Sunshine, rainbows, lollipops and unicorn farts…

I’ve  been meaning to write a light-hearted and possibly funny entry for a few weeks now, but I’ve stalled out quite a few times.  I think because honestly, I don’t feel all that humorous or light-hearted at the moment.  While being a new father has had its definite highs, there have been some pretty serious lows that have come with it.

It’s one thing to know that having a newborn will be tough.  To have the information that you’ll have sleepless nights, difficult days, and just be outright tired most of the time is helpful, but I don’t think you can ever be fully prepared for the toll it takes on you, both psychologically, and emotionally.  Not to mention the problems that arise in your relationship with your spouse.

No one really wants to talk about it, because the focus should be on the baby, and rightfully so.  There is a ton of responsibility and work that needs to be done when caring for a newborn.  However, all of that work takes away from your ability to actually have a relationship with anyone except the baby.  It’s not hard to keep up a façade of happiness and joy when dealing with people outside of the immediate family, but within the nucleus, things can get pretty strained.  I know I’ve found myself snapping at my wife due to being tired from lack of sleep, or stress from doing duty after duty, and I’ve been equally snapped at.  Sadly, it doesn’t feel as if any of this matters, because there is a baby to look after.  When the happiness and well-being of the child comes first, everything else seems to come second.

I love my daughter.  I want her to be happy.  I love to see her face looking at me, with not a care in the world.  However, it comes at a price.  It has been the roughest month of my life when it comes to my relationship with my wife.  I have never felt as angry or as helpless as I have this last month, because I honestly feel that I can’t do anything right. 

Case in point.  Due to the task of trying to either put her to sleep, or keep her asleep, both my wife and I have found ourselves up for long stretches of the night, trying to comfort our baby.  Sometimes it’s one of us, sometimes it’s both of us, but someone is always tired come the morning.  I’ve been trying to take some of the stress off of my wife by getting up early, and taking care of my daughter for a few hours so that she can get a few extra hours of sleep.  However, because I am so tired from the night before, I need to do something to let my mind rest.  For me, this normally consists of doing something relatively engaging, but pretty mindless.  What does that mean?  Right… video games.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t translate well with a squirming, fussy child in your lap who doesn’t want to sleep.  She starts crying, which either causes my wife to wake up, or me to stop what I’m doing.  So I try everything in my power to get my daughter to stop crying, but this stops my resting time, therefore causing me to be more irritable the rest of the day. 

I'm not one to take a nap during the day, because I tend to wake up more cranky than if I had just stayed up, so I’m constantly looking for time to just veg out to give my brain time to process the tiredness. This ends up being a pretty vicious cycle, as it has now been a few weeks since the last time I have had a good night’s sleep, and every day is a struggle to find time to let my brain be off for a little while.  This is interpreted as my not caring, or not wanting to be involved, and we argue. 

That might have made no sense, seeing as how I’m writing this during one of those stretches where we’re trying to get the baby to go back to sleep.  However, I was in bed thinking about how utterly miserable I’ve been the last week, and felt the need to at least try to articulate how I’ve felt, if for no other reason then to get it out of my head. 

While writing this entry, my wife told me about a conversation she had with our neighbor, who already has two children.  She told me that she can’t imagine how couples who are having problems in their relationship can think that having a child will save it somehow.  We’ve had a pretty strong relationship, and we’re already snapping at each other frequently.  I would imagine if you didn’t have that type of relationship before having a baby, that you might as well sign the divorce papers after having one, because all of your flaws, errors, and selfish desires are magnified a hundred fold when you’re trying to take care of a newborn.  Everything is seen through the lens of “How will this behavior benefit the child?” and most everything you’ve ever done for yourself will fail that examination. 

The only silver lining in all of this is that it’s supposed to get better after the initial exhaustion.  Seeing most couples with children, I believe this is true.  However, who knows?  Maybe it’s just another façade.  No one wants to be “that” family.  I get overly pessimistic when I’m sleep-deprived, so please forgive me if I come off a tad gloom and doom.  I just know that statistically, most married couples find less satisfaction with the relationship after having a child.  I’d rather not end up in that statistic.  Only time will tell. 

Despite all of the effort, all of the tiredness, all of the arguing, I do love my wife more everyday, and I’m happy that our baby is here.  I’m still amazed that we actually have a little girl to call our own, and that she’s actually ours.  Part of me is still expecting someone to show up at the door and say “Ha! Jokes on you, we’re taking her back now.”  When I look at my wife holding my daughter, I feel nothing by love for them both, and I will do whatever I can to make our lives a better one… even though I’m going to be cranky for most of the first part of it. 

