Wifey looks at me and says “what time did you get up with Alex?” I replied, “I didn’t”. We both went in to check on her and there she was, just starting to stir and looking content.

I don’t know what, if anything, suddenly changed, but our current routine (and one we plan to keep) is to put her to bed around 8pm. Our little ritual is to change her diaper, put her in a night gown, and then feed her. We start around 7:15pm or 7:30pm and finish by about 8pm.

Once feeding is over, we bring her to her crib, sing twinkle twinkle little star to her and kiss her good night. We then tuck her under her blanket (which is tightly tucked into the sides of the mattress to avoid going over her face) and turn on her mobile. If she wants it, we give her a pacifier. She usually falls asleep within a few minutes.

We go to bed around 11pm, so we’ll wake up the baby about a half hour before then, change her and “top her off” with a bottle, then put her back to bed. She is usually pretty groggy when we wake her up so she goes back to sleep pretty easily afterward.

For the past couple of weeks, she’s been sleeping later and later, not waking us up until four or five in the morning. Now she seems to have found a rythym and is able to sleep through the night.

I am a firm believer that one of the contributing factors to her sleeping so well is that we have always had her sleeping in her crib since the day we brought her home. There have been times I would peek in on her and see that she had woken up, but was happily looking at her mobile and eventually falls back asleep.

The truth is that she probably doesn’t sleep through the night, but instead wakes up and looks around for a while and is then able to go back to sleep on her own since she is comfortable in her crib and we always put her in her crib while she is still awake. Several books I’ve read say you should avoid waiting until the baby is totally asleep before putting her in her crib as this will confuse the baby when she wakes up in the middle of the night as she expects to still be in your arms.

Whatever the magical formula is, I am glad that baby Alex has found her comfort zone and is now able to sleep through the night.

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I should have known that something was amiss.

I started getting busy around the house and settled in at my computer in the home office. Around 8:00pm wifey woke up and decided to get some dinner. She happily ate on the couch and was watching some tv when all of a sudden she called out to me telling me she was having a bad cramp. She had been having some cramps on and off for a few days so I didn’t think much about it.

The cramps kept coming periodically and we were concerned that something may be wrong. I whipped out the doppler monitor and we checked the baby’s heart rate. Normal. Nothing to report. We decided this was fine and decided to go about our night.

The cramps kept on coming and around 9:30pm wifey went to the bathroom. She suddenly yelped and called me in. There she was on the toilet holding toilet paper that was full of orange/red blood. Both of us panicked a bit due to our history of miscarriages. My first thought was “Oh my God, what if we lose the baby at 36 weeks pregnant!”.

I immediately called Dr. Klein’s off hours pager. He called back within 5 minutes. I told him what was going on. He dropped the bomb on me: “Ok, so she’s going into labor.” I said no, she’s bleeding with cramps. He explained that those weren’t cramps but contractions. This hit us like a ton of bricks. I asked the doctor what he meant by that. He said the blood was the mucus plug coming out and that meant that she could go into labor immediately or two weeks from now.

When wifey was getting up from the toilet, an actual plug that looked like a wine cork made of meat fell onto her underwear. Mucus plug confirmed!

Dr. Klein said just to start timing the contractions. If they stop, we should go to bed and not worry about it but if they continue and get to 5 minutes apart and stay that close together for more than an hour, we should call him back and go to the hospital.

Wifey immediately replies, I can’t be in labor, I’m 36 weeks pregnant! I’m not ready! Luckily we had been fairly proactive about getting ready for the baby in advance. We had already taken a full day lamaze class and infant CPR classes as well as a breast feeding class. I had a full list ready of what to bring to the hospital. The problem was that I thought I still had at least 3 weeks to put the stuff together.

Most of the doctors told us the baby could be two weeks early or late. Everyone else we talked to kept telling us that the first born is usually late. We weren’t prepared mentally or physically, but none of that mattered to the baby.

We started timing the contractions and they were all over the place some would be 10 minutes apart while others would be 5 or 6 or 7 minutes apart. We were hopeful the entire time that they’d subside and stop and we’d just chalk it up to false labor.

I was talking on the phone with a friend around 11pm when I looked over at wifey. She was curled up on the couch with her legs curled up on the couch. She suddenly looked at me with huge eyes that were as big as dinner plates. I promptly hung up on my friend and asked my wife what was up. She reached out for my hand saying that she thought she’d just passed a huge blood clot.

I pulled her up and off the couch and looked down. Her water had broken. I escorted her to the bathroom where the rest of it gushed out. I called the doctor back. My wife was still somehow clinging to hope that this was still false labor. The doctor squashed that in one sentence: “Ok, see you at the hospital”.

So I immediately grab my go bag list and start running around the house in an evil scavenger hunt. Wifey is trying to figure out what to do. We remembered the lamaze class said taking a hot shower while you’re in labor can relax you and make the contractions a bit easier. Another benefit to taking a shower is that you’ll feel better in the hospital. Considering that you’ll be in the same bed for at a minimum of many hours if not a few days, you may as well start off fresh.

She headed off to the shower and I finished assembling the labor bag. We pondered whether to call family or not and decided against it. It was already 11:30pm and there was nothing anyone could do for us except worry. So we decided to let family and friend sleep and we’d call them after the baby was born or if there were any problems.

