Oh man, she's here!

So here she is... how something so beautiful could have issued forth from my loins (albeit indirectly) on November 16th, 2005 is a mystery full of grace. Well, maybe not a mystery to those familiar with how Angela looks, but I won't belabor the point. Suffice it to say that she came along 6 days early, at 11:50 am on November 16th, after 41 hours of labor on the part of my dear wife, Angela. As a result of this process I will never, ever again be dismissive about the rigors of childbirth. It is staggering for me to think of how many thousands of women every second are rising to and confronting this brutal ritual in a spirit of total self sacrifice.

Although Angela and I had been through all the pre-natal training to the point where I was bristling in anticipation of stepping up to my coaching duties, we really used none of the information. Well, that's not entirely true - some details of what to expect definitely came in handy, but the lion's share of the course - i.e., how to be a maximally supportive spouse, turned out not to apply in the least, in our case. The reason - Angela instictively, and very effectively, turned almost entirely inward to her own resources in coping with the pain of contractions. Although she claimed it was comforting for her to have me sitting over in the corner tied up in knots, she appeared to me to be a completely self contained unit. This was no doubt due largely to the fact that she's no stranger to pain, as her Oxford Dictionary sized medical record will attest to.

I suppose I should be at least modestly cronological, although I don't think of the overall experience in those terms at all. Contractions started in earnest at, again, T minus 41 hours. After approximately 27 hours of increasingly severe, yet fairly sparsely spaced contractions, we went to the hospital. The timing turned out to be nothing short of impeccable, since women are admitted only after they'd reached 4 cm of dialation, which was exactly where we were when we arrived.

One conern we'd had all along was this baby's propensity for situationing herself in a transverse attitude (sideways) in the womb. Already we'd shown up to have a version, i.e., a procedure where the baby is moved via external "massaging" by a clinician. This procedure is potentially quite painful and offers a good possibility of avoiding a c-section, although this can't be guarunteed since 4% of transverse babies return to their original position prior to delivery. At any rate, in our case it was determined that the baby had returned to a healthy head down position, but only after having been hooked up to the IV and otherwise prepped. As a result of our case, ultrasounds are now given immediately to women showing up at this particular health care institution for the version procedure to avoid unecessary expense/discomfort.

So on November 16th the baby was feeling transverse to everyone again. And again, as the end game approached she dutifully assumed the head down position again. Eventually the contractions started to get huge, so Angela opted for the epidural. It took them 3 semi painful attempts to get it in - but from that point on, things were pretty relaxed. Over the course of that day they decided Angela wasn't dilating as fast as they'd like, so they started a petosin (sp?) drip. Unfortunately, at the same time the epidural malfunctioned, so Angela was totally awake for about 4 hours worth of severe induced contractions. It was in this timeframe that she earned my infinite respect... just concentrating and gritting it out for each contraction, yet totally lucid and relaxed in between each one. On your right you can see how she looked in this timeframe.

Eventually the epidural was fixed, but not before the nurse anesthetist tried to distract me by talking about my cameras. E.g., "So that's what a Leica looks like in real life!" - a comment that would normally be completely euphoric for me, but one that seemed horribly inappropriate given the pain that Angela was in. In retrospect, I probably looked like I needed more help than Angela, and the guy was probably doing his best to distract me.

So before we knew it, it was time to push - from this point on things were mercifully quick, and before I knew it, here's what I was looking at. Simply unbelievable. Mom was doing great, the baby was admired by all, and I was in a detached haze, snapping and video taping away. Now it's time for me to retreat for a moment while I decide how to chronicle the remainder of this bad boy.