A Daddy By Any Other Name

I mentioned in the previous post how my using the term “daddy” instead of “father” was significant.  I’d like to take a moment to explain that.

In my mind, I was all prepared to be a “father” to my child.  When I think of a “father,” I think of someone who kind of stands above their child, someone who has an air of authority about them.  You wouldn’t want to mess with someone who is a father, because they are likely to kick your butt.  However, there’s also an air of detachment from their children; at least there is when it comes to my point of view. 

Admittedly, it may come from my experience with my own father.  I always felt a little separated from him as I was growing up.  He was just always this presence in the house, someone who provided for his children, and that was about it.  I don’t think I ever really bonded with him, and to this day, our relationship is kind of awkward.  To be honest, some of that is due to some of the rather horrendous things he has said to me, but despite those things, he still feels obligated to support me in a way, even if it is only financially.   I don’t really understand it, but that’s just how things are with him. 

So here I was, all ready to be a “father” to my child.  I say that because I have never felt any real love for children.  I was never the type to coo over or coddle a baby or a little kid.  I have always spoken to them as I would any other adult.  I don’t treat them any differently because I never saw the point.  I have always been very straight forward, and with very little emotion on my part.  Even with my own nephew and niece, despite me honestly caring a lot about them, I feel as though I am a bit aloof at times, frequently putting my own interests ahead of any desire to see them.  There are times I feel that I am just playing the role of an uncle, instead of feeling any special connection to them.  I have always been confused by how excited they are to see me, despite me feeling as though I am sort of a mediocre uncle to them at best.  People have always told me it will be different when it’s my own child.  I always just blew them off and went, “Pffft… sure.”

Not to say I was planning on being a “father.”  It’s just that when you take some time for introspection, and if you’re really honest with yourself, you can get used to anything.  Better to know how you could be beforehand then to regret your behavior later in life when you find yourself wondering why you couldn’t have been a better whatever.  If you have an idea of what to expect, at least you can fine-tune your behavior so that you’re the best whatever you’re going to be. 

So over the course of the pregnancy, I was preparing myself to be the best “father” I could be.  I thought about what kind of lessons I’d want to teach my child so that I could pass on my knowledge.  I thought about how I’d correct her behavior if she did something wrong.  I thought about how I would answer the myriad of questions I knew was going to come my way, because children will always incessantly ask “why?”  I thought about how I’d handle all the big moments in her life so that I could at least show her that while I may not be the kind of person that was emotionally attached, I still cared about her, and that I wanted the best for her.

I know, reading that, you wonder what kind of person I must be.  “How would anyone preplan their reactions to spontaneous events?  How could you be so cold?”  Truthfully, I’m the type of person who just thinks about every potential scenario, and tries to plan accordingly.  I have this maddening habit (you can ask my friends, they’ll tell you) where I’ll let completely hypothetical and near impossible scenarios play out in my head, just in case.  Everything from, “What happens if it rains sometime this week?”  to “What would I do if a terrorist tried to commandeer a plane that I’m flying in?”  I will acknowledge that as much time as I spend on these thoughts, 99.9% of them are complete wastes of time.  But whether it’s due to paranoia, or just some odd quirk in my brain, I feel that it’s worth it to spend a little time thinking about these things. 

However, the day of the birth, all of that preparation, all of that readiness for being a “father,” flew right out the window when I held little Rinoa in my arms for the first time.  I took one look at her, and all of that exterior seemed to melt away.  I knew, from the moment I looked at her, that I was hooked.  I was not going to be a “father” to her.  I was going to be a “daddy.”

The thing is… I’ve never thought about what a “daddy” really is.  I try to wrap my brain around it, and there’s nothing concrete for me to grab on to.  I just know that there won’t be any of that disconnect that I had with my own father.  I look forward to her calling me “dada” or “daddy” or whatever she wants to call me the first time she learns how to speak and wants my attention.  I’m anticipating the day that she wants to jump into my lap and curl up with me just because she wants to be near me.  I can’t wait until she buries her head into my chest because we’re watching a movie, and something scares her.  I want to be there when she feels sad and needs something to make her day better.  I want to be the kind of person that she’ll still call “daddy” on her wedding day. 

Turns out all those other people were right after all.  At least when it comes to me, anyway.  Holding her in my arms, looking into her tiny little face, I feel different.  Prior to her birth, I always felt like I didn’t think I could really handle having a child.  I knew I was going to try my best, but ultimately, I was just going to be another one of those “fathers” out there who went about their business while their kid grew up.  Now… I feel as though I could move mountains for her if she asked me to.  All just because she’s here. 

I can’t wait until she asks. 

Tiny’s finally here!

