The Babies Journey

It's been quite the adventure. Krystal started contractions at about 6:30am on Wednesday. We stayed home and our midwife stopped by and checked her out a few times. Then we went in at about 2:00pm to the clinic only to be turned away because she was not dilated enough. Understandable. Tried to get some rest that evening and finally went back in to the clinic at about 3:00am Thursday. Krystal labored for a while and still wasn't dilated a lot so we left, got some breakfast (just a smoothie for Krystal) and stopped at home to let the dogs out of the kitchen. We went back to the clinic at about 2:00pm that afternoon where things just kept on not progressing. Krystal finally got almost fully dilated but couldn't really push. So there was a whole lot more laboring and she sat in the tub and they broke her water manually which made her cervix go back down to 6 cm. So we watched TV and tried to nap and eventually Krystal got back up to almost 10 cm at like 5:00am today (Friday) but still couldn't push. Remember that there has been virtually no real sleep and no food since early Wednesday. Now our midwife is suggesting that Krystal get back in the tub but I can tell that the poor girl doesn't have anything left in her. And Krystal finally gives in and asks to be taken to the hospital. The place we didn't want to go but by this point I just want the baby to be born healthy. I don't care how anymore.

So about 6:30am friday we go over to Legacy Emanuel and get admitted there. We get a new midwife from the hospital and a nurse and they give Krystal a mild painkiller just to get her relaxed. Then after talking with the midwife about our options with epidurals and pitocin, we decide to give Krystal and epidural and just let her get some sleep. which she does and it seems to help out tremendously. So after a tiny amount of pitocin and some laboring she is finally fully dilated and she starts pushing. To make a long story short, after 4 hours of intense pushing, the midwife and nurse come to the conclusion that the baby is not going to make it naturally. The midwife said she's never seen anyone push so well and there should be some progress but there just isn't. It's literally the story of the baby's life. So they bring in a doctor as a second option and he agrees that a c-section is the only way to go. Krystal is disappointed but after over 2 days of solid labor (contractions every 5 minutes sometimes 2-3 minutes the whole time) and 4 hours of pushing, there's not much else she can do.

Within 15 minutes we were in the c-section room and they had me sit next to Krystal's head, I couldn't see the operation due to the blue curtain. Finally they held up a wrinkly, blueish baby boy... Boy? Apparently the doctor was wrong about the sex, which we weren't completely surprised about. So I got to go around and I took some pictures and some video as the nurse cleaned him up and printed his feet and he peed on some of the nurses (which I got on video) and then I got to hold him and bring him over to Krystal. And nurses just assume that guys don't know how to hold a baby, I got lots of compliments on my baby holding skills. I've been around a baby or two in my day. Then they stapled Krystal back up and we went back to the room where she breastfed him and he did great at latching. Then Krystal took a nap and I just held him in my arm for the longest time. He would just look up at me with these pretty blueish/ grayish eyes.

No I'm back home letting our dogs out of the kitchen they'd been locked in for 21 hours. I'll probably watch some TV and just pet them for a bit so I don't feel like they're being neglected and then go back to the hospital. Krystal will have to be there until at least Monday. My sister is coming down tomorrow.

I will say this from our experience. Whoever made the movie "The Business of Being Born" has never been to Legacy Emanuel. And since that is my only point of reference, in my opinion, that movie is 100% false about hospitals. At least based on that one. I know there are some terrible hospitals out there, but if you look into it, you can find a good hospital that uses midwifes and will respect your wishes in a lot of areas. I think also that movie came out just before the hospital birthing industry changed so now it's not quite as accurate. Having the parents in control of the labor is a growing trend in hospitals. Not that our original midwives did anything wrong. After the c-section the nurses told me there was no way that baby would have ever came out naturally, he was just jammed in there weird. And I trust that they are right. There's nothing our first midwifes could have done about that. But honestly, we don't plan on having another baby, but if it did happen I wouldn't go anywhere else to have it. That hospital was fantastic. I recommend it to anyone especially anyone who is interested in having, or at least trying to have a natural birth. Or anyone afraid of having drugs pushed on them. They used the epidural and pitocin perfectly to help along an already troubled labor. And any time they thought they could back off the pitocin they would or occasionally turned it off. There was no pressure to use more and it was always up to us. And to us, eventually you have to start picking your battles differently. having the baby became much more important than any ideal we had about how the labor would go.

But I'm glad our baby boy is out and healthy. And Krystal did an amazing job that I don't think anyone else in the world could have done. She deserves her beautiful son she worked so hard to bring into the world. So ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Elliott Action O'Neal...

