As Expected

Life is what happens when you're making other plans about the birth of your child.

***A version of this story first appeared in the Spring 2021 issue of Adelaide Literary Magazine, under the title Great Expectations II : A Birth Story. I still find that title to be very funny, but wanted something a bit more concise. Since my daughter will be turning three, I decided to rework the story, clean it up, and release via Substack. Although, I don’t think she’ll read it. Enjoy!***

My wife Rachel beamed, “She could be here by tomorrow morning.”

I was equally as excited, “I just can’t wait to meet her.” Somehow under the impression that my newborn daughter and I were going to shake hands, grab a cup of coffee, and get to know each other.

We were on our way to the hospital for an induction. Our daughter was now two weeks overdue, and our midwives suggested we not wait much longer. We envisioned the birth to be a candle lit affair, with a birthing tub, little to no medical intervention, and as drug-free as a crisp early spring morning. There would be a young lady with dreadlocks gently strumming an acoustic guitar, perhaps some Martha Graham choreography in between contractions, and Rachel and I would catch the child as she spilled forth from her mother’s womb. The three of us would then be naked, perhaps in a manger, maintaining skin to skin contact for no less than 72 hours.

Many of these expectations came from our twelve week birth class, which focused on keeping the birth as natural as humanly possible. The class instilled confidence that a woman’s body was made to give birth. Most medical intervention was due to impatience and was ultimately unnecessary. The class also encouraged the birth partner, in this case me, to keep a close eye on the nurses and doctors. Medical professionals are shifty. Their number one priority is to pump Rachel full of drugs and cut her open. I needed to prepare myself to intervene and demand to know just what the hell they were trying to do to my wife. The class provided pointers for much of the doublespeak I could expect from these monsters. 

You think a C-section would be best?! I bet!! I’d say while performing a perfectly executed roundhouse kick to the head of an anesthesiologist. So you can line your pockets before your tee time?! Said while grabbing an obstetrician by the throat. Why don’t you C-section yourself right out the door, pal! Concluding my rampage with a swift kick to the ass. This was something I was fully prepared to do, I just needed to have a complete shift in personality and start taking karate before our daughter was born. 

One of the great miracles of birth is how miraculously naïve first time parents can be with their birth plans. Our induction was scheduled for eight o’clock in the evening, the day after Thanksgiving, during a pandemic. When we arrived, it felt like we’d entered a restaurant an hour after closing and asked to see a wine list. After having our temperatures taken and answering a slew of rote COVID-19 related questions—including if we’ve recently had diarrhea, which is always a coin toss—we made our way to the Labor and Delivery Unit. Rachel was only permitted to have one person with her due to pandemic restrictions and I was relieved she chose me. 

We were shown to our room and Rachel was told to put on her gown so they could strap two monitors around her big pregnant belly. One monitored the baby’s heart rate, the other monitored contractions, and both insured Rachel wouldn’t know a moment’s comfort while wearing them. There is a stage of active labor referred to as “loss of modesty” in which the woman no longer cares who sees or touches her body, as long as the baby is on their way out. Rachel, in an inspired turn, reached that stage as soon as she set foot in the hospital and went naked under her gown for the duration. She had all the modesty of a nudist resort’s activities director. 

 The nurses would ask, “Are you sure you don’t want to put on some underwear?” 

“Nope.” Rachel responded with her backside proudly displayed, finding underwear to be inefficient for the task ahead. 

 I was allowed to keep our car temporarily parked in front of the hospital so we could unload our luggage, and it looked as if we had packed for a long weekend at a cabin in the mountains. I overthink packing a simple lunch, so packing for the birth of my child was almost untenable. I asked the security desk if there was perhaps a luggage rack I could use. My inquiry was met with a definitive and singular, “No.” 

Like any hospital in a densely populated urban area, parking was a multi-phased operation, and if each directive wasn’t followed to the letter, I was assured my car would be towed. I was given a piece of paper to hang from my rearview mirror, another to place on my dash, a series of stickers I was advised to keep safe in my wallet, a wristband that granted me access to nothing, a map with crudely scrawled directions, and I was advised to park on the final level of the underground garage, which was warmed by the Earth’s core. For all this, I paid a shockingly reasonable five dollars, which I was repeatedly told was nonrefundable. 

Rachel began a course of medication around 10pm that would help her dilate and it would take up to twelve hours to make any meaningful progress. Due to the monitors strapped around her abdomen, she had to be sitting in an upright position which made any meaningful rest very difficult. The monitors would make arrhythmic beeps throughout the night and nurses would regularly come to our room to check on them while asking Rachel any number of questions. Each time before exiting, they would strongly encourage her to “really try and get some rest.” 