It’s been a couple of weeks since my last post, most of which had to do with a very hectic schedule.  A lot has happened in the past couple of weeks, not the least of which is that I’m now officially a daddy!  The fact that I used the word “daddy” instead of “father” is an important matter in and of itself, but I’ll get into that in another post.  First, let me catch you up to everything that led up to the birth of Tiny Tien.  Warning, this is a very long post… you might need a pot of coffee or something.

My last post detailed all of the issues that we had in dealing with a baby in breech position.  Well, shortly after that post, we were told that there was a doctor in the Fukuyama area that had experience in dealing with natural breech births.  You would not have believed how incredibly relieved we were to hear that.  The doctor that we had at Fukuyama Medical Center had gone out of her way to put us in touch with a doctor at the Koike Family Hospital who apparently had dealt with breech births extensively, so it seemed like an ideal fit for us.  The thing that we knew at the time, that didn’t quite register, is that doctors who still performed natural breech births tend to be on the older side.  That little tidbit proved to be a lot more important to this whole matter than we would ever have expected.

We left from the Fukuyama Medical Center on March 9th, with the expectation that we would meet the doctor from Koike that same afternoon, register with the hospital, and prepare to have a natural birth.  Since the baby shower was that Saturday, we were looking forward to that weekend as sort of a final lead-up to the eventual birth of our child.  We got home, relaxed for a few hours, and made our way to the hospital.  Since the doctor only spoke Japanese, I had to go pick up a friend who would act as translator.  This meant that while my wife took a cab to the hospital, I had to follow on bike in order to A) find where the hospital was, and B) leave soon after to pick up our friend and get her to the hospital.  This led to a comedy of errors. 

First of all, there is no way I can keep up with a taxi with a bicycle, especially when the cab takes a major highway.  I quickly fell behind, and soon lost sight of the cab.  Fortunately, we had looked up the location of the hospital beforehand, so I had a general idea of where it was.  Unfortunately, I didn’t know the exact location, so when I got to the area, I was expecting my wife to be standing in front of the location and wave me in, since the cab was well ahead of me.  Now, anyone who knows me knows that I tend to have my headphones on when I bike.  I  generally like music when I travel, so this is a pretty regular occurrence.  I think you can guess where this is going. 

I get to the general area where I thought the hospital was, and I don’t see my wife, so I keep going.  After about 5 minutes of biking, I realize that I may have gone a bit too far when I get to a store that was nowhere near the marked location on the map that we looked at prior to leaving for the hospital.  I start to ride back, and there’s my wife, standing outside of a non-descript building, waving at me frantically.  Apparently, I had passed the hospital by a good 5 blocks, and my wife had no money for the cab she had taken, so she had to resort to paying for the ride by credit card.  Apparently, I wasn’t that far behind the cab, and they had only pulled into the hospital about 2 minutes before, so she hadn’t had the opportunity to get to the front of the hospital before I had passed.  Also, by passing the hospital, I was now late in picking up our friend.  We should have taken all of this as an omen.

So when we finally get into the hospital with our friend, we go through the customary sign in and registration.  We then excitedly waited until our names were called, and we went in to see the doctor.  It started smoothly enough.  He explained to us the nature of a breech birth, and what breech position was best for such a birth.  We had researched all of this before, so when what he said matched our expectations, we thought it might just be smooth sailing.  Then things began to go downhill.  He informed us that in order for them to proceed, they were going to need to perform an X-Ray on my wife in order to admit her into the hospital.  The reason that we were given was so that they could make sure her hips were wide enough to deliver the baby.  This immediately sent alarm bells ringing in both my wife’s and my own head.  Every bit of literature that we had read up until then had said that X-Rays while the baby was in the womb were generally regarded as a bad idea.  Considering the baby wasn’t quite full term, we were concerned about the safety of such a procedure.  When we brought this up to the doctor, he immediately began to get defensive.

He replied quite aggressively that all hospitals did that, which was the first time that we had ever heard anyone say that.  Up until that point, every examination we had undergone was done by ultrasound only.  When we said that this was not a common practice in the US, he replied with, “If you want to use American procedures, then you should get on a plane and fly back to America.”  This obviously rubbed us the wrong way, but we tried to keep an open mind.  Maybe he was just gruff in his manner.  We asked for some time to do some more research to make sure it was ok, and he responded with, “If you don’t accept this procedure right now, then we will not accept you at all.  You will have to leave, and don’t bother coming back.”  He followed that up with, “If you don’t do this, there’s a possibility the baby could die.”  Finally, he kicked us out of his room while we were trying to discuss what to do because he didn’t want us to waste his time.  Keep in mind that all of this is being filtered through our friend who was acting as translator, and the doctor would give her time to translate his responses, but would cut her off whenever she would try to translate what we were saying. 

