Random Thoughts

I compiled all the indivdual posts telling the story of Wonder Woman, er, Sherrill, into one small compact easy-to-forward file.  This was so people wouldn’t have to go searching through my site to try to figure out where the story started and such, and also so I could email it to people who aren’t as computerey as all of us brilliant chris86.com people are.  I changed a few things here and there, edited a few things here and there, but it’s pretty much the same story you read before if you read it here.

Feel free to read it again if you like, or attach it in an email and forward it to people you think might like to read it or who aren’t all that computerey.  It’s a PDF so I can’t imagine anyone will have trouble opening it.  The pictures are on the back few pages.

To open:  Click it
To save:  Right-click it and hit “Save target as…”

The day(s) my wife gave birth

Tonight I took my daughter to see Quantum of Solace. 

She is eleven days old.  The doctor told us specifically when I asked that this wouldn’t be a good idea till she was a month old or so, but we were sure she was kidding.  We paid cash, just in case, so we couldn’t be traced.

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WARNING:  IF YOU ARE UNDER 13 YEARS OF AGE, HAVE A WEAK STOMACH, OR ARE A SISSY GIRL, YOU MAY NOT WANT TO READ THE FOLLOWING. 

I casually walk back over towards Sherrill.

Sherrill kept her eyes shut pretty much through the whole labor.  If she were to look down now, she’d see Susan, from about the shoulders up, doing the post-labor cleanup.

But what I see, standing beside Susan, is that her green scrubs are covered with crisscrosses of blood from just below her shoulders down.  Just below Sherrill’s line of vision.

There is a sheet, which once had been white, under Sherrill, hanging down to the floor at Susan’s feet.

It is solid, unbroken, wet crimson.

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Annalise Lane* is born.

*well…Annalise is born, anyway.  We don’t have a middle name at this point.   

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I speak on behalf of Sherrill and say, “Okay, let’s try the suction.”

This seems to set everyone into motion, like a clock getting ready to chime the hour.  They’ve been standing there, waiting, but now they have something to do.  People come and go, things get moved around, I get a fresh ice-cold washcloth, more people come in, equipment is brought in, lights are positioned, Sherrill’s bed is readjusted, handlebars are folded out, the baby’s mini-intensive care unit is readied, our nurses get into the stuff-is-about-to-go-down position, and vacuum salesman guy sets up some stuff behind home plate.

Vacuum salesman guy says to me, “Oh.  Do you want to cut the umbilical cord?”

Cut the umbilical—?  Who cares?  “Whatever’s going to keep Sherrill from being in pain.”

This seems to slow him down a second.  “Well, it doesn’t matter.  It’s up to—-”

“Yes,” I say through clenched teeth.  “Yes.  Sure.”  Can we just get started?  Does anybody but me understand that my wife’s in pain?

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Still, not that it matters all that much, but I’m not convinced.  Sherrill’s in pain.  I’m not liking this whole standing by thing, getting a washcloth or a cube of ice once in a while, while Sherrill’s in pain.  That’s not a very rewarding job.  If when I put a washcloth on her was flooded with relief and sighed and looked up at me gratefully, that’d be one thing, but the rare times she reacted at all, she mostly went, “Groannnnnnn.”

Sherrill says, in her weak voice, not able to look at the vacuum salesman, “Whatever we do, can’t I just get some medication?????”

The vacuum salesman says, “Well, you can’t, because, and I’m not trying to scare you here, or bully you either, but the thing is that just to lay it out for you, you can’t, because you’ve already had more epidural medicine, so all we can do is give you another epidural if that doesn’t work, or we can just go on to the anesthesia for the C-section, and phlebotomy, tonsillectomy, presenting with necrosis, cirrhosis, magnesium phosphate, oxcyacetyline torch.”

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What’s with the epidural, anyway?  The medicine’s still not working?  We bring this to the attention of the eipdural girl, and she looks confused and concerned.  Sure, it should’ve started working by now.  And Sherrill was on her back this time, so it should have spread through her system correctly. 

She does the ice test.  She starts to explain, but we’re like, yeah, yeah, we know.  It’s cold, mostly cold, and cold.  So it’s not working.

She and her associates do some investigation work and decide that the epidural must’ve come unplugged a bit.  The little back IV they gave her, which to me looks like a Dr. Frankenstein scar in the shape of a spiraling snake, has loosened.

It doesn’t particularly surprise me that the epidural’s come loose, the way Sherrill’s been writhing around on the bed in pain. But I mean, if this whole epidural thing is so fragile that you can’t use it if you move around a lot, what are you doing using it on women in labor????

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The guy comes in the room, introduces himself, and starts immediately pitching the merits of vacuum over forceps.  He’s speaking really fast, like a used-car salesman, and using lots of big medical words that anyone who’s never been pre-med would have no way of knowing what they could possibly mean.  This works out well for me, because I’m able to use all the time he’s spending pronouncing medical terms to try and figure out the bottom line—-what is he basically trying to say?

After what would be ten pages of dialogue if everything he said had been scripted—-single-spaced—-he made the foolish amateur blunder of taking a breath, and I took my chance.

“But the lady who just left here said that forceps would be the best option!  She recommended it over vacuum!”

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And now for more drama.

First, they send in an epidural girl, who wanders around the room and seems to be unsure of what sort of epidural to give, because if Sherrill’s going to have a C-section, you have to give her one kind of medicine, and if she’s not, there’s another kind.  So Sherrill’s still lying there, hurting, eyes shut, wishing for medicine, and not getting any.

Then another girl comes in and starts talking to us about the various benefits and negatives for using forceps and the suction cup.  When she finds out we’re receptive to the idea, she orders yet another ultrasound, to see which of the two methods would be best, based on the baby’s position and whatnot. 

So now we’re waiting on an ultrasound machine, with the epidural girl still wandering around wondering what to do.  Sherrill says, “Can’t you give me something????“  The epidural girl consults with someone and then decides and gives Sherrill another dose for the epidural.  Which sounds great, but remember an epidural doesn’t work for thirty or forty minutes.

So yeah.  Any minute now.

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It’s been 3 and a half hours.

Sherrill is tired, just as they predicted she would be.

What’s more, she’s unmedicated.  For all practical purposes, the epidural has worn off.  It started wearing off halfway through the three-plus hours of pushing.  By the last hour, Sherrill was pretty much on her own, pushing, contracting, and getting even more exhausted.

The pushing towards the end just sort of fizzled out, because Sherrill just got to the point where she couldn’t do it anymore.  The words of encouragement sounded more and more hollow.  The number of pushes per contraction went from four or five maximum to three, then down to two or so.  She just couldn’t go on after being battered by contractions all day, then pushing during them for almost four hours.

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