Baby Ellie
January 30, 2010 10:40 am
Half a centimeter never seemed so far. But it was all that stood between Jess delivering the old-fashioned way and her having a C-section.
Unproductive labor is what they call it when the labor winds to a halt without a baby to show for it. And Jess had stayed stuck at 9 and a half centimeters, shy of the 10 needed, for the last six hours of an agonizing 24-hour labor marathon. To Jess’ credit, she had fought well, had endured two shoddy epidurals that took only partway, as well as a number of medieval-like procedures to help the baby along. But we could no longer sidestep the fact that the baby just wasn’t coming out.
The ink of our approval signatures on the liability waiver form had barely dried, when one out of a swarm of scrambling nurses chest-passed me a ball of scrubs for me to wear in the operating room and hurried my wife out the door. I trotted alongside Jess’ hospital bed in route to the operating room, where they would spring the baby free, so that we could finally meet our daughter, Ellie.
When the nurse finally waved me into the operating room to see my wife, they had her laid out flat on a stainless steel table, awake and prepped for surgery. She wore a tissue-paper blue cap like mine, and a series of tubes ran out from her to the humming, beeping machines in back. A makeshift curtain blocked Jess’ view of the surgeon’s work. But from my seat beside Jess, I could see as much as I could stomach, if I craned my neck. Exhilarated by a mash-up of fear and excitement, I held Jess’ hand and alternately consoled her and stole glances over the curtain. Jess didn’t hurt.
The procedure itself probably only took ten minutes, but to me it lasted longer than the 40 weeks of pregnancy it took to get here. It especially felt forever when it came time to extract the baby from its cramped little home. The doctor and nurses braced themselves. Their brows furrowed above their surgeon masks, as they put some muscle into it. Behind the curtain, Jess’ upper half jarred sickeningly in sync with the doctor’s digging and wrenching. Dislodging the baby wasn’t as easy as I’d expected. She was in there real good, still holding on as she did before in the delivery room. Jess was still okay, though.
Finally, a nurse appeared with a suction-cup device. It fished beneath the surface of my sight and caught a head, thick with jet black hair. Then followed the attached body, the color of a powdered doughnut. The doctor thrust it onto the operating table. I listened — there was the cry!
I left Jess for just a minute to find out about the baby. Across the room, at the nurse’s station, Ellie lay on her back all sprawled out as if she’d just swum the English Channel. She had her color now and was perfectly healthy. And I confirmed that she was, in fact, a girl, as the ultrasound had said. I would have been happy regardless, as long as the baby was healthy. Nonetheless, I did experience a pinch of relief that Ellie wasn’t an Eddie, because all our baby clothes at home were pink.
When I returned to report on Ellie’s excellent condition, I found Jess crying silently as the doctor sewed her back up. “Are you in pain?” I asked, ”or just emotional?”
She nodded.
“Emotional?” I asked.
She nodded.
