Saturday, May 29, 1999 began normally enough. Two days before we had finished our birth refresher class. As a result we were hyper–sensitive to the so–called “early warning signs” of labor. Tina had felt “flu–ish” all week and she had lower back pain to start the day Saturday. I awoke quite refreshed after falling asleep early Friday evening. We didn’t think much of any of these things until Tina called me at work that afternoon to report that she had a “bloody show”, one of the earliest signs that labor is imminent. After Thomas’ birth, however, I knew that there was little point in hurrying home since the mucus plug can precede the actual birth by days or weeks.
So I finished up at work and even stopped at the yard debris recycling center to dump off a load of grass before heading home. H&H Recycling was buzzing with business on this day and their normally formidable array of yard tools (rakes, pitch forks, brooms, etc.) was exhausted. As a result, I had to unload the decomposing–for–two–weeks grass sludge with my hands alone. This involved alot of bending over and pushing with no leverage which resulted in a slight strain on my back. I would regret it later.
In the meantime, Tina took to cleaning the house and doing laundry with a vigor unusual for a woman in her 36th week of pregnancy. By the time I got home, however, she was ready to take a hot bath to soothe her still–aching lower back.
Not long after, Thomas came into my office and pushed me without saying anything before leaving. Seconds later I heard Tina call my name. As I got up and headed towards the other side of the house, she called again but with a trace of panic in her voice. As I rounded the corner from the kitchen into the hall leading to the bathroom, I saw her standing on a rug outside the bathtub with a look of horror on her face as she watched two streams of blood trickle down her legs onto the rug. She explained that she had gotten out of the tub when a big “gush” of blood came out. She sent Thomas to get me but he returned without me. That’s when she yelled.
She looked desperate as she stood in a small pool of blood and asked what we should do next. I told her to get dressed because we had to go to the hospital. We would drop Thomas off at Uncle Buddy’s which was on the way and was where Tom and Jan, Tina’s parents, were staying. Tina asked if we should take anything, like her pre–packed bag, and I said “No, we should just go.”
I called Buddy and explained that we needed to drop off Thomas and go to the hospital. He said that was fine. As Thomas and I went out the front door, I switched the porch light on. For some reason, I thought we would be back that night. We wouldn’t.
On the way to Uncle Buddy’s, Tina called her doctor’s office with the cell phone and left a message for the on–call doctor to call. As we rounded the corner to Buddy’s house, the cell phone rang and Tina proceeded to tell the doctor the situation. As we pulled into Buddy’s driveway, the doctor asked her if she had been having contractions. Tina responded with, “I’m having one now!” I jumped out, unbuckled Thomas and carried him over to his Grandma Jan. As I handed him to Jan, I told her that we would call her from the hospital as soon as we knew something. As I jumped back in the van, Tina opened her door and yelled that we would call. I looked at the clock. 6:50.
During the short trip to the hospital I attempted to allay Tina’s fears, but I had a good idea what she was thinking. You see, a little blood is OK during pregnancy, but generally blood means something bad has happened. In our instance, we were thinking that the placenta could have become abrupted, or torn away from the wall of the uterus. When that happens, it is equivalent to throwing a deep sea diver’s air pump in the water. Very bad.
Fortunately, it was not long into the trip to the hospital before Tina felt the baby kicking again. And again several minutes later. The radio station said they were doing an “A to Z Countdown”. We got in at “Purple Rain”. Also notable during the trip were contractions coming about five minutes apart.
After we arrived at the hospital and took the elevator to the third floor, we were escorted directly into a maternity room. Once there, our nurse hooked Tina up to the fetal/uterine monitor. We were both relieved again when we heard the baby’s heartbeat on the fetal monitor. We watched the monitor intensely for the next several minutes and especially during Tina’s contractions which were now between three and five minutes apart. Sometimes during labor a baby is said to be “in distress” when their heart rate goes down during contractions. Our baby was holding very steady at 135—exactly where it should have been.
While we watched the monitor, our nurse obtained permission from the doctor to examine Tina to see if she was dilated or effaced at all. For the uninitiated, dilation measures in centimeters the width of the opening of the cervix, which the baby’s head must pass through to be born. Generally, when dilation reaches 10 cm, the opening is wide enough and the baby is born shortly after. Effacement measures the thickness of the cervix. As it becomes further dilated, it becomes stretched and thinned. Effacement is measured as a percentage of complete effacement. When the nurse examined Tina, around 8:30, she found that Tina was dilated to 4 cm and 75% effaced. She was officially in labor.
