Weida's Blog

Keep an eye on this post, I'm working on uploading the pics and the story as I get time...

Right now, Gavin is asleep on my chest snoring away. I remembered I still don't have a pic of the guy up yet. I think I'm done for the night, but, here is a pic from Friday, when Miles met his brother.



Sunday, 1:00pm: Julie and Gavin are home! The weather is beautiful, Miles is excited to have Gavin here, he's showing him all his toys. What a great day. Julie is able to walk around, but there's still some pain to deal with. I'm still working on the blog updates, hopefully I'll get some time tonight to finish up while the events are still fresh in my mind.


Saturday, 3:26 pm: Someone please contact Doc Brown. I believe the flux capacitor has been installed backwards. This place is a time vortex! It feels like I've been here at the hospital for 2 hours, but it's been more like 6. I'm not sure what's going on here, but in 3 dimensions, Julie and Gavin are doing good. Julie got a shower and the medicine appears to be working well. We're planning on taking a walk once Gavin decides to take another nap. We got to have a Skype call with Grandma Susie. So things are getting better. Julie's going to stay here one more night and if things go according to plan, she will be home tomorrow night.

So, here we are in the recovery room, waiting for Gavin.


It took another hour after they got Gavin out until they had Julie ready to leave the OR. When we got to the recovery room, we were told that we would have to wait here for 2 hours, Gavin had to stay in the NICU for 1:30. I was allowed to go to visit the NICU. I took a picture to take back to Julie to show her that he was OK. She was still having trouble believing that he was not in distress. I went in, and found him. He was doing fine. They just had him hooked up to a lot of equipment, an IV in his tiny hand, a temp monitor on his foot, a bunch of electrodes on his chest or the heart rate. In spite of all this, I asked if I could hold him, and they let me. So armed with the picture and the fact that I held him, I went back to recovery and told Julie, and showed her this:

I could see the relief on her face immediately. Finally, an hour and a half after we got out of the OR, they brought Gavin in to us in the recovery room.



It was a long, drawn out path between getting to the hospital and having him in our arms. 17 hours. Uncontrolled pain. Neo-natal intensive care unit. The dude didn't make an easy entrance to the world, but he's here, and that's what matters.

Just after midnight, we got to relax back in our room and try to get some sleep. The next day, Miles came and met his new brother.

When we got to the OR, I was told I need to put on my clean suit and they would come right back and get me. I quickly put the things on, thinking in less than a minute I'd get to be back beside Julie, holding her hand, comforting her through the moaning pain, and continuing the labor.

Instead, this is what I got:

I'm sure you've noticed the lack of a clock. That's because in the rush to the OR, I forgot my watch. I'm not sure the exact times of things, so I have to guess here, but I'll do my best.

I stared at this door for about 15 minutes. In the time I was there I saw a lot of people in scrubs rushing in and out, including our doctor (who we had not seen all day because he was in Canton all day. In fact, we were scheduled to meet with him in Canton for what we presumed would have been our last doctors visit, but Gavin decided to start the show instead of a measly doctor visit.) He rushed in the door before he saw me, so I didn't get any information. So I sat in my clean suit, staring at these locked doors, wondering what was happening. When he finally came out the door, he saw me, and smiled, but I could see the concern on his face. He told me that he had talked with Julie, and that she had agreed to a c-section. He went on that he just arrived and learned that during some of the contractions the baby's heart rate had been dropping below 100 bpm and that the baby was already quite stressed, he didn't think that we should continue to labor for the safety of the baby. Not much you can say about that, so I agreed. I would have to wait outside for "a little longer" while they prepared for the c-section. Then, the doc disappeared behind those doors.

So, there I was again, alone in the hallway with nothing but my thoughts. The last I had seen Julie, she was in a lot of pain and the anesthesiologist seemed unable to help. I couldn't stop pacing the hallway. I was rubbing my hands together. I wanted to bust through the doors and go find Julie, hold her hand, and tell her everything is OK.

I forced myself to calm down. There's nothing I can do to make things any better right now; it's all in their hands now. I sat down in a chair and set my hands to my side. That's when my mind went dark. It was terrible, I started thinking the worst. I don't know why, but I just kept imagining Julie screaming out in pain, the doctors not knowing what to do about it, or something going wrong with the baby, or other things. Then, suddenly, there was a magical "bling" sound.

