Being the compassionate and concerned husband I am, I replied groggily, "Are you sure? It's 4:45am."
"Very sure."
Now, being fully awake, I began to walk hurriedly around our bedroom with no particular goal in mind. Rather like a Roomba robotic floor cleaner, I meandered from place to place picking up random items before bumping into a wall, chair, or end table and changing course.
"Would you call my mom please?"
"Sure honey." Ahh. Hard and fast directions. This, I can do.
"Sharon? It's Jeremy. Yeah...hi...Merissa's water just broke and we'd like you to watch the kids."
"Huh? Oh. OK. Do you want to drop them off here?"
"Well, since your house is 20min in the opposite direction from the birthing center, I was hoping you might come here until they wake up." I was comforted to find that my brain was not the only one still in bed.
"Oh. Of course. Sorry. I'll brush my teeth and be right over."
"Jeremy?," Merissa hailed me.
"Mmm?"
"Would you get these bags to the car and grab some extra batteries for the camera while I shower?"
"Absolutely." More solid directives. Perfect. I would seriously be lost without this wonderful woman in my life.
Putting the pre-packed bags into the car, I realized it was snowing heavily. Not only would this make for an interesting drive but backing out of our precipitous driveway is challenging enough with good traction. I had to weigh my options. Do I: (1.) Leave the car where it is making it easier for Merissa to get in. (2.) Drive the car to the top of the hill before any more snow falls—leaving my pregnant laboring wife to navigate the slippery slope on foot. (3.) Go inside, say, "This really isn't the most convenient time,", ask her to home deliver in the bathtub, and go back to bed.
If she didn't have to have a C-section, option 3 might have been the way to go. As it was, I chose option 1.
I returned to my bride, showered, and helped collect a few more items for our stay at the hospital. We were totally ready to go but Sharon's 20min drive had taken over 40min to this point due to the severity of the storm. Merissa called her mom's cell and Sharon assured her she was just minutes away.
Now that kid one and kid two were in good hands, we made our way toward the hospital to deliver kid three.
Snow continued to fall in quarter-sized flakes. Since our house sits at a lower elevation than Sharon’s the roads were not nearly as treacherous but visibility was nil. Picking up speed in our CX-9, the snowflakes looked as though there were coming directly at us. It appeared more like we were making a jump to light speed rather than traveling down HWY 69 in Prescott Valley.
“OK, Sweety. I’ll be your triage nurse until shift change in a couple of hours. Let’s get some information from you.”
Merissa and I were relived to be in the birthing center and eager to meet Daniel. The questions the triage nurse asked were nothing out of the ordinary and Merissa answered them honestly in between contractions of mounting intensity. Now, I say, “answered them honestly,” because that turns out to be a major factor in the rest of the story. And to erase any worry, we didn’t have any trouble answering, “Do you feel safe at home? Do you feel the father of this child will be able to provide reasonable care?” “Ohh…how ever will she answer?! Merissa…please keep up the squeaky clean charade.” As an aside, I was surprised the hospital staff asked those questions in front of me. Who would answer openly in front of an abusive spouse? And—nobody ever asked me if I felt safe at home!!
So here is the question that changed the course of the next 6 days: “Have you had anything to eat or drink within the last 8 hours?”
“Yes,” Merissa replied. “I had a sip of water and a corner of toast.”
“OK. We’re aiming for an 8:30 ‘section’. So, let’s see, you’ll be having this baby in about an hour and a half! I’ll go contact the doctor and anesthesiologist and be right back.”
Sounds pretty firm, right? Not a lot of flexibility in the above statement. We were a little flamboozled when the very same nurse came back into the room and said the surgery had been pushed back to 1:30pm due to Merissa’s testimony that she had eaten a crust of bread. The anesthesiologist was playing this very conservatively and did not want to take any chance Merissa might up-chuck then aspirate tiny particles of bread into her lungs. Merissa was crestfallen. She tried, to no avail, to explain that she had taken the smallest of bites—it was not as if she had strapped on the feeding bag at Golden Corral! To add irony to the situation, she had taken the bread in an attempt to settle her stomach. Oye.