This was a recurring theme. It would be as if you were trying to sleep and I—along with several other individuals I made no attempt to coordinate with—entered your room every fifteen minutes to gently tickle you, and then inquire about your bowel movements. Upon exiting, we’d make brief statements on the importance of rest.

My sleep station was a fold out Barcalounger in the corner of the room. The mattress seemed to be made of pipes and sand and the sheets were constructed from a translucent anti-warming fabric. The nurses and doctors were also urging me to get some sleep. My right leg heeded their advice and went numb shortly after laying on the mattress. 

The following morning we were bleary eyed but excited. When the midwife came to do the examination, we were taking bets and wondering if the baby might effortlessly fall out at any minute of her own accord. This was one of many exams I had the pleasure of witnessing. Turns out, I have a delicate constitution when it comes to medical professionals examining my wife. Although Rachel could grit and bear it like she was receiving triage on a battlefield, I became lightheaded and felt faint. 

I kept these feelings to myself because a squeamish husband is an unwelcomed and utterly useless presence during labor. Holding myself up on the Barcalounger, I did my best to gently say encouraging things like, “You’re doing great, sweetie. I’m so proud of you.” But it ended up sounding more like, “Jus…. great. Yup….. doing it.”

What quickly becomes clear to any father, or birth partner, is that you are the least useful person in the room, and perhaps the least useful person in the entire hospital. Everyone serves a direct and dire function, while you are puttering around looking terrified. I was also perpetually in the way. Nurses and midwives would often come towards me and say, “Can I just scoot right past you?” or “Actually, could you just stand right over there.” And more than one, “And you are?” 

The results of Rachel’s exam were not as we had hoped, she hadn’t made much progress overnight. The next suggested course of action was the balloon. The midwife described putting an uninflated balloon inside Rachel, filling it with saline solution, and leaving it for at least twelve hours to help stimulate dilation. After it was fully explained, I prayed the midwife would crack a smile and say, Just kidding! Can you imagine?! Yikes! A balloon?! Well, it is a birthday! She’d gently elbow me in the ribs, But seriously, folks. And we’d all share a hearty laugh. 

But this was, apparently, our best option if we wanted to stay on a more natural path, so Rachel gave the ok. This marked the beginning of an unpleasant shift in energy. To no one’s surprise, having a balloon full of water inside your body is extremely painful and Rachel had all but stopped talking. Any movement brought her great discomfort. I did what any supportive husband would do, I sat sentry and watched a marathon of a television show I particularly enjoy. It wasn’t much, but it was honest work. 

Hours passed, quiet and powerless. 

Over the months of pregnancy, we’d discuss our birth plan, but always acknowledged that we had no idea what might actually happen. Our way of telling the universe, “This is how we want things to go, but of course, we don’t control the future.” We’d say while winking at the sky, “Now that we’ve clearly humbled ourselves unto you, dear Universe, we have every expectation it will go exactly as we planned.” After a relatively uneventful pregnancy—minus a global pandemic—absolutely nothing was going as planned. My only solace was figuring out how to get more than our allotted “one free meal” delivered to the room. This was accomplished through a series of performance heavy phone calls to the cafeteria. 

After fourteen hours of the balloon, the midwife came to remove it. It was two o’clock in the morning and Rachel and I were in varying states of consciousness. I held Rachel’s hand as two nurses assisted the midwife in removing the balloon and checking Rachel’s progress. While the midwife was examining her, she was able to move the baby’s head and we found out Rachel’s water had already broken and the baby’s head was blocking its release. When she moved the baby’s head, amniotic fluid poured out. I could hear the gush, I glanced at the source of the noise, and I promptly began to pass out. 

One of the least productive things I could have done at that moment was let my limp body collapse onto my infirmed wife, so I sat down and put my head in my hands. I was worried I had done so in too dramatic a fashion, as if I were making the moment about me. You think she’s got it rough?! I feel dizzy and might need some juice. But no one noticed, which is one of the benefits of being useless in high stakes situations. 

The midwife told us the baby might be in distress. This was when real fear made its entrance into the scene. The kind of fear that can storyboard unspeakable horrors in your imagination at a moment's notice. No matter how hard I tried to stay present, the worst conceivable scenarios flooded my mind. It’s also the kind of fear that puts an objectively dumb look on my face. I want to look like I should be holding a sword, ready to do battle against an unbeatable foe. Instead I look like a child with cheese dust all over my face, pretending not to understand his mother’s question, “Who ate all the Doritos?” 

