I just read Marta’s story and thought it would be appropriate to tell my own. We experienced the whole thing together, but obviously not in the same way. So here goes…

It figures that the day we planned to go to the hospital was the same day that the weather decided to give us the biggest snow storm of the season so far. We had taken it easy throughout the day, just resting and watching movies and relaxing before the big event. As the credits to “Waterworld” began to roll, Marta looked at the clock and realized it was time to go.

We packed everything into the car and began trudging through the snow covered roads on our journey to Annapolis Hospital. It was strange, but both of us had pictured it this way… that we would be heading to the hospital at night during a pretty bad snowstorm.

We arrived only a few minutes late, registered at the front desk, and then were brought into the room in which we’d be staying for the next two days. It was very calm and peaceful in the room, and in the entire birthing center. There was also something really soothing about the snow coming down outside while we were comfortable and warm inside our room.

The nurses began to prep Marta for the induction while I unpacked all our stuff and got us settled in. We were given cabinets for our clothes, a refrigerator to keep our champagne cold, and I was given a very comfy fold out bed to sleep on. Marta got her IV, then the cervix softener, and we kicked back and began to watch the first episode of Twin Peaks, which we brought on DVD.

In the onset of all of this, Marta was dilated to about 2cm. The nurse kept coming in to check on Marta’s progress. After a couple hours, she was checked again and told that she was only at 2.5 centimeters. With permission from her doctor, we were then allowed a couple hours to walk around freely and see if the softener would bring some contractions. We walked around the halls of the birthing center together, stopping at each end to observe the plows outside doing their work to clear the snowfall.

Marta was feeling very comfortable still, with no real pain to speak of. At about midnight, it was decided that she would get some pitocin in her IV. We continued watching our Twin Peaks DVD, and eventually I heard Marta say, “whoa….now THAT was a contraction”. I stopped the DVD, and pulled up a chair by her side. Almost immediately, she started feeling another one, and another one, and each of them looked more painful.

Things got intense pretty quick after that. The contractions came so rapidly, maybe only 20 seconds apart, and my poor wife withstood it with all her might. We established some techniques early on that helped her, mainly squeezing my hand tighter as the pain came and went continuously. I put on one of the mix cds we brought that we had made for our Northwest vacation, keeping the volume very low. I’m not sure if it really helped Marta, but I myself found it very comforting to have something that was so familiar to both of us playing softly in the background. I also managed to give her one good foot massage with the oil that we brought.

As time went on, the pain was getting worse for her, and eventually I was locked in my seat right next to her. The nurse came in to check her dilation, and at that point they said she was only at 3. This worried us both, because it seemed like it was going to be an eternity to get up to 10. Marta made it clear that we should call our Doula. I grabbed her phone and called Lidia, who lives in Ann Arbor. I felt a little nervous about calling her this early, but Marta reminded me that this is why we were paying her in the first place.

It took Lidia a while to get to the hospital because the roads were terrible, and during this time the pain was becoming almost unbearable for Marta. We called in the nurse and she suggested the use of Stadol to “take the edge off” the contractions. Poor Marta was so worried about how it would effect her, but she was desperate for relief, as the contractions never seemed to let up long enough for her to ever get a break.

When Lidia finally arrived, Marta was at about 4cm, and the drug was just kicking in. It was sad for me to see her sleepy eyes looking up at me from that uncomfortable hospital bed. After each contraction passed, she closed her eyes and seemed to fall right asleep. Having Lidia arrive at this moment, I could tell Marta felt a little guilty, as did I. It seemed like there wasn’t much she could do for us yet, and we still had so far to go. The Stadol made Marta very groggy, and she couldn’t talk much to Lidia or I. At this point, I began to worry about my own ability to get through this. I was starving, exhausted, and my back was aching from leaning over for so long.