Since we now knew that we would be at the hospital for the duration, we made a few calls. Shortly after we arrived I had begun making a list of things that we would need for the ordeal. Since we did not have any of it prepared (with the exception of Tina’s bag), I also noted the location in the house. Here is the list I made with Tina’s help, in the order I wrote them down:
With this list in hand, I called Uncle Buddy to give them the news and request delivery. Buddy said, “No problem.” and I said they had a couple of hours to get it done. He would later call back with a lame joke about there being fire trucks in front of our house.
Next Tina called Katie, our administrative assistant at Splash and Tina’s backup coach. Katie had decided to cancel a trip to California for the weekend because she felt something might happen with Tina. She was right. We told her that she had a couple of hours to get there but could she grab a burger and fries for me on the way? “No problem”, she said.
Tina’s other backup coach, B.J., had gone away for the weekend. Tina had a contact number for her there so she called and left a message. She would call back awhile later and we would give her the scoop. Tina also called her Aunt Carol to let her know what was going on. At that point the nurse came in to the room and saw both of us on our cell phones and told us that we weren’t supposed to use cell phones in the hospital. We didn’t make any long distance calls after that.
Instead we hit the road, so to speak. Anybody that has been through the labor process knows that one of the best ways to speed the process along is to walk. So we started walking the halls of the maternity ward. Occasionally we would stop and Tina would lean against a wall and breathe her way through a contraction. This continued for about twenty minutes until both of us were ready for a rest. By the time we finished that walk, contractions had begun to come every two minutes.
We returned to our room to find paperwork waiting for Tina. She attempted to fill it out but the semi–minutely contractions would prove to be too distracting to do much of anything. Instead I completed the forms for her and signed as the responsible party.
At 9:30, Katie arrived with a bag of Burgerville (a Northwest fast food joint). It was most welcome since I had not had anything to eat since lunch. Unfortunately, I gobbled it down in such a hurry that I would later be having a few “contractions” of my own. I would not require medication.
Shortly after Katie arrived, the nurse re–examined Tina for progress. She had progressed to 5 cm and the nurse reported that the baby had moved down. By this time contractions were 2 minutes apart but lasting almost 1 minute. Because the interval between contractions is measured from the beginning of the last contraction to the beginning of the next contraction, she was, in fact, only getting a little over a minute of rest in between contractions.
As a result of this and because of Tina’s excellent dilation progress, the doctor OK’d her for medication. At 10:15 the nurse gave her a dose of Stadol, which is a synthetic narcotic. Stadol doesn’t act as a pain–killer, but rather takes “the edge” off the pain. It doesn’t take the pain away but sort of makes it irrelevant. Within a few minutes of the IV installation and the subsequent shot of Stadol, Tina was resting comfortably between contractions.
Within a short time after that, she began having mild halucinations. Seeing fields of w’s and u’s, telling us a strange story of some woman from her childhood. These were just two of the out–of–context conversations that we had with her. At one point she asked if I had seen something, to which I replied that I had. A few seconds later she laughed out loud and said, “No, you didn’t!” She knew she was acting a little weird.
During this period the contractions continued to increase in both intensity, duration and frequency. At 10:35 Tina’s water broke and we knew we were headed down the home stretch. The Stadol made this stretch easier but by the time we got to the moment of truth, the effects had faded and Tina found herself back in the world of pain she had left a little over an hour before. Because the birth was so close, Tina declined a second dose after finding out there could be some short term effects on the baby including difficulty in breathing.
The other pain medication option when the birth is close is an epidural. Essentially this means they stick a long needle and then a plastic catheter directly into the spinal column in order to bathe the spinal cord in a medical cocktail that causes the lower body to become numb. Tina had availed herself of this option during Thomas’ birth but wanted to see if she could do it without this time around. She would later both regret and be grateful for the decision.
Towards the end of this period, Tom and Buddy arrived with the stuff. After a lame joke from Buddy and the shock of seeing Tina in labor, they decided it would be best to leave us and return when things were less intense. I was grateful for the arrival of the CDs and tapes and flipped the radio off. They were in the late S’s. I stowed the rest of the stuff in the corner and put on the sweatpants. It was probably around 11:15.
As she came out of the Stadol, Tina eschewed the breathing exercises that we had just finished relearning days before in favor of reciting multiplication tables during contractions. We had not planned to do this but it proved to work well until the contractions changed drastically.