By the end of that exchange, I was seething, and my wife was in tears.  We had never been treated quite so rudely during this entire process, and despite all the difficulties, we always felt we were at least treated with respect, until that moment.  We sat outside of his office, trying to decide what to do.  My wife was still very against the idea of a C-section, but after the kind of treatment we had just received, she was ready to just call it quits and do whatever the doctors at the previous hospitals wanted.  I decided to try to do what research I could right then and there, since my wife owns a smartphone, so I hopped on the internet to see what we could learn about X-Rays during late stage pregnancy.  Come to find out that it isn’t all that irregular, as long as the dosage of radiation used during the X-Ray was kept very low.  They still advised against it, but that if it was absolutely necessary, it could be done without any ill effects. 

We gave it one last go, this time asking if at the very least, we could keep the baby with us in the room after the birth at all times so that my wife could breastfeed the child. When they told us this wasn’t allowed either, we decided it was time to go.  Aside from the possibility that we could avoid a C-section (there was never a guarantee that we would avoid a C-section at this hospital, just that if the circumstances were right, we could still undergo a natural birth), there was no reason to come to this hospital.  Their policies didn’t match what we wanted, the doctor was a rude asshole (yeah that’s right, I said it) and we honestly didn’t want to undergo what would already be a stressful process with someone who had the bedside manner of a jackhammer with a busted air compressor (yeah… a weird analogy, but I honestly don’t know what else to compare him to without using some rather uncouth words). 

On a sidenote, the reason I brought up the age of the doctor earlier was that he seemed to be one of those old school doctors who just expected everyone to bow down to his expertise, without question.  The fact that we didn’t immediately acquiesce to his demands seemed to have set him off.  I’m led to believe that he must have taken our questions and hesitation as a personal insult, and he felt that he had to reestablish himself as some sort of alpha male by badgering us into a decision, and when he didn’t get his way, he unceremoniously kicked us out of his office.  I’m not saying all older doctors are this way, but my experience is that younger doctors, at least here in Japan, are more willing to entertain a wider variety of ideas, and try to work with their patients, as opposed to trying to browbeat them into submission.

So we entered the weekend of our baby shower without anywhere to give birth to the baby.  Both of our previous hospitals had said that unless we agreed to a planned C-section on specific dates, we wouldn’t be taken in.  We knew that in the case of an emergency, they’d HAVE to take us in, but we’d rather not had to resort to that.  So in a last ditch effort, we decided to speak to our midwife, who was affiliated with the first hospital we were speaking with, Iguchi hospital.

The following Tuesday, March 13th, she came over, and we had a very long conversation.  We also had our friend/next door neighbor over as well, since she had a good deal of experience with dealing with babies, so that we had her opinion.  This was, all things considered, probably one of the best ideas we have had since this whole process began.  The most important thing to come out of this conversation was an explanation as to why we needed a C-section.  Up until this point, every time we asked why, the response from all of our doctors was that it was “hospital procedure.”  This led us to believe that it was always just a matter of convenience for the doctors, not a matter of respecting my wife’s desires or decisions.  We were told that the C-section needed to be planned to avoid damaging the uterus, since performing surgery while going through labor contractions could lead to tearing in the uterine walls, which could lead to excess blood loss, as well as putting the baby in a state of distress.

It was a very calming conversation, and we decided to schedule appointments with both Iguchi hospital and Fukuyama Medical Center in order to see what policies they had that would accommodate our wishes.  If she had to settle for a C-section, there were only two things she wanted.  One, that we have the baby with us at all times after the surgery, and two, that I be with her during the surgery.  While the second wish is common in the US, when we had brought it up before while in the Medical Center, we were given a non-committal answer.  This time, we were going to make sure we had solid answers, and we were going to make a final push for what we wanted before we assented to anything. 

On March 14th, we went to our appointment at Iguchi hospital.  We spoke with the doctor with whom we had worked before, and he checked the baby.  Then he sat us down and told us that he would take us in, but only if we agreed to a C-section for the very next day.  We were informed that the umbilical cord was wrapped around our baby’s neck, and we didn’t really have anymore time to wait.  We made it very clear what we wanted, and he agreed to both things.  Fortunately, unlike the doctor at Koike, this doctor is very affable, and tried his best to make us comfortable.  The reason that we weren’t with this doctor the entire time was that when he had discovered my wife’s cervix was thinning, the baby was still premature, and Iguchi was not equipped to handle a premature birth.  He sent us to Fukuyama Medical Center as a precaution.  Once we hit full term, we approached the idea of returning to Iguchi, but he insisted that we have the C-Section immediately, and at the time, we were still holding out hope that we could still have a natural birth.  However, after the experience at Koike, we were left with very little choice but to accept a C-section. We canceled the appointment with Fukuyama Medical Center, since if we had to be in a hospital for the birth, we wanted Iguchi as our first choice anyway.  So that night, we prepared ourselves to meet our baby the next day.

