I haven't posted in quite a while and, for once, I have a good excuse. On Monday, January 28, 2008, Maris gave birth to a beautiful little girl. Her name is Alaina Claire and she weighed 5 pounds, 4.7 ounces at birth and was 19.5 inches long. She was born about five weeks early. This is the story of her birth.
Before I really start this story, you should know that Maris and I, like many parents-to-be, set aside a room in our home to be the nursery. We started to decorate that room in December, bought furniture for the room, and had the help of Alaina's grandparents, her uncle, and one set of great-grandparents to paint the room, assemble her furniture, and install a chair rail. I mention this here because as this project began nearly six weeks ago, Maris had her first contractions. On Sunday, I spent the afternoon renovating Alaina's closet and installed a closet organizer. I finished this project at 6:00 in the evening and with that, I had completed Alaina's room. As I neared completion, Maris reported that her contractions were getting more intense.
At 7:30 that night, we called the hospital about Maris's continuing contractions, and although these contractions had gone on off and on for six weeks, they had remained irregular and relatively brief throughout the day, they had become more uncomfortable recently. The nurse who answered the phone said we should consider calling our doctor and maybe coming in for an evaluation, but did not sound anxious and indicated in her tone and advice that it was likely that nothing was amiss. The on-call doctor at our doctor's practice said much the same thing. So, on the day the nursery was completed, we headed to the hospital for what would become the day before Alaina's birth.
We finally got to the hospital at 10:00 on Sunday night. It had taken us two hours to leave the house because we needed to pack up our things for the hospital stay and we needed to arrange for someone to stay with our two beagles, Luke and Lily, while we were gone and we didn't feel any need to hurry. By the way, Monday, the next day, was Luke and Lily's first birthday.
Once we got to the hospital, my phone rang and it was a cop who works graves who had owed me a phone call for several weeks and chose that moment to make it. You see, he had been assaulted by a drunk several weeks earlier and I was prosecuting the case and I wanted to know what he wanted done so that I could move the case forward. The officer talked and talked and talked as we sat in the parking lot and I was barely able to get a word in edgewise. After the tenth or so time we had reviewed the plea offer I wanted to make and that he eventually approved of, I terminated the call by saying, "Look, I have to go, I'm at St. Mary's and I think my wife and I are having a baby tonight." With that, Maris and I got out of the car and headed into the hospital. She never complained about pain at all while we sat in the car, and never suggested I wrap it up, though obviously I should have. Looking back, I have newfound and tremendous respect for my wife's ability to tolerate unpleasantness.
When we went to the hospital that night we brought along clothes and other items for a stay, but I never believed we would use them and don't believe Maris thought we would either. We had been to the hospital several times before for contractions and each time Maris had been monitored for a while and then released. This time would no doubt be the same. Obviously, I was wrong about that.
Once we got up to the delivery ward (they have a sign on the reception desk that reads "Department of Labor"), Christy the nurse examined Maris and discovered she was already dilated to 5 cm (10 is what is required to deliver, 0 is what it should have been at this point in gestation) and Christy told us we were having a baby tonight. We were both afraid and excited, Maris cried and I was irrationally angry because this was not the way it was supposed to happen. Christy also initially made us feel bad about being there, about having early labor and we were both upset that she was going to ruin our experience. She did not and in fact was the first of many, many fine nurses we met at St. Mary's who took such good care of the three of us.
Maris made steady progress through the night. To help her along, we did the things we'd learned in our child birth class: we took a walk through the hospital wing and Maris sat in a hot tub for about thirty minutes and found that she was further dilated to 8 cm. At this point she was in some distress and asked for pain medication, which she received. Eventually, her progress was slowed because her water would not break. At about 7 the next morning her doctor broke the water and Maris began pushing about thirty minutes later. It took about two hours to complete the process and Alaina was born at 9:16.
Let me say a few things about this amazing night and morning. I went into this pregnancy with several preconceptions about what the actual birth would be like, what I wanted to do, what I didn't want to do and so on. I first thought that there was no way that I wanted to really be nearby when the baby was born, and that certainly I did not want to actively participate. I assumed that I would be repulsed by the gore of it, that I would have difficulty seeing Maris in so much pain, and that I would be embarrassed by my inability to do anything to help, and thus had decided to try to avoid being there as much as possible.
