Baby Luke!

If you haven't heard the news yet, baby Luke was born last Saturday, June 23, 2012 at 1:47pm!  His birth weight was 8 lbs 2 oz and he is 20 inches long.  

Pictures!  That's what everyone wants to see.  We have a baby website with about 20 pictures and a guestbook you can sign here.  Disclaimer - these pictures don't really convey how adorable Luke is.  The pictures make him look cute, but in person he's just fantastic.

Now most of the females out there are probably wondering how the labor went.  So here it is.  Friday night both of us were feeling kind of out of it.  Marinda was really tired from not sleeping much (something about having an 8 lb baby in her or something).  Also, Amit was coming down with something so he needed to rest.  In fact, his throat was so sore he could only talk when necessary.  So there we were Friday night, too tired to spend a lot of time with either set of parents that were in town.  Marinda actually spent the entire day napping, thinking she would start activity trying to get into labor the next day.  Her contractions had pretty much stopped, and she was beginning to wonder how much later after her due date the baby would come.  “It’s never going to happen,” she said.  “I’m going to be pregnant forever.”

Around 9:30pm while Marinda was stretching, she looked at Amit and said "I think my water just broke."  "Are you sure?" he asked her, secretly hoping it wasn't the case.  Marinda called the Labor and Delivery unit, and they asked her some questions about what was going on, and told us to come in.  So we threw together the last few things for our hospital bags, Amit dragged everything out to the car, and off we were!  "I was so jittery," Marinda said.  "I couldn't believe that it was actually happening.  I was nervous that this could actually be it.  And on the car ride over, I refused to listen to the radio because I didn't want some awful song to be part of our son's birth story just in case!"  Amit had a slightly different reaction.   "I was actually pretty sure we were going to get sent home,” he said.  “It seemed cruel for the universe to have Luke come when I could barely speak, let alone shout 'Push!' for who knows how many hours!"

By the time we got there it was late - around 10pm.  FYI, hospitals are pretty empty that late on Friday nights.  The only person we saw before getting to L&D was the guard at the front.  He took one look at Marinda and then said to Amit "You can check in after you get settled."  We could tell he'd seen this plenty of times before.

This was taken by Marinda's Mom when they got there, but it looked pretty much
like this on Friday night too.

It turned out Friday was a really popular time for women to be in labor.  The hospital was swamped and we actually had to spend a good amount of time just waiting to get into a room to get examined.  We ended up being in a room that wasn't really even an exam room.  It was one room that had been turned into two by a dividing curtain.  Anyways, once we got to the examination room Marinda was hooked up to the fetal heart rate monitor and contraction monitor.  After maybe an hour of monitoring a doctor examined Marinda to see if her water had in fact broken.  When she came back, it turned out her water wasn't broken.  Amit, tired of trying to sleep in an armchair, was relieved.  It was only 12 or 12:30.  They could go home and maybe rest.  Marinda disagreed - she wanted to stay. Her contractions were progressing and she didn't want to leave until she knew about how fast they were progressing.  You know, the acceleration, and at that point they only had the velocity.  Half an hour later while we were still deciding, the doctor came back and said that there was a slight anomaly in Luke's heart rate that made them want to keep us longer and probably admit us.  Nothing serious, but they don't like to send people home unless everything is stellar.  They said that things were moving pretty slow and that they would observe us all night, and then in the morning they would get Marinda walking and induce her if needed.  So that was that, we were to be admitted into the L&D unit and knew that one way or another by the end of the next day we would have our baby!  And on his due date no less!

By the time we actually got to our real room it was around 3am (as we said, super busy night).  Marinda's contractions had reached the well-known 5-1-1 rule for going to the hospital (they were actually more 4 minutes apart at this point), so we knew we were supposed to be here either way.  We got to the room and it took until about 3:45am to get everything situated.  During that time Marinda's contractions had more or less stopped, making us think we would be able to rest and start real labor again in the morning like planned.  But the universe has a funny sense of humor.  As Amit remembers it: "I was lying on my couch-bed, having just gotten comfortable.  I was in that rare moment between sleep and waking, where only the loudest and most sudden distractions can wake one from that realm beyond our own consciousnesses.  And it was in that moment that I heard the cry - the cry of pain."  