The camera in my pocket sprang to life as if to say, "uh, remember me? You're supposed to be documenting your experience." So, I took a Seng-style self portrait. I don't know how long I stared at those locked doors, but it seemed like an hour.

I finally got in to the OR. They explained to me that when they take me in, I'll walk past Julie's feet and around the long way to a stool they have placed by her head. Don't touch anything blue. They opened up the door to the OR and it was a white, brightly lit room with blue paper draped all around. There was anywhere between 50-60 doctors, nurses and other highly compensated medical professionals in the room. OK, maybe more like 10, but I was struck by the size of the team they had fielded. Somewhere in the middle of the sea of blue was Julie's body from the neck down. I purposely did not look into the sea in case they had already started the procedure. The scientist in me wanted to look, but under the circumstances, this is not the right time to experiment with my ability to withstand seeing my wife's insides on the outside. I looked straight ahead at the nurse leading me to my stool. There was a curtain of blue that I walked around and found Julie's head.

This is what I saw. Julie's head and arms are on my side of the curtain. I can talk to her and hold her hands during the operation to remove the baby from her abdomen. The anesthesiologist that placed the epidural is standing directly behind me along with a second anesthesiologist. Julie has tears running down her face, I ask her if she's OK and she replies that she's just overwhelmed. I held her hand and started back on the relaxation techniques. Take a deep breath. Relax your shoulders. Her arms are shaking violently. "Try to relax your arms." She says "Ooooowwww" a lot, and the docs behind me ask her if it is pain or pressure she's feeling. She replies pain, it feels sharp. The docs look at each other and whisper some stuff, then one injects something into Julies IV, after coaxing her hand to relax and reduce the shaking. It subsides. I'm still talking to her, trying to get her to relax. More cries out. More injection into the IV. This went on for what seemed like forever, a cycle of Julie lying kind of still, to her arms flying up in the air and her whole body shaking the whole table. I think the doctors had to stop when this was happening.

Pretty soon, I overheard the docs behind me saying something about "she'll have minor retrograde amnesia, she won't remember a lot of what is happening...." Some other mumbled stuff, and they pull out the air mask. The doc with the mask tells Julie to think about happy things as she holds the mask. The other one tells me that Julie may say some odd things, just ignore it, it's the medication. They seemed to repeat giving her the gas and the shaking and crying out and tears. It was killing me to sit there and watch it, but I couldn't do anything but try to help. So, when they gave her the gas and asked her to think happy thoughts, I started talking about things from our honeymoon in Hawaii. I said think about the beach, laying in the warm sun, cooling off in the surf. Think about sitting down to a dinner outside with white wine, and a great fish dinner. I couldn't understand most of what Julie said with the mask (not that it was sensible anyway), but after I talked about the dinner, I saw her smile and she said "with scallops?" I said, yeah, with lots of tasty scallops. Julie said "mmmmm. Scallops. (lip smacks)".

On the other side of the curtain, I can hear the voice of our doctor and the others. Occasionally, someone will call out name of some medical equipment: "Gloves!" "1...2....3.4.5...6". I presume this is to prevent leaving equipment on the wrong side of the skin.

The worst about all of this was knowing that Julie was feeling a lot of pain, and it seemed like the docs weren't sure what else they could do. They gave her the gas, and it made Julie smile, but her arms would still fly up and she would shake, and even with the smile on her face, tears were still falling out from under the mask.

Then, they said he was out. I didn't hear any crying. The docs shouted out that he was out and he was OK. Shortly after that, some kind of alarm went off. Not the beeping kind of alarm. The long, uninterrupted tone kind of alarm. Julie heard this and became really upset. She thought it was a flatline. The realized she was upset, and held Gavin up over the curtain so we could see. What I saw was probably the most surreal thing I've even seen. He had really dark hair. His skin was grayish white, with spots of red here and there on him. He was moving, but not crying. My mind said, you know this is normal, but combined with all the stress, it didn't matter what I had read. But, I was overcome with emotion, and cried in happiness and fear and empathy and asked Julie if she saw him. I couldn't hear her answer.

They took him to get him cleaned up, and a nurse came around the curtain and explained to me that because Julie's temperature spiked just before they removed Gavin, and as a precaution, they needed to take him to the NICU. I had to sign a consent form that would let them do what they felt was needed. Then she asked me if I would like to come over to meet him. I couldn't leave Julie after all this. She said she would get him cleaned up and bring him by for us to see, and then offered to take my camera over and get some pictures.

