Part III: The Beginnings of The Beginnings of a Beginning

The following post is a follow-up to the episodic story I'm writing on my blog chronicaling the birth of my first son, Justus.

PART III: Who has the hot water and the towels? We need hot water and towels!

So after being discharged from the hospital at around 8 p.m. because there weren't enough beds (!), Nicole and I and Nicole’s mom went home and ate that meal that Jonathan and Kari had bought for us. Now, the good news was that before Nicole was discharged, they checked and found out that she was now 80 percent effaced and 3 cm dilated. Which was a good sign. The hormone was working. What we didn’t know was how effectively that hormone would work, or how quickly cervixes could ripen.

Kari and Jonathan left our house about 10 p.m. At about 10:20, Nicole was getting ready for bed and started complaining. Now, for those of you who have had pregnant wives, you know that complaining is nothing new. It’s kind of par for the course. Especially if the baby is late. But Nicole’s complaining was a bit atypical. She seemed more…edgy. Not edgy like Bjork's fashion, but more edgy like a pissed-off Doberman.

She insisted that this really hurt, and it felt like she had to go to the bathroom. I wondered if she was going into labor, but then decided that it would be impossible, mainly because the pain wasn’t coming at regular intervals. Anyone who has ever watched a movie or the Cosby Show, knows that contractions are spaced apart. First they’re 30 seconds long and are 7 minutes apart. Then they last 45 seconds and are 5 minutes apart. Then, finally they’re a minute long and are 3 minutes apart. This is when you call Dr. Huxtable in the middle of the night.

But Nicole’s pains weren’t like this. They seemed to last anywhere from 30-45 seconds and were only about 3-4 minutes apart. There was no way that Nicole was having contractions 3-4 minutes apart.

So I figured it was Mexican food, or the baby tap dancing on her small intestine or something. The numbers just didn’t make sense.

Nicole’s conditioned worsened until she was fundamentally unable to lay down or get comfortable in any manner. The big problem was that she was ready for bed, and was exhausted. To make matters worse, she had just taken two Tylenol PM, which always knocks her out. So the pain was coming on top of her being really tired. Which is a bad combo. In general, I always try to avoid two things: Menudo reunions and tired women who are in pain. Both are bad news.

Nicole laid down on the floor and I briefly considered just sleeping through this whole thing. I mean, no reason for both of us not to get any sleep, right? Then I realized that would be something a sitcom character would say, so I laid down on the floor next to her and began massaging her back.

Nicole was quickly turning into Cruella d’Ville. Not that I’m blaming her. I’ve never had a uterus, let alone a uterus that is expelling a large object through a hole the size of a rice cake. But Nicole was getting kind of mean. I knew it was bad because at one point, I was rubbing her back, which apparently felt good. I thought the pain was over, so I stopped rubbing for a second.

“MASSAGE,” Nicole screamed, as though she were a beauty school drill sargeant.

I continued the massage.

Nicole found that the only position that was even remotely tolerable was to stand in the bathroom, gripping the counter-top with both hands. During the times of contractions, Nicole made up a list of several rules. They were as follows:

Nicole's Rules:
1. No one is allowed to touch her during a contraction.
2. No one is allowed to talk to her during a contraction.

Eventually, talking in general would be disallowed, and then, breathing loudly. I woke up Nicole’s mom.

“Uhh, Terry,” I said, talking into the darkened guest room. “I don’t know what’s going on, but I don’t think we’re going to be getting much sleep tonight.”

I called the labor and delivery department and they told me that Nicole was probably having contractions, and that she should take a long, warm shower to relax her. Eager, I rushed to tell Nicole this advice. In my haste, however, I forgot about the “no talking during contractions” rule. I would pay dearly.

After the contraction was over, I suggested that Nicole get into the shower. She did, and Terry sat on the toilet lid while I ambled up on the vanity. This was the smallest room in the house, and all three of us were in it.

Nicole didn’t talk much in that shower. She braced herself on the shower walls. At one point, she indicated that she would like to lean on something.

Kari had lent us her birthing ball, this large blue inflatable yoga ball that I loved and used frequently as a chair. It was huge, and barely, just barely fit through doors and our hallway. Sometimes, I would find our cat Madison asleep in the living room and roll it toward him and chase him down the hallway with it. I called it “playing Indiana Jones with the cat.” From the way he scampered, I think Madison called it “traumatic.”

Anyway, I rolled this down the hall and into the shower. For the next 50 minutes, Nicole was hugging this thing. She only said four sentences the entire time she was in the shower. They were:

“Water!”
“Quiet!”
“This sucks!”
“This really sucks!”

The fourth sentence is related to the third one, but I think, syntactically, is enough of a variation to count as a completely different expression.

Anyway, after about an hour, I called Labor and Delivery again, and they told me to bring her in.

“Now, hold on a minute,” I said. “You realize that you folks sent us home because you didn’t have enough beds. What are you going to do now? I mean, do you have a bed for her?”

“We’ll figure something out,” the nurse on the other end said.

We'll figure something out? Not exactly the warm reassurance I was hoping for.

The ride was fixed, we were all strapped in, and all the attendants were standing to the side giving the thumbs up sign to the ride operator.

This was going to be something else.