(this is very long, but there’s really no other way to tell it)
Last Thursday night Julia started having intermittent contractions. They weren’t intense enough to keep her up all night or call our midwife, but it was a warning sign that labor was just around the corner. In anticipation, I worked from home on Friday and by 3:00PM the contractions had become regular and considerably more intense. As is the process, I began recording their duration and interval – a neat little statistical representation of the unknown and overwhelming.
By 9:00PM that night, Julia’s contractions were 4 – 5 minutes apart and just shy of a minute in length. She also thought her water might have broke (it’s not always as easy to tell as movies lead you to believe). At our midwife’s recommendation, we called our
doula and headed up to the Roosevelt Hospital – this appeared to be "it."
For those not in the know, a cab ride from Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn to 58th and 9th in Manhattan is quite the haul. You have to go over a bridge or through a tunnel and work your way up The West Side, all of which is compounded when your cargo includes a huge suitcase, a baby car-seat and a woman in labor.
But on the ride up, Julia’s contractions lessened in both frequency and intensity. When our midwife examined Julia in the Birthing Center (we were hoping for a natural childbirth), she was only a fingertip dilated – barely one centimeter (you need to be at least five to get admitted). She sent us home and told Julia to try to get some rest. At the time we were devastated, which is almost comical now, considering all that was to come.
After getting a couple of hours of sleep (during which I could hear her endure contractions), Julia was awakened at 6:00AM from the pain, and we spent all day Saturday recording her contractions. She sat in a
chaise lounge while I applied pressure to her feet or held on to the other end of a sheet that she pulled during each contraction. Her contractions were stronger than the day before and wavered between 5 and 8 minutes apart throughout the day. For hours we both fell asleep in the interval between them. Time took on an otherworldly, yet somehow familiar rhythm – turbulence, silence, turbulence, silence.
After checking in periodically with our midwife, we were encouraged to, once again, make the trek up to Roosevelt. Julia’s contractions were occurring at the same rate, but our midwife wanted to make sure Julia’s water had not broken (she was leaking fluid). This time we opted not to call the doula.
The midwife examined Julia and took some blood, after which we were assured that the baby and Julia were fine and her water had still not broken, but that she was still barely a centimeter dilated, although her body had made other progress. This was supposed to be "good" news – once your water has been recorded as having broken you are required to (naturally or through induction) have the baby within 24 hrs. – but we had a hard time seeing it as such.
The midwife encouraged Julia to let her prescribe an Ambien for her to try and get a few hours of sleep to conserve strength for the labor ahead. Julia was skeptical, but the midwife convinced her to take a script for Seconal – a similar sedative, but without the stigma of Ambien.
And so we headed out on foot into a rainy Saturday night in Manhattan (sans umbrella) with all our gear in tow, looking for a 24 hr. pharmacy. The first place we found didn’t carry the drug, but recommended a few places within walking distance that might. Exhausted and starving, we stopped at a diner, where Julia muffled her contractions long enough to enjoy some pancakes. I think I was the only person in the restaurant not drunk or in labor. Regardless, in a severely altered state from the events of the previous two days, I found myself laughing hysterically at the menu description of the mushroom and spinach omelet ("An omelet with mushrooms and spinach blended together.")
After dinner, another pharmacy yielded the same results ("but we can have it in two days") and we continued to schlep through the rain while Julia pretended to window-shop during contractions. The third pharmacy didn’t have the drug either, but it did have an angry mob of people waiting for prescriptions (at midnight, mind you) and a comically indifferent cashier. At this point, Julia was exhausted from walking in the rain and the contractions were more intense, so we had the midwife call in a prescription for Ambien. The cashier and harried pharmacist did their best to rush our prescription through – it seems a woman in labor brings out the best in everybody.
After another cab ride home, Julia took the pill and squeezed out a few contraction-riddled hours of sleep. A new day brought a severe hike in pain, and Julia could no longer sit or lie down during contractions. Standing in the shower or lying down in the bath were the only positions that brought any relief, and Julia began making the kinds of crazy noises our birthing class instructor had simulated.
