If you hadn’t heard the audio post that I left, or you weren’t one of the random few people that I called yesterday, you don’t know that we had the baby Saturday afternoon.
Saturday morning around 7am, Berta started having contractions that were irregular and of varying severity. As the morning progressed, it looked like they were getting more frequent and stronger. No sooner had I called Mom to tell her we would be by to drop Abby off when the contractions started spreading out and getting weaker.
So we sat around for a while.
I was in the middle of writing email to Becca about the site redesign she’s doing (lookin’ good!), when Abby came into the computer rooms and said, “Daddy, get off the computer.”
Of course, my thought was, “yeah, yeah,” and I tried to finish the email, but when she came in and said the exact same thing again, I followed her back into the living room to find Berta panting like a mad-woman, obviously hit hard by a sudden fierce contraction. Thankfully, everyone was already prepared for the trip, so we loaded ourselves into the car and I drove in my usualy semi-maniacal fashion to Mom’s and the hospital.
We barely parked in front of Mom’s house and discharged Abby. She really didn’t seem to know what was going on, and we launched her out of the van so fast, we barely had time to say bye, but during the entire ride, Berta was having contractions on top of one another. We really didn’t have a lot of time.
We got to the hospital, and I procured a wheelchair, since it didn’t look like Berta was going to walk anywhere. The nurse at the emergency room took her in, and by the time I had parked the car and returned, she was headed towrd the elevator for Labor and Delivery.
I should mention that Chester County Hospital has a very large, very nice Labor and Delivery department. There are many LDRP rooms - these are special rooms that are designed to be the only place that a new mother needs to visit during her stay, although the hospital doesn’t use them for the “P” part (Labor, Delivery, Recovery, Post-partum), moving the patient to a different room. It turns out that every single LDRP room was filled. Everyone decided to have Brackston-Hicks contractions on the same morning, to go through a trial run of the delivery procedures. It’s no wonder that the nurses in Delivery are so relaxed - it’s mostly false alarms.
So they rolled Berta into an exam/triage room. It was really small. The bed was not designed well for delivery. How do I know? Because we had the baby right there.
The doctor didn’t show up for a while. The nurse checked out Berta. Already 8cm when we arrived. Berta asked about getting drugs for the pain before it was too late - her preferred medicine being the epidural - and I could tell by the nurse’s body language that any positive remarks about getting the anesthesiologist into the room were actually tales of the tall nature.
So it really wasn’t a shock that when the doctor finally arrived (a nice woman, although stricken with the same blasé just-another-day-at-the-office that gets me so riled about the people at the hospital) that the idea to move Berta to a newly opened LDRP room was shot down, along with any idea that Berta was going to be holding the baby much longer. The five of us (Berta, me, doctor, and two nurses) all scrunched into the tiny exam room and prepared for the incoming baby.
Berta had been getting the impulse to push even before the doctor had come to see her, and as soon as the doctor settled in, she started. It was all over very quickly, and I’ll spare you most of the details, but here are a few I wanted to record for future reference by others (Berta’s sisters) seeking birthing info.
First off, let me be clear about the drug issue- There were no drugs. The nurse had started an IV in the case that the epidural guy could make it, but he didn’t, and the IV actually fell out during all the pushing, so getting drugs that way that wasn’t even a possibility. There was some drugs in what I think was called a PC-block, but in the scheme of drugging, this is mild and was administered almost as an afterthought.
The baby came out facing the wrong way. Usually babies come out facing toward the mom’s back, and when they come out they twist around. This guy decided to come out facing Berta’s front, and so it was a bit more difficult to get him out.
In all Berta did a great job with no drugs and a hard positioning, all in a room the size of a matchbox without many of the niceties that are usually available. Still, this is better than me delivering the baby in the car.
And so Riley was born. Riley Alan Winkler (which is the officialy spelling, in case you got some other message from someone who was very sleepy at the time) was born at 12:45pm on November 13. He weighed 7 lbs. 12 oz., and was 19 inches long.
They did his glucose tests and he seems to be fine, even after the gestational diabetes, and Berta is doing just fine with a day or two of recovery. Abby and I stopped by the hospital to visit a couple of times, and her reaction to the baby is pretty positive.
Everyone comes home later today (Monday), so I’m trying to get the house in a little better order than what we left it on Saturday. It’s a wonder anything runs without Berta around. Alright, Abby’s up and I promised her pancakes if it was at all possible this morning.
As soon as I remember to bring the camera home with me from the hospital, I’ll have some pictures to post.
