All the nightmares came today

10 PM--After a very satisfying win by the Chicago Blackhawks over the Boston Bruins in overtime, we decide to settle in. M is in his clear plastic hospital crib, swaddled tightly, L is in the hospital bed, swaddled slightly more loosely, and I am in the hospital recliner with the world's smallest "blanket" covering me from chin to knee.

11 PM--M is screaming. I get up, I check his diaper, and I give him to L to nurse.

11:30 PM--M unlatches. I take him from L, burp him, swaddle him, and put him down to sleep. I lay down and pull the "blanket" over 3/5s of my body and try to find a comfortable position.

11:31 PM--M is screaming. I pick him up and rock him. He sniffles, but being in my arms seems to calm him. I sing to him, and hold him tight. Then I put him down.

11:35'PM--M is screaming.

It is at this point that I begin to wonder if I am a bad parent. The night before this, M had gone down and slept for two four-hour chunks. Tonight, though, (his second night on earth) he is having none of it.

"Maybe he's afraid of the dark." This is the best that I can come up with.

"Maybe?"

"Let's leave the light on, and see if that helps." It doesn't.

The night nurse comes in a few minutes later.

"Oh, poor baby. Do you want me to take him to the nursery so you can sleep?"

L and I look at each other. We were so proud of ourselves for keeping M the night before. We were so sure that we were "Good Parents" for not putting him in baby storage. But, it's tempting. It is so very tempting to send him away so that we can sleep and be functional tomorrow.

"No, I think we'll try to muddle through." I hope that I have received L's signal correctly.

"He'll sleep better if you shut this light off"

The night nurse takes the measurements she needs from M and leaves.

"Right?" I ask, "You didn't want her to take him, did you?"

"No, no." L says, "Here, why don't I hold him and let you rest for a bit."

12:47 AM--M is screaming.

I decide that it is time to break out the five Ss. They are "Swing.  Swaddle. Shhh. Sing? and.... one additional S word." Unfortunately, despite my obvious mastery of these baby soothing techniques, M still refuses to sleep.

1:30 AM--The night nurse comes back.

"Ok, let me hold him." She swings M, and makes a static noise in his ear. He immediately relaxes.

"Such a sweet boy," she coos. "Why don't you let me keep him with me for a bit?"

"That would be great. Thank you."

5:30 AM--I wake up. The night nurse is going over shift change information while M nurses. I pick up the folder the hospital gave us when we got our room. A pamphlet falls out. In big, bold letters it advertises its contents: "Your Baby's Second Night: What You Need to Know."

Look out my window and what do I see. A crack in the sky and a hand reaching down to me.

Labor has stages the same way that the earth has geological epochs visible in the fossil record or cities have neighborhoods. When you are firmly and deeply in  the center of a rich vein of Chesapecten Scallops, you know what epoch you are dealing with. A rich vein of hardware stores and bars with reasonably priced and extensive draft beer menus makes it clear that you are in Andersonville. But in labor, the fossil record and in neighborhoods, things get fuzzy around the edges.

Transition is the period between active labor and pushing, but many women have the urge to push during transition, and some women don't have any urge to push during pushing; and yet, humans are somehow successfully born every day.

L isn't sure she should be pushing yet. Mid-wife is absolutely sure L should be pushing. I am staying out of it.

I should point out that this is right around seven and a half hours of labor. If this was a union shop, L would be entitled to a thirty minute lunch and two 15 minute breaks. So far, there has been no epidural, no narcotics, and, shockingly enough, no IV drip. This is the labor we wanted, and L is holding up her end of the deal in spades. Pushing, though. Pushing is turning out to be a bit of a sticky wicket. I think part of it is that there is no way for anyone who is not pushing out a baby to empathize with someone who is. I can mop L's forehead, I can hold her legs back, I can whisper encouragements in her ear, but I cannot in any way relate to what she is going through.

L pushes, L falls back exhausted. L pushes, L falls back exhausted. L pushes, L falls back exhausted. I think about the path we took to get here. At home, there is a nursery. There is a special seat in the car to safely transport an infant. I have spent so much time with the baby's stuff that I started to think of myself as a parent, but as L pushes, and I start to see the crown of M's head I realize how little I could have possibly prepared for this moment.

Unfortunately, L is losing steam.

"This isn't working."

"No honey, it is. I can see his head. He has hair and everything."

"It doesn't feel like it's working."

"Can we get a mirror?"

And that is how L got the last bit of energy to push out a baby with no interventions. When she sees M's head it becomes real to her that this is the hour we will meet our son.

And so, she pushes.

I see the mid-wife putting on a sterile robe and hair net.

"The mid-wife is putting on her baby catching outfit. We must be close."

And then, it happens. At this point we've watched enough birthing videos to know what's about to happen, but it still shocks me. The split second after the widest part of M's head comes into the room, the rest of him tumbles out into the mid-wife's arms. It's shocking to see such a gradual and lengthy process end in this one ungraceful and sudden spurt of activity.

And up in the air, from his improbably tiny body comes a giant arc of urine. And from his sunken chest comes a mighty scream.

