The Birth of a Son15 min read

Who Is This Strange Woman In My Room?

I woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of a woman frantically pacing in my room. It took a second, but once I shook off deep sleep daze, I realized this woman was my wife. I had questions.

A few days prior, we ended up in the emergency room. My wife had very sharp, odd back pain on a single side. This is alarming in general but considering she was 39 weeks pregnant, I yelled “wee woo wee woo wee woo” out the car window as we drove to the E.R. Pain on one side is not a typical pregnancy symptom.

As this was smack dab in the middle of the covid pandemic, the ER was quite literally empty as we walked in. The two doctors working came directly into triage to discuss the issue with my wife instead of waiting for her to get assigned to a room… This might sound trivial to you. But any free healthcare loving Canadian knows it doesn’t matter when you show up in an ER, you’re waiting a couple hours unless you have no pulse… This empty ER strangely resembled the beginning of a zombie apocalypse movie…

Anywho, the doctors ran a full battery of tests on my to uncover the source of the pain. When the results came back, my wife was given a clean bill of health. “Maybe it’s muscular?”, said the doc. Hmmm… That’s when my shifty, doubtful eyes made their appearance… Thankfully, by this time the pain had largely subsided so we headed home scratching our heads but satisfied with the fact that nothing serious was happening. The following days were relatively pain free for my wife. Until the night of my questions, that is…

“What are you doing up?”

 “I’ve got the same pain as the other day”

 “Just on the one side?”

 “No, it’s on both sides now. I didn’t want to wake you up.”

 “That’s nice of you. *Rolls back over to sleep… Double-take* HEY, WHAT THE HELL! You’re 40 weeks pregnant!

It’s Go Time!

Shortly after waking up, the pain started coming in waves… We put two and two together… Contractions. Having not experienced contractions during the birth of our daughter, I guess she had had some weird one-sided foreshadowing contractions a few days prior but couldn’t recognize them… I went into game plan mode:

1. Massage wife’s back and get her an exercise ball
2. Throw prepacked bags in the car
3. Come back and draw a hot bath while suggesting that moving on the exercise ball might help
4. Go check that the car still actually works
5. Come back to checkup on contraction timing and to see if a glass of water (?) could help
6. Go to the kitchen to get said water and pretend I have power over the situation
7. Wake up Papi to tell him “the time has come!” He was now on babysitting duty for our daughter.
8. Come back with said water (which remained untouched) and continue checking contraction timing

Side note: Ladies, if you have a man who gets you a glass of water whenever you are not feeling well, it’s his way of providing for you in a time of need, of not feeling powerless. He’s a keeper…

When contractions were 5 minutes apart, we decided to head to the hospital. It was 3am. As we were in the middle of a covid lockdown, there was not a soul in the streets. Once at the hospital, a nurse brought us into a transition room and evaluated the situation. My wife was barely dilated at all… And discouraged. They gave her morphine to help with the pain and to help the body relax but that if that did nothing, they would have to send us home. I suddenly noticed a new, distinct look on my wife’s face. It gave me “If you send me home, I will burn this place to the ground” vibes… Thankfully, over the next few hours, the morphine allowed her to get a bit of sleep and dampened the contraction related pain.

Today is Delivery Day

When the doctor came to check on us around 7am, dilation was well underway. I was thankful because my wife’s contraction pain was back and I don’t want to be married to a convicted arsonist. The doctor confirmed the birth was to occur in the next few hours. We moved to a delivery room and I went to get our bags from the car. I remember coming out to the most gorgeous, calm, sunny, crisp winter day. It was quite the contrast with what was going on inside.

Once back in the delivery room, my wife immediately pressed on the “DEAL!” button when the option of an epidural came up. I felt fine so I was tempted to hold on for a better deal after opening a few more briefcases but… No dice. The anesthetist came in. He told my wife to hold my arms and to stay as still as possible during contractions while the epidural was put in place. Her stability impressed me… And her grip strength. Once the epidural was in, they also setup a heat rate monitor for baby.

