Shelby's Birth Story: Nick's Version

Sara has been wanting me to write my side of Shelby’s birth story for a while, but I think she’ll probably be pretty disappointed.  The truth is, I feel like I avoided the hospital for a lot of the time that Sara was there.  It’s not that I don’t like hospitals or was uncomfortable with my wife being hooked up to four or five machines telling us what was wrong.  Mostly, I was just being selfish.  For spring break, I planned on finishing one of the major papers I had to write, and get half way through my other.  We ended up staying somewhere without internet, so I lost a week of research.  The next week, I spent all of Sara’s birthday trying to catch up; forgetting to even wish her happy birthday until 20 minutes before it was over.  The next week, Sara spent her first night in the hospital.  I didn’t believe we would end up going through the same experience with Shelby that we went through with Shasta, so I didn’t concern myself with staying in the hospital.  The next day, Sara was sent home on bed rest for the balance of the pregnancy.  I spent most of the weekend that was supposed to be dedicated to research catch up, trying to figure out who could take care of Shasta and how to get her there.  I spent as much time with Shasta as I could, and ended up getting further and further behind.  I was also trying to keep from burning through all my PTO at work because I had eaten up a fair amount of our savings when I was on disability with a broken hand.  By the time Sara went in for her follow up check up, I had expected no changes, and she would  be back home with me scrambling to take care of Shasta; but the news was not that good, so things got more difficult.  I spent even less time at the hospital, trying to be with Shasta and get my homework to a point where I could turn it in and not fail the classes.  I would have a plan to take Shasta to visit her mom, and we could spend 30 minutes or so at the hospital, but it usually didn’t work out, mostly because Shasta wanted to cuddle with her mom, but was too rambunctious to avoid hurting Sara, so we usually only stayed about half the time.  

On the morning when Shelby was born, I had taken Shasta to the hospital on my way to dropping her off at my sister’s house.  I had a test to take, and had studied about half as hard as I needed to.  The nurse came in on my heels to inform us that we were having the baby that day, and she made it sound like it was happening right away.  I once again went into scramble mode, trying to get Kaleena to come get Shasta (my sister’s toilet had flooded all over her, and she was trying to get Meili water off of her).  I eventually got a hold of our relief society president who hurried over to pick up Shasta, but by that time, Kaleena was only a few minutes away, so I asked Stephanie to sit with Shasta for a few minutes until Kaleena showed up.  I hurried back up, still believing we were only minutes away from having a baby.  

 But we waited.  

 So I rushed down and made sure Kaleena had gotten there, gave her the keys to my car so she could get the car seat, and then hurried back up.  

 But we waited.  

 After a while, it became clear that this wasn’t happening right away.  The ultrasound tech came in, took his time doing whatever he was doing.  On and on it went.  I emailed my teacher to tell him why I wasn’t in class and he kindly allowed me to take the test at a later date.  I was hoping to get a shower in, but I had given away my car keys and was stuck until Kaleena could return to give them back to me.  We waited until late in the afternoon; apparently we were at the bottom of a long list of c-sections performed that day.  By the time it finally happened, I had been in and out of the delivery area a dozen times, and it was always inconvenient, so it was almost calming putting on scrubs and feeling all important walking into the operating room and sitting down next to Sara to finally get this done, which is ironic considering it was almost eight weeks early. 

The actual delivery process was mostly how Sara described it.  I had two jobs; hold Sara’s hand and take pictures of Shelby.  Of course, a couple of days before Shelby was born, I had taken the memory stick out of the camera and put it in my back pocket.  This apparently causes the memory stick to want to be formatted, and you can’t argue with a memory stick.  I hadn’t come up with my brilliant idea to switch the memory stick out of the video camera into our regular camera yet, so going into the delivery, I already felt like a tourist, being forced to take pictures with my below average phone.  Then putting on my scrubs and feeling like I had missed my true calling in life being a doctor (I went to school long enough to be one), it was almost a little frustrating being stored behind the curtain while the wizard pulled the baby out of his magic bag.  I tried peeking over the curtain a couple of times, once to see all the fuss with the uterus, the other time was to see what time Shelby had been born.  Both times, I felt like a mouse emerging from a hole to find cheese and seeing the humans start freaking out at my appearance.  The correct chronology for the events of the birth is a little hazy; I remember the cleaning, and the pinching, and the dropping blood pressure.  How ironic that the reason we were in this predicament was because of high blood pressure, and to see Sara’s blood pressure dropping exponentially.  That was probably the scariest part for me, but the anesthesiologist seemed unconcerned, so I tried not to worry.  The longest part of the surgery was the cleaning up and stitching up, so it felt like I sat a long time, just waiting to be excused. 

I went to see Shelby right away, which is just as uncomfortable as it was with Shasta.  There were fewer people hovering around her, and people seemed to be much calmer.  Doctor Horkley had been there early Monday morning, so he was once again not there, so I got the explanation of everything they were putting on and in Shelby from his associate and gave permission for them to insert the permanent iv line into her umbilical cord (which was a little frustrating because it limited the access we had to her.  When they tried with Shasta, they couldn’t get it in, which I think was a blessing for us the first time around).  I was watching desperately for my parents to arrive so that I could hijack my mom’s camera and take some good pictures of our baby, but I abandoned them to get to spend some time with Sara in recovery.  She was a lot better.  With Shasta, the nurse told me that Sara may love me, but she doesn’t like me much right now.  This time, Sara was mostly with it, in significantly less pain, and aware of all that was going on.  I was able to talk to her, show her pictures, and provide some comfort.  All in all, it was a much smoother process, or so it seemed. 

Originally, we felt like Shelby was progressing a lot faster.  She had oxygen out two hours after her birth and they quickly bumped up her feedings, but she eventually stopped tolerating her feedings and went back on oxygen.  I was thinking it would take longer because of that for her to leave the hospital, so as I prepared to barricade myself in my room to finish my final paper and get through the last week of school, it was pretty frustrating to find out that Shelby was coming home at the exact wrong time, especially because she was coming home still on oxygen.  My kids did their best to try to keep me in school longer. 

Despite being a veteran father of almost two years, I felt, when the time came, that I was a very unprepared (and perhaps a little unwilling) father.  In truth, I have been going through a lot of negative emotion surrounding this baby, and I need to do better.  I really wanted to have a son this time; not because I don’t love Shasta or that I’m against having girls.  I just felt like if we had a boy, then I would be completely okay with not having any other children.  I’m 75% sure that Sara won’t want to risk having any more children, and while I’m not against adopting a son, I would still really like to have one of our own.  But female children are healthier, so if this is how we’re going to bring children into this world, then maybe it’s best that we only have girls.  The timing was about the worst it could have been, and each time I thought we had passed the roughest part, it got worse.  I was less patient with Sara, and her complications this time, and probably lost my patience with Shasta more than she deserved.

Although I sound a little negative in this post, the truth is I love Shelby a little more every day and she’s worth every second of stress I’ve had getting to this point.  And I doubt this is the last time her plans will get in the way of my plans.  I’m sure most fathers go through these kinds of emotions; I’m certainly not the only one with problems.  Babies are amazing things, no matter how they come.  I used to be one, and I used to be a pain.  I wonder how my father felt when I was born.  I was supposed to be a girl, but I think it was a relief when I came out a boy.  We also received more help than we deserved from many people who didn’t need to help.