And the mid-wife looks over at the pediatric team who is planning to take our baby away and cut his cord and put him under a lamp, and she says "This is a healthy baby, right guys? He wouldn't sound like that if he had meconium in his lungs."

And they pack up, and they leave.

M is on L's chest. His cord is connected. This is what we wanted. The placenta pushes all the good fetal blood he needs into his tiny body to make it strong, and then, knowing its job is done, detaches itself. I cut the cord. M cries, L cries, I cry.

M's crying changes. He's confused and sad. He has never felt discomfort before. The feel of air on his skin is new and uncomfortable. I pick him up, and hold him tight. I start the song that I sang to him through his mother's skin.

I sing about Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. I rhetorically ask if we should crush his sweet hands. I reassure him that Ziggy plays guitar. He cuddles in closer and closes his eyes.

I realize that none of us has eaten in eight hours.

I made some breakfast and coffee

If your only experience with childbirth, besides being born yourself, is what is shown on movies and television shows, you might be surprised to find that the rupture of the amniotic sac is not necessary for labor to begin. In fact, some babies are born in relatively intact amniotic sacs. When this happens, it is referred to as a "Caul Birth," and in some traditions the baby is considered a prophet if they get to spend a few minutes pretending they haven't been born yet.

M is not a caul birth. L's water breaks at the usual time, which is somewhere between active labor and the vaguely and menacingly named "Transition." For me, this is the first "scary part," because, other than the aggressive timeline, this is the first complication in the delivery. Instead of seeing pure amniotic fluid, which looks like hefeweizen, we see amniotic fluid with meconium in it, which looks like hefeweizen with flecks of tar in it. This complication puts M at a slight, but real, risk for "Meconium Respiration Disorder," so named because "Poop Lung" is presumably already taken by a Scandinavian Metal band.

By this point, my sister has joined us at the hospital to be another set of hands and to get the things I've neglected to throw in the birth bag.

"What'd I miss?" my sister, J, hands me a cup of hospital coffee. 

"Water broke, but there's meconium in it." I sip the coffee, which manages to taste like airplane coffee even without the deadening of the senses afforded by a pressurized cabin.

"What's that?"

"Baby poop."

"He pooped his sac? How did he do that? He hasn't eaten anything yet?"

"He ate his fur. He had a downy coat of fur that he shed about a month and a half ago and he ate it. That's meconium. It's sterile."

My sister looks wistful "I wish they were born with the fur."

"Yeah, me too. It seems like a real missed opportunity."

"Help, or get out." This is the catch-phrase of our new mid-wife who took over midway through delivery. She is brusque and rude with a bad habit of barking orders, but so far she has held the line with me on keeping L off an IV drip, and I suspect she is our only hope of keeping M's umbilical cord connected for longer than hospital regulations.

"What can I do?" My sister and I ask in unison. 

There is much pointing to compensate for the fact that she seems to know none of our names:

"You (me,) walk mama over to the bed. You (J) run fresh water in the tub and get some ice chips."

L is now officially in transition. What this means is that her cervix, much like Optimus Prime, is transforming itself into its final and most useful form. Unlike Optimus Prime, this causes intense contractions that come so close together it feels like one long contraction. This stage is called transition, because calling it "The Worst Pain of Your Life ®" smacks of the unprofessional.

I help L to the bed and nervously move closer to the mid-wife. "So, is this meconium going to mess with our birth plan? We wanted the umbilical cord connected and skin to skin contact for at least five minutes."

"It depends." The mid-wife snaps her attention back to L and her breathing.

"On what does it depend? This is really important to us. If the team has to flush out his nose and mouth, can they do it with the cord attached? I understand what they need to do and why, but I don't see why it has to change our plans."

"No, they will not leave the cord connected if they have to take him. That won't happen."

The mid-wife studies L's cervix. 

"It's push time. Everybody but mom and dad need to clear out!"

Put another log on the fire for me

Women who give natural birth are flooded with hormones. Some of them help manage pain, some act as chemical runway operators flagging the baby down the birth canal and some of the most important snuggle up next to the woman's ear and whisper "this is worth it."

Men get flooded with hormones after the baby is delivered. After M was delivered, I remember feeling like I couldn't leave his side, as if someone had slipped an electric collar on me in delivery and he was the transponder. Unfortunately, there is no hormone that makes labor not boring.

After all the excitement of packing the bag and rushing to the hospital, we find ourselves spending the next six hours hanging out. L's contractions are tantalizingly far apart at first, they invite thoughts like "would anyone judge me if I crank up my laptop and jot off some work emails?" I decide that, yes, of course they will and try to use my phone instead.

A,
I'm not sure exactly what information you are looking for, but I would be happy to set up a phone call early next week as my wife is delivering our son, and I don't expect to be in the office for the remainder of this week.
Best,
D

I consider hitting send, but then I realize the kind of questions this opens me up to. I click delete draft.

"HNNNMNNN"

"That sounds like a big one. Do you want the racquetball?"

"Yes!"

I push the racquetball deeply into the base of L's spine to help get her through the contraction and call over to the mid-wife.

"How's the tub coming?" One thing we did not consider about the birthing tub was how long it would take to fill. The racquetball is starting to look worn and spent in my hand and I briefly consider that I haven't played in over three weeks.