The hospital team continued to set up the delivery room. A newborn baby station was wheeled in. Gowns and masks were put on. A second doctor came in and introduced herself. As things were progressing, I started noticing that the delivery team was a bit on edge… I distinctly remember the second doctor looking at the baby’s heart rate monitor with intent focus. Her hands were clasped behind her back and she was rubbing the palm of her hand with her pinky. She was concerned.

Baby Has to Come Now!

It quicky became apparent from the heart rate monitor alarms that baby’s heart rate was dropping excessively with every contraction… The doctors told us there was no need to panic but that we had to get the baby out quickly. Dilation was far enough along that my wife could start pushing. I stood by her side and did what I could to contribute to the effort (moral support?). She pushed once during a contraction and immediately, the doctors brought in the vacuum in to help going forward. Baby’s heart rate was… not good. For the next 5-10 minutes, every push was vacuum assisted to try to get baby out quickly. It seemed like the air had also been sucked out of the room during that 5-10 min period… Everyone was holding their breath. And suddenly, after the seventh push, there was a new person there with us, our baby boy!

The medical team transported my son to the baby station where the team evaluated his APGAR score. It was 4 or 5 which is not great. His head was also swollen from his experience with the hospital hoover… In the minutes that followed, he gained some strength and his APGAR score improved. My wife was able to hold him for a few minutes but he was then quickly taken to the nursery as his head had to be monitored. I made sure the new mom was ok and headed to the nursery with sonny boy.

20 minutes after birth, our son was all smiles and very alert. I had now experienced the post-birth alertness period with both my kids. It’s a thing! Looking at his eyes, I trusted things would be ok. He was already so cheerful!

Surprise! It’s not over.

Over the next few hours, as my wife recovered from her eventful morning (!), we spent lots of time in the nursery with our new family member. Our adrenaline started plunging back down so we took turns taking a nap. When my turn came, I closed the lights to our room and collapsed in one of those convertible hospital chairs. I quickly fell into a deep sleep. In what seemed like an instant (it was apparently much longer than that), I was awoken by a surge of noise as the bright white hospital lights turned on. The doctor was coming in with my wife to tell me that the swelling in my son’s head was getting worse. They were going to transfer us to another hospital as they did not have the resources and expertise on-site if the situation degraded any further. Hello new adrenaline surge!

In the next two hours, I packed all the bags we had just unpacked. The hospital staff kept notifying us that the hospital we were going to had changed. I brought everything to the car and upon returning, learned that we, the parents, would not be allowed to ride in the ambulance with our son. A full medical team would be in the ambulance and there would be no room for us. We would have to get to the second hospital separately by car.

Oddly, my wife and I were very calm during this whole process. First, our son didn’t show any signs of distress. We saw this as a preventive measure. Second, when the paramedics and medical team arrived from the other hospital to pick up our son, they just had an aura about them that instilled trust. Our son was placed into an incubator which was strapped onto an ambulance stretcher, we held his hand a bit, gave him a kiss and he was rolled away. He was sound asleep at this point so that definitely helped in the process.

Travelling to the Second Hospital

As we quickly gathered the rest of our belongings, my wife signed the hospital leave papers and we got on our way. In the car, I kept marveling at my wife’s state six or so hours after giving birth. She has a few aches and pains but was pretty much ready to go… I couldn’t believe it. When we got to the second hospital, we parked and brought all our bags with us.

As we got up to the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), we crossed paths with the paramedics who had transported our son. He was already sleeping comfortably in his hospital incubator. We thanked them, bags in hand, and then met with the head nurse. After confirming everything was OK with our son, we asked about getting access to our room. The nurse looked at me crooked: “Uh… Your son is a patient here but you guys are not. We’ve setup a chair by the incubator and one parent can be there but otherwise you’ll have to wait there. Frankly, I don’t know why he was transferred here. He’s fine.” She pointed to a few plastic chairs in a designated waiting area in the hall.

