The News
The news was not good.
We went in early for a Non Stress Test (NST) that went well. After 30 minutes they moved us over to the ultrasound room where we quickly got the bad news.
While she was up on the examining table I thought her stomache looked bigger, but the ultrasound readings contradicted that. Very quickly the doctor realized the situation.
The baby hasn't grown in the two weeks since the last ultrasound. While the baby continues to have a good heart rate and good movement, the doctors feel that the baby would be better off outside the womb at this point.
Our OB is off in Alaska on vacation and won't be back until Sunday night. We had thought that we would be able to wait until Monday to deliver, but the ultrasound specialist suggested we have the baby today.
So, there I am in a darkened room where the only light is coming off of a tv screen that shows us images from the ultrasound. All I can see is monochrome bubbles and shadows. The doctor pulls out a graf showing the baby's growth over the past two weeks and how it relates to normal growth. He tells us to pay attention to the blue line as it represents our baby. That line veers off from the other lines about 5 weeks ago and keeps fading further south.
While he consults the doctor that is sitting in for our OB, doctor C, we are sent up to her office to meet her. Doctor C has a really interesting name suggesting some sort of East Indian/East Asian ancestry. We sit in her tiny office and wait.
I try hard to judge what the wife is feeling, ...she seems to have a general sense that the doctors are overreacting. She wants to believe everything is ok. Also, we are woefully unprepared to deliver today. The nursery is not finished, the wife's moving boxes are not put away, we don't have a mattress for the crib, and we don't have a bag packed for the hospital. It would be hard to come up with two people less prepared to have a child today.
After a short time doctor C walks in. She's about 5' 3", long dark hair, dark skin, and hot. I mean really hot. I was right, she is some sort of asian, ...my guess is Burmese or Thai.
Wiping up my drool, I listen to what she has to say, ...the short version: baby's gotta come out today.
She sends us over to the birthing center where we check in. The wife disrobes, puts on the hospital gown, and gets an IV stuck in. We answer a lot of questions, make a list of supplies we need, and wait. They don't have a delivery room ready for her, so she must sit in one of the regular rooms until one opens up. While we wait, I head home to feed WND, get supplies, and notify work that I will not be able to finish the 9195 tasks I have on my plate.
I feel sorry for my co-workers.
None of this pretext seems important now. Yes, I ran around trying to gather everything I needed for the birth, forgetting many things, sweating, running, swearing at traffic. But we are here now in the delivery room.
They try to make the delivery rooms look as much like a normal household room as they can, but the cables, fixtures, lights, and strangely configured outlets give it away. The wife called her mother and father, waking them up at about 6am their time. She cried a little after they examined her, but she is doing remarkably well. She's mostly worried about the pain. It's been her biggest concern all along. She's a real wimp when it comes to pain, so I'm a little concerned about how she will handle it.
They just hooked her IV up to some Pitocin to help move the contractions along. Everything is quiet here. It's daylight out, about 4:45pm, barely a cloud in the sky. All the lights in the room are off, so it's comfortably dim. The only sounds are the air conditioning and the soft beating of our baby's heart through the monitor.
The wife is reading a book and I am writing this.
When you are young and playing hide and seek with your friends, you cover your eyes, turn away, and count to a designated number. When you are finished, you turn and warn all of your friends, that no matter what their current state is, "Ready or not! Here I come!"
Well, we are not ready, but that doesn't really matter. We don't even have a name picked out, but that doesn't matter either. I've got lots of work to do, lots of deadlines, lots of time. I've got lots of time before I feel that I "must" have a baby. There is no biological clock keeping me awake at night with it's incessant ticking. I could spend a few years overseas, change careers, buy a sports car, do anything I wanted. I have not brought myself to this juncture by need or design. As a random piece output from a grand machine, my destination is not physically predestined.
And none of that matters.
As a child I spent most of my time playing out fantasies in my mind (I still do today, however my childhood fantasies did not involve the bassist from Hole, Miko Lee, and Miwa Oshira). I'd construct elaborate plotlines of war and revenge and adventure. Each day I'd replay the same exact fantasy, but make small corrections along the way. Each day I would edit my story, shaping it into something I would not be embarrased to share.
Life has no editing feature. It is a constantly moving vehicle. But if I could, would I? Would I steer myself onto another path?
You all know the answer is no. I guess I knew it too, but I kept writing these sentences to see what would come out on the other side.
Time to pick out a name, start timing contractions, and prepare myself for what is sure to be a long night.
Ready or not.
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