You may have noticed I haven’t been blogging as much of late – I also haven’t been sleeping or eating right or working because my wife and I are very happy to have welcomed our first child, Gracelynn to the world. Beforehand, I took every single baby class, even the breastfeeding one to prepare. No, I didn’t expect to breastfeed, but I knew so little about babies I didn’t want to miss anything. Plus at 3 am, I would rather be able to answer my wife’s questions quickly when Gracie is screaming her lungs out. Nothing prepares you for a delivery though.
Our due date came and went, so we had an induction scheduled, but my wife was checking the openings for earlier inductions more often than a crackhead steals stuff out of cars. I was at work when I got a call and text saying we got bumped up…to 8:30 that night. Suddenly, it went from casual to serious faster than White Castle gives you the shits. We got to the hospital that night, carrying bags like displaced refugees, nervous about being late. We checked in, then some lady’s water broke in the lobby – guess who gets wait in the lobby another two hours! Some old guy with a cowboy hat, boots and flame patterned button up beat me to the bathroom by 4 seconds and was in there long enough to give birth himself. I considered peeing in the fake plant by the check in desk, but he came out and I ran in. I wished I had watered the plastic tree; I didn’t know I could hold my breath that long.
We finally got called back. A delivery is like this – someone comes in the room every 20 minutes, checks on the pregnant lady, then tells you that you are getting closer…for about 18-32 hours straight. We didn’t actually make any progress on the cervical effacement (a term I didn’t know existed three months ago) until about lunch time. Oh, and your family will text, Facebook message, call, smoke signal, carrier pigeon and telegraph messages to you asking for updates every 3 and half minutes when there are none to give. “Oh, crap, we had the baby a month ago! I forgot to call!”
My advice if you’re hanging out with the expectant mother? Bring books, games, arts and crafts, iPods, snacks…hell, work on your memoirs or you will lose your damn mind. Not that I’m bitching. Number one advice – DON’T COMPLAIN ABOUT ANYTHING TO THE PREGNANT LADY. Does your back hurt? STFU. Are you hungry? She can’t eat, STFU. Are you nervous? She has a human about to rip through a hole about 20% as big as it needs to be. STFU. After 22 hours, it was finally getting to the show. (Stay tuned for more!)