Things were different with the birth of the second child, relative to Alden's birth. Alden was born in the middle of the night and was what the midwife characterized as "precipitous". It went stunningly fast and was a little scary.
This time around, my contractions started at 5:30 in the morning, but were mild and far apart and so I had time to take a long shower, get Alden breakfast and clean the kitchen a little bit before leaving for the hospital. It also gave us a chance to explain to Alden what was happening and what the plan was for him. This was my biggest worry, that it would all go down at night, leaving Alden to wake up without us and have a freak out in front of his poor groggy grandparents. This was a much more civilized approach. We got to the hospital around 7:30, with plenty of time to get settled in and relax before things really got going.
The hospital was boring from 7:30 to 9:30. Low level preparations and examinations. Kerstin and I walked around the halls to keep things moving. At 9:30 things felt like they were about to get serious so we returned to our room and I had them attach a stint to my arm in case I would want drugs for the pain. From my recollection of the last time around, I figured I would.
By 10:00 it started for real. I made it for about 20 minutes and decided I needed some drugs. I think the hospital conspired against me because they kept getting sidetracked for one reason or another. First the nurse had to page someone or another, then the anesthesiologist came in, and got called away almost immediately, then OB paged the nurse and she left the room to give her a progress report, etc. In the meantime another nurse hooked up me up to an IV line, which I thought was a phentanyl drip since that was an option we'd discussed before things got bad. It turns out it was just saline, which in retrospect made complete sense since it certainly didn't ease any pain. By the time everyone on team pain management was ready to deal with me, it was already too late. From maybe 10:40 on, it was full on crazy town and I don't remember much. Mercifully it was short, although that was the very same reason I missed out on pain relief when I had Alden. I was punked again by my overly eager body.
When the baby was born he did not give a lusty cry. He made some "eh, weh" noises but in more of a conversational manner rather than shock or surprise. He was quite purple, but they got him to the baby station with the heat lamp, toweled him off and gave him straight oxygen. Then he had vitamin K and eye ointment and the mucus bulb and the rest of it. We kept being told everything was fine and I guess things were, but I came to find out later (after pressing the on-call nurse for my labor details) that the cord was wrapped around his neck when he came out. After his brisk towel rub and prodding he made a bit more noise and was declared healthy though. The only real concern the staff had was because of his weight. Since he was over 9 lbs, they had to check his glucose at regular intervals for the next 12 hours to make sure he was not diabetic. He's not, his glucose was stable and all was well in his little world and ours.
