Food for thought from TheHuey

In this crazy world, we want everything now. I want my coffee now! I want my Yahoo Videos now! But, sometimes, the end result is well worth the wait.

After going past our due date of Sept. 30th and visiting the doc, an induction date of Oct. 5th was set, due to Audrey’s large head circumference. At midnight, Audrey pre-empted our scheduled morning call and sent Yun into labor. After waking me (Huey) up a few times, Yun got up at 1:05 to walk around. Still half asleep and somewhat disbelieving Yun, I vaguely remembered to tell her to grab a towel in case her water broke. At this point, contractions were irregular and about 10 minutes apart. Deciding that perhaps she was in false labor, Yun laid down around 1:25 and almost immediately went into another contraction. Breaking her water on this contraction, I rapidly became alert and started looking for the phone. We had been waiting for this baby for the past 3 weeks (Not counting the whole pregnancy of course) and I was ready to meet her. Calling the doctors office gave me an answering service. After letting them know the situation, I was told the on-call doctor would be paged. After what seemed like an eternity, we got the call from the on-call and we were told to head for the delivery room.

Half expecting a relative quick delivery, with the wife having been at 2-3cm for a few weeks, I was completely unprepared for what lay ahead. After checking in and getting situated, we dug in to wait for the progression of labor. Yun made some progress early but stalled early in the morning. Stalls around 5cm and 7cm took us deep into the afternoon, what started as a hopeful 10 hour delivery had dragged into a marathon 16 hours. Our doctor finished with her clinicals and was able to come check our progress. Knowing beforehand that our baby was atleast 8 pounds, we knew that we might have to prepare for a Caesarean. At this point, Yun was developing a fever and Audrey’s heartrate had escalated from a steady 130bpm to 170bpm. The decision to head for the operation room was quick but not without a few tears.

From decision to delivery, it was only around 40 minutes. Hearing her first cries of complaint sent Yun and I into emotional tatters. Gathering my wits, I somehow made it over to the baby’s crib and was handed a pair of scissors to cut Audrey’s cord. Bringing her to show Yun, I couldn’t help but fall in love with her pursed lips.

The 9 month+ wait was filled with excitment, confusion, anxiety, and some mad scrambling to purchase all sorts of baby furniture. All that melted away the moment we heard her voice.

So what happened after that? While those details are a bit more mundane, I’m sure there will be plenty more exciting news to come, but you’re going to have to wait with the rest of us. I’m going to go see my daughter.

-Huey

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 5th, 2006 at 10:49 pm and is filed under Baby News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.