Minerva Faye Diroll-Black was born on Wednesday, August 23, 2017, at 10:27 P.M. at Holy Cross Hospital in Silver Spring, Maryland. She was 5 lbs., 9 oz. at birth and about 19.25" long. By all measure, a healthy baby. One hundred-percent human, perfect in every way (although, potentially some werewolf in there). Getting there, as with our first child, wasn't all that easy.
Carly had some signs of early labor around the end of July, at the thirty week mark. She went to the emergency room and six hours later she was released with an order for bed rest. Thirty weeks is very early to have a baby. 32 or 33 weeks is about when the fetus crests a threshold of survivability. At that point, there's about a 90% chance of survival that just creeps up incrementally from there. 35 weeks is 96%, and from then on the newborn would have virtually no complications resulting from being born early. 38 weeks is considered full term. The Wolf was born at 33 weeks and a few days.
Carly did her level best to stay off her feet and worked from home for the better part of the next two months. After three or four good checkups with her OBGYN, she was allowed to go back to work on a limited schedule and did so about two or three days a week, mainly to alleviate boredom and talk with an adult other than me. We half-jokingly hoped she'd go into labor and we could have the baby on the day of the solar eclipse. It would have been early, but no bother, she'd have super powers. Right?
Entertainingly, Carly started having weird contractions the weekend right before the eclipse. They were kind of half-assed contractions in parts of her belly, not painful, and the baby was moving around quite a bit. The feelings weren't painful, so she just rode them out and started logging the movements in some app she had for these things. By Tuesday, things were getting more pronounced, but not alarmingly so.
I had taken a few days off that week because the Wolf's daycare was closed for vacation, but on Tuesday and Wednesday, I had to go in so that I could finish arrangements for the big company picnic, which I help to organize every year. The picnic was on Wednesday afternoon, followed by a happy hour at a bar in D.C. I was settling into my first happy hour drink and bonding with my coworkers when Carly started texting about her contractions being a little more regular. I told her I was only staying for two and would head out before long.
My boss showed up a little late and bought a round as I was getting ready to go, so I stayed for a bit extra. I dutifully texted the wife and sort of joked with my coworkers about how I was being a classic American father--out at a bar while my wife was in labor. Carly assured me it wasn't so severe. Yet.
I got home around 7pm and it was clear that Carly was undergoing something more serious than some half-assed contractions. I was tired and somewhat apprehensive about the timing. My brain was doing all the calculations of what we'd have to do if we had to go to the hospital:
- Find someone to watch the Wolf; feed him? Pack a bag for him?
- Let my boss know I probably wouldn't be in to work the next day, which was complicated, because I was supposed to be leading a national conference call on a project I spearheaded;
- Get to the hospital.
Carly called her doctor, gave her the information about her contractions, etc. Apparently, since I got home (and Carly relaxed a little, knowing that I was there to manage those 3 things, above), she went into proper labor with regular contractions. When I was there, they were about every 6-7 minutes--GO TIME.
Lucky for us, my boss is also a friend and doesn't live too far away. She was already my backup for #1 and #2. I called her and let her know we were on our way to the hospital, and asked if it was OK to bring the Wolf by. My boss has two kids around the Wolf's age and we all thought it was time for a sleepover, so here it went! The Wolf was excited to stay at his friends' house and that was that.
The big work thing I had to do required my boss to learn a script I wrote (in my own voice) and then speak it at hundreds of lawyers and businesspeople over the phone for 45 minutes straight, followed by questions. She'd not done it before, so it also required a rehearsal and a follow-up session that would be recorded. She'd have to basically spend all day talking and sounding professional and at the end of it would probably die of talking too much (I will never die from that).
After we dropped the Wolf off, with hugs and well-wishes, I took Carly to the hospital.
Holy Cross is a Catholic Hospital located conveniently off of Georgia Avenue, near the infamous I-485. That means it's usually accessible and on Wednesday evening, it was. We arrived around 9:10PM and went right up to the neonatal unit. I point out that it is a Catholic hospital because that raises the stereotype that it might be a little more traditional or old school. It is. More on that later.
