Part IV: I Drive My Pregnant Wife to the Hospital, Hoping for a Police Escort

This is part four of a series I am posting chronicaling the birth of my son, Justus. It's episodic, so it's kind of Dickensian that way, don't you think? No? Okay, me neither, I just thought I'd use a big word.

PART V: DON’T STOP SO COMPLETLY

After the Labor and Delivery nurse told me that it was time to bring Nicole into the hospital, the next challenge Terry and I had to face was how to get Nicole into the car. Our home is kind of weird in that the garage doesn’t really have direct access to the master bathroom. Nicole was having a really difficult time moving. I got all her stuff into the car while Terry helped Nicole dry off. How she accomplished this without touching Nicole, which as you will recall was rule number 1, I do not know. But mothers are miracle workers. I got all of Nicole’s hospital bags into the car, grabbed a soda for myself, and got ready to go.

When I got into the bathroom, Nicole had managed to slide herself into her pajamas. But she still had bare feet. I grabbed her slippers, and in between contractions I helped her put them on. Terry then left to get herself ready to go to the hospital while I attempted to help Nicole down the hall. In retrospect, I should have borrowed an appliance dolly and rolled her down the hall and into the garage like a fridge. But sadly, I didn’t have one. So we had to do the whole walking thing. This was a challenge because Nicole couldn’t walk when she was having contractions, and by the time she recovered from the contractions, she only had a few seconds until they started again.

It took us four contractions to get her into the kitchen. Two more, and she was leaning on the car. Terry was now ready, and all three of us were in the car. I attempted to open the car door to let Nicole in, but then a contraction started.

“WAIT!” she said through clenched teeth.

I backed up and waited for the contraction to be over.

I then made a tactical error.

I thought, while she was having an contraction, why don't I get things ready and unlock the door. I attempted to hit the key for the car to unlock all the car doors, but I accidentally hit the panic button. The car alarm echoed in the garage. Keep in mind, this was during Nicole’s contraction.

Technically, this was not a violation of rule number 2, because no one was talking. But I wasn’t about to attempt to explain the logic of this to Nicole. After the contraction, I opened the car door, and then wondered how Nicole was going to sit down, since every seated position seemed incredibly painful.

“I’m not sitting down in the car,” she said.

This left few options, since most cars have seats, and what most people do in seats is sit. While I was thinking of some polite way to tell Nicole this, she climbed in the car, rested her butt on the dash and gripped the headrest of the front seat.

Good enough for me.

Now, the question in this situation is, “Do I speed, to get to the hospital quickly, or do I drive slowly, so that we’re safe.”

I opted for safety. This was a good choice.

You never really realize how many potholes there are in the road until you are driving a pregnant woman having contractions at 20 mph to the hospital. It was as though the Marines had used the road for grenade practice or something.

It was about 2 a.m. at this point, so there weren’t many people on the road. And we only had to go about two miles, so this trip wasn’t going to take long.

At one point, a light turned red ahead of me, and I had to apply gentle pressure to the brakes.

“Don’t stop!” Nicole barked.

“I have to, honey” I pleaded. “It’s a red light.”

“Well…” she said, “Then don’t stop so completely.”

Isn’t that the definition of a stop? The complete cessation of movement? Not in contraction-land. Terry just patted me on my shoulder. I was hoping that I could run the red light and then get pulled over by a cop, and I could shout to him, “My wife’s in labor!” and he would say, “Okay then! Follow me!” and he’d give me a police escort. But no such luck. The only guy I saw was a Asian guy in a pick-up truck, who looked over and saw my wife’s butt sticking up on the windshield. He gave me a really weird look, as if to say, “Uhh, is that lady mooning me?”

The light to turn to the hospital took about 19 minutes to turn green. I looped around the back of the hospital to the emergency room, which was the place for after-hours labor and delivery admission.

Here’s where it got interesting. As I was approaching the ER, Nicole says, “I feel sick to my stomach.”

To which I reply, “Good honey. That means it’s working.”

I have no idea what that meant. What “it” is and how one can tell if “it” is progressing well by the presence of stomach cramping is beyond me. But it sounded nice and reassuring at the time.

“No,” Nicole said. “I mean, I’m feeling nauseous.”

“Okay,” I said.

“I mean, I think I’m going to throw up,” she said.

“We’re almost there,” I said. “It’s like 20 feet away.”

“STOP the car,” she said.

So I stopped the car. Completely. And I rolled down the windows.