Well, you know the outcome of all this ends happy. I feel like I've gone on way too long with this already. But yes, here you can see the cone head. No it does not still look like this! Here he is just before they took him to the NICU.

6:50 pm: As you can see from the look on her face, the medication did not last. Things slowly went from "wait it out", to the same level of pain as before the medication. The anesthesiologist was perplexed. They tried different positions during the contractions, we tried our relaxation techniques. Nothing worked. Julie was in serious pain, and now everyone was concerned.



7:20 pm: 30 minutes later, we're in route to the operating room. The doctors wanted Julie to continue to labor there because with the continual contractions, the baby's heart rate was dropping below 100 bpm. Also, her temperature was over 100 F, and due to the pain situation. If something were to happen, she's already in the operating room in case there's a need for an emergency ceasarian section. Only one support person is allowed in the operating room, so unfortunately Julie's mother, Linda, would have to stay behind. I would be allowed in to help. So the plan is we'll move her down there and continue where we left off in the O.R.. Julie is yelling out in pain occasionally as she is wheeled on her bed through the halls. I'm following at a trot to keep up with the quick moving medical staff. I'm in back, so I called out to Julie "I'm still here, Julie, I'm coming with you!" I'm starting to get nervous when I realize how quickly we are moving through the halls. At least I'll be by her side to be with her.

Julie got a little sleepy for some reason. Since not a lot was going on and the contractions were not real strong still, she laid down to try to sleep through a little of it. In this picture, she's hooked up to the monitoring machine that tracks the timing of the contractions and the heart rate of the baby. The contractions are coming around 4 minutes apart still. Things are about to change.



Yeah, it looks like the same picture, but this was really taken 3 hours and 20 minutes later. A lot has happened in this time. The contractions got stronger. The labor was in her back. And they were coming one on top of another. With barely two minutes between contractions, and some contractions lasting 2-4 minutes alone, the pain was too much to bear. There were a lot of concerned nurses and doctors around, they were all ready to administer pain medication, but Julie held off as long as possible. Through tears, she asked for an epidural, which would block feeling in her abdomen.

If you know Julie and you talked to her before the labor, she was set on having a natural birth because it's better for the baby, and the recovery is much shorter for the mom (thus she can get her running shoes back on sooner!). Unfortunately, this is not the way it was going to work out. We tried every trick we could, but the back pain was too much, too often. With the epidural, Julie could sit back and have a conversation, hardly feeling the contractions. We just needed to wait it out.

Or so we thought....

Let's get things moving!


Here, Julie was roaming the halls, trying to get gravity to help us out. I asked her if she wanted to do some jumping jacks. She was not amused.

She was, however, hungry. We asked the nurse if she could get some food, she said "Sure. This is probably the last chance you're going to have, so you should order what you want. The doctor OK'd a light breakfast. You can define light however you want." Julie could not contain her elation as she perused the room service menu and selected pancakes with syrup and sausage.

About 20 minutes later, the attending came in and said, "Good news! You're approved for a light breakfast, so if you're hungry, go ahead and order something light. Just don't get anything heavy like uh... pancakes and sausage."

Julie: (furtive look at Jason)
Jason: (furtive look at Julie)
Attending: "blah... blah bla blahh bla..."
Julie, after 10 seconds hesitation: "Uh, that's exactly what I ordered."


Mmmm. Pancakes and sausage taste so much better when it's naughty. Apparently the guilty eat standing up, so watch out if you see someone standing and eating a slice of pizza. They probably just dropped a deuce in the back seat of your car.

Oh yeah, I said I was going to stay on topic. At this point, still not much going on, hence the rich array of photographs.

After the exam, Julie is at 1 cm (out of 10). Her disappointment is evidence that she thought she was much further along than that. But they assigned us a labor room (with a tub) and we headed up. Still smiles all around. Time is 7:15 am. Not a whole lot going on, so I decided to take care of the car situation. We parked in the "triage" parking area, but you're supposed to move as soon as you can. So, no time better than now. Snapped a picture before I left.