As Marta slept in the brief moments between her contractions, I started to express some of my worries to Lidia. I told her I was starving, and she calmly said “there’ll be plenty of time to eat when all of this is over”. I knew then there was nothing I could do and that I was absolutely going to have to tough it out no matter how long it took. I also felt terrible inside about this, because I couldn’t even begin to imagine what it felt like for Marta. Lidia started to work with me, taking turns holding Marta’s hand while I patted her face down with a cool cloth. I started regaining my confidence, and it was great to have a helper on hand.

At about 5cm, we decided it was time to call Loretta. Marta was having a really rough time as the contractions continued to get worse, and the Stadol began to slowly wear off. She asked us to call the nurse because she said she was feeling some intense urges to push, and in what seemed like 10 minutes, it turned out that her dilation had gone from 5cm all the way to 9cm. This brought a huge feeling of relief over me, and I could see for the first time all night a smile on my suffering wife’s face… it was going to be over way sooner than we had thought!

The last stages of all of this were by far the craziest and hardest to remember for me. Marta began to get very scared at the thought of pushing the baby out, and begged for an Epidural. The anesthesiologist came in and began to prep her for it, but an intense contraction and an exploding bag of water threw her back down on the bed. “Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god” was all I could remember her screaming.

I was finding this harder and harder to take… I wanted so badly to take her pain away… to switch roles with her. She was so frightened and in so much pain. I kept fighting my urge to cry. As we had discussed in our prenatal visits with our doula, it was my job to stay as strong as possible to help my wife through this, and it was getting harder and harder for me to keep it together.

At the end, I remember the room began filling up with hospital personnel. Equipment was being rolled in, the doctor arrived, and I knew then that we were almost done. Marta’s legs began to shake uncontrollably, and soon Lidia and I were on opposite sides, each holding one of Marta’s legs in one arm, and holding her hand with the other. The doctor was shouting out instructions for her on how she needed to push while we continued to try and soothe her.

I began to periodically glance down to see if I could see my son’s head coming. The doctor pointed it out to me, though it really didn’t look like a head… I saw more of a squished pancake! Continuing to watch for the head, I started to notice that there was an incredibly odd smell in the room. With my sensitive nose and gag reflex, it started getting to me. I tried to fight it, but eventually I turned to gag. Of course the nurses saw this and probably thought I was going to pass out or something. I didn’t want to say anything because I was embarrassed.

I threw some water on my face, took a drink, and got back at Marta’s side, this time staying close to her face so as not to induce any more gagging! With one more massively painful push, the next thing I knew, there was a squirming slimy baby on Marta’s chest, connected to a gleaming white umbilical cord. He let out his first cry at the same time that I finally shed a few tears.

Marta’s mother arrived right at this moment, just in time. I remember the doctor handing me a pair of scissors and pointing to where I needed to cut. I did so willingly, and as I cut through the tough rubbery tube I got squirt in the face with blood. Trying to take all this in was difficult. So much of it is a blur to me now. It was just so emotionally and physically intense. Looking back on what took about six hours seems like it happened in only one!

After the baby was out, Marta looked like she was in major relief, so I was finally able to gather my thoughts and start taking photos. Eventually the staff disappeared, our doula went home, and me, Simon, Marta, and Amma Loretta were left alone in our room.

We were all exhausted, so I laid down on my pull out bed to try and rest. This was when everything started playing back in my head, and I could not shake the images of my poor wife screaming in agony. Her voice crying out kept echoing in my head and eventually I started to lose it. All of the emotion that I had been bottling up for the last six hours began to pour out of me.

I wanted to lie next to my wife, but it was impossible in the hospital bed. Luckily, Loretta was there to comfort me and calm me down. I had a tough time shaking this emotion throughout the rest of the day.

In the late afternoon, I picked up my son and started looking at all of his amazingly tiny features. He was so precious I just wanted to snuggle him! I took him over to the bed and laid him next to me and the two of us passed out together for the next two hours, while Marta got some much needed rest herself. The tiny sounds of his breath were so adorable and knocked me right out.

It was an amazing experience for all of us, and before I knew it we were loading Simon into the car and heading home.  As this major event comes to a close, I can’t wait to experience everything that comes next. I love being a dad!