Later that day, after hours of increasingly intense contractions, our midwife made a house call (virtually unheard of) to examine Julia, who was now 2 – 3 centimeters dilated. She coached Julia on how to breathe into the pain and not tense up. By the time I came back from running out to get food (we had consumed everything in the house), Julia had completely adjusted her demeanor and was taking the contractions in stride, like a heavyweight boxer in the late rounds of a prizefight, accustomed to the pain and in pursuit of the title.
By the end of the day we were camped out in the bathroom and Julia was barely able to communicate. I was timing her contractions based on the duration and frequency of the moaning. Presumably from the moisture and humidity of hours of showering, a large wooden sign on the bathroom wall came loose and crashed down on my head. The sound terrified Julia and I tried to downplay the whole thing while checking my head for blood and wondering if I might have a concussion (I didn’t).
Unfortunately another Ambien would not do the trick that night, and after being jolted out of one hour of sleep by a fierce contraction, Julia had simply endured all she could. I convinced her (at the midwife’s advice) to hang on for just a little longer, but an hour later her contractions were four minutes apart and it looked like the baby might come soon. On our third trip into the city we decided that she should be admitted regardless of how much she had progressed.
Back in the triage again, Julia was only at three centimeters dilated. After enduring 62 hours of labor and with very intense contractions only three minutes apart, she was forced to give up on a natural childbirth. First came an epidural for the pain and then Pitocin (with it’s own brand of pain) to induce labor.
Over the next twenty hours Julia made very slow but steady progress. As the pain continued to intensify, Julia, worn down from the length of the labor, kept needing more medication. We had the doula come in at just the right point – massage and counter-pressure made Julia’s intensifying pain more bearable.
No one really prepares you ahead of time for how difficult it is to watch the person you love more than anything else in the world endure so much pain, especially not for days on end. The nurses, our midwife and doula were sympathetic (and continued to praise Julia’s strength) in what they noted was an extremely difficult and long labor. But eventually Julia’s body started to break down – she ran a fever and had to be given antibiotics.
At this point she was close to being ready to push (9 centimeters dilated), but was only fully effaced on one side. They tried rolling her onto her side to see if the pressure of the baby’s head would help (and even had her push a few times), but for some reason the baby was “presenting” his head in a manner that just wouldn’t work. And so, after 83 hrs. of labor, Julia was forced to have a C-section.
I would imagine that a C-section is never a really pleasant experience, but after all that we had gone through, it was a particularly unfortunate end to the whole affair. From a lack of sleep, hours of medication and pain, and general anxiety, Julia was understandably scared. It just killed me to see her strapped down on the operating table and shaking, knowing how hard she had wanted (and tried to have) a natural labor. Somehow I managed to stifle all the emotion for a little longer, and did all I could to keep her spirits up and calm her. Fortunately, the procedure was very quick and our all-star midwife was there the whole time to try and calm Julia. Most importantly, Luca was just fine, albeit a little a little funky looking – he had a crazy cone-head, a lopsided jaw and a blotchy facial rash.
While Julia was in recovery, I followed the baby downstairs for his bath, shot and examination. Once he was safely resting, I came back up to check on Julia (somewhere in there I broke down and cried to my mom on the phone, and the doula and midwife in person, although I can’t remember when). Julia was on a morphine drip and more than a little loopy. Every time she dozed off, an electronic alarm went off to inform her nurse that she wasn’t breathing deeply enough. This annoyed the only other patient (who seemed to be in early labor) in the recovery room to no end, and we could hear her from twenty feet away behind a curtain, complaining to her husband, "I don’t care if someone’s dying, just turn that fucking thing off!" Were I not beyond exhausted I might have actually tried to kill her.