"About halfway there. Do you want the birthing ropes?"

Birthing ropes. They talked about all of these props at birthing class and we quietly made fun of them as exercise equipment that had the word "birthing" stamped in front of the name. For instance, the only difference between a yoga ball and a birthing ball is that a woman in labor is sitting on a birthing ball. Birthing ropes are Pilates ropes. They are meant to help women squat, which is meant to help with the pain of contractions.

"Do you want the ropes, sweetie?"

"No. Racquetball." I lament the fact that I did not bring two racquetballs. 

Put on Some Clothes, Shake Up Your Bed

The hospital bag. For some it's a utilitarian satchel of clothes and toiletries akin to an overnight bag packed for a business trip, for others it is an oasis full of reminders of home in a strange and sterile hospital environment. For us, it was largely hypothetical. L and I held a deep belief in a long and un-eventful early labor. To be honest, if I were pressed to describe what I thought early labor would be like, I probably would have more accurately described a rather bad case of hiccups. 

"The mid-wife says it's time to go." I've just gotten off the phone with the spritely, kind and energetic mid-wife I had secretly been hoping would be on duty to catch our son.

"The bag hnmn..." L has started to punctuate most thoughts with what I call "The Labor Noise." 

"Ok," I do my best to seem authoritative and cool. "I will pack the bag. You stay here and... labor."

My approach to packing the bag is chaotic. Things make it in, or not, more as a matter of proximity than any inherent virtue or use in a delivery room. Still, at least ten minutes elapse as I throw the bag together. I come downstairs with the bag, and announce that we are ready to go. 

"Hnnnmn.... Did you grab..." 

"I can't say beyond 60% certainty that I grabbed anything besides your birthing dress, your iPad or the racquetball." 

"Ok, let's go."

I pull up at the hospital. Our mid-wife is waiting outside.

"I can't believe I beat you here."

"I had to pack the bag." If you ever want to see what a look of pure pity looks like, admit to a mid-wife that you just decided to pack the hospital bag after your (overdue) wife went into labor.

"I have good news." This is why I like this mid-wife, she is full of good news and matter-of-fact optimism. "We got the tub room."

"Did you hear that, honey? We got the tub room." Another major tenet of our birthing belief system was that the tub room was absolutely necessary for L to have the natural birth she was hoping for. Her pregnancy had been greatly eased with baths and showers, and so the deep soaking tub in the tub room is a lynch-pin in our labor strategy. The other lynch-pin is the racquetball I push into the base of L's spine during contractions.

"That's ...hnnmnnh... nice"

The mid-wife pushes a stray strand of hair out of her eyes.

"Great! Let's have a baby!"

Wake Up, You Sleepyhead

"......and corn markets seem like they're going strong. In other news, Chicago Police are reporting that suspects are in custody for mass shootings at two South-Side parks." NPR blares to life as I blearily awaken to a June morning.

L is on her side of the bed, hugely pregnant. Improbably pregnant.

"Dave.... unh... I'm in labor." This is a shock to me. To be honest, it has no right to be a shock. L is almost a week overdue, so it would be more shocking to me if she wasn't in labor. This fact does not keep me from saying something profoundly stupid.

"Are you sure."

"Unh.... yep, pretty sure."  I begin to wake up fully. I am never fully myself first thing in the morning.

"Why did you let the alarm wake me? How long were you in labor before my alarm went off?"

"About an unh... hour." This is early labor. Women can walk and talk and are basically themselves during early labor. L, it turns out, had let me sleep because after the few false starts this week she hated the idea of waking me up to observe Braxton Hicks contractions.

"Should I be logging this?" There is an app for this. It is a contraction timer that helps you log contractions and rest periods and helpfully tells you what stage of labor your partner is in. I will consistently misuse the app all morning and get data that is strongly contradicted by L's actual, physical reactions to labor.

"I guess?" L is standing next to the bed with her arms on the rail. Any thoughts of false labor leave my head. I have never seen her like this. She looks exactly like my wife but different, animal.

"Should I go to the diner?" We have a plan. The plan is to basically use early labor as a last chance to play hooky before the baby is born. I will call in to work and we will spend early labor putting together the hospital bag, eating good food and watching good movies. If it is not too bad, we might try to catch a matinee of Joss Whedon's "Much Ado About Nothing" and hope that L's contractions aren't too loud. We will not be the kind of people who go to the hospital in early labor. Those people are silly, and learned everything they know about labor from movies and tv shows. We attended a two-day class.

I return from the diner with our usual (Veggie Omelet for L, Corned Beef Hash Skillet, extra crispy, for me) and L looks much different. When I left she was in early labor, she is now in active labor. I set out plates for us, I pour myself coffee. She is in active labor. I sit down, begin eating, and ask her to join me. She is in active labor. I have spare thoughts about what I would be doing if I was at work. She is in active labor. I call the midwife.

The midwife listens to me, and listens to L in the background. She correctly diagnoses active labor and tells me that it's time to go to the hospital. I agree and hang up. There's just one thing. We haven't packed the hospital bag.