It’s a girl!

Beginning on the evening of the 2nd, and ending on the afternoon of the 3rd, I was with my friend Melanie as she laboured and then delivered her daughter, Dana Lynn. It was definetly the coolest, grossest, most miraculous event I’ve ever witnessed. It took what seemed to me like forever. And I wasn’t even the one having the baby. (She was with me at the birth of my son, which took a little longer. She must have been soo bored because I slept a lot.) So anyway, here’s a time line of what happened.

Dec. 2

• 6pm - Melanie calls and says she’s headed to the hospital. I call David and ask him to get home, and he arrives around 8:20pm.
• I arrive in the triage area of the labor and delivery unit at about 9pm, to find Mike, Jackie and Melanie all huddled into this very small curtained area, filled mostly with a hospital bed. We all scoot around eachother until we fit, where we wait for the nurse, Charmin, to tell us if Melanie is going to be admitted or not.
• Charmin checks Melanie’s cervix and says that she’s still only 4 cm dialated, and that we should walk around to try to get things moving. So we walk.
• After walking for a while, Charmin checks her again, and says she’s still only 4 cm, but things have changed enough that she’s going to call the doctor and recommend that Melanie be admitted.
• They put us in a huge room around 11 pm. Mike immediately goes to sleep. Jackie has a serious allergy attack (which I think is caused by the lingering catness on my clothes) and she goes home to shower and take medicine. Melanie and I chill.

Dec. 3

• A big fat nothing happens for the rest of the night. Melanie is uncomfortable and can’t sleep. Around 2:30 am she gets her epidural. During this, she almosts faints and some crazy nurse comes in yelling at everyone and bossing everyone around. We hated her. She’s an idiot.
• So, still nothing much is happening. Our awesome nurse, Charmin, leaves at 7 am, and we get a new nurse, Layna. She’s nice too, but she’s no Charmin.
• A male Doctor (which Melanie specifically didn’t want) comes in around 7:30 am and checks Melanie. He’s concerned because she’s been at 4-5 cm for about 8 hrs and he starts talking about a c-section. This gets Melanie totally freaked out.
• I tell her all about the pros of c-section for the next two hours (the time the doctor is giving her cervix to make some progress or else… *insert forboding music*
• So by the time they come back in to see what’s up, she’s ready to have the surgery. Also, she’s totally exhausted and is ready for any solution that involves her not being pregnant anymore - putting the baby’s health first, of course. And wouldn’t you know, she’s now 7 cm dialated.
• During the next hour, things move right along, and Layna has her start to push. I felt so bad for her because she was so tired, and had finally accepted c-section as a reality, and now she’s got to muster up enough energy to push this baby out. Sometime during all this, she gets an extra bollus of epidural because her’s had been wearing off.
• The doctor comes in and gets into his catcher’s position, and Melanies pushes little Dana out at 11:03 am.

For the most part, I didn’t think it was gross, although it was gory. The one part I didn’t like was when the baby’s head was out, but not her body. She was really purple, and her eyes were squinshed shut, and the cord was around her neck. She looked awful. Once Melanie pushed her the rest of the way out, and the doctor unwrapped the cord, she started to cry, and I was finally relieved. I really thought something was wrong for a minute. Scary.

So, here are the stats: 18 hrs of labor resulting in a 7 lb, 19 in baby girl :)