There is a very strange feeling knowing the exact moment you will meet your new child.  With natural birth, there is an indefinite period of time where you’re not sure if the baby is coming or not.  You know it will be soon, but the time in which you’re in labor can vary by great amounts.  It builds a sense of anticipation that has a very climactic finish with the actual birth.  We were scheduled for surgery at 1:00 PM on March 15th.  That’s about as definitive as you’re going to get.  There’s a sense of anticipation, but it’s very different in the fact that you know by a certain time, you’re done.  It’s almost like waiting for a train or a bus.  You know it will be there, with very little degree of variation in the timing (well… unless you’re waiting for a NYC bus… then who knows?) so it’s just a matter of waiting. 

So we arrive at the hospital at 9am on March 15th.  They prep my wife for surgery, and we settle into her recovery/post-partum room and wait until the actual surgery.  We nap a little, because we were both nervous/excited the night before, so we had very little sleep.  Then they call her into the surgical room, and I am told to wait while they set up for the actual surgery.  At 1:30pm, I am told to walk into the surgery room.  I was a little surprised by this, as I thought I would be given scrubs, but apparently, they’re ok with me coming in with my street clothes.  I proceed to sit next to my wife and hold her hand as they begin the surgery. 

Normally, at least in the US, when the husband is in the room during a C-section, there is a curtain separating the husband from the area of surgery, but there wasn’t one in this case.  I was given a full view of the entire surgery.  This was both scary and cool.  I had never seen a surgery done this close before, but at the same time, this is my wife we’re talking about here.  I have always felt close to my wife, but I never thought I’d see this side of her… you know, the inside.  At approximately 1:48pm, Rinoa Helena Tien was brought into this world.

See? Street Clothes

The funniest thing about this whole thing (if you can call a surgery funny) was that as they were pulling out Rinny, butt first, there was a moment when her entire body was out of the womb, except for her head.  If you don’t know what a newly delivered baby looks like, they are a very strange blue-ish, gray color.  As her head was still inside her mom’s body cavity, I saw bubbles in the amniotic fluid, and I don’t know why, but it was the funniest thing I had seen for some time.  It looked sort of like an alien ostrich.  Anyway, they pulled her out, and here was this toothless, blue-ish, gray thing crying its head off at us.  At this point, we discovered it was a girl, and I could finally stop calling my child an “it” (although, as I had suspected for 4 years prior to her birth, that my first child would be a girl… it’s nice to be right).  At that moment, I was officially a daddy.

After they cleaned her up and clothed her, they handed her to me, and I was able to bring her to my wife while they closed her up.  To say the least, it was an uncomfortable experience for her, one that she never wants to repeat if possible.  I will never understand how people would willingly put themselves through a procedure that amounts to elective major surgery.  However, at the end of the day, we were blessed with a beautiful little baby girl, and really, that’s all you can ask for. 

Rinoa Helena Tien

Now, on to the business of being a daddy! I’ll save all the immediate post-birth stories for the next entry.  Hope to see you here for the next one.

Anticipation…

We are now only a month away from the expected arrival date of Tiny Tien.  It has been a long and arduous journey (man… I always wanted to use that phrase, even if it is a bit hackneyed) and we’re almost at the finish line.  However, there continue to be a few stumbling blocks in the way. 

As you all know,  my wife has been in the hospital for quite some time now.  In fact, she just hit the month mark.  The good news is that she will be allowed to come home this coming Friday, which is good news for both of us, as we’ve been missing each other terribly (I’ve been there to see her nearly every day, but it’s just not the same as being home together.)  If things continue as they have been over the last month, she will be allowed to stay home until she has to give birth.  This is where the sticky part comes in.

Originally, my wife wanted as natural a birth as possible.  We hired a midwife to help us with that.  One of the requirements of signing up with the midwife was that we had to register at an affiliated hospital.  Actually, it was more of a birthing center, as they only dealt with pregnant women at this location.  However, they had all the requisite pregnancy monitoring equipment that the midwife didn’t have, so it was a good place to be.  It also helped that they had similar practices when it came to post-delivery baby-time that the midwife had.  Here in Japan, the common practice is to separate mother and infant for hours at a time so that the mother can ostensibly “rest”.  However, at Iguchi (the name of the birthing center), they allowed the baby to stay with the mother at all times.  This was one of the top things that my wife wanted, so we were quite happy with the arrangement.