With triage completed (Merissa was found to be pregnant and in labor—shocking, I know), we were admitted and shown to a room that would serve as Mer’s home for the better part of the coming week.
This spacious area was a vast improvement over the room used in the births of our other children. Where previous accommodations were little more than a sleeping pod, we could have easily hosted an arena football game this time around. Each apartment in the newly built birthing center is not only for storing patients but used as the actual birthing room and recovery room for both natural or cesarean deliveries. While there is a decent sized flat-screen television it is positioned in such a way to be at the greatest distance from the patient’s bed and visitor’s couch. The resulting effect renders such a small viewing area that a cohesive picture is not discernible. Alas, we were not exactly in the frame of mind to veg. out.
The next few hours passed with intensifying contractions and the usual hospital rigmarole. Merissa was a champion the entire time. Not only was she having to wait patiently for a pending invasive surgery but was having to endure hours of hard labor while she waited! As if this were not enough, every so often someone would come to check her progress.
I recently had to go the ER to have a few stitches put in my shins after an incident at work. As I stood by my wife during this time before delivery, I tried to comprehend how I would have handled my ER visit if after every few stitches the doctor had to perform a prostate exam. I surely would have either passed out or escaped and tried my own hand at sewing the flesh back together. Merissa is a ROCK! At about 10:15am the nurse came in to check on Mer, yet again.
“Well, you are completely effaced and dilated to 5cm. I will go phone the doctor and ask him how he wants to proceed.”
We tried not to get our hopes up. The nurse quickly returned with good news.
“The doctor wants to deliver now before you progress any further. We should have you prepped in 20-30min.’
The relief on Merissa’s face was instantly visible. Now each contraction was part of a very short countdown, making the pain more bearable. I was given my set of disposable grey-blue scrubs and asked to change into them.
Merissa the Rock of Great Fortitude and Beauty (MRGFB) was wheeled into the operating room while I was given a tall stool to sit outside of the OR doors. One of the nurses gave me the rundown.
“You will be able to join your wife after the spinal is administered and she is fully prepped.”
I sat back and began to get even more excited to meet Daniel. What would he look like compared to Ethan and Ella? How much would he weigh? Would he have hair? As I contemplated such things I became aware of the anesthesiologist searching MRGFB’s spine for landmarks. Despite me being some 20ft away and being outside of the OR, the needle looked formidable. He plunged it in. He drew it out.
Landmark. Plunge. Withdraw. Third time’s a charm? Nope.
Landmark. Plunge. Withdraw.
Now, I am not given to fits of rage. As a point of fact, I am not even one to get frazzled about much. But this?! Something was rising up in me—and it was growing by the second.
I burst through the doors like the protagonist in a western confronting his nemesis in the local saloon.
“Look here,” I growled while baring my teeth, “this is my bride and you are supposed to be a professional. You have one last chance to get it right or I take this here Smith & Wesson and give you a spinal you won’t soon forget!!!”
OK, that last part didn’t actually happen.
Landmark. Plunge. He got it. Ahhhhh...
The S&W was holstered.
Being motioned into the OR, I took my place to the left of Mer’s head and waited for the surgeon to begin his craft.
The mood was, generally, jovial. The doc joked with the nurses. The nurses laughed politely. Then, it all changed. A few succinct orders were bookended by disconcerting silence.
Then I saw something that really concerned me. The doctor actually put his left leg up on the operating table to gain more leverage. I watched what I could see of Merissa’s body jerk and sway under the incredible force the doctor was employing to dislodge Daniel from the womb. Silence further enveloped the room.