Nothing could have been further from the reality of it. First, the timing of things made it so that I had almost no time to prepare - and certainly no time to craft some "good reason" or another why I could not perform this or that function that morning. All of a sudden we were there, we were having a baby, and we were told it was happening now. I spent most of my time trying to make sure that Maris was comfortable and that her doctors and nurses were sharing all the information with us that we needed to make decisions and know what was happening. I did manage to get a couple hours of sleep and when I woke up, it seemed that things were going to happen very fast. Soon I was holding Maris's leg during her contractions while she pushed. I was applying cold towels to her head and neck to try to keep her cool. I was watching her body as it grew and expanded to allow my daughter to be born. And, despite myself and my earlier plans to stay detached and uninvolved, I was completely fascinated by it all and very involved.
When the time came, I saw my daughter's head emerge. She was so small and so quiet! I had no idea what to think about that. The doctors, who had been urging Maris along the whole morning, said, "Here she is. Push!" Maris did and out she came - my baby!
I have never been so happy, scared, and shocked all at the same time. I congratulated Maris, I think, was told to cut the cord (didn't plan to do that), and got to hold my daughter ever so briefly. They took the baby to the warming table to be cleaned and evaluated, and Maris remained where she was to finish the birth process. Maris was able to hold the cleaned and swaddled Alaina and I snapped a few photos of the two most important women in my life (sorry Mom).
Because Alaina was so young, she was immediately taken to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) for care. I followed the doctor and nurses there to observe what was happening and perhaps help in some way. I was actually able to help in my own small way when the nurses needed to know her weight and I was able to recall it to one thousandth of a kilo - this saved them a trip back to the delivery room to get this data.
As I write this now, Alaina is still in the NICU and there is no way to predict how long she might stay there, though we hope to have her home soon. Today, she is five days old.
The past five days have been an emotionally trying time for me and for Maris. It was very hard that first day to see my baby lying on a bed under warming lights with all kinds of plugs and wires on her and an apparatus on her head to help her breathe. Hard to be unable to reach out to hold her and maybe comfort her. But, she made steady progress. On that first day, Alaina was able to breathe first without extra oxygen, then without any assistance at all. She was also able to hold her own temperature, so the warming lights were removed and she got to wear some clothes. On the second day, we were able to give her food to eat to supplement her IV nutrition. The amount and frequency of these feedings continued so that on the fourth day the flow in the IV was discontinued and on the fifth day it was removed entirely.
Unfortunately, but not unexpectedly, Alaina developed jaundice and had to spend days three and four under the blue lights receiving photo therapy. To protect her eyes in the "isolette," she had to wear shades on her eyes - these were very cute and we have a few pictures of that. Being in the isolette meant that holding Alaina was limited to thirty minutes every three hours. That was hard. On day five, her jaundice had cleared to the extent that it was possible to remove her from the lights and the isolette and return her to clothes and place her in a crib. As day five closes, Alaina is now consuming only breastmilk supplemented as needed with formula. Because of her young age and relative weakness, she gets some of this nutrition through a bottle and some of it via a tube running up her nose and into her stomach.
While this may sound like something of a setback, it is not. If one considers how far she has come already, Alaina is doing very well. At the moment of her birth, she required the assistance of machines to breathe, keep warm, eat and drink, and then process that food and drink - essentially to perform all of life's functions. Today, she just needs help getting the food into her body at some of her feedings because she is too tired to do it herself. I could not be prouder of the progress she has made and though at times I am frustrated that I cannot have her at home, I know that Alaina is receiving high quality care from individuals who care about her and care about us.
You should also know that she knows my voice and turns her head toward the sound when I talk near her. She seems to smile sometimes when I hold her and I know that she hears even if she cannot understand my words as I try to provide her with my first bits of advice. I can't wait to teach her what I know. I have never been so happy doing something as formerly repulsive as cleaning up a messy diaper as when I'm changing hers. The first time I got to do it, I was thrilled to announce to the entire NICU that she had made a poopy diaper (her first). I love bathing her, even though judging from the sounds she makes, she hates it.
I have been told by many that having children will change your life. It will. There is no need to say any more than that about it. If you are waiting for or thinking about trying for your first, you may understand this on an intellectual level. Still, none of my thinking about it before the fact survived that moment in the delivery room when I held my daughter for the first time. I suspect you may have a similar experience.
Alaina will be home soon, safe and healthy, and then the greatest adventure of my life will truly begin. Please keep us, and particularly Alaina, in your thoughts as we wait.