As the pregnancy progressed, we kept running into minor complications.  The baby always seemed to be in breech position whenever we had an ultrasound.  We thought “Okay, well, some babies turn later in the pregnancy, and there’s still time, so ya know, whatever.”  However, as time wore on, the baby remained in breech, and this was followed by the news that my wife’s cervix had thinned considerably.  At this point, they were worried about a premature delivery, with the risk of a prolapsed umbilical cord.  If you don’t know why that would be an issue, imagine if you were scuba diving, and your air-hose got pinched.  Same general idea, but a heck of a lot worse.  So she ended up in the larger Fukuyama hospital for the aforementioned month.  Main problem with that, aside from it being an extended hospital stay, is that they prescribe to the “take the baby away” methodology that we were trying to avoid.

Now that the month is winding down, we’re preparing for the actual arrival of the baby, and even then, there are issues.  The baby has remained in breech position, and seeing as how we’re in the 36th week, this is getting to be very worrisome.  Unfortunately, the only method that the doctors here know how to employ when dealing with this circumstance is the dreaded C-section.  In fact, when we were told that she could leave, we were hopeful to return to Iguchi so that we could have the baby with us after birth, but we were told that they would only take her if we agreed to a planned C-section, some 2 weeks before the expected due date of Tiny Tien.  Both my wife and I sat there, our mouths agape when we were given this news.  We didn’t want a C-section period, nevermind a planned one.  We were given some reason about them wanting to avoid a ruptured membrane, but we’re only 10-15 minutes away from the hospital by taxi.  Needless to say, we were caught a little off guard by this news, as we thought that Iguchi was the type of place that generally leaned toward more natural births.  Just seems that more and more, the supposedly low numbers of C-sections in Japan are beginning to be a thing of the past. 

We had high hopes for being pregnant in Japan, as we had read report after report that the infant mortality rate is the 3rd lowest in the world, and that C-sections are an uncommon experience.  However, during the time we spent in the hospital, we learned that it is standard for anybody with a breech position baby to have a c-section (which is roughly one in four) and that if you’re having twins, it is also general a C-section.  One of the more ridiculous reasons to have a C-section is if the baby is deemed too large.  Do you know what they consider too large?  3400 grams.  That translates to roughly 7 pounds.  That’s underweight in the US, not to mention my wife is not a small Japanese woman.  It boggles the mind that they would even consider something like that.

However, despite all of these trials and tribulations, we are just excited to be so near to date when we will see our child with our very own eyes.  We STILL don’t technically know what gender the baby is, as the breech position is preventing the doctors from getting a clear look, but we’re pretty sure it’s a girl at this point.  Whatever the baby is, we just want her/him to be healthy, and we’re anticipating her arrival with glee.  It has been an unreal experience going through this first pregnancy at times (which I will likely write about in the future), but now that we’re near the end, I’m happy we went through it.  It served to bring me and my wife closer together (although how that could happen, it’s hard to imagine, as we’re almost already joined at the hip) and has made me try harder to be a better person for my future child.  We’re waitin’ for you Tiny, with loving arms wide open.

Rude Awakening

So this is how my Thursday started this past week:

*Knocking in the rhythm of “Shave and a haircut, two bits”

Answering groggily at the door: “Hey… what’s up?”

My neighbor: “Oh hey.  Your wife wanted me to wake you up because she says she wants to talk to you.  She has to sign papers at 11 for an emergency c-section and she wants you there.”

Me: “Ok… wait, WHAT?!”

Needless to say, that woke me up in a HURRY.  Just for clarity’s sake, my wife is at the hospital, she has internet on her phone, she was talking to my neighbor via Skype, and I don’t have a phone that works.  This led to this particular wake up call.  Also, my neighbor had thought that I had known about this previously, which I didn’t, so she believed she was just informing me of prior knowledge, not nonchalantly telling me that my wife was about to have her belly sliced open and the baby removed.

After frantically signing onto Skype to talk to my wife, I learned that it was not indeed a request to do surgery that day.  Instead, it was a consent form just in case something happens, and she is otherwise too preoccupied to give her permission to do the procedure.  For anyone who knows my wife, she wants nothing to do with a c-section whatsoever.  She wants this baby to be born naturally, no drugs, no medical intervention, no anything outside of the natural process.  Knowing that, her signing this paper was a direct acknowledgement of the fact that she may not be able to see it through how she wanted it.