After wifey’s shower, I was pretty much ready to go. We brought her out to the car and I went blasting down the road. I was safe, but where appropriate I was doing 95mph. I was secretly hoping to get pulled over so I could reenact the scene in all the tv shows: “Officer, my wife is in labor! Ok, follow me, I’ll escort you to the hospital”. Didn’t happen… Not one cop the entire 20 minute ride (at 90mph).

We arrived at the hospital about midnight. Luckily we had taken the lamaze class at that hospital and they had given us a tour and told us exactly what to do and where to go when we go into labor. We got upstairs to the maternity ward quickly and almost immediately saw Dr. Klein, which was very comforting.

A nurse changed my wife into a hospital gown and put her on the bed. She connected a fetal heart monitor and a contraction monitor to her belly and a pulse/ox monitor to her finger. Contractions were under 5 minutes apart and the baby was doing well. A young female doctor came in and said she wanted to check dialation. Wifey was already 5 centimeters dialated, which really suprised us.

The doctor said they’d keep monitoring and we’d begin pushing when we get to 10cm. Wifey’s contractions were getting very strong and she started yelling at anyone she could see that she wanted drugs. She even yelled to a janitor passing by that she wanted drugs.  The doctor said they’d bring in the anasthesiologist when she get’s a bit more dialated as they can’t do it too early.

When wifey got to about 7cm, the anasthesiologist came in. It took him about a half an hour to get set up and insert the epideral. Wifey’s contractions were not cooperating and every time she would move he would have to stop working. At one point she started a contraction while he was in the middle of a procedure that he couldn’t stop. Wifey just had to suck it up and breath through her contraction. Luckily, she did great and the doctor finished the epideral. about 5 to 10 minutes later, wifey felt great (actually, felt nothing but pressure, not pain).

Within an hour or so, Dr. Klein came in and said that it was time to start pushing. They gave us a quick walk through on the pushing process and said let’s get started. The nurse would watch the contraction monitor and when they saw one starting up, she and an intern (student doctor) would hold her legs and tell her to push while counting. Dr. Klein left and said he’d be checking in with us.

There were some moments of concern. I was watching the baby monitors and saw several times that the baby’s heart rate got quite high. On some occassions, everyone left the room to do other things. At one point, my wife started having a contraction and no one was there except me. I grabbed both of her legs and started counting through the contractions and pushes with her. Luckily the nurse came in about half way through.

I kept asking them about the baby’s heart rate getting so high. They would tell me,  “Oh, it’s fine, look it’s going back down”. I didn’t think it was normal as baby Alex’s heart rate has always averaged in the 140′s to 150′s. During labor it was spiking in to the 190′s. I would later find out that it was a concern.

This went on for about two hours before Dr. Klein came in to check on us and decided that wifey’s pelvis bones were too narrow for the baby to pass through and recommended a C section. He asked the female doctor to come in and feel where the baby’s head was and see if she agreed. She did. He called one more doctor in to check, who again agreed. Well, the decision was unanimous and we packed up and got wifey ready to go to the Operating Room.

I was handed a set of disposable scrubs complete with lunch lady hat and mask. I went and got dudded up and a nurse escorted me to the O/R where wifey was already prepped and ready. They brought me to a chair right next to my wife’s head. Thankfully there was a large surgical curtain blocking our view of the action. There are definitely some parts of my wife and I do NOT feel the need to be familiar with ( like anything inside of her stomach besides the baby).

Wifey was shaking when I sat down. I asked if she was ok. The doctors said it was just the drugs and it was very normal. Obviously it was a concern for me since I’ve never seen her like this before.

Well, without much fanfare, I suddenly realized that they had started and had already cut my wife open and were working. In what seemed like about 5 minutes flat (but was probably more like 40 minutes) I suddenly hear a bark and a cry and I see Alexandria being handed from the doctors to the nurse who promptly brought her over to a work area in a corner where they cleaned out her nose, gave her eye drops and did whatever else it is that they do to new babies.

Within a few minutes the baby was all bundled up and looking around. The nurse brought her over to my wife and let her get a good look at her beautiful momma. Mommy gave Alex her first kiss. The nurse then brought the baby over to me and let me hold her.

After a few minutes, they escorted me out of the O/R (I deliberately avoided looking at what they were doing in my wife’s belly). In the hallway outside, they had me sit down and gave the baby to me. I held her in wonder and awe and talked to her while trying to avoid crying. By that point I was totally emotional as I had been up for almost 2 days straight and this was one of the biggest events of my life.

After about 20 minutes, they wheeled my wife out on the bed and when she got to me, they wanted to give her the baby to hold. She was very shaky from the anasthesia and didn’t want to hold her for fear of dropping her. Instead, they nestled baby Alex in the space between her legs and wheeled them down the hallway toward the recovery room.

Alex decided to greet the world by wailing all the way down the hallway. I suddenly had a vision of a crazy police car with baby Alex on the hood as the siren clearing the way. LOL

I spent some time with the new mommy and baby in the recovery room, then went outside to call family and friends and get a bite to eat.

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