Week 1a. February 25-27: At the Hospital
Catherine and I got up on Sunday the 25th and did some work around the house, finished laundry, and finally actually packed our bags for the hospita. Both of us had for some reason finally decided that Catherine would be going into labor at the end of the week rather than before her due date of March 1, as we had been expecting before. A little after noon I went to work on my computer designing our on-line birth announcement, leaving blanks for all the specific information--since I would be running home from the hospital to post the page after the birth, I wanted to get a rough idea what it'd look like ahead of time to get Catherine's ok on the plans.
Just after 1:00 I called her in to look at the page, and she had just finished telling me she liked it when she ran into the bathroom. A few seconds later she told me that her water had broken and I was on the phone with Dr. Wolanski's service. Once he called us back and talked to Catherine, he said that we should labor at home and to call him back once the contractions were regularly 3 minutes apart, or that he would call us at 7 if he hadn't heard from us by then.
Then we called Catherine's parents so they'd know they'd have a granddaughter by sometime that night and I called someone who was going to teach my classes for me that week. I spent the rest of the early afternoon trying to get everything in order for us to be away from home for a couple of days, in between rubbing Catherine's back or feet during a contraction. For a little while just after 3, the contractions were about 4 minutes apart, but then they spaced themselves out again and we kept waiting to call. While Catherine labored, we watched the Knicks narrowly defeat the Sacramento Kings and part of Jaws.
At around 6:00 the contractions were getting very strong and they were right about 3 minutes apart, so we called Dr. Wolanski again. He was just getting out of church and told us to meet him at his office at 6:30 and told Catherine that it seemed like we were still kind of early in the process. By the time Catherine was on the exam table she was having contractions on top of each other. He examined her and asked how far along she thought she was. Catherine said 4 centimeters, hoping not to be too disappointed, and he said, "Nope, you're fully dilated. Can you walk across the street to the hospital, or do we need to drive you?" Catherine said she could walk and we headed over.
We walked into the obstetrics ward at Martha Jefferson right at 7 pm, and there was a group of nurses waiting for us at the doors. As we got into our birthing room, Dr. Wolanski said that Catherine might still have a fair amount of pushing to do. Catherine changed into a gown and got onto the bed, by the time she'd pushed twice, I could see the baby's head, and by 7:15 Ella was born into the world, pink and screaming. She was absolutely beautiful, with no molding of her head and only a few little scratches and red marks.
I got my own hospital bed right next to Catherine's for the two nights we were there. Other than two short trips--once to go post photos on the birth announcement and once to go get a bagle and get the car washed for the trip home from the hopital--I was right there next to Catherine or following Ella to the nursery to watch them measure her and give her her shots the whole time. The nurses and staff at Martha Jefferson were really nice and very flexible. They were willing to put off routine procedures, like the Vitamin K shot and the eye ointment, until as late as possible so we could bond with Ella. For most of our stay, we kept Ella in the room with us, though we did let them take her to the nursery for a few hours each night just so we could get a little extra sleep.
Catherine spent our entire stay in the hospital saying to me, "I can't believe they're gonna let us take her home," and "I can't believe we get to keep her." And I found myself just staring at Ella's face and repeating such profound statements as, "My goodness" and "Look at her big eyes."
I've known for nine months now that we'd be having a little baby sometime about now, and I've seen her picture on the two ultrasounds and heard her heartbeat at each of our doctor's visits, and I've made furniture for her nursery, and I've already read Whitman's "Song of Myself," The Complete Winnie the Pooh, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, and the first few chapters of Fellowship of the Ring to her in the womb, but I am still somehow surprised to find myself a father.
