Been an interesting week!

Sorry for the late post, guys. It's been an interesting week.

So, on the 6th- Friday before last- the wife was supposed to come to the office for a baby shower, at 2:00p. My office is maybe not the timeliest when it comes to planning baby showers- my coworker, Mike, actually had his kid a few days before the day for which his shower was planned. But they set this one a tad earlier- a good two weeks off the due date. Which isn't too bad, for my office.

Of course, it wasn't good enough. At 1:30p, Katrina calls and says, "I'm not joking. My water just broke."

So, we were off to the races. I attempted to drive home at near-race pace, but traffic, it seems, hadn't gotten the memo. I didn't get snarled in a true traffic jam, just one of those shoulder-to-shoulder-at-35mph deals. Which normally isn't a big deal. But when you can't be entirely sure that your wife isn't about to deliver your daughter on your couch, it becomes perhaps a smidge more frustrating. Like, cursing-and-pounding-your-steering-wheel frustrating.

Thankfully, I arrived to find my girl fresh-faced, all packed up, and ready to roll. Admissions were fairly painless- the ten minutes covering the process during the childbirth class got that part right on.

Here's what I wasn't entirely ready for: the waiting game. Of course, I knew that there would be a wait; when your wife is pregnant you hear dozens of stories of 'she was in labor for 22 hours' and so forth. What I didn't fully grasp was how time stretches during this period. You know how, when you were a kid, the night before Christmas morning seemed to last forever? Well, this was just like that. Except instead of tossing restlessly in your bed, you're stuck in a room with a woman in terrible intermittent pain, and you can't really do much to help her. And instead of stumbling downstairs to see what Santa left you, you get to see a doctor cutting...

..oh wait, we'll get to that later.

So the first real hurdle was about the three hour mark, when the pain started getting too much for her and she decided she wanted an epidural. Sadly, the anesthesiologist was in the middle of another emergency case, and had yet another one after that. However, our nurse was very touchy-feely. That's good enough, right?

Not so much. Katrina is not one that wants to be cooed over or touched when she's hurting. She wants to be left the heck alone. At this point she had kicked ever her father out of the room, and this girl is nuts about her dad. And yet, this nurse was right on top of her, rubbing on her face and saying things like, "focus! focus!" I seriously thought Katrina was going to get up and maul that lady. Thankfully she went off her shift about 45 minutes later and we got The Best Nurse In the World, who, among other excellent qualities, had enough intuition to stay clear until the epidural showed up.

And yeah, once the epidural showed up, Katrina was out, like a light, leaving me in the room, relieved but puzzled about what to do. I elected to snap a quick pic, and then tried to figure out what to do next. Turns out there's really not much to do in such a situation... so I broke out the notebook and organized and tagged some MP3s. Seems inappropriate, I know, but... I couldn't leave the room, I couldn't turn on the TV, so MP3 organization is what I had. At least it wasn't office work.

I'll skip most of the rest of the details of the next eight or so hours and get right to the good part: midnight. By this time she was fully dilated and ready to rock. Our next curveball was that our usual doctor wasn't on call that weekend, and we'd be working with an Indian fellow with a nice thick accent. Our nurse had to translate sometimes. But he was fairly confident, which Katrina liked.

However, one part of my plan went right out of the window. I'd planned to stay up by Katrina's head, pretending to share words of strength and encouragement, but the doc asked me to come down to the 'business end' to help, by holding a leg and ankle. Yeah, not part of the plan. And I suggest it not be part of your plan, either, as you will see parts of your wife do things that may haunt your dreams. But even that was small change compared to the surprise of the night... before I could look away, the doc had grabbed a pair of scissors and performed an episiotomy. For those of you not in the know, that's when the doctor creates a wider opening for the baby by cutting some or all of the flesh between the anus and vagina. I'm not sure exactly what I did, because whatever part of my brain that protects my sanity from the darkest horrors haven't released access to those memories yet, but I'm sure it wasn't good. And worse, he apparently didn't cut deep enough, because she tore a bit, too. Yikes. And despite all that... they still had to use a vacuum extractor- sort of a suction cup they affix to the top of her head- to get her out. She was a big 'un.

Shortly after that, though- at 12:22am on 6.7.08, to be exact, we had ourselves a little girl. She weighed 8lb 7oz and measured 20.5 inches. She was a bit goopy at first, but the fabled protective instincts kicked in right away when I saw some nurse I'd never met jabbing one of those nasal aspirators into her mouth. I know it had to be done, but why the jabbing, fer chrissakes?

Anyway, the kiddo was healthy and stable, and after a bit of stitching, cleaning, weighing, and whatnot, everyone made an exit and the family and friends came in to visit. We had a pretty impressive crowd. I ran out to get Katrina a double cheeseburger and fries from Burger King- which she very specifically requested. (I'll admit, I stole a few fries on the way back to the hospital. They smelled too good.)

We were in the hospital from Friday at about 2:00p until Monday around noon, and a had a pretty good experience. One good lesson here: if they offer to take your baby away to the nursery for an evening so you can get some sleep.... DO IT. You'll be spending countless nights with them for the rest of their life, but a little sleep will certainly keep you a bit more sane and rational. But anyway, over the next few days we spent some quality time together, figuring out the breastfeeding thing and generally bonding, which was nice. Being cooped up in a single room and sleeping on a couch for three days and nights was maybe less fun. It was nice to get home.

All told, I'd have to say it was a good experience. Currently little Tori and her mom are both doing pretty well. We're not getting as much sleep as we'd like, but we've got a healthy, cute baby, and for that I'm incredibly grateful.

Thanks again, everyone, for your well wishes!