While that last bit was very good news, I was afraid the first part had revived my wife’s arsonist tendencies from just 12 hours prior… We started getting a bit agitated: “Wait, what!? My wife just gave birth 6 hours ago and we were transferred here.” The nurse replied: “Well, there’s nothing I can do.” I took a deep breath. I told my wife to relax, go be with our son and that I would sort this out. “You’ll have to get your own glass of water for now, dear. There’s a little something I have to do.” Thankfully, my wife accepted and went to be with our son. I stacked all our bags in a visitor’s locker, rolled up my sleeves and drew up my game plan. If I was to be successful, I had to be courteous but forceful in my requests.

Getting to “Step Right This Way Sir, We Have a Room for You!”

I found the maternity ward and spoke to the admins at the operations desk to explain the situation.

“Hey, how’s your night going?”

“Pretty good, you?”

“Well, on balance it’s been a weird day but I can’t complain. I was wondering if you could help me out?”

I explained the transfer and asked if they thought it was reasonable that a woman having given birth 6 hours ago did not have access to a room to rest? Thankfully, they were on the same “reason wavelength” than I was and agreed it wasn’t a good look. However, with it now being late, there were no supervisors on the floor and they needed to call them to get approvals. I waited. “My supervisor said she was sorry for your situation but that there was nothing she could do.” My shifty eyes made their appearance again.

There were a number of empty rooms on the floor. I could think of something she could do… I asked if there were other departments I could hit up for some room and board. The admin at the desk pointed me to a couple of other places on different floors. I ran through my script a couple more times and arrived at the same result every time. Hmmm… This is weird. What’s the key to solving this puzzle? I thought back to earlier in the day. I got a flash of my wife signing the hospital release papers before we left the first hospital. AHA! “Those should have been TRANSFER papers! Not RELEASE papers!”, I thought to myself.

I got on the phone with the first hospital. Thankfully, we had met the nurse that picked up earlier that day. I explained the situation and asked politely but firmly that she rectify the problem. I would be calling every 15 minutes to get a status until this was resolved: “Re-admit her and transfer her on your end if you have to but I am not making my wife sleep on a plastic chair in a hall 6 hours after having given birth.” She was agreeable and I hung up. 15 minutes went by and I called her back. The head doctor from the first hospital was in the process of calling the head doctor in the second hospital to work out the transfer. I should have news shortly. I went back to hang out near the maternity ward operations desk.

Shortly thereafter, the phone rang at the desk. The admin I had spoken to earlier picked up, listened for a bit and then quickly glanced in my direction with a puzzled look. She hung up the phone, walked over to me and said, almost as a question: “I’ve just been told to give you a room?” She could not get the look of confusion off of her face. I could not get the smile off of mine. She probably thought I was important… I’m not. VICTORRRYYYY! It shouldn’t have been this hard but I was glad I got to the desired result.

I hurriedly went to tell me wife. She was feeding our son so I told her I would go get us setup and come back to get her. I brought our bags into the room, nested a bit and felt an incredible high from the victory of my administrative conquest! So much so, that I called a friend of mine then and there to recount the story. “Yet again, my formal business process management training is paying dividends!!!” “How can you be talking about business process management at a time like this?!” “Because it’s my super power?”

Things Are Back on the Rails

From then on, the rest of our stay was more “standard” as it relates to birth stories… My wife and I got some sleep. The NICU nurses woke us up a few times as it was time for feeding. Early the next morning, our son was stable enough to leave the NICU and came to stay with us in the room. Both my wife and son had regular checkups for the next few hours as we held him and changed the first few diapers. Things were in order again.

Late morning, it was time for one last checkup from the doctor and both my son and wife were given their leave. We packed up yet again but headed home this time. We had gotten less quiet time at the hospital to get to know our new baby this time around. This would be done in the following days, weeks and years at home.

What I can tell you is that in the year since his birth, we’ve come to know my son as fairly easy going, always happy and on the go. He has no concern for his or anybody else’s safety. He also loves vacuums which is strange. Come to think of it, that makes him a good mix of both his grandpa and great-grandpa so it tracks.

A few days after the birth, I noticed weird bruises on my forearms. I was puzzled but remembered my wife trying to rip them off during the epidural procedure. I looked over to my wife, showed her the bruises and told her that if ever she asks her son to open a jar for her, I would tell him that she definitely has the strength to do it herself. And so, we were four…