The last few weeks have been a big fight with the doctors to make sure they know that the ONLY circumstance where a c-section may be administered is if either the baby’s life or my wife’s life is in danger.  There will be no surgery for convenience, or lame excuses so that life is easier for the doctor.  One of the doctors in particular has been somewhat glib about the whole c-section procedure, and that sort of attitude can set my wife off in a minute, not to mention my reaction.  I don’t want anything stressing my wife now, as she is in a very delicate situation.  Stress will only serve to make the situation more unbearable, so as it is right now, the only thing she needs is rest, relaxation, and some peace and quiet.

However, this whole debate has got me thinking.  While most people believe that c-sections are pretty run of the mill nowadays, it is still a major surgery.  There can be complications that arise mid-surgery that could threaten the mother’s life, or the baby’s.  Knowing that, and knowing how much of a pessimist/worrywart I can be,  it hit me that there’s the possibility that I could lose either my wife or my child.  Neither is acceptable, but if either scenario were to happen, I have no idea what I would do.  I would likely fall to pieces.

My wife and I jokingly tell each other that we have to be married and alive until we both hit the 100 year old mark.  Should we hit that mark, then we’ll negotiate.  Obviously, we have no way of knowing what will happen in the future, but it comforts me a great deal to know that she wants to be with me so deeply.  I honestly can’t think of my life without her, so this latest scare has me worrying about something that is difficult to fathom. 

I’ve told my wife plenty of times “I don’t want my life to be dramatic.  I don’t like the idea of being a widower or a single dad.  Sure, the pity sex might be fun, but that’ll get old really quick.”  Of course it’s said tongue in cheek, but I really do just want a nice, boring life.  Be married to my wife, have kids, raise them to be good people, watch them grow up and move on with their lives, raising their own kids.  This is probably the only real dream I have.  It’s simple, it’s comfortable, and it’s important to me that it happens.  All these things happening with the baby, with my wife, it has caused me no end of stress.  I’m pretty sure it caused me to be ill this past week, and will probably age me more than I’ve aged in the last decade. 

It will all be worth it once the child is born, and we’re all home again as a happy family.  It’s a cliché, but the only thing I hope for now is a healthy child, a healthy wife, and for them both to be able to come home.   I’m grateful for all the reassurances that I’ve been getting from friends and family, as it keeps me from bouncing too much off the walls, but until they’re both home, it’s hard to really let that worry go.  The time is coming soon though.  We’ve only got a little over a month left until the due date, so hopefully soon, I will be writing about my misadventures in taking care of Tiny Tien, instead of worrying whether or not everything will end up alright.

Life is Funny (Not in a ha ha way)

It has been a very exciting week, and not in a good way.  Maybe stressful would be a more appropriate word, but either way, it’s left me feeling very drained, and a bit unable to really get my thoughts clear enough to do anything aside from update everybody on very basic news of what’s going on.  That said, I had a bit of a moment of clarity tonight, so I thought I should write while the writing is good(hopefully).

Prior to the recent series of events that led to my wife being hospitalized for the month of February,  I was going to write something about how strange relationships are.  I had said to my wife, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, that the time period that she would be at home due to her maternity leave would be a true test of our marriage.  This is because when you really think about it, how much time do you actually spend with your significant other?  Between work, sleep, and just generally being busy, you are around each other for maybe 4 or 5 hours a day, maybe less, depending on your life.  People believe themselves to have great relationships, when in reality, they probably spend more time with their coworkers than with their significant other.  How would you handle it when you and your wife are basically forced to be around each other twenty-four hours a day?  Anyway, that whole line of thought got blown away when about a day after conceiving the idea, my wife was forced to stay in the hospital, thus leaving me very much alone in the house.

It’s funny how life tends to smack you in the mouth when you least expect it.  Here I was, preparing myself mentally for being around my wife all the time, and then we’re separated in quite an alarming fashion.  While I try to remain somewhat level-headed, and at least outwardly remain cool, to be honest, I was worried sick.  I have felt completely helpless these last couple of weeks, as I can do nothing but wait until the doctors give the ok for my wife to come home.  At this point, that’s all I want.  I’ve always been a guy who enjoys his alone time, but not when it has been forced upon me, and not when there’s a chance that whatever led to it could lead to very bad things. 

That having been said, it has made me very aware of my interactions with my wife as I’m hauling myself to the hospital every day.  Because we don’t have the luxury of having easy access to each other every day, what time we do have has sort of become a condensed version of what we do on a regular basis.  We sit, we talk, we hold each other, we nap.  Napping in one of those single hospital beds is a lot more comfortable than you would think, but maybe that’s because I just miss alternately holding and being held by my wife, and I’ll suffer any discomfort to enjoy that particular sensation. 