The pediatrician shuttled a mass of bloodied blankets away from Merissa and I looked back to the operating table expecting at any moment to hear Daniel’s cry. At first I assumed the pediatrician was merely helping out the team by replacing soiled blankets with clean. With my attention being back on the events occurring around the operating table, I narrowly missed the activity to my left. A tiny pale arm flopped lifelessly out of the blanket heap. My heart and mind were not able to fully comprehend what my eyes were beholding.
“Daniel had been delivered? Why was he not crying? I didn’t get to cut the cord. Where's the, 'yeah! it's a boy!,' from the doctor?” These thoughts and more found answers not to my liking.
I am an EMT by profession and am familiar with certain procedures. Procedures I have used on some of the most intense calls were now being performed—on my son. The pediatrician was performing a sternal rub (make a fist, extend the middle knuckle above the others, apply middle knuckle to sternum, push and rub hard and deep) to try and elicit a pain response from Daniel. I have only used this technique on drunks who could no longer function due to inebriation and on those patients for whom we were about to perform CPR—Daniel was certainly not the former. Breathing for Daniel via a bag-valve-mask and high flow pure oxygen, was one nurse's sole responsibility. By this time Merissa knew something was not quite right but could not see Daniel being worked on from her vantage point. Due to the severity of the situation, I did not really even have time to freak out. My mind was still having a really rough time sorting out what I was witnessing. I calmly told Merissa that Daniel was needing some extra care but was improving. Merissa responded with incredible clarity by asking me to pray with her. Within moments we heard the smallest cough from Daniel at the same moment the pediatrician announced, "We have revival." "Revival"?! Good gravy! "Revival"? I mean, that was good to hear he was back but "revival", to me, means he wasn't here for a bit. Scaaaaarrrryyy!
Merissa boldly asked if I would be allowed to lay my hands on him and pray, to which the response was a surprising, "Yes.". I prayed for a full recovery as they prepped his little warming chariot to go to the "Special Nursery". Yeah. That's what the nurse called it. Merissa wanted to know if she could hold DanDan for a bit and the nurse's response was, "Well, hon. We are going to take Daniel to the Special Nursery and you'll get to see him in a little while." OK. To me?, a "Special Nursery" has lollipop light fixtures, cotton candy pillows, licorice bassinets, and peppermint wallpaper. Now that's a "Special Nursery". Daniel was headed to their version of NICU.
The best guess as to what happened was that Daniel had become lodged in Merissa's pelvis. During the struggle to dislodge him he took his first breath—inhaling amniotic fluid instead of air.
For his first few hours he fought for every single breath as I stood by his bed.
People prayed—hard. Daniel continued to improve. We got to witness some awesome miracles. When his second chest x-ray came back the nurse said she could not believe they were from the same child within a 24 hour period. One of the O.R. nurses sought us out a couple of days later and told us she began to intercede for Daniel and us the second she saw him delivered from the womb. The "Special Nursery" nurse we had for the majority of our stay was a strong Christian woman who, along with her husband, lifted Daniel up daily in prayer.
The Lord got to some places in Merissa's any my heart that may have been ignored had we not gone through this trial.
Daniel, a living breathing testimony to the facts that God answers prayer and still works miracles, was one month old on Tuesday.
“OK, Sweety. I’ll be your triage nurse until shift change in a couple of hours. Let’s get some information from you.”
Merissa and I were relived to be in the birthing center and eager to meet Daniel. The questions the triage nurse asked were nothing out of the ordinary and Merissa answered them honestly in between contractions of mounting intensity. Now, I say, “answered them honestly,” because that turns out to be a major factor in the rest of the story. And to erase any worry, we didn’t have any trouble answering, “Do you feel safe at home? Do you feel the father of this child will be able to provide reasonable care?” “Ohh…how ever will she answer?! Merissa…please keep up the squeaky clean charade.” As an aside, I was surprised the hospital staff asked those questions in front of me. Who would answer openly in front of an abusive spouse? And—nobody ever asked me if I felt safe at home!!
