Standing in for A today

Greetings to the followers of "Love and War in Texas." Let me preface this little blog with the fact that I am not as gifted a writer as A. Due to my literary shortcomings, I'll try to stick with the facts and sarcasm. This is E; A's husband and as of 2:52PM on May 12, 2009, the proud father of Baby N. After the battle to bring N into the world, A and I became the parents of a healthy boy weighing in at an impressive 7lbs 15oz. He is 20 inches in total length and his wide little head was an uncomfortable 14 inches in circumference. Here's an abreviated version of N's arrival into the world.

May 11 - 11AM: We have our final appointment at the OB and they tell us that we need to check into the hospital at 8PM. A and I revel in our last hours of unencumbered freedom and go out to lunch and then a movie. We then sit around and talk while we wait for check in time at the hospital. This allowed enough time for A's mom to arrive at our house and also for us to try and make up for the upcoming neglect that our faithful Lab Zoee will no doubtedly experience. Then we go to the hospital.

I have to say that this whole induced labor has left me feeling cheated because I don't have to wake up in the middle of the night and do a mad dash to the hospital with my hazard lights flashing. We leisurely drive to the hospital and check in. A get's hooked up and a first treatment is applied at 10PM and then we proceed to fall asleep. At 12:18AM an alarm starts to go off on one of the machines attached to A. We keep our cool and call the nurse in to see what's going on. Apparently my wife (who pre-pregnancy was capable of running at least 3 consecutive marathons in under 2 hours) has an unusually healthy cardiovascular system which translates to low blood pressure. This was the cause of the alarm and therefore we had nothing to worry about except that my wife could basically be classified as not living at any moment of her life. Then 1:18 came another alarm went off. This lovely blood pressure machine was set to take measurements every hour, and these alarms kept going off for the next 4 hours. In addition to this, A had another treatment at 2AM and her water broke at around 3:00AM. Needless to say that by the time 6AM came around both she and I were exhausted due to our inability to sleep.

At this time A was also in a great deal of pain. They hadn't started the pitocin drip yet and she didn't want to sound like a wuss so she had kept quite about her discomfort for 3 hours. Of course I'm sitting next to her mumbling idiotic words of encouragement all the while telling her to focus and breathe while this is going on. After she had had heard enough of my worthless dribble she swallowed her pride and called the nurse to ask for something to take the edge off like a baby tylenol. They checked her out and found that she had already started going into labor and was 6cm dialated! Now here's the funniest thing about the whole delivery. The nurses asked A to rate her pain on a scale from 1 to 10 before they checked her out. A gave them an honest 5 on her pain-o-meter. After they checked her out they looked at her and said, "what kind of pain have you had before today?" Honestly she was over half way done and was telling the doctors that 50% of the time she'd ever experienced pain that she had had worse. I'm starting to think that my wife used to be a Navy Seal. Think about it, she can function without sleep, has a high tolerance for pain, and she can run 3 consecutive marathons in under 2 hours (or could have before I knocked her up).

It's now about 7:30 or so and the doctors were nice and let A take a nap while she finished progressing. At around 11:30 A started pushing. The first half hour went great. A was simply awesome while I continued to spew useless words from my mouth while manning the ice chip cup. N was moving on out and making a break for daylight as well. Everyone was thinking that this was going to be an easy delivery with how fast things were progressing. Then he got stuck. Now if any of you out there know my family you will realize that the men do not have small heads. I'd like to think I have an average sized cranium (however I've been told otherwise), but anyone with eyes can tell you that my dad's head is just freaking huge. N was doomed to have a big noggin' and it had gotten him stuck. A continued to push for at least 2 more hours without anything to show for it.

Our doctor came in and provided assistance with the vacuum. Now this thing was not a Hoover, it was basically a suction cup on a T-grip. Our tiny little doctor was manuevering N's melon around with a plunger which allowed A to continue doing better than great. N finally arrived into the world with a plunger induced hickey on his head. Other than a suave baby beenie to cover up this hickey all N had to show for his efforts was a magnificient mother who went out and ran only one marathon today and one extremely proud father.