Let me start by saying the Olympics is the best time to have a baby. He
wasn't born on 8/8/08 like I had hoped, but if he came that day or
earlier, what would I have watched in the waiting room? The View? Dr.
Phil? If we didn't have the baby when we did, I might never have known
about Olympic marathon running or Olympic mountain biking.
But I
suppose I should go back to the beginning. The reason we were in the
waiting room to begin with was that we went to the doctor and he said
the baby was really big, and Sarah's body wasn't ready for labor. He
was already late, and if it got much later, they would have to induce
labor, which the doctor said would probably result in an emergency
C-section. So to save everyone the trouble, he said we should just
schedule a C-section.
The cool part about a scheduled C-section
is that we got to take the subway and a bus to the hospital, as if it
were any normal day. It was really a weird feeling to get on the train,
knowing we were on the way to have a kid. I mean I realize that either
way it probably wouldn't have been as crazy and frantic as it is in the
movies, but I think this was as easy as it can get.
So the
surgery was scheduled for noon, and we were supposed to get to the
hospital at 10am. We got into Manhattan and got on the bus at about
9:35, but slowly the tension started to mount, especially for Sarah. At
about 9:50 we weren't at the hospital yet and Sarah was starting to get
nervous. I believe her exact words were "&*$% this bus." Normally
I'm sure she would have been fine with little old ladies and cute
little kids taking their time to get off the bus but on this day every
stop was like waiting for a time bomb.
We got to the hospital at
exactly 10am, but it turns out it didn't even matter--the couple who
had been scheduled to go in at 10 was still in the waiting room, where
they had been since 8. They were there until 12:30. We were there until
4. Which was pretty lame because Sarah wasn't able to eat anything all
day (no food for seven hours before the surgery, which probably would
have been OK if the surgery was at noon as planned).
So the
waiting kind of sucked, but we passed the time by watching the Olympics
and playing cards. When we finally got called in, that's when the real
fun began.
They told me I had to wait outside of the operating
room while they did the anesthesia, and it would just be a few minutes.
Well, a few minutes turned into a few hours (no TV or anything). I
think the staff felt bad, because random doctors and interns kept
coming in and out of the room, and every time they would look at me and
say something dumb like "Wow, this morning we did one and it took three
minutes" (thanks, that helps) or "Ok, the epidural is about 50% in"
(that doesn't even make sense). I think they thought I was really
worried or nervous or something, but really for the most part I was
just bored. At one point a nurse came out into the hall and fell on her
ass, that was kind of interesting.
I realize though that I
have no right to complain, because the whole time I was waiting
outside, Sarah was in the operating room getting stabbed repeatedly
with needles. While I was waiting I started thinking about weird stuff,
and wondering how I was going to react when I saw the baby. I was
thinking about how the big cliche is that people always talk about how they loved the baby right when they first see it, and all that cheesy
stuff. Was that going to happen to me? What if its one of those things
where you get your expectations up really high, and then when it
actually happens you get disappointed?
Finally at around 5 (i
think it might have been 5... I'm trying to figure out the timing, but
it doesn't seem right because it felt like AN ETERNITY) they called me
in. Sarah was really great and positive--though I could tell she was trying to be not scared. They had her laying down, with curtain over
her chest so neither she or I could see what was going on down there...
she was kind of shaky, I don't know if this was from the drugs, or the
nerves, but the doctors said it was OK. They started
doing stuff though, and she could still feel them pinching her stomach,
so they decided that the anesthesia must not have worked. I got sent
out into the hall again.
Sorry, no baby yet. You'll have to read more
stupid stuff about the hospital. Since I had to wait, so will you.
The
next hour and a half was probably the most miserable I have ever been.
Further down the hall in the other room, I could hear another baby
crying, LOUD. It sounded like a velociraptor. I had already seen that couple come in
way after we did (though she was already really drugged up, she had
probably been in labor for a while, and it reminded me that our wait
was comparatively easy).
I did a lot of pacing and trying to
peek in between the cracks of the door... At one point I realized I
could look in through the window of the scrub room, and kind of see
what was going on reflected in the window (yup, at this point it was
dark out--they say that Manhattan had a "tornado warning," right around
the time that Miles was born, actually...).
Finally at about
6:30 they called me in again, and this time Sarah was really drugged
up. She was actually really cute and funny. I was too nervous to really
remember what she said, but I do remember that I've never loved her
more.
Before I knew it, it was 6:36 and we could hear the baby
crying. He was quiet, he didn't cry too much. He sounded so little. We
wanted to hold him right away, but the doctors said they had to wrap
him and put him under the warmer for a little while. We just looked
over at him, he was all red and hairy, and he looked bigger than I
expected. Sarah was crying, and I could feel myself tear up a little
(don't get me wrong, I didn't cry). They bundled him up in a blanket,
and brought him over to us. He was super well-behaved. That's my boy!
My expectations couldn't have been more wrong. It really is something
that you cannot describe and you're just going to have to experience
it for yourself.