So here is the question that changed the course of the next 6 days: “Have you had anything to eat or drink within the last 8 hours?”
“Yes,” Merissa replied. “I had a sip of water and a corner of toast.”
“OK. We’re aiming for an 8:30 ‘section’. So, let’s see, you’ll be having this baby in about an hour and a half! I’ll go contact the doctor and anesthesiologist and be right back.”
Sounds pretty firm, right? Not a lot of flexibility in the above statement. We were a little flamboozled when the very same nurse came back into the room and said the surgery had been pushed back to 1:30pm due to Merissa’s testimony that she had eaten a crust of bread. The anesthesiologist was playing this very conservatively and did not want to take any chance Merissa might up-chuck then aspirate tiny particles of bread into her lungs. Merissa was crestfallen. She tried, to no avail, to explain that she had taken the smallest of bites—it was not as if she had strapped on the feeding bag at Golden Corral! To add irony to the situation, she had taken the bread in an attempt to settle her stomach. Oye.
With triage completed (Merissa was found to be pregnant and in labor—shocking, I know), we were admitted and shown to a room that would serve as Mer’s home for the better part of the coming week.
This spacious area was a vast improvement over the room used in the births of our other children. Where previous accommodations were little more than a sleeping pod, we could have easily hosted an arena football game this time around. Each apartment in the newly built birthing center is not only for storing patients but used as the actual birthing room and recovery room for both natural or cesarean deliveries. While there is a decent sized flat-screen television it is positioned in such a way to be at the greatest distance from the patient’s bed and visitor’s couch. The resulting effect renders such a small viewing area that a cohesive picture is not discernible. Alas, we were not exactly in the frame of mind to veg. out.
The next few hours passed with intensifying contractions and the usual hospital rigmarole. Merissa was a champion the entire time. Not only was she having to wait patiently for a pending invasive surgery but was having to endure hours of hard labor while she waited! As if this were not enough, every so often someone would come to check her progress.
I recently had to go the ER to have a few stitches put in my shins after an incident at work. As I stood by my wife during this time before delivery, I tried to comprehend how I would have handled my ER visit if after every few stitches the doctor had to perform a prostate exam. I surely would have either passed out or escaped and tried my own hand at sewing the flesh back together. Merissa is a ROCK! At about 10:15am the nurse came in to check on Mer, yet again.
“Well, you are completely effaced and dilated to 5cm. I will go phone the doctor and ask him how he wants to proceed.”
We tried not to get our hopes up. The nurse quickly returned with good news.
“The doctor wants to deliver now before you progress any further. We should have you prepped in 20-30min.’
The relief on Merissa’s face was instantly visible. Now each contraction was part of a very short countdown, making the pain more bearable. I was given my set of disposable grey-blue scrubs and asked to change into them.
Merissa the Rock of Great Fortitude and Beauty (MRGFB) was wheeled into the operating room while I was given a tall stool to sit outside of the OR doors. One of the nurses gave me the rundown.
“You will be able to join your wife after the spinal is administered and she is fully prepped.”
I sat back and began to get even more excited to meet Daniel. What would he look like compared to Ethan and Ella? How much would he weigh? Would he have hair? As I contemplated such things I became aware of the anesthesiologist searching MRGFB’s spine for landmarks. Despite me being some 20ft away and being outside of the OR, the needle looked formidable. He plunged it in. He drew it out.
Landmark. Plunge. Withdraw. Third time’s a charm? Nope.
Landmark. Plunge. Withdraw.
Now, I am not given to fits of rage. As a point of fact, I am not even one to get frazzled about much. But this?! Something was rising up in me—and it was growing by the second.
I burst through the doors like the protagonist in a western confronting his nemesis in the local saloon.
“Look here,” I growled while baring my teeth, “this is my bride and you are supposed to be a professional. You have one last chance to get it right or I take this here Smith & Wesson and give you a spinal you won’t soon forget!!!”
