The evening of Friday April 12th Tanya started to feel something "a little different". I thought that it might be a change in the Braxton Hicks contractions because I took 7 week child birthing class with my beautiful wife and I am now an expert on such things (I kinda was before as well). We decided to try the spicy food route, mostly because it helped settle the ongoing "what are we going to eat" debate. So off we went to the local Indian food place for dinner. We ate, came home, watched a little Netflix, and headed to bed around 11. Tanya was still feeling something different, but they were far spaced and only slightly painful. At 2:30am I was awoken by her telling me "this is something different, and it hurts". I pulled out the contraction timing app and started charting. The first one I timed came at 2:45 and lasted 3min; the next 15min later. At 5am she was less than 5min in between and we packed up and headed to the hospital. I partially expected to be sent home, but we were admitted right away and settled into our room. The monitors confirmed that this was actually happening and away we went. The waiting was not too bad for me, but then I was not in horrible pain without medication every few minutes; I passed the time by running to get water, rubbing her back, and otherwise looking for things to do to help and keep me busy. The first nurse who checked us in was nice enough, but I don’t really remember her all that well. At shift change at ~7am we met Jen who would be our nurse during delivery (of course we did not know that at the time). Tanya’s plan was to give birth without medication, but she was flexible with that idea, not dead set on it, it was a matter of if the pain now was greater than potentially slower recovery and her dislike of the idea of a needle in her back. Staying in the bed was not comfortable for her, so we spent a lot of time with her sitting on an exercise ball like you would see at the gym with me putting pressure on her lower back. About 8am she moved over to the Jacuzzi tub in the room to see if that would relieve some of the pain which was mostly hitting her in the back between contractions (but not “back labor”). This did a lot for her, but also made me less useful to have around. Since I had not yet eaten I took the opportunity to run and grab a bite to eat and put the car away in long term parking. I cannot for the life of me remember where I ate or what I had… but I guess that shows where my focus was. Tanya stayed in the tub for a good 3hrs, only getting out when the Dr. arrived and had to check her out. Everything was progressing along and she was now 6cm dilated and the baby was looking great on the monitors.
Tanya was now in bed and the contractions were coming pretty quickly and based on the graph on the monitor, they were not subsiding in between. It was at this point that she told the nurse that she wanted to get the epidural. Her biggest concern was that she would be to worn out when the time came to actually deliver the baby, and if she got the drugs, she could rest. The nurse asked if she wanted to see how far along she was before making the decision. At this point Tanya asked me what I thought she should do. Now I had no idea, and her line of reasoning about being tired seemed valid; but I’m actually pretty happy with what I came up with… this is basically verbatim “Well, I don’t know how uncomfortable the checking is, but I do know that if you don’t do it, and you get the epidural that you will be second guessing the decision for a long time”. She considered that for about 4 seconds, and agreed that she would be dwelling on it if she did not know where she was at before the drugs. Jen checked her and found that she was at 7, almost 8, and said that she would likely start pushing within the hour. That statement was kind of a shock to me for some reason as part of my brain thought maybe we would still be sent home; now it was really real. Tanya elected not to have the epidural.
The hour passed, and the doctor came again and checked her while the contractions worsened. As the Dr. was getting geared up Tanya started to feel the need to push. My internal reaction was “holy $#@%, this is really happening”. The bottom of the bed was removed, a plastic catch sheet brought in, and the Dr. assumed the position as Tanya put her feet up in strips. At each contraction she would squeeze and sometimes almost break 2 of my fingers. In talking to everyone, she took on a different tone of voice than normal, I can’t describe it, but it was not her normal voice. She also became the group’s motivational speaker, saying things like “Ok, let’s do this”, or “Ok, ok, big push on this one”; it was incredibly endearing and made me even more proud than I thought possible. She pushed for 50min, which felt like 5 to me and 500 to her. Never once did she scream or cry, but there was a fair amount of noise. Each time the pain came she would just bear down, grunt like a weight lifter and push; it was amazing to watch. Around this time the monitor was having a hard time reading his heart and the mood in the room shifted dramatically, for about 30 seconds it was all about medical jargon and scurrying nurses. They did an internal monitor, and luckily found that it was only a reading issue with the external, and that everything was still fine. A few more pushes and the Dr. said that she could see his head. Two things happened at this point, I was overcome by curiosity and strayed from her shoulder level as I had intended, and took a peak down south. I did not see everything, but I did see some little tufts of hair on the top of his scalp, I’m very glad I made the decision to look. The second thing was Tanya announcing that she was quitting, she had had enough and was done with this birth thing. I told her that that probably was not an option right now, and the nurses kind of chuckled and told her to lay back, relax and breath. She lay back, took a few breaths, and the motivational speaker came out in her again; this time it was “Let’s do HUUUUUUU….” And she was back to pushing. 3 more big pushes and his head popped out, I also watched this happen, and it literally does pop out. Now the Dr. could help pull, and in moments he was free and angry. The cord was wrapped around him and there was some more commotion as they assessed it, but in the end they got him easily untangled and up to mom. Tanya seemed very surprised when they handed her the baby and just looked at me for a moment like “where did this come from”, I was so overwhelmed with pride for my wife and awe for my child that I started tearing up. At that moment I snapped his first picture. I leaned in and kissed my wife and new baby boy, realized finally that it really had happened and that I really was a dad.
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