Part 3 - "The Birth"

On Friday night we were admitted into the hospital, into a private birthing room, with the hope that Angela's contractions would progress and that the baby would start dropping. As the night turned to morning, it was pretty clear that nothing was happening. Another day brought another OB, and this time the visit was quite short. Dr. Namis simply came in the room, sat down beside Angela, and said that he was recommending a C-Section. To his credit, he asked Angela what she would like to do, but at that point the choice seemed pretty clear. She consented to the C-Section and it was scheduled for "around 2pm".

We had a few hours to mentally prepare, and our midwife Carol came in and talked us through the entire process so that we would know what to expect. The maternity ward is split into two sides: The natural birth side, and the C-Section recovery side. As 2pm approached, I moved all of our stuff into another room on the C-Section side, right across the hall from the OR. Then I changed into my scrubs and went to sit in the hall to wait to be called into the operating room.

Eventually, the finished prepping Angela for the surgery, and Carol came to retrieve me from the hallway. I held Angela's hand and whispered reassuring words to her as Dr. Namis performed the operation. The operating table was set up with a large screen so that neither Angela nor I could see anything that was going on.

After a few short minutes, I heard Dr. Namis say that the umbilical cord was wrapped around the baby's neck, but then he said that it was loose enough that he could simply loop it over the baby's head without cutting it. However, that probably explains why the baby didn't drop in the two days that we were trying to induce labour. It also reassured us that we made the right decision to go for a C-Section, since we probably would have had an emergency C-Section anyway.

Very shortly after I heard the comment about the cord, I heard the stereotypical sound of a baby crying! At that point, I left Angela and went over to the examination area where Carol was doing all of the newborn tests and measurements. At the time of birth, Aila weighed 9 pounds, and was 53.5 cm tall. She also could scream quite loud, and fought Carol every step of the way through the examination. Carol wrote a single comment on the baby's information sheet: "Vigorous!" Aila was also born with red hair, which at first was quite striking, but has since turned to more of a blond colour.

After Carol let me symbolically cut the cord, I took the as-yet-unnamed baby over to see Angela briefly as she was being patched up. Mom and baby said hello to each other for the first time, and then I had to leave the OR.

Stay tuned for Part 4!

Technical details: This photo was taken with my 5D Mark II + Tamron 28-75mm at 75mm, ISO 6400, f/2.8 for 1/16th of a second.

Comments

Aw...it's a baby!!!  

In my completely unbiased opinion, she is definitely one of the top 10 cutest
babies EVER.

Such a beautiful baby - she looks like Angela I think

She seems to have Angela's mouth and chin.  Angela thinks she has my eyes, but
it is hard to tell at this angle.  We're not really sure where her nose came
from yet.  :)

her nose looks like Maggie's nose did, then it sort of flattened out.  It might
be from our side of the family.

Adorable baby! I think "Vigorous" is a good adjective to be associated with :)

Actually, I take back what I said about the nose.  In retrospect, it is clearly
Angela's nose, as you can see from this picture of Angela:

Picture

I just emailed you some photos for more comparison fun for you and Angela.