As you might expect from knowing me for any length of time, my genetics will cause problems. Our baby-to-be was firmly situated as a breech baby, meaning her butt was pointing the wrong direction for birth. Many breech babies end up as Caesarean-sections, as coming out of the birth canal backwards can lead to head and neck injuries even if the doctors are quite practiced and careful. So we knew, when we got to the hospital, we should be on the fast track. "Breech baby, 3-minute contractions" should set off alarms in the head of any hospital staff who hear it. It means, "get the OR ready, and check this person RIGHT NOW." Our receptionist did not get that memo, and asked us to sit in the waiting room.
We were patient. There were two other couples there when we showed up, and didn't want to presume that our problems were greater than theirs. One left to go to labor and delivery after a few minutes--the other couple was just checking in. They'd actually been turned away twice because the mother's labor wasn't sufficiently developed, but this time, her water had broken and they were only at 35 weeks. Early.
After about 20 minutes, Carly's water broke. The receptionist go her a pad to sit on and went back to her ... staring at a computer screen and giving this other couple an exasperated sigh. After another ten minutes, Carly's contractions were around 2 minutes apart and she was starting to feel the urge to push--full labor. I reaffirmed to the receptionist that we had a BREECH BABY and my wife's WATER HAD BROKEN and that she was FEELING THE URGE TO PUSH. The receptionist stared back blankly. I said, "if you don't go get a doctor or nurse or someone, I will do it myself." She got it. She scurried away and came back a moment later. "A doctor will come get you in five minutes, tops." She seemed to think I would go sit down, I did not. Stood there and stared at her, glancing at the clock. I pulled Carly over (already in a wheelchair, ready to go) and reminded her that she should NOT PUSH and just breathe through the things as much as possible. She was in pain, and I was doing my best impression of a golem.
Right at the five-minute-mark, a couple of nurses showed up and started to cart Carly away. I said "BREECH BABY, WATER BROKE, 2-MINUTE CONTRACTIONS" and they moved faster. As soon as they threw her on a bed in the triage area and started checking Carly out, the Demon Gate opened and out came the most unspeakable substance imaginable... meconium.
So, meconium is basically a baby's first shit. It's all the remnants of whatever they eat while in utero, and it's typically a dense, black goop that resembles crude oil blobs. The first volume of it to come out is a sign that the baby's internal workings are, well, working, and things are on track. Our baby decided to drop that particular bomb while still inside of Carly. And it was epic.
Most meconium drops are relatively small--the size of large garden slug, maybe. Our child apparently ate well in utero and released a tide that would have brought tears to the eyes of the most successful Texas oil men. It was an endless tide of crude oil soft serve, all coming out of my wife to the point where even the nurse was like, "Really?" she flicked her gloved hand to get a mass of the black cake batter off of it, and on second thought, just got new gloves and looked around for a shovel. My brain is stained forever, and I think yours is, now, as well.
The punchline to this is that the baby was coming and was under stress. Feet were poking out (yeah). The nurses were yelling things like "COMPLETE" and "RUPTURE." The consent forms were just one of the nurses yelling "do you consent to a C-section?!" and Carly yelling back "yes, obviously!" They threw scrubs at me and told me to wait in the hallway (old school, remember?), which I did.
Carly and I both missed the birth. Because of the emergency situation, they did not have time to administer an epidural or other anaesthetic, so they had to put her fully under general anaesthesia. Because of that, they don't want extraneous people in the OR, and I was left in the hallway while Carly was knocked out. I kept watch while a long cast of nurses and doctors cycled in and out of the operating room, each of them giving me platitudes and no information. Eventually, one of the nurses told me "she's crying!" and that was the first I knew that the baby was born. It was around 10:40pm.
Eventually, the baby came out in a little plastic box and the nurse told me that she'd have to go to the NICU for a while to monitor her breathing. We'd find out later that she was under some serious stress at the time of the birth (due, apparently, to the prolonged wait in the reception area) and they wanted to make sure she didn't inhale any of that meconium or have other troubles. She also was kind of small for her birth age--about a pound lighter than expected, so they wanted to see what was up with that also. But at least on first look, she seemed to be OK.
I found Carly in the recovery area around midnight. She was mummified in bandages and blankets and very groggy. After a number of injections and some cleaning and forms and talks with the nurses and doctor, she was wheeled down to see Minerva in the NICU.
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