John Robert was born May 4th at 2:51 am. This is how we got there... from my point of view.On Thursday, May 3rd, I was working a closing shift at the bookstore, meaning I started at 3:30 pm. At 4:15, Megan called the store, saying, "Hans, I think you need to come to the hospital."
"What's going on? Where are you now?" I asked.
"I'm at the hospital. They're going to break my water."
Megan had been feeling sick for the past few days, and had been especially bad that day. She made an appointment with her midwife for 3:30. Apparently, her blood pressure was high, indicating preeclampsia. The midwife said that Megan had to go to the hospital, and wasn't leaving without a baby in her arms. So here she was calling me as she was being checked in to Labor and Delivery.
So I told the store manager, "I think I have to go to the hospital..." And I was on my way.
I called my parents from the car as I drove to the hospital to let them know what was going on and relay the little information I had at that point. Mom asked if they should come down right away, but I said maybe we should wait until we knew a little more and I'd call with an update within an hour.
When I got to Labor and Delivery, Megan and her Mom were in a room, Megan in the bed in a hospital gown. A nurse was in the room, entering her information into the computer and setting up her IVs--like pitocin to induce labor and magnesium chloride to bring her blood pressure down.
By the time I was situated and ready to call my parents with an update, I already had a voicemail from Dad, saying they were already on their way to the boarding kennel to drop off the dog and would head down to Charleston right away.
At 5:30 pm, while the nurse was still entering info into the computer, Megan was starting to feel her contractions.
At 6:15 a midwife came to break her water and hook up sensors to monitor her contractions and the baby's heartbeat.
By 8:30, Megan's contractions were getting strong enough that she was ready to ask for the epidural. The anesthesiologist that came to apply it was a bit of a cowboy. As he pulled the sterile wrap off of his tools, he tossed them away with a devil-may-care attitude.
At 10:00, the midwife checked on Megan and found that she was still dilated only 4 centimeters--the same as she was when she came in, and also as when she had her last appointment about three days earlier. So she said we should try to get some shut-eye and she'd check back around 4:00 am. I called my parents, who had just gotten in to town, and had gone directly to our house to let the dog out and wait for news. I told them to go ahead and sleep and we'd update them in the morning. The delivery room had a pull-out cot and a rocking chair. Julie and I agreed that I would take the cot for the first half of the night. So I got as comfortable as I could with my hospital blanket and tried to get some sleep. From time to time some activity in the room would wake me up and I'd check the clock, and try to go back to sleep--although now I wish I hadn't tried so hard to sleep.
At about 1:25 Friday morning, Megan's contractions had been bothering her. The nurse was hesitant to give her another bump of pain relief through the epidural. She thought she'd go ahead and check to see how she was progressing.... And she was complete. The nurse flipped all the lights on, and said, "OK, it's time! We're going to start pushing." It turns out the monitor wasn't recording the strength of her contractions correctly and they had been getting stronger and stronger without the computer indicating how strong they actually were.
The nurse started having Megan push in sets of two or three 10-counts during her contractions. After a little while the midwife came in to handle the actual delivery. They were both great and coached Megan on how to push and gave her the appropriate encouragement. When the midwife could see the top of the baby's head, she said, "I can see some hair. It looks like the color of dad's."
A few more pushes and the head was out. I noticed the midwife quickly pull the umbilical cord over his head. It was amazing to see him being born, but the moment passed quickly because another push and--ploop!--his whole body was out. The midwife, nurse, and a couple more nurses who had just come in acted quickly and confidently. They clamped the cord, cut it, dried him off, got him under a heater and started giving him some oxygen. It was 2:51 am on Friday, May 4th.
The magnesium chloride had lowered his blood pressure as well as Megan's, and his umbilical cord had gotten wrapped around his neck as he was born. Because of that he looked pretty pale. Pale and wrinkly. He weighed 7 lbs, 11.9 oz on the electronic scale. Practically everyone in the room yelled at me to get the camera and take a picture of him on the scale. Then they brought him over to Megan for a moment and Julie snapped the picture above. It's John Robert's birthday.