I went down to the desk to get my hospital ID, and as she handed my id to me, the attendant said, and I remember this distinctly: "Be sure to get your blue ticket, you'll need a stamp to cap your parking fee at 2 dollars". I went down to the parking area to get my keys and they looked at me like I was crazy.
Maltrained College Dude: "Are you leaving now, sir?"
Me: "No, I just got here."
MCD: "Do you have your ticket?"
Me: "They told me upstairs that you would give me a blue ticket. I just want to move my car to the regular parking."
MCD: "I just gave your ticket to the desk upstairs."
Me: "She just told me to come down here and make sure I get my blue ticket."
MCD: "So, are you leaving?"
Me (incapable of hiding my disdain for this situation): "No, my wife is in labor upstairs. I just want to move the car like they told us we would have to do and get our bag."
MCD: "Well, I can take you to your car."
Me: "My car is 10 feet outside this door. I can make it."
MCD (looks at me like I have 2 heads): "Your car is in the parking garage. The Malibu, right?"
Me: "Yeah. So, someone moved my car for me?"
MCD: "We're the valet. It's in a valet spot, and I just gave your ticket to the girl upstairs."
Me: "OK, sure, whatever. I just want to get my bag. If the car is in a good spot that's fine. They just said to make sure I get the blue ticket stamped to cap my rate at 2 dollars."
MCD: "Oh, there's no charge. It's free. Only... unless... you want to tip... or something."
Me (rolls eyes)

Geez man, we came to hospital for orientation and they told us we need to park and then move the car when we get a chance. The ID attendant told me the same thing. I went down one floor and it's like a different planet. Maybe someone decided to spontaneously set up a volunteer valet service downstairs. I don't know. But, thanks for indulging my need to vent. When I got back to the room, I saw this on the table:

Me: "Arrrrggghhhh!"

Anyway, enough of my minor annoyances. Back to the case at hand.


There still wasn't a whole lot happening at this point. Julie thought she might lay down and take a little nap...

Coming up: Part 4 - The Parking Garage and the Squeegee.

Just kidding. Part 3 is coming up. I'll try to stay on topic next time.

3:00 am. Yep, that's what time Julie woke me up and told me her water broke. Very calmly, we discussed what we should do. Do we go to the hospital, wait a little bit; what did the doctor say? We decided to take our time and get things ready. In the back of my groggy mind I kept thinking, "We've got 2 weeks until the due date. This is probably a false alarm, so keep things cool, Weida." For good measure, I grabbed the camera and decided, if this was the real deal, I want to take as many pictures as I can so I can remember what happened. So, you'll see a lot of the clocks we saw throughout the day.
Yeah, it's blurry, just like my eyes were at the time.

Here we are after we got our stuff together. Miles was still sleeping.




We went downstairs and fixed some breakfast. I made coffee. With freshly ground beans. Ahh, now I feel a little more human. Julie is remarkably calm about all this. It does not seem much different from any other morning.

At quarter to 5, I woke up Miles and told him Sphygsy was on the way.
Miles: "I wanna go back to sleep."
Me: "But sphygsy is ready to come out today. Mommy and Daddy have to go to the hospital, and you're going to James' house."
Miles: "Oh! James' house? OK."

We loaded up the Malibu, and headed to James' house. Of course, James was not awake at this obscene hour, so when we got to his house, James' mom and dad met us at the door. Miles was great, it was just the right balance of not wanting us to leave him at first (so we felt loved), and letting us leave and making the best of the situation (so we could get on the road). We're really lucky that Lisa and Steve (James' mom and dad) were so nice to let us drop Miles by. In the car on the way, we called my mom to let her know today was the day. She was... estatic. If you know my mom, you know what I mean. :-)

Got to the hospital, the drive was uneventful. Julie was all smiles (so was I).

7:00 am, we're in the "Birth center triage" room. Julie's got her gown on; they check out the vitals of mom and baby, things are looking great.


mmm. water.

To be continued....

We took Miles to the Build-a-Bear Workshop today so that he could make a present for his baby brother, Sphygsy. (Of course, that is only a nickname. We're not that weird.) He also got to make a stuffed animal for himself.

He chose to get a bear for Sphygsy. Here he is hugging it to make sure it's stuffed adequately.


He chose a dog for himself. Here he is putting the dog's heart inside before the girl stitches it up.


After he made them, he got to name them. His dog is named I love you, Doggie. Sphygsy's bear is named I love you, Bear. Jason and I tried to encourage other names, but that's what he wanted. What can you do?