03/18/08
So there we were, in a sterile room somewhere near the corner of 59th and Maryland on the South Side of Chicago, my wife leaning against me on the floor. Per her request, I'm supporting her from under her arms, almost like a headlock. We're surrounded by people, most of whom we don't know. Our doc and nurse are on their knees in front of us, and my parents, whose flight leaves in two hours, are right behind them, taking pictures of my wife's vagina.
Then it happened so fast. She started pushing. Huge, grunty pushes that turned her whole body into a steel pillar, thick and immovable. Every time she did, she screamed, and...
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03/14/08
The contractions were coming faster and faster on that floor, and every now and then Sarah would mumble something incomprehensible. "Please give me a minute here," I heard her say at one point.
"Who are you talking to?" I asked.
"I'm making a deal with my body here," she said. "Shut up."
I did, no matter how much she pleaded with the contractions. Her natural response was to...
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03/11/08
While I sat in the hallway, locked away from the only person on earth I wanted to be with, my wife was apparently giving them hell in triage.
They took her blood pressure, which was fine, but when a resident came in ten minutes later and put the blood pressure cuff on, Sarah asked if it was necessary.
"Well, uh ... "
"Apparently not," Sarah said, and ripped it off...
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03/07/08
Sarah hijacked this entry, which is fine with me. After all, it's her uterus; maybe it should be her words, too.
At some point after Jeff turned off Napoleon Dynamite—which I never really wanted to watch—I went back to bed and fell asleep. When I woke up around 1 a.m., Jeff was snoring in our bed, his dad was snoring in the guest room, and his mom was snoring on the basement couch because she was sick and didn't want to keep Jeff's dad awake. I couldn't go anywhere. I was still having these terrible constipation pains, so I took a bunch of magazines and pillows into the bathroom and put on some music...
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03/04/08
After waiting in our basement for two weeks, my parents leave tomorrow. They will miss the delivery, assuming it ever happens. This bums me out, and I know they're frustrated that their whole visit was for naught, though they're far too diplomatic to say so. It was never clear to me what exactly their role would be during the delivery, though my wife continues to maintain—even after spending 11 days with them—that she wanted them in the room when she delivered. I just don't see it...
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02/29/08
Still nothing. Now we're just pissed.
My parents leave in two days.
In our Bradley class, which seems like a distant memory now, Denyse encouraged us to write up a "birth plan." I didn't get the concept at the time, figuring the plan was: Give birth; go home. How could we possibly develop a plan for the most complex, unpredictable moment of our lives, when the experts should be calling the shots? It seemed ridiculous...
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02/26/08
Just got off the phone with Sarah. Very excited. Still no baby, but here's a transcript of the call—which I pray no one overheard:
Me: Hello?
Sarah: You sitting down?
Me: Yeah. What's up?
Sarah: I passed my mucus plug.
Me: (excited) Really? Your mucus plug? What did it feel like?
Sarah: I didn't notice. I went to sit on the pot, and...
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02/22/08
My parents have been living in the basement for a week now, and Sarah's womb has been painfully quiet the whole time. Every time I go downstairs, Tom and Lois are sitting on the couch, eating peanuts and watching Law & Order. And every time Sarah goes down there, they jump up with excited anticipation, and when they realize she has come to simply put in a load of laundry, they sigh. Audibly. They don't mean any harm—they just want to meet the baby, too—but their presence seems to have spooked Sarah's cervix. The pressure is overwhelming. "I feel like every day I don't produce a child, I'm letting everyone down," Sarah said...
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02/19/08
Every time my phone rings at work, I think, Here we go. I look at the calendar: This is the day. I look at my clothes: This is what I'm going to be wearing in all the pictures. Usually, it's someone calling to ask my least favorite question: "Has the baby come yet?"
No, it hasn't. Thanks for reminding me.
It's easy to forget that Sarah's due date was an estimate—not an appointment. In most cases, post-term pregnancies aren't really "late"; they stem from miscalculations of the time of conception...
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02/15/08
Here's what it's like sharing a bed with 39-weeks pregnant woman. Or, at least, with mine. Early this morning, I was sleeping peacefully when I felt a tugging on my shirt. I rolled over and Sarah was staring at me, wide awake. "What's up?" I asked. "Is it time?" "No. I'm miserable." "What's the matter?"... "I've got a fucking human being in my stomach, that's what's the matter." ...
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49.0F