An examination during this time found that her cervix had dilated to 8 cm. The doctor had given orders that he be called when she reached completion (10 cm) since he was only “five minutes away.” When the contractions changed in intensity and character several minutes later, the nurse called the doctor anyway.
“Something is happening,” Tina said as she pointed down. During the next contraction she begged for us to let her push. The nurse encouraged her not to push but said if she couldn’t help it that they would be ready. The nurse called for another nurse to assist and the final preparation began. A tray full of surgical instruments was brought in as well as a free-standing full length mirror (Tina had earlier requested this). The bottom of Tina’s bed was removed to reveal a plastic bag construction for catching babies and body fluids. The other nurse soon joined us.
Katie stood on Tina’s left holding her hand and reassuring her. This had been my job during Thomas’ birth but Tina had wanted the full event documented this time so she could watch it later. Since I was the only free and able hand for the camcorder, I told her one last time that I would not be there for her this time but would be recording. She said that was what she wanted. I consulted with the nurses to find the best position to be out of the way and began taping.
After resisting pushing for several contractions, Tina’s body took over and she felt like she had no control over whether to push or not to push. The nurses gave her the OK and she began pushing. The mirror would prove to be useless as Tina spent the end of the delivery screaming loudly with her eyes closed. I could see the top of the baby’s head one second and then it popped out the next. A half second later the whole body slithered out and one of the nurses made a nifty one–handed catch. During these last few seconds, I struggled to find a position with a clear shot of the birth. Unfortunately, when that little body slid out, I only got a shot of the nurse’s shoulder as she moved in for the catch.
I moved in to see if everything was alright and was quite amazed to see how pink he was. Thomas had been born with the cord around his neck and was bluish white when he arrived. He would not take his first breath for at least thirty seconds, but this baby started crying seconds after he was out. The nurse handed a surgical scissors to my free hand (I was still taping) and directed me to cut the cord. I motioned to a spot behind the clamp but the nurse pointed to the area between clamps. I moved in for the cut just as the other nurse reached across my field of view. I stopped just before I poked my new baby in the belly with the scissors. I reset, moved in and cut through the umbilical cord. The nurses quickly wrapped the baby in a blanket and plopped him on his mother’s chest. All of this from pop to plop probably took less than thirty seconds. It was 12:10 am, May 30, 1999.
I momentarily regained my composure, backed up and framed a better shot of Tina and our new baby. The next moment, the realization that all of the anticipation, anxiety, anguish, apprehension and fear had come to an end was quite overwhelming. I felt a rush through my whole body and found that I was shaking uncontrollably. I breathed deeply and soaked in the rest of the experience now that it seemed that the worst had passed.
They took him back from Tina momentarily to finish cleaning him up and re–wrapping him in another blanket. We wondered over this little creature with the tiny but perfectly developed fingers with nails that needed to be trimmed. We noted the vernix (a white substance to protect the skin from the amniotic fluid) under his armpits and the amazing alertness in his dark eyes. Joy permeated the room as the doctor walked in. I made a comment to him about only being five minutes away (it had taken him at least 10) but he said something about dropping his keys. He examined Tina and was surprised to find that no tearing had occurred so there would be no need for stitches. He also helped deliver the placenta a few minutes later. He wished us well and promised to return in the morning.
In the coming hours we would measure (18 inches), weigh (5 lbs., 13 oz.), poke, innoculate, warm, bathe and feed the little guy. Eventually Katie left out of exhaustion and I curled up on the couch for a few hours while Tina cuddled up with our new son, Graham Christopher Laurren Ring.
During the bath I noted that Graham looked a little jaundiced but nobody really paid attention until the next night when the nurse tested his bilirubin levels. Jaundice in babies is quite common because of incompatibilities in blood between the mother and baby. An incompatibility results in the breakdown of red blood cells which produces a chemical by–product called bilirubin. High levels of bilirubin can cause brain damage, but that is very uncommon. More common is for the baby’s skin to turn yellow and for the bilirubin to be expelled through bowel movements. If the level rises above normal, the baby is generally placed under high intensity lights in the violet range of the spectrum. A more extreme measure is to give the baby a blood transfusion.
As it turned out for Graham, the bili–lights were all that was necessary to tame his bilirubin levels. After a couple of days in the hospital nursery, we took him home where we continued the photo–treatment for another long and exhausting week. At last his bilirubin levels began to dip and his pediatrician said we no longer needed the lights. His hemoglobin level has dipped during this time as a result of the blood incompatibility so, as of this writing (June 18, 1999), a transfusion has not been ruled out.