Upon arriving at the hospital to deliver our daughter, it didn’t take long for a quick ultrasound to discover that our daughter, who had been in a proper head-down birthing position just a few weeks ago, had felt the spontaneous urge to do one final somersault, and was now in a breach, or “butt-first”, position.Because of our daughter’s gymnastic talents, our doctor decided that a C-section would be the best option for delivery. Ironically, we had requested, and been denied, a C-section several weeks prior to my wife’s due date.
Some friends of our had a scheduled C-section for their twins a few months before us, and it seemed like an incredibly easy process; they knew what day their twin girls’ birthday would be, calmly drove to the hospital at their scheduled time, and out came two beautiful baby girls in a relatively short period of time.
We’ll take what they’re having!
I had also read, somewhere, a theory that one of the downsides of human beings evolving to the point that we have, was that our new bigger brains required bigger heads, resulting in tougher childbirth, since the hips haven’t kept up the pace. The bad ratio of baby-head to mama-hips was why mortality rates during childbirth used to be so high, before modern medicine.
(Plus, my wife was an eleven-pound baby, and she was afraid that our daughter would be the same, or bigger. My wife had some fluid in her lungs when she was born, so she had to spend some time in the NICU, with all of the preemie babies, and apparently people kept going to the window of the nursery to get a peek at the “Monster Baby”.)
So, for us, a C-section seemed like a no-brainer, and we asked our doctor if we could schedule our delivery date. Alas, we were denied, since we weren’t “high-risk”, and there are, in fact, several risk factors with C-sections that doctors will, if they can, avoid.
Note: I am certainly not discounting any woman’s decision or ability to give birth the traditional way, especially when they accomplish it “au natural”. (The next time I pass a watermelon through my nostril, I’ll give you a call and we can compare notes!)
And so, it had only been a few hours since my wife’s water had broken, and we had assumed we would be in for a 36-hour labor, (Assuming we were going to have a “Monster Baby” of our own) but we were excited to hear that we would be having our baby in a matter of just a few more hours.
As the time came, and my wife was taken into the OR to get her epidural and continue getting prepared for her C-section, I spent the longest thirty minutes of my life waiting outside the room for her. I passed the time by thinking about every childbirth scene I had ever seen on TV or in movies, trying to prepare myself for what I was about to see. None of which, actually prepared me for what a real newborn looked like.
Eventually, I was called into the OR and told to take a seat by my wife’s head, behind a curtain that had been setup below her neck. (Apparently, seeing yourself being opened up and having a human being taken out of your stomach can make some new moms a tad squeamish.)
After what seemed like only a few minutes, I heard the phrase that I will always remember:
“There she is…oh, she’s pooping!”
That’s my little girl!
I was told that I could look over the curtain, and I shot up to see a site that I will never forget: The doctor holding my baby girl, who was purple from head to toe, covered in white “goop”, screaming her head off, with black poop dripping out of her butt.
It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.
My wife asked me what she looked like, since she was stuck behind the curtain, and I told her, “She’s beautiful, she’s gross, but she’s beautiful.”
After our daughter got somewhat cleaned up, and wrapped in a warm blanket, I was able to hold her for the very first time and bring her to my wife’s head for an introduction. I don’t mind potentially losing my “man card” to say that both my wife and I shared a happy sobbing cry together as we looked at the chubby cheeks of our new daughter.
Finally, we were a family.
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