Seems like as good a time as any to jot down the details — as well as I can recall them — of Emmett’s arrival into the world.
The tweet heard ’round the world hit the ‘Net at 9:34 p.m., May 30th. That’s when Leah started having heavy contractions after munching on a couple pieces of Pagliai’s pizza (note: Leah went into labor with Ava at almost the same time in 2004 after sitting down to a pizza meal. Just sayin’.). Shortly after sending that tweet, I called my mom and Leah’s mom, then scrambled around to time contractions and get our bags together. We were at the hospital by 9:50, which is when Leah’s water broke in the elevator on the way up to L&D. Messy, freaky, and super sobering.
Shortly after 10, Leah was in her bed and being hooked up to machine after machine after machine. At her first cervical check, she was 3 cm. dilated and 90% effaced. “Sure,” I thought. “We’ve fallen for that before.” With Ava, Leah progressed fairly slowly and then stalled out at 7 cm. before having to have the C-section. I figured this was going to be more of the same. But shortly before 1 a.m. on the 31st, she’d made it to between 4 and 5 cm. The epidural was delivered and was working swimmingly; Leah even napped for a spell.
By 2:30, Leah was between 6 and 7 cm., and everything was looking good. She was on pitocin by now to keep her contractions going after the epidural had smoothed them out a bit. By 4 a.m., the doctor said it was time to try pushing. This was really exciting. We hadn’t made it this far with Ava, and the VBAC had been the goal of this delivery from the start. So Leah pushed. And it was good. Except the doctor noticed that Emmett’s heart rate was crashing now with each contraction. Something was up.
The nurse stopped the pitocin to see if Emmett’s heart rate would even out in the absence of the stronger contractions. Our doctor told us that, if the heart rate looked steady enough, we’d restart the pitocin and try pushing again after an hour or so. We waited. Just before 6 a.m., the nurse restarted the pitocin, and Leah gave another couple pushes before the doctor informed us that a small ring remaining at the edge of the cervix was preventing Emmett’s head from coming out. Which ordinarily wouldn’t have been a big deal, but Leah couldn’t push past it when the boy’s heart rated bottomed out each time.
By 6:30 the decision was made to do the section, and at 6:48, Emmett was born. It wasn’t the experience Leah had been hoping for, but she’d gotten to push, and our baby came out healthy and LOUD at the end, so all was well. Turns out Emmett’s umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck and was also running alongside his head, which was causing the trouble with the heart rate. Leah and I marveled at the outcome we would’ve likely had had she tried to deliver this baby without access to the medical resources we had.
As I type this, my small son is having squeaky little dreams as he snoozes in the clear plastic baby bucket supplied by the hospital. I am happy to have him.