Babymaker

The particulars:
Name: Callista Renae
Weight: 7 lbs 12 oz
Height: 21.25 inches
Hair: Brown
Eyes: Blue
Date of Landing: May 25, 2007
Latitude: 42.008
Longitude: -91.643
First Impressions of Earth: 7:56 pm
Introduction Music: Pink Floyd “Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun”*
*Estimated
Interests: Sleeping & Titties
Favorite Quote: “Nobody puts baby in a corner.”

The story:

About fifteen minutes after I arrived at work on Friday, I received a call from the SLF. Typically, if it’s a non-emergency, she’ll just send a text with the understanding that when it’s “time to go,” she would actually call. The call turned out to be the “time to go” variety; her water broke fifteen minutes before.
After letting the appropriate authorities know of my reason for leaving, I went home to collect the SLF, the excited-yet-oblivious E, and some already packed clothes for the stay.
We arrived at St. Luke’s at 9:00 am and passed the “Yes, your water has indeed ruptured” test which enabled us to get access into a delivery room. Once there, things progressed fairly slowly until around 2:30 when the bigger contractions started. An epidural was started and we waited some more while Beth enjoyed the drugs.
Things hit a standstill until 5:30 when the labor reached intense proportions. With the regular nurse on dinner break, the covering nurse prepared us that the show might really be starting. I put in disc one of a two disc compilation set I made called “Babymaker.” The idea was to determine the baby’s introduction music by whatever track the delivery took place on. The music was on fairly low, but I did notice that David Bowie’s “The Man Who Sold The World” started to skip and, occasionally, began playing over and over…or at least the first 45 seconds of it did.
I went over to the cd player, a shitty JVC boombox system with preset eqs (jazz, pop, classical, flat, etc.) and put in disc two.
I noticed that the baby’s heart rate remained strong outside of the contractions and dipped dangerously low during the contractions. The attending nurse noticed me watching this and assured me not to get too freaked out by such low dips in baby’s heart rate.
The doctor arrived and waited for the SLF to go from 9.5 cm to the full 10 cm. After an hour of this and with the contractions getting even more intense, the doctor bluntly stated “Guys, we need to get things moving here and get the baby.”
I had no idea what that meant, but as soon as I saw the SLF’s reaction, I knew what he was talking about wasn’t good.
We didn’t want a cesarean, but with baby’s heart rate staying lower for longer periods, it was necessary for the her health.
They immediately started to dismantle the bed and monitors while shoving paperwork at me for her to sign. Seriously. Like I would be able to get her to stop contracting and start to fill out their paperwork. Seconds before being transported down the hall to the operating room, the SLF threw down a halfassed John Hancock to allow the hospital to do a procedure that we didn’t even want them to do.
I was provided with scrubs and told to wait in the recovery room while the SLF was taken into the operating room to be prepped for surgery. By now, her epidurals were completely wearing off and I could hear her yelling from across the hall. With a cesarean in the picture, she was told not to push the baby along; thereby going against all of the natural urges that her body was telling her.
Occasionally, someone would come over to explain what was going on (“We’re waiting for anesthesia. They should be here in just a couple more minutes. Then you can come in.”) A “few minutes” turned into over a half hour of me hearing the reverberating cries in the hallway, leaving me alone to cry and worry about the unknown.
The doctor stopped in to notice this and asked if I was a little freaked out.
A…yeah.
I’m not sure if he took offense, like I was somehow questioning his ability as a doctor to ensure that both Mother and baby would be fine after the surgery, but he asked “Why” I was so freaked.
Maybe because just a few minutes ago everything was Kool & The Gang, but then everyone rushed to the operating room like it was Ice Castles starring Robbie Benson.
I don’t know what that means; I’m really tired as I write this.
After forty minutes, the anesthesiologist arrives (the same one that applied the epidural) and I’m offered a spot in the operating room.
“You’re going to notice a lot of blue in the operating room, and those are sterile items that you should not touch.” The nurse explained. “Are you a little squeamish around blood?” She asked as we headed towards the door.
“I guess we’ll find out” I offered back.
“Then you probably want to look towards the right as we make our way in because they’ve already started the procedure.”
Of course, with that bit of information I had to look towards the car wreck that was my 3 week old bride with an incision right along her waist line.
