1 year ago, today, my beautiful daughter was born. After over 30 hours of painful labor, the moment we had waited 9 months for had finally arrived. My wife gave birth a beautiful little girl that weighed 7 pounds and 7 ounces, looked just like her daddy (thank you very much), had tons of hair, and started raising hell from second she exited the womb.
Now, let’s back up about 34 hours…..
I was at work, about 8 hours into a 48 hour shift, when my phone rang. My wife informed me that her doctor had decided to induce labor today. I got a little light headed and nearly passed out from excitement. I called my boss and informed him of the good news. I left work, ran home, grabbed our bags and headed over to the hospital.
My wife and I were waiting in the room for the staff to start the Pitocin drip to induce her labor. We were both full of joy and excitement…….until the Pitocin drip actually started. Little did we know, we were about to endure nearly 2 days of painful contractions, hunger, back pain and lack of sleep.
I spent the majority of the time on this little couch that converts into a bed. Of course, it doesn’t really do a good job of either. I read about every issue of Gun’s and Ammo, American Rifleman, Maximum PC, and about any other gun / tech magazine you can think of. When I wasn’t reading, pacing around the room or writing on my blog, I was snoring so loud that the nurses had to come in and assess my airway and consider intubating helping my wife out with her every need, like the good husband that I am.
At the time, I worked in the area for the local ambulance service, and my wife worked for the same hospital network as an ER nurse. Of course, we pretty much forgot about any and all medical training during the whole thing. If it wasn’t for the fact that ambulance crews and nurses were stopping in to say hi, the staff probably wouldn’t have even known that we worked in the medical field. Which is the way I usually prefer to keep it in these types of situations.
As time went on, the labor pains grew, and discomfort skyrocketed. It seemed like there was nothing my wife and I could do to make her more comfortable. This is course was followed by agitation, restlessness and creative profanity. I quickly learned that there wasn’t a whole lot I could do outside of grabbing the nurse for help or retrieving more ice chips. As this went on, I got to thinking about what we are taught in school about the “stages of labor” and how all of that is a bunch of BS. That’s when I wrote this post on the “real stages of labor”.
Fast forward about 12 hours, and we were all standing on edge. The doctor was at her side setting up and she was ready to deliver. I was pacing back and forth, not really sure what to do. My mind was going a million miles an hour and I’m pretty sure that if you would have placed an ECG monitor on me you would have seen some sort of crazy narrow complex tachycardia that warranted electrical intervention. I called my best friend to tell him that it was time. He arrived minutes later, and from what I was told by his wife, he broke enough traffic laws to land him life in prison.
When our daughter was delivered, I immediately noticed the thick brown hair and stunning resemblance of her father. The delivery didn’t go without problems, unfortunately. She never really took as big of a breath as they had hoped for, and she actually wound up spending a few days in the NICU. At the time, this was really hard for us to not be able to hold her and play with her whenever we wanted, but we knew it was for the best. After a few days of observation and tests, they finally let us take our little girl home……and we haven’t had a good nights rest since. Fast forward a year, she’s healthy, happy as can be, still raising hell and looks just like her mom. But that’s OK, I’ll prevail next time!
Today we are gathering our family together on this beautiful Saturday afternoon in North Texas to celebrate Lilly’s first birthday.
Happy birthday Lilly!
About Sean Eddy
