in her tracks. She labored in the bed, in the bathroom, but no matter how much pain she felt she pushed through it. Throughout 12 hours of pain and uncertainty, without any intervention whatsoever, she pushed through everything. Unfortunately though, our baby just wasn't in the right position and we had explore other options.
The plan was to administer an epidural, in hopes that with the aid of pitocin, her "super-sized" contractions would allow things to move forward. That never happened. Our baby was sending us a message, something just wasn't right. Again, we had to explore other options.
Deciding to move forward with the cesarean was difficult. Angie and I were very emotional, it didn't seem like the ending she deserved, she who worked and fought and pushed through so much pain. Why couldn't she push now, when it mattered most? It's hard to describe the feeling we shared, but it felt like this wasn't what we planned and that somehow we had failed.
All of those feelings faded away the first time I heard our baby cry. He was finally here, and he was so beautiful. I remember I thought he had his mommy's eyes the first time I saw him. I still think that. I still think that in the end, our plans were just plans and we didn't fail. We experienced something we will never forget and were rewarded with a handsome little baby boy that we named Calvin Charles McDonald.
(more photos on my Flickr, which can be found on the right sidebar)