What happened?  Marinda's contractions struck back, stronger than ever.  They were really painful and her entire body started violently shaking, and soon she was unable to breath through them without help.  "There was no warning.  No contractions - not even a feeling of 'I feel different' - it was just all of the sudden all-consuming,"  Marinda said afterwards. "We took the baby prep classes and learned all the different breathing techniques, but honestly they were completely useless.  My body had entered survival mode and I could hardly keep my eyes focused let alone think."  Amit called the nurse back, and she took one look at Marinda and said now would be a good time to call the doctor and the anesthesiologist (she had asked for our birth plan and knew what we wanted.)  

Side note: Everyone (doctors and nurses) asked for our birth plan when they first met us and told us how much they loved it.  They said we pretty much wrote up how they delivered babies at that hospital.  They also were fine using the folded worn one that Marinda had been carrying around in her purse for the past few weeks instead of the nice newly printed ones in our hospital bag.  They said it had character.

Pretty soon Marinda was examined by a doctor who told us that she was dilated to 4-5cm and had begun active labor.  When the doctor told them, Marinda remembers thinking to herself "if it hurts this bad at 5cm, I don't want to know what 8cm will feel like."  This was a great time for her to get the epidural and some other things she needed for labor.  But unfortunately it took some time for the anesthesiologist to get there.  "I said I was going to die," Marinda remembers, "I felt like I was.  I kept thinking, 'I'm the exception.  Everyone else can do childbirth, but not me.  I'm special.  I'm going to die.'"  Amit tried to assure her that she was doing great and that she could do it.  "I had brought this nice picture of Christ that was going to be my focal point through the pain - but it ended up being useless.  The only thing that got me through it was having Amit looking at me, telling me to breath and to look at him when my eyes started to wander while holding my hand and touching my forehead."  And she made it - the anesthesiologist got there around 4am or so.

We're sure our anesthesiologist is a great guy and a great doctor, and the epidural he gave Marinda worked wonders, but at the time Marinda was furious at him.  "He kept asking me these questions and giving detailed instructions about what the epidural was and what the risks were," she said.  "And all I was thinking was 'stop talking and make the pain go away!  I'm dying!  Aren't you a doctor?  Didn't you go to med school?  Small fiber peripheral neuropathy explains itself in it's name!  Stop asking me questions!'"  Needless to say she might have come off a little annoyed and frustrated, but who doesn't when they're in active labor with no pain meds?  The fact that she didn't actually say anything mean to him is impressive - mostly because she was in too much pain to form coherent sentences.

Note for the future: write up a description of any health problems you might have (like Marinda's small fiber peripheral neuropathy) because when you're in active labor and the anesthesiologist is trying to figure out if it is actually safe to give you an epidural it is going to take forever for you to think through the pain enough to explain it to him.

So she got the epidural, and labor became much more tolerable for some reason.  "It really was magical," Amit said.  "Before it everything was on edge - like I could get punched in the face by my wife at any moment.  After the epidural, we actually slept.  Isn't that crazy?"  "My vision cleared almost instantly, I looked around, reintroduced myself to our anesthesiologist (who actually was a great guy) and met my new nurse Jackie who had come in after my active labor had started.  Before she had simply been "nice soothing voice and hands on my shoulders telling me that I 'got this'.  From this point on she is going to be 'my amazing angel of a nurse who is one of the main reasons I survived this.'"  At this point we contacted the parents who came as soon as they could.

Around 6am the parents showed up, and we were ready to sleep.  Originally we thought things might progress really quickly given how suddenly Marinda shifted into active labor.  Also, we later found out that her water had broken while they were putting in the epidural, so we knew things would have to move somewhat quickly.  Little did we know our parents would be sticking around for 10 hours before Luke got visitors.  Oh well, pregnancy is fundamentally an unpredictable process.  In basically every way.  The only thing you can count on is that it ends at some point.

We basically slept on and off until maybe 9.  The nice thing about UW Medical Center is that you can order as much food as you want.  It's technically just for the mom, but partners are unofficially allowed (and encouraged) to order food too.  Of course Marinda had her epidural so she was confined to the bed and couldn't eat solid food.  That didn't stop Amit though!  "I didn't care," Marinda said later, "I actually am pretty crazy about jello and fruit pops, so I was good."