Rachel asked, “How much more have I dilated?” 

The nurse told her it was only two centimeters.

Well, shit.

The midwife began laying out our options with an urgency we had yet to hear. Making it clear our situation was no longer typical. But she was being very sensitive to our birth plan and did not want us to feel obligated to stray from it. Rachel, in another inspiring turn, took on an attitude which could best be described as not-fucking-around and was ready for medical interventions outside our plan. She requested a drug called Pitocin which induces very heavy contractions. And she also requested an epidural; The Big Kahuna of pain relief for women in labor. 

Next came the anesthesiologist for the epidural, he was a monosyllabic man with the efficiency of a wind turbine and the hairiest forearms I had ever seen. If he had suddenly stopped what he was doing and said, “Whoops! I forgot to take off part of my gorilla costume,” I would not have been surprised. My wife and I enjoy a brief amount of small talk before having anything injected into our spine. We tried to crack a few jokes with him, but this furry-armed anesthesiologist was having none of it. 

After several unsuccessful attempts at engagement while he was assembling a needle that would have looked more at home on the deck of a spaceship, he looked at me and ordered, “You don’t see this.” His way of warmly letting me know to stand somewhere else, specifically, not near him.

We started to feel some momentum. Although things weren’t going as we planned, there might be an end in sight. 

Then, nothing. 

Like most significant life events, along with the anticipation, there is an incredible amount of just sitting around. 

Rachel started getting cold and asked for one of the several flannels I had packed for our weekend getaway. She started to shiver and asked for another blanket. Nurses started coming into the room more frequently. Rachel had developed a fever. They were concerned about infection, so they took a blood sample, and confirmed it. This meant the baby had a fever as well. 

You know, not great. 

To add another ray of sunshine to our day, the baby’s heart rate was significantly higher than it should be. Rachel was put on oxygen and they placed ice packs under her arms to help bring the fever down. She was too sick to speak and too weak to move. Which is not exactly the most conducive state for child birth. 

It was a moment that made me grateful for the pandemic because I was the only person there to see her in that state. Had I seen the fear that I felt in the eyes of a family member or friend, I might have broken down. A hysterical husband would have been of little benefit to our situation and I’m also a very ugly crier. Blotchy-faced, lip quivering, gasping snots, you get the picture. 

I studied the behavior of the nurses and midwife every time they entered the room. I have no experience in the field of behavioral analysis, but you would have thought I had a degree in how individuals hold back catastrophic information. By this point, the darkest sides of my imagination had free reign and I felt sick with fear. It briefly flashed through my mind that if Rachel and the baby die, and I somehow manage to not commit suicide, I’d move back to New Jersey and become a hermit. Who could imagine a fate worse than living in New Jersey?

Hours passed with no progress, and Rachel was still running a fever. We had finally reached the get-this-fucking-baby-out-safe stage of labor. Again the midwife laid out our options: C-section or an amniotic flush of the womb to buy time for natural birth. To me, the C-Section sounded like dinner at a fine restaurant and the amniotic flush sounded like hanging out behind a Chick-fil-A with militia members. I was about to ask the midwife to give Rachel and I a moment to discuss, but Rachel didn’t hesitate.

“C-section.” Rachel interrupted the midwife, “I’m done. I just want the baby out safe.”

As soon as the midwives left, Rachel joked, “Did you hear that amniotic flush bullshit?” She shivered, “No way I was doing that.” 

I never loved her more. 

Within moments, the obstetrician was in our room laying out our course of action. The obstetrician was a tall, radiant, red-headed woman with the confidence of a samurai sword. The last thing she said to us was, “I will have your baby in your arms in thirty minutes.” She may as well have put on sunglasses and climbed onto a motorcycle. I had to hold myself back from chasing her down for an autograph. 

Immediately, things started moving very fast. 

Rachel had a mountain of paperwork shoved in front of her to confirm she was opting for a C-section. There was something vulgar about having a woman in Rachel’s state sign paperwork. I know you’re terrified. Life’s crazy, right?! Anyhoo, sign here, initial here, and the last four of your social there. Do you happen to have the phone number  of your previous employer? 

