Born September 22, 2006
He’s Here!!!
WOW!!! That pretty much sums it up for me. Everything has been a blur since Thursday, the 21st (my mom’s birthday, by the way), starting at about 9pm. That’s when Niki started having strong contractions for the first time. Frantically, I grabbed the clock off the wall, a notecard and a pen, to keep track of how long and how far in between her contractions were (see notecard below).
Car trip from hell…
After a couple phone calls to the doctor, we decided to jump in the car and head to FAHC, just to play it safe. That was a good decision. Niki’s contractions grew stronger and closer together – I have a scar on my finger from her squeezing it to prove – and the 1-hour jaunt to Burlington never seemed slower despite my driving nearly 85 mph. We arrived at the emergency room at about 11pm.
Where’s my epidural?
That night dragged on for what seemed like forever. Thankfully, Niki chose to have an epidural, so the pain of her contractions were somewhat nullified as she, Cami & CJ (her sisters), and I hung out in the delivery room all night.
It’s go time!!!
At about 6am, after 9 or so hours of labor, the doctors said it was time to push! I thought, “Thank God, the worst is over”, hoping that Maddox would just pop out as easily as a football into a quarterback’s hands. Boy, was I wrong.
Am I even in the room??
All of a sudden, there was blood…way too much blood, I thought to myself. I think that’s when I started to cry. The doctor started yelling. Ten or more other doctors marched into the room, in a frantic, yet eerily calm and ordered fashion. I barely noticed that I was gritting my teeth so much so that I broke one of my molars in half; the large chunk of dentin fell to the floor in what seemed like slow motion. I barely remember what happened, or what was said, other than an obvious plethora of babbling and profanity on my part. I do remember saying to the doctor, “What the hell is going on? You’re scaring me! Why won’t you fucking talk to me?!”. It was as if I wasn’t even in the room, as the doctors methodically – and very professionally – went to work, effectively saving the life of both my child and wife, as I would later find out.
Hut! Hut! Hike!!
So visceral and real this is, I thought, as my first-born child was finally tourqued free and into the light of day, his dark-purple complexion making him look utterly lifeless. Before I knew it, he was rushed away to be worked on, and I was left holding my wife’s blood-soaked hand, sobbing uncontrollably, not knowing what just happened. As I looked up at Niki, I saw a smile rush across her face. I realized then that she had it together the whole time, and that it was me that was totally losing it! She’s a total badass.
The worst noise I love to hear…
I finally consciously felt myself breathe at approximately 6:51am. That was when I heard the first loud shrill of my son’s voice, 30 seconds after he had been born. The problem, we found out afterwards, was that there was a large cut in the umbilical cord. This accounted for the profuse bleeding and for Maddox’s heart rate and blood pressure dropping so dramatically. We actually just found out today, on the 27th, after speaking with the delivery doctor, that it’s quite rare for the child to survive any kind of extensive umbilical cord rupture. She said that “someone must have been looking over him that morning”, and it was even more of a miracle that Niki came away as unscathed as she did, despite her needing more than 50 stitches post-delivery.
Well, I’ve always been rather agnostic, so I’m just fine sufficing to say that it was Niki looking over Maddox that morning, because she’s the strongest power in the universe that I’ve ever seen. And one of the most beautiful, just like my little man, Maddox.
1 comment September 27th, 2006