OK, that last part didn’t actually happen.
Landmark. Plunge. He got it. Ahhhhh...
The S&W was holstered.
Being motioned into the OR, I took my place to the left of Mer’s head and waited for the surgeon to begin his craft.
The mood was, generally, jovial. The doc joked with the nurses. The nurses laughed politely. Then, it all changed. A few succinct orders were bookended by disconcerting silence.
Then I saw something that really concerned me. The doctor actually put his left leg up on the operating table to gain more leverage. I watched what I could see of Merissa’s body jerk and sway under the incredible force the doctor was employing to dislodge Daniel from the womb. Silence further enveloped the room.
The pediatrician shuttled a mass of bloodied blankets away from Merissa and I looked back to the operating table expecting at any moment to hear Daniel’s cry. At first I assumed the pediatrician was merely helping out the team by replacing soiled blankets with clean. With my attention being back on the events occurring around the operating table, I narrowly missed the activity to my left. A tiny pale arm flopped lifelessly out of the blanket heap. My heart and mind were not able to fully comprehend what my eyes were beholding.
“Daniel had been delivered? Why was he not crying? I didn’t get to cut the cord. Where's the, 'yeah! it's a boy!,' from the doctor?” These thoughts and more found answers not to my liking.
I am an EMT by profession and am familiar with certain procedures. Procedures I have used on some of the most intense calls were now being performed—on my son. The pediatrician was performing a sternal rub (make a fist, extend the middle knuckle above the others, apply middle knuckle to sternum, push and rub hard and deep) to try and elicit a pain response from Daniel. I have only used this technique on drunks who could no longer function due to inebriation and on those patients for whom we were about to perform CPR—Daniel was certainly not the former. Breathing for Daniel via a bag-valve-mask and high flow pure oxygen, was one nurse's sole responsibility. By this time Merissa knew something was not quite right but could not see Daniel being worked on from her vantage point. Due to the severity of the situation, I did not really even have time to freak out. My mind was still having a really rough time sorting out what I was witnessing. I calmly told Merissa that Daniel was needing some extra care but was improving. Merissa responded with incredible clarity by asking me to pray with her. Within moments we heard the smallest cough from Daniel at the same moment the pediatrician announced, "We have revival." "Revival"?! Good gravy! "Revival"? I mean, that was good to hear he was back but "revival", to me, means he wasn't here for a bit. Scaaaaarrrryyy!
Merissa boldly asked if I would be allowed to lay my hands on him and pray, to which the response was a surprising, "Yes.". I prayed for a full recovery as they prepped his little warming chariot to go to the "Special Nursery". Yeah. That's what the nurse called it. Merissa wanted to know if she could hold DanDan for a bit and the nurse's response was, "Well, hon. We are going to take Daniel to the Special Nursery and you'll get to see him in a little while." OK. To me?, a "Special Nursery" has lollipop light fixtures, cotton candy pillows, licorice bassinets, and peppermint wallpaper. Now that's a "Special Nursery". Daniel was headed to their version of NICU.
The best guess as to what happened was that Daniel had become lodged in Merissa's pelvis. During the struggle to dislodge him he took his first breath—inhaling amniotic fluid instead of air.
For his first few hours he fought for every single breath as I stood by his bed.
People prayed—hard. Daniel continued to improve. We got to witness some awesome miracles. When his second chest x-ray came back the nurse said she could not believe they were from the same child within a 24 hour period. One of the O.R. nurses sought us out a couple of days later and told us she began to intercede for Daniel and us the second she saw him delivered from the womb. The "Special Nursery" nurse we had for the majority of our stay was a strong Christian woman who, along with her husband, lifted Daniel up daily in prayer.
The Lord got to some places in Merissa's any my heart that may have been ignored had we not gone through this trial.
Daniel, a living breathing testimony to the facts that God answers prayer and still works miracles, was one month old on Tuesday.