It just strikes me as funny, because if you were to observe it from an outside perspective, we’re not doing anything special, but I think that’s actually what makes our relationship work so well.  We just enjoy being in each others company, and don’t need a lot of hoopla in order to be happy around each other.  This actually makes me more secure in the fact that we’re going to be parents, and I believe we’ll be good ones.  We don’t need a lot of bells and whistles to be happy with each other, and that will somehow translate to how we take care of our kid.  It doesn’t make a lot of sense right now, neither here on the blog, nor in my head, but there is a correlation, even if I can’t express it at the moment. 

I tend to put a lot of pressure on myself to be a good person, and it will only get worse once the baby is actually here.  I have to fight my natural urges to be selfish and get things the way I want them, and instead try my best to do what I can and what I must in order to try to meet my own expectations.  Being with my wife makes it easier, because most of the time, I want to do things for her and for others because she makes me feel like I actually am a good person.  Having been separated from her in this way has made me realize just how much of an affect she has on me in that regard.  I am better when I’m around her, and when I’m not, it’s a struggle.  It might not be an epiphany of epic proportions, but it does make me realize that her being on maternity leave would not actually have been a test at all.  It would have just been time that we could have enjoyed together.

Gotta keep an eye out for that silver lining…

Another week leads to a little more drama.  I was hoping the pregnancy wouldn’t be so exciting, but I guess you can’t always get what you want.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, there was the possibility that our child could potentially be born premature.  Well, at this point, the doctors seem to almost be guaranteeing that it will happen unless they intervene in some way, so we are now in a situation where my wife is now in a hospital for the next month, more or less confined to a bed.

Of course, the preterm birth of the baby isn’t really the big worry.  The baby is past 7 months at this point, so she will have a pretty high chance of survival (at this point, north of 90%, raising even higher once we hit next week).  The real problem, at least from the doctors point of view is that the baby is in complete breech position.  For those not familiar with what that means, it means the baby is currently head up, butt down, with the feet bent at the knees so that she’s in sort of a cannonball position.  Optimal birth position is with the baby head down, butt up in a standard fetal position.  With the feet down, there is the possibility that the baby’s head will not fit through the birth canal properly since the body comes out first.  There’s also the possibility that the umbilical cord could come out first and cause the baby to lose oxygen during the birth, and that leads to a whole other mess of things. 

Even that by itself, wouldn’t be a problem.  There is still time for the baby to flip itself over.  The issue is that the breech position is in tandem with the fact that my wife’s cervix has shortened quite dramatically in the last week.  Standard cervix length during this part of the pregnancy is 30mm or more.  When we first went to the doctor, it was 24mm.  When we went for a follow up this past Tuesday, it was down to 16mm.  My wife then got sick on Thursday and was vomiting so frequently, that the tension and strain on her body had shortened to 10mm.  The rapidity with which her cervix shrunk, and the breech position had the doctors worried that the umbilical cord could potentially slip out, and so they admitted my wife immediately into the hospital, and will now keep her for a month to monitor hers and the baby’s condition. 

It has been a lot to take in, and I’m surprised that I haven’t had a nervous breakdown yet.  It’s a lot to take in, especially when it’s my first child.  I’m anxious for the health of my wife and of my child, and all of this news is just stressful to get, especially in such rapid succession.  Fortunately, I’ve been able to keep myself calm by realizing two things.  One, that the infant mortality rate in this country is the third lowest in the world, and two, that while the illness that afflicted my wife may have caused her cervix to shorten, it is also possible that her cervix had shrunk to that point anyway, and that if she hadn’t gotten sick, we might not have discovered the problem until it was too late.  There’s that silver lining I was talking about. 

With the sudden shortening of her cervix that she was experiencing prior to this recent visit to the hospital, I would not have been at all surprised if it was the case where we were fortunate that the sickness had been bad enough to drive her to the hospital, or it might have progressed to the point where the baby could have just popped right out.  The last thing I want for my wife is for her to have to undergo a Caesarian, because that causes so much stress and damage to a body.  Not to mention how it screws up the bonding ritual between a woman and her child.  So maybe her getting sick when she did was a blessing in disguise, or a stroke of really good luck, depending on how you want to look at it.  Either way, she’s in the care of a really great staff, and even though this wasn’t the ideal situation for us, I’m at least relieved that she is in good hands. 

I do want to thank everybody for their well wishes during this time.  It would be even harder to have to face this completely alone, and this event has really opened my eyes as to all the love and caring that we get from our friends and family.  The concern that has been shown for us has been incalculable, and we are grateful for everything.