The nurse brought an empty cart into the room and said to me, “Put all of your and Rachel’s stuff on here in the next five minutes.” She turned to leave, then stopped, “You won’t be coming back to this room.” It felt like we were being evacuated before an enemy attack. Rachel is an extremely organized person, and watching me pack was perhaps the most helpless she felt during our entire stay at the hospital. Shoes on top of jackets, larger luggage on top of smaller luggage, loose toiletries—it was her nightmare. 

I would have preferred a dramatic goodbye with Rachel, where I held her hand, pledged my undying love, and wiped tears from her face. But my last words to her before she was wheeled away were a confused, “Wait.. ok, I’ll see ya in a few.” What it lacked in elegance, it made up for it with informality.

I was asked to leave the room with my luggage cart, which looked like a set piece from The Grapes of Wrath, and was ushered into the recovery room. I was told not to leave and they would come grab me when it was time. I once went on a carnival ride that was operated by a drunk one-armed man, who left the ride’s controls to light a cigarette butt he found on the ground. But being alone in that recovery room was the most scared I had ever been in my life. 

I was able to watch the doctors and nurses scrub in and wash their hands before the surgery. I was embarking on the biggest event of my life and they were just heading into work. Performing a C-section was just one of the things they had to do that day. They were asking each other about their Thanksgivings and catching up on hospital life. The only thing out of place for them was the hysterical about-to-be father crying, yet smiling at them as they washed their hands. 

After what felt like several hours, but was only about fifteen minutes, I was invited into the operating room. It was a hive of activity, including a natal intensive care unit on standby in case our daughter wasn’t able to breath. It would be like if you boarded a plane and the pilot handed you a parachute. It would be somewhat comforting, but you just kinda hope the flight goes smoothly. 

A curtain was raised at the base of Rachel’s sternum so we wouldn’t be able to see the profoundly invasive surgery that was about to take place. She was on her back with her arms stretched out and strapped down on either side of her. Thanks to fourteen years of Catholic school, my imagination made a brief and lazy comparison to childbirth being like a crucifixion. A comparison that even an overzealous Women’s Studies major would have found exhausting. The hairy-armed anesthesiologist was stationed behind Rachel to monitor her levels on a computer, or he was just checking his email. He didn’t say, he just pointed to a stool right next to Rachel. “You sit there.”  

Rachel and I said we loved one another and they began the operation. The feeling of uselessness left me. I held Rachel’s hand and told her how well she was doing. I was so proud of her. She was scared and I got to be the one to tell her it was going to be okay. It was one of the only times in my life I felt like a grown-up. Not because I was confident everything was going to be okay—I was shitting my pants—but because I intrinsically knew it was my duty, as a grown-up, to tell her it was going to be okay. For a brief moment, I wasn’t useless. Then Rachel told me to get my elbow off one of her IV tubes.

The longest part of a C-section is not getting the baby out, that part is freakishly quick. The longest part is putting the mother back together after the baby is out. A nurse came from behind the curtain, which made me feel like we were backstage in a very experimental theatre piece, and asked me if I wanted to see the baby’s head come out. I didn’t want to leave Rachel’s side and I thought we should see the baby together for the first time instead of me peeking over the curtain like a nosy neighbor. The nurse asked for my phone and took pictures of our daughter’s initial entrance. Then there was a big joyous commotion as the baby was all the way out. 

I immediately forgot about my first-look solidarity with Rachel and jumped up to see over the curtain. I thought I was about to see some kind of swamp monster grabbing at the obstetrician’s throat. Instead it was a big, beautiful baby. So this was who had been growing next to me on the couch for the last nine months.

The NICU team whisked our little non-swamp monster over to a table to make sure her lungs were clear, but no one was all that worried because she was crying loudly, which was a good sign. 

Rachel put her hand on mine and said, “Go be with her, I don’t want her to be alone.”

I walked over to the table, and my daughter kicked her legs in a stationary march that appeared very urgent. My heart didn’t suddenly explode and I didn’t immediately feel like a father, I just knew the rest of my life would be pre and post this moment. 

“Rachel, she’s good,” I yelled across the operating room, “She’s perfect!” 

I asked the nurse if I could cut the cord. In a lapse of understanding basic human anatomy, I didn't realize—since the baby was already well across the room, unless Rachel had some kind of world record umbilical cord—it had already been cut. 

The nurse said kindly, “Of course you can, Dad.” 

She handed me the scissors and I cut a bit of the excess cord, completely unaware the cutting was only a symbolic indulgence, provided by a good hearted medical professional.   

“This was in our birth plan,” I told the nurse. “At least one thing went as expected.”