The wait for surgery seemed to take an eternity. Miyo agonized over how the
c-section was going to feel, and Roger did his best to calm her down. This wasn't
what either of them had counted on.
Finally they wheeled Miyo down to the operating area. Roger couldn't follow her
in right away. They gave her the epidural while Roger waited outside. That, by
far, was the most painful part of the whole ordeal. Nurses gave Miyo their hands
to squeeze so she wouldn't jolt away from the pain, and she's pretty sure the
nurses regretted it.
After everything was set up and ready to go, Roger came in. He could tell Miyo
was out of it, and she was ... mostly from the physical shock and fear. She was
shaking uncontrollably! He talked to her about what they would do when they got
home, what his mother would say when we finally took the baby home. Miyo wondered
what the baby's voice would sound like. The last few weeks of the pregnancy,
Miyo wondered a lot about the baby's voice and what it would sound like. That's
the part she looked forward to the most ...
Pretty soon, Roger and Miyo heard the doctors and nurses taking bets on the baby's
weight. "This looks like a big one," one of the doctors said. "Oh! There's an
arm! Nope, it went back in ..." "Is it Caleb? Or is it Emma?"
"It's Caleb!" "He grabbed my stethescope!" "He's BIG! Quick, how much does he
weigh?"
It was happy chaos in the room. And Caleb let out his first cry, which was the
most perfect-sounding cry to his parents. Sad enough sounding for us to want to
run over and help him, and not annoying at all.
Roger went over to meet Caleb. He returned to Miyo's side to report on Caleb's
weight and size. "He's big!" Roger said. He then left the operating room to be with
Caleb in the nursery as the doctors and nurses cleaned Caleb up, took his
measurements and ran all the tests they usually do.
Miyo lay paralyzed in the operating room, getting sewed up and anxious to see this baby whose voice
was the only thing she'd been introduced to so far ... She got
"Happy Drugs" though, to calm her down, so it wasn't all bad.
Read the conclusion of the birth
story.
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