Jan. 22

The day before Kaia was born, I had the day off. The night before that, I went to bed at about three, so on my day off, I rolled out of bed exhausted at about 11:30 am.

Steph slept in as late as I did. She wasn’t feeling too well. She was tired, sluggish. And she was having stomach cramps she assumed were gas or something. She took off for work, lasted about three hours, then came home and went back to bed.

Probably should’ve been our first clue something wasn’t right. She slept until early evening, we had some dinner, watched the Sarah Connor Chronicles (not a bad show, by the way). Steph went to bed about 11. I goofed off on the internet for another hour and a half then surrendered to fatigue.

Two hours and fifteen minutes later, Steph said, “Cory, wake up.”

I’m not a good instantly awake kind of guy. I think I blinked a couple of times, said, “Wha?”

“Either my water just broke or I wet the bed.”

Uh, that’s not supposed to happen for another five weeks. I got up started getting dressed, though not very well. Steph went to the bathroom. I stripped the bed and then just sort of started running around the house in circles.

Our bags were not packed. Should’ve been but we’d been waiting on the baby shower so we could see what we were missing. The half-packed hospital bag went in the car and not much else. No extra clothes for either of us. No car seat.

We piled into the car and headed for the hospital. It’s very difficult to drive carefully and slowly when you’re both exhausted and your adrenaline is pumping like mad. I remember being pretty scared. It couldn’t be a good thing if she was coming this early. Something had to be wrong, right?

We got to the hospital by about 3:05, 3:15. They checked us in, put Steph in a bed and got the heartrate monitors on she and Kaia. Steph’s blood pressure was scary low, like 73/49. They started her on fluids and called our doctor. I’m pretty sure the nurse taking care of us was new. She kept leaving the room to ask questions and seemed nervous (too much white in her eyes despite an outwardly calm demeanor).

Our doctor showed up about 4:00. She had just rolled out of bed and looked/sounded slightly frazzled. She checked some stuff then informed us we’d be transferring to a hospital in Oklahoma City. Apparently, Stillwater Medical Center does not deliver babies born before 36 weeks (Kaia was at 34 weeks, 5 days) as they have no Newborn Intensive Care Unit (NICU). That meant an ambulance trip. It took about 45, 50 minutes for the ambulance to show up, even though it was right there in town. Does it take them that long to show up when there’s a bad car accident in the middle of the night?

While we were waiting, Steph started having contractions. She was only dilated to a One, but they were already pretty quick, a couple of minutes apart, and painful as hell. I don’t know about other people, but I hate watching people I love in pain and not being able to do anything about it.

I was told there was no room for me in the ambulance, that I’d have to get the car and drive myself. They gave me directions to the hospital, told me what floor she’d be on, and basically told me good luck. Put yourself in my shoes for a moment. It’s four-something in the morning. Your wife’s water has broken more than a month early, and these ambulance drivers and nurses are taking her away from you and making you drive an hour in sleet, ice and dark.

Longest hour of my life.

Steph says it was no joy ride for her either. The ambulance had what amounted to no suspension and her contractions became more frequent and painful.

All that said, during this time, Kaia’s strong heartbeat never faltered. That would come later.

I showed up to the hospital, parked and pretty much ran for the elevators, my arms laden with bags of crap we really didn’t need. I’m not sure I was holding a coherent thought in my head. I just needed to find my wife. The elevator moved too slow. I didn’t know who to ask where she was. Still, I found the right floor, the right hall, and finally, the right room. It was almost 6:00am.

She was in there and a nurse was already wiring her and Kaia up. The contractions at this point basically curled her into the fetal position and kept coming faster and faster. The nurse asked us questions, had me fill out paperwork. I did the best I could while trying to talk to Steph, keep her calm.

Then the freaking nurse vanished. For half an hour or longer. And never came back. Instead, a new nurse showed up. Her name was Linda and she talked way too damn much. Through the course of her jabbering, we learned she’d been a delivery nurse (she called herself something, but I’m not remembering it now) for 29 years.

The whole time she talked, she would take a break and ask Steph how her pain was. The time was around 8:00am. By this time, Steph was lying on her side, and I was sitting in a chair in front of her. I had my forearm lying in front of her and she held onto it with both hands. Every time she had a contraction, she’d squeeze the hell out of me.

Linda was really concerned about the amount of pain Steph was in. For one, she still hadn’t dilated past a One. Linda called the new doctor, got permission to give Steph some narcotics, and hit her with them.

Nothing. Steph never felt them.

The doc showed up sometime before nine and examined Steph (not too gently, which pissed me off at the time). I heard Linda at that point suggest to him they might want to give her the epidural early.

We’d had a couple of baby classes. Had more to go. But I knew you weren’t supposed to get your epidural until you were a Three or a Four. They were giving her one at a One. Again, this did not convey to me that things were going well. For one, I kept watching Linda check the monitors and she kept becoming more and more animated. Never panicked, but she kept moving faster and faster, checking more and more stuff.