0 Weeks 0 Days: Day Two

The baby is still working her way out. When we went to the birth center yesterday, the midwife had us come back home because Krystal wasn't dilated enough. So she told us to just come home and be comfortable. We got a little sleep and went back to the birth center at about 3:30am. Krystal labored there for a while and then we laid down and kind of slept on and off through contractions. Sleeping made the contractions start coming further apart which got Krystal really discouraged, thinking it would take a long time before the baby is born. But the midwife came in and checked Krystal and determined that she is about 4 cm and effacing really well. So the progress is happening but we still had some time so she suggested we go get food (or smoothies) and check on the dogs, maybe take a shower and relax. One, to be more comfortable and two, to pass some time. So we just got home, Krystal is sitting on the couch. She says that the contractions are happen more frequent again. We're going to go back to the birth center at 11:00am.

0 Weeks 0 Days: Right Now

So the baby is on her way. The midwife came by and said everything looks good and will come back in a few hours. We're still having the baby at a birthing facility but the midwife said it's best to stay home where you're comfortable as long as we can. Then we'll go to the facility and have the baby. So now I'm cleaning up the house and talking to my mom and soon I'm going to go get some beverages for Krystal.

Word.

40 Weeks 0 Days: The Time is Right

Everything has been business as usual. I have been making sure my customers know that I might have to take a couple days off from their project on any of my new jobs. Everybody is fine with that of course. I can't imagine anybody going, "I'm sorry but we have a contract and you need to miss the birth of your child to work on my house." That would just be silly.

Everything is as ready as it can be though. The baby has a bed and some clothes (actually a lot of clothes) and the car seat is installed. And we have diapers. So we can get the baby home where it can eat, sleep & poop.

I have been planning ahead and downloading various cartoons and kids shows because I don't like any of the crap that's on TV for kids now. It's all way too PC and geared toward really over-sheltering kids. I'm not the sheltering type. I have absolutely no interest in making sure my kid doesn't see nudity or hear swearing. And everybody goes, "Oh you'll feel differently when you have a kid." Oh, nope. I think that the more you make something taboo, the more your kid is going to want it. I'm not going to get my kid liquored up and sit it down in front of a porno, but I'm going to continue to treat things the way I normally do. There are some movies that have weird graphic sex scenes that make me uncomfortable and I will most likely not let our kid watch those, mainly because I don't really want to watch them either. But violence, nudity and not so graphic sex scenes are fine by me. I really think it's weird when people don't let their kids see just nudity. We are so afraid of the naked body in this country. We are the only country (of mainly white people) who are this afraid of nudity. I mean, we blur out cleavage on the TV and bleep the word "balls". Really? Balls? Maybe if we didn't constantly teach our kids to be ashamed of their bodies, their wouldn't be so many kids with eating disorders... Just an idea.


And swearing.... Give me fucking break. My mom NEVER swore. I mean, literally she swore once while I was growing up and my sister and I were amazed that she did. She was prudish about sex and violence in movies and she never swore and I love violent movies and I swear like a sailor. So that doesn't work. Maybe the fact that she made it a big deal focused my attention on it and made it an attractive way to rebel? I find it hilarious that my mom thinks I should not swear around my kid, which is what she did and she has a kid who tuned out to swear a lot... And she thinks I should do the same thing? Am I the only person who sees that as a pattern for failure? So, no offense, but I'm going to go ahead and disregard the advice from the parent who's kid turned out to swear constantly and try my own method. My method is called the "I don't give a shit, everybody makes everything out to be way to big of a deal" method. And maybe it won't work and my kid will turn out to swear a lot but really, not the end of the world. I swear a lot and I'm doing just fine. And, though I don't want my child to walk around swearing at people, if she swears as an adult, I don't care. I'm not trying to eliminate swearing from my child's vocabulary. If my kid learns swear words when she's little I think teaching the kid how to be polite and respectful will stop them from swearing at everybody. But my prediction is that it will work perfectly and my kid will never swear and it will frustrate my entire family. Oh, the simple pleasures in life...

37 Weeks 0 Days: Clean Your Room

Over the course of last weekend and this weekend I built a piece of furniture to store the baby's clothes in. I don't know what to call it. It's not really a dresser. I guess it's a hutch of some sort. I had the basic box already built as something I was going to use for a place to put work clothes and to have somewhere to put my wallet, phone and the little tools I keep on me at work every day. I like to put things in the same place every day so I don't forget them. I never finished it so I used that. Then I had made some built in cabinets in a customers hallway a while back but the door I ordered originally didn't fit right so I kept those and ordered new ones. There was one shorter door and one taller door. To my surprise the shorter door fit perfectly on the front. So I made a drawer because I had some drawer tracks lying around the garage and put the door on, put a little trim on it, added a shelf, painted it with some high gloss paint and now we have some baby clothes storage. It's not perfect. It was so cold in the garage when I painted that the paint took a really long time to dry so there are some drips dried into the paint. Even trying to do a light coat, with the paint taking so long to dry it gave it that much more time to drip. I put a space heater on it and it helped a little. But it's sturdy as hell. It's all 3/4" material, even the drawer. It's no Ikea dresser that will fall apart in a matter of months. This thing is a tank.