Somewhere around this time we were told that Julia would be taken to a semi-private (shared with one other patient) room and that I would have to leave at night during her 3 – 4 day recovery. For a mere $400 out-of-pocket a night, we could have a private room (basically a fully-private version of the exact same room with the exact same service) but I would be allowed to stay the night. Oh, and we were #5 on the waiting list for the room, despite my endless pleading and references to the severity and duration of Julia’s labor. (Note: I’m not exactly sold on the concept of semi-privacy. I mean, there are things that you just don’t do with other people around, regardless of whether it’s one person or a hundred. You’re either in private or you’re not.)
Fortunately, since we checked in so late (like 6AM), they let me stay the night. We were instantly in full swing post-partum care – what seemed like every few minutes, someone would barge in to take Julia’s temperature or blood pressure, give her meds, change her bedding, check the baby’s hearing, check her incision, etc. We quickly adapted to the spontaneity and to the surly disposition of several of the nurses. Supposedly New York is famous for nasty post-partum nurses (
New York: Have a great time here, but not a baby.).
Other than an NFL quarterback, I can’t think of a profession where you have the power to elicit such a wide variety of emotions from people. A sweet, older Asian nurse referred to Julia as "mother" (everyone else called us "mom" and "dad" – a simultaneously awkward and flattering sudden title) and made her feel so safe and special. But the posse of nurses that openly mocked Julia for requesting that Luca be taken back to the nursery after she had held and nursed him for hours (this was on the night I got kicked out after nearly coming to blows with a hard-ass West Indian nurse), because she wasn’t strong enough to change him or hold him any longer, were just plain evil. Regardless, Julia was making a quick recovery and dead-set on taking the best possible care of her son.
Still exhausted from the events of the previous few days and having to take care of Julia and Luca by myself, I called in my mom for support, and she was there the next morning. By the end of that day, things were finally looking up. My mom was more than happy to run out for food or hold the baby while I tended to Julia or ran to ask the nurses for something. We got our private room and fell into a nice rhythm of feeding and soothing Luca, who had dropped his initial gnarly-ness and settled into being a symmetrical, round-headed and adorable baby.
Around 11PM that night, a nurse came in to tell us that Luca (who had been with us all day, but was being checked out in the nursery) had a fever and would have to be admitted to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) for 72 hours for observation and to check for infection. Most babies lose some of their bodyweight over their first few days, but Luca had lost 9% of his in a day and a half. We are now aware that this sort of thing happens fairly frequently, but at the time, after all we had already been through, we were absolutely devastated. I don’t think I’ve ever been so upset in my entire life.
An hour later we went up to the NICU (pronounced "knick you") to check in on Luca. We were lead through the exhaustive sterilization/washing routine we would have to undergo every time we visited and donned the requisite protective gowns. Poor Luca was inside an incubator, hooked up to an IV and several monitoring, beeping machines. He was in a room with about a dozen premature and sickly looking babies – it was scary to think he belonged there. The nurses and doctors did their best to explain everything to us, but stopped short (surely due to protocol) of giving us the "it’s probably nothing" we so needed to hear.
I don’t know how we would have survived the next few days without my mom. She basically picked us up again while putting the whole thing in perspective. She helped us feed the baby and continued running errands while getting our apartment in Brooklyn ready at night. I fed Luca on the NICU’s rigid every-three-hour feeding schedule, usually with Julia in tow, although the NICU nurses practically begged her to try to get some rest. Rolling your wife down the hall in a wheelchair at 3AM to feed your incubated son really puts things in perspective.
The NICU turned out to be a blessing in disguise – I learned so much about newborn care from the saintly nurses there, and actually came to enjoy the quiet late-night calm (and the events of the week as a whole have brought Julia and I closer together than ever). As the biggest and healthiest baby (not to mention the one with the loud slurp and big attentive eyes), Luca quickly became the star of the NICU. After he steadily regained his weight and all the tests came back negative (it was just dehydration, probably from the long labor), we were discharged on Saturday. Julia’s parents came in to (finally) meet their grandson, and I drove the whole happy lot of us back to Brooklyn, where we are now – happily adjusting to the normal stresses of first time parents and taking nothing for granted. I continue to marvel at the strength of my wife and the beauty of my son.