Nicole got out of the car, took one step, spit on the ground, and then proceeded to spew what I can only assume were the remnants of that evening’s quesadillas. Now I went to college, so I have seen people vomit. But never like this. We saw that dinner from “Unamas” uno mas, if you know what I mean. This was intense vomiting. I think it may have damaged the asphalt.

I stopped the car in the middle of the road, literally 10 feet away from the emergency room ramp. Now, I was on a mission. I ran like a madman to the ER, showing freakishly quick movements for a land animal of my size. I then got to the automatic doors, which never open fast enough if you’re running. I rushed to the front counter. The nurses all looked at me.

“My wife is out there. She just vomited. And she’s pregnant. And she’s having contractions!”

“How far is she?” the nurse asked. She was asking me how “far along” my wife was in the pregnancy. My mind did not register this question.

“She’s right out there,” I said, pointing. “Like literally 15 feet away.”

“No,” the nurse continued. “How far along is she in the pregnancy?”

“All the way!” I said. “She’s having contractions!”

“No, how many weeks is she,” the nurse asked.

“Oh,” I said. “41.”

“41!” all the nurses all said together. You would have thought I just told kids at a fat camp that the cake truck was coming. They all jumped up. One of them grabbed a wheelchair. I ran alongside her.

“Does she feel any bearing down?” the nurse asked.

“Yes,” I said, having no idea what that meant. “Lots of bearings. And they’re all down.”

Terry, who is a nurse, understood the question. The term “bearing down” means that the woman thinks they’re going to deliver at any moment. The last thing these nurse wanted to do was deliver a kid in the parking lot. Labor and Delivery rooms tend to be more sterile. The nurse put Nicole into this wheelchair and let me tell you, I have never seen anyone move so adroitly with a wheelchair. She was running down the halls. If there were a NASCAR for wheelchairs, this woman would be sponsored by Tide or Nabisco. I thought that was an oxygen tank on the back of the wheelchair there, but I guess it was nitrous, or something.

We were in Labor and Delivery in about 30 seconds. Four hours earlier we had gotten kicked out because my wife wasn’t really in labor. Now, she was really in labor. As I walked into the wing, I could tell it was pandemonium. Nurses were scurrying around like cats running away from giant rolling blue yoga balls. A nurse came out of one L&D rooms, and I heard a woman yelling. I heard someone else yell, “Push!” A door across the hallway opened and another nurse came out. I heard another woman yelling. This one was accompanied by a chorus of people counting. It was enthusiastic counting, like on Sesame Street. Only with more screaming in pain.

“We should have a bed for her at any moment,” the receptionist said, with a slight smirk. In the meantime, they put Nicole into an auxiliary birthing room.

By the time I had gone downstairs to grab all the bags and stuff, Nicole had been switched into a hospital gown, and had reverted to her previous sink position, this time grabbing the edge of the bed.

I tried to tell the nurses about the two rules of contractions, but I didn’t get a chance before one started.

“Okay, Nicole,” the nurse started…

“QUIET!!” Nicole screamed. “Everyone…just…SHUT…UP!”

The nurse took a step back. Tough job.

A few seconds later, another nurse, also unfamiliar with the two rules came in to the room. Her name was Thelma and Thelma’s job was to get an IV going in Nicole’s arm in between contractions. Thelma attempted to swab Nicole’s arm with iodine during a contraction. I tried to warn her, but it was too late.

“Don’t TOUCH ME!” Nicole screamed.

Thelma took a step back. Tough job.

Thelma then did the amazing. My wife is not the easiest person to give an IV to. She often faints when she gives blood, and is really squeamish. Thelma, however, was a super nurse. She was like, part Filipino, part Flash Gordon. She had this IV in Nicole’s arm in like 20 seconds.

Then the nurse midwife came in. Roseanna had gotten off work at 9, so this was a new lady. Her name was Elizabeth. She was a Latino lady, probably about 40. I liked her immediately. She was the kind of woman who measured her words, brimmed with intelligence, and carried with her a kind of authority. You got the feeling that in she hadn’t been a midwife, she could have been running a large company. Or, something tougher, like a middle-school principal.

Elizabeth examined Nicole.

“She’s at 7 centimeters,” she told us. It was now 2:40 a.m. In four hours, Nicole had dilated 4 centimeters. Normally, it’s about two hours for every centimeter, but not with Nicole. Elizabeth told us she’d be back in an hour to check on Nicole again. Another contraction hit.

Clack-clack-clack-clack-clack.

We were heading up the first big hill.