Up until 10am things mostly went as expected.  She still was shaking violently on and off, so we knew her body was going through something terrible, but she couldn't feel it and was okay with that.  There was a little pain, but things were going really smoothly.  At least in our room.  We could hear a women in the next room over who clearly didn't have pain meds to get her through labor.  At this point Marinda's epidural did something weird where her lower back and her upper left thigh started hurting - a lot.  We called for the nurse, but since they were so swamped with births that day and because Marinda had been napping Jackie was assisting in another birth at the moment.  The nurse who did come in really didn’t know anything about our situation so she wasn’t able to help all that much.  The pain, plus the lady in the next room freaking out spiked Marinda's anxiety levels again and Marinda's Mom had to go get Marinda's Dad's iphone and headphones to try and drown out the sobbing next door.  "I didn't want to listen to something that I liked because I might have associated it with pain for the rest of my life, so I picked Smash Mouth's Sister Psychic and listened to it over and over until Jackie came."  It turned out all she had to do was shift to her left a little, and the epidural kicked back in again and life was happy once more.  

At this point Jackie's shift ended, but she got replaced by the other two reasons this experience turned out to be a positive one, Joleen and Eva.  "I don't think I can emphasize enough how important the nurses were.  Sure the doctor was there doing stuff every now and then and he was absolutely great, but it was really the nurses who got me through this.  They were AMAZING!"

Taken after Luke was born, but look at the cute note the nurses
wrote when they came on!

Marinda finally was ready to start pushing at 12:50pm, and with the help from the nurses it went pretty smoothly for the first half an hour or so.  Then everything changed.  For those who don't know, the epidural helps with contractions, but when that baby starts crowning there is absolutely nothing that can contain the pain.

Everything picked up really fast.  The doctor was called in and Marinda started panicking that they weren't getting him ready fast enough.  Marinda's body had taken over and she was telling them when she was pushing - or really when her body was pushing.  She did not scream or curse, but she was sobbing uncontrollably and when her vision started going they put her on oxygen.  At this point other doctors came in to observe, and we meet the one person in this birth story that Marinda truly hated.  One of the new doctors was standing sort of behind the main doctor and he will forever be known as "that blond doctor with glasses." While the nurses were giving Marinda instructions and encouragement, he kept saying stupid things like "It is going to keep hurting unless you relax your hips."  Interpretation: You're in pain and it is all your fault. Marinda wanted to scream "SHUT UP!" and punch him in the face, but she was a little busy staying conscious.

Amit was in there too, helping and trying to encourage Marinda.  He also had a great view of the birth.  “Beforehand a couple other guys told me that I should look over the divider while she was pushing,” he said.  “But there was no divider!  I was standing by Marinda’s side and I could still see Luke’s luscious head of hair coming out.”  As far as watching his wife go through the worst pain of her life, he said “It’s sort of this surreal experience.  There’s nothing I could really do, and she was so hysterical I’m pretty sure she doesn’t remember anything I said anyways.”

In the end, it came down to a choice.  Somehow, through the haze of the pain, Marinda knew that the only way to make it finally end was to make the decision to push herself - to be the cause of the worst pain she'll hopefully ever feel.  Not that she hadn’t been pushing, but this was going to be different.  Once she did, it was all over in two more pushes 57 minutes after she started.

Then he was here.  His little, perfect, wriggly body was placed on her chest, and even though the pain was still there it didn't matter any more.  All she could say was “he’s mine.”  "The only way I can describe that moment is it is like you spend your entire life trying to figure out the different purposes for why you're even here.  In that moment I aligned with one of mine, and that feeling is what we are all looking for in this life."

Here are Amit’s final thoughts: “There’s this anxiety throughout the whole process of whether or not things will be okay.  But when he came out and started moving and had his whimper of a cry, it all became real.  I was a dad.  And Luke was just perfect.”

And Luke is still perfect, now 5 days after his birth.  His pediatrician even said so on Tuesday, so it’s official now.  His birth certificate will probably say something about it.  He didn’t have any major deformities like some newborns do either.  “He’s so cute he could be a c-section baby,” one of the doctors who visited us in postpartum said.

So that’s the story.  This blog has now officially changed from the adventures of Amit and Marinda to cute pictures of Luke until further notice.  

All buckled up to go home!

Luke at five days old!