And so it was that at about 9:30, the anesthesiologist showed up to give Steph her epidural. If you don’t know what those are, basically, they put an IV in the tissue right next to the spine and pump in pain killers. They basically deaden everything from the stomach down. No pain.

Just prior to that, Steph had been having minute to two-minute long contractions separated by just 20 seconds. That’s a lot of pain, kids.

Soon as the epidural was in, however, she stopped feeling them at all. In the next half our, they informed us that there would be a bunch of people in the room with us. Four from the NICU, complete with a super-duper baby unit (heater, IVs, scales, the works), as well as the doc, Linda and an additional nurse. They weren’t there yet. It was still just Steph, me and Linda. I sat rooted to my chair on Steph’s right, petting her head and reminding her to breathe.

Linda started checking her dilation every couple of minutes. The first time she checked after the epidural, Steph was a Six. Ten minutes later, an Eight. By 10:00am, Steph was a 10. Linda was on the phone telling the doc he’d better get there and soon.

For her part, she felt drugged out of her head. She was fighting to stay awake and mad as hell about it. She kept saying, “Why can’t I feel anything? This isn’t right. I’m supposed to be feeling something.” I kept telling her she didn’t want to feel what was going on and rubbing her head.

By about 10:05, the room was full, the doctor showed up, asked the same stupid questions of Steph and I we’d already been asked five times that day, and suited up. Linda was across from me, another nurse beside her, and the doc got ready to catch.

Then the pushing started. Again, Steph could feel nothing, and the more she pushed, the more pissed off she got that she couldn’t. I kept watching Linda check Kaia’s monitor. Hell, you could hear it. Steph would push and Kaia’s heartbeat would plummet.

We went through probably three rounds of pushing and Kaia still wasn’t there. That’s about when the tone of the room changed. I didn’t hear the doctor ask for them, but I noticed when they started unwrapping the forceps. They are these huge chrome claws, basically. And there was some other piece of chrome equipment, I assumed they used to spread Steph open more.

Seeing all that, I couldn’t help it. I started to cry. I was so scared for Steph. Being scared for Kaia at that point was secondary. My wife was being hurt. She looked up at me crying and she started crying. I kept telling her everything was all right. Far as I knew, it still was all right. But I also knew doctors don’t like to use the forceps anymore, that using them is rare, and that that must mean they wanted Kaia out of there in a hurry.

I buried my head next to Steph’s so she wouldn’t see me cry, and kept repeating to her that everything was fine, like a monk’s chant. She didn’t believe me. I was so happy she couldn’t feel what they were doing to her.

We started the final two rounds of pushing. Linda kept up the orders, telling Steph how to push, to not scream because she needed the air in her lungs to help force Kaia out. I actually had to hold her head up while she pushed at this point, so there was really no way for me to not see what was going on.

It was a weird deal, because there was this point in the room where all they cared about was the baby. Steph’s health was secondary. The baby had to come out.

I saw Kaia’s head emerge. She was kind of pale, kind of purple kind of covered in all kinds of stuff. Then I heard the doctor say, “It’s wrapped around twice.”

Time to push again. This time, Kaia came all the way out. I watched the doctor carefully unwrap the umbilical cord from around her neck (twice), then hand her to the NICU nurses.

We could not see Kaia, nor hear her crying. Steph kept saying, “How is she? Is she all right? I can’t hear her?”

I’d say, “She’s fine. She’s okay.” Over and over again, even though I knew nothing of the sort.

Then we heard her cry once. Then again.

I said, “See, she’s okay. She’s going to be all right.”

All this time, the doc was stitching Steph back up. I was trying to keep her from noticing that. She kept asking me about Kaia. I kept saying the same things.

Then someone said, “Do you have a camera?”

What? Camera? “Yes, we have a camera.” I stumbled away from Steph, dug through our bags and found the camera. They let me take a picture of her on the scales (4 pounds, 8.6oz), and then they put her in a cart and prepared to wheel her away.

They asked if I wanted to go with her to the NICU. I asked Steph. She said go with her. I stumbled down the hall, my baby girl in a clear plastic box on wheels next to me, trying to stop crying.

I had no idea.

I watched the baby get stuck and fussed with until someone suggested I should go check in. I just didn’t want to leave her. I didn’t want her to have to go it alone. But after an hour, I thought it’d be okay. I pretty much ran to our room, dragging Paula and Grandma Jane with me. We caught Steph up from there.

That day, I visited Kaia probably seven times. Each time you go in to see her, you have to scrub your hands for three minutes all the way to your elbows. No exceptions. If you leave the baby and go back outside, you have to repeat the whole three minutes. My arms are scaly at this point.

As a perfect end for the day, at 7:00pm, they came and removed us from the nice room on the sixth floor and took us to a much smaller, less nice room on the fifth where we remained for the next two days.

You know the rest.