They brought me towards her head where she was strapped down in a spreadeagle Christ pose with a protective sheet preventing us from seeing what they were doing around her tummy. She looked at me and started crying, as if to apologize for all of the sudden drama that evening.
I started crying again just because I was happy that she was alright.
The anesthesiologist provided us with a play-by-play as to what was happening downstairs, but in reality, I could make out what was happening. When the doctor asked the nurse if she was “pushing up,” I understood that she was trying to push the baby’s head back up as it had already started to make some progress down. The doctor got, literally, on top of the table to get a better angle at reaching into my SLF’s uterus and grabbing the baby. After a few moments of struggle, there was a flurry of activity as another nurse rushed the baby over to another table to assist it with its first breaths.
“It’s a girl!” He said, before starting the process of sewing up the large gape that was now like a pothole in my SLF’s Netherlands.
The doctor explained that the baby’s umbilical cord was tied completely in a knot (she continually kicked and flipped while she was inside of Mommy) and had started to progress downward in such a way that her neck was crooked. Both of these things contributed to the baby’s low heart rate during the contractions; she was losing oxygen every time she was getting squeezed through and there was no guarantee that she would have been able to make it all the way through a natural childbirth.
They asked if I wanted to go over and take pictures, but I understood that in doing so, I would have to walk past the car crash that was the cesarean again. I wasn’t about to do that.
Thankfully, one of the attending nurses did a stand up job at taking my camera and snapping a few photos for me while the SLF and I cried. She wanted a daughter and her tears turned to ones of joy when she heard the words “It’s a girl!”
After a few minutes, I stepped over a dozen or so towels soaked with blood and went back to the recovery room with our daughter while they stitched up the SLF.
She was very quiet, crying only to let us know she’d arrived and that it was cold and then calming observing the world around her. She cried when they took off her blanket to do footprints and really wailed when she received her vitamin k shot. I stood and watched helpless as my girl experienced pain for the first time on Earth.
I sat and rocked my daughter, crying as I got to spend some alone time with her before Mommy arrived. The cesarean prevented things like blotchy skin and coneheads while allowing her natural beauty to stand out, just like she had been plucked directly from the uterus.
Which is exactly how it happened.
After an hour in recovery, we made the obligatory phone calls and finally made our way back into our room. Since we never gave birth there, the mix cds that I made were, essentially, worthless in the end. Just for shits and giggles, I calculated from the time I started the second disc to the actual delivery time of 7:56 pm and figured out that Pink Floyd’s “Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun” would have been playing had we stayed in the original room. For all intensive purposes, the cd player did continue to play during the birth process. There just wasn’t anyone there to hear it.
I’m posting this on the MySpace page as well and will continue to provide the more mundane follow up posts there. My posts in general may diminish some in the coming months as I’m learning firsthand how newborns don’t subscribe to any rational time schedule. I’ve got a full schedule of stuff ready for June’s Glam-Racket, but I may choose to use the time to finish it to sleep instead. I’m learning that you get sleep when you can.
Ultimately, the event was completely fucking life altering that I cannot adequately describe it. I’ll sit with my daughter for hours on end and it feels like seconds have passed. I think of her and tears automatically start welling up. I look at my SLF and understand what a great Mommy she’ll be, just like she is with E. And he gets so excited around his baby sister that, again, I start to feel like crying again. They drew blood from her toes last night and he watched it. He instinctively told the nurse to stop hurting his sister, which I hope is a behavior that he’ll carry on as they both get older.
Logically, I know we’ll probably end with her. With E and Cali, we’ve got a perfect blend of siblings and given the dramatic events of her childbirth it’s something that I don’t want to go through again. However, whenever I’m holding her, watching her, smelling her “baby fresh” scent, all I can think about it how totally fucking wonderful life is and how excited I am at getting a chance to see not one, but now two adorable little ones grow up and find a cure for rock ‘n’ roll pneumonia.