All Wrung Out

Today has been a simply unbelievable day.

With two days left until our appointment with the c-section, and over a week until the due date, Zola decided to change the script a bit. I went to see Frank Black at the 9:30 club, but knew I was on-call. So I drank a couple of beers, and nursed a black coffee for most of the show. When I got home, I sat in bed and chatted with Susie for about half an hour. She got up and said she felt nauseous, and walked into the bathroom.

"I think my water broke." she said.

So I rushed her to the Georgetown emergency room. I dropped her off, and headed home, with the idea that she was going to call if she needed me to come pick her up. She called a bit later to say it was a false alarm, and that she'd be taking a cab home, then an hour or so after to say she had a second, larger "incident" again while leaving the hospital, and that they'd tested her, and she was in labor.

I had about 30 min to get to the hospital to be with her during the ceasarian surgery. Driving like mad, I got there with a while to spare, put on some surgical garments, and was led into the operating theater.

Susie was incapacitated from the armpits down, and lashed to some sort of crosspiece
to prevent her from moving. After about 20 min, the anesthesiologist asked me, "Would you like to see the delivery?"

"I sure would."

"I'll let you know when you should look."

After a few more minutes the anesthesiologist, eyes intently watching the main show, said, "Okay, here goes."

So I stood up, and looked over the partition. The first thing I saw was blood, lots of blood. Then that weird yellowish wrinkles you get when you combine skin, surgical adhesive, and iodine. And finally, the rear half of my infant daughter, sticking out of my wife's abdomen. Unbelievable.

I guess one of the goals of a successful c-section is to make the width of the incision as short as possible, because they had managed to free Zola pretty much from her toes to her chin, but weren't having much success getting her fat head out.

The worst moment was when, briefly, her mouth broke the surface of the skin, and she let out her first cry into this world. It was immediately snuffed as her head was re-subsumed into Susie's belly. Yikes! Who to be more terrified for?

When they finally managed to extricate Zola, and we could hear her crying, there was nothing to do but cry ourselves. This tiny person, who the two of us had made, alone on a cold plastic tray, being cleaned and weighed and measured on the far side of the room. How beautiful, and how terrifying.

I don't think you ever really look at a baby unless it's your baby. Either that or you've got the baby fever. Susie and I spent about 8 hours today just gazing at Zola, wondering who she'd become, how we'd get along, what her capacities would be.