1 AH
Happy New Year! 2003 .. doesn't the Millennium seem so distant? Y2K? Get outahere.
This is 1 AH, Anno Hannes.
I didn't make any New Year's resolutions this year (although I should, I'm on a three-year keeping-streak), but what I will do now is keep a promise I made to
A. on New Year's Eve. She asked me to write something about the delivery.
Now, I have deliberately not written anything about it because it has just felt like such a personal experience of .. Jessica's that if anybody should tell stories about it, it should be her, not me. Then again, I can tell my side of the story and well, I did promise you . So, A. here we go:
Jessica had been pretty sick and tired with the whole belly for a couple of weeks, so she couldn't have been happier when the water broke on the 21 November at 5 a.m. She woke me up at 6. I can still see her standing in the shower, jumping up and down a bit, going, "it's so exciting, I can't believe it's happening now" and then, "Now what do we do?"
I suggested we eat breakfast, so we did. Tea, toast and read the newspaper. At quarter to seven, we put on our clothes and started walking towards the hospital. We live about 4 blocks from there, so it took us maybe 15 minutes to get there. It was snowing, and I wore rubber boots. I don't know why.
At 7.20, Jessica was lying on a hospital bed, with a machine attached to her belly, as they registered Hannes's (that we still called "Hilda" at the time) heartbeat, and Jessica's contractions. The heartbeat was around 80-100 and the contractions between 1- 21 .. units. We didn't know what the units were, so we jokingly called them "jävlar". As in, "oh, here's a big one, 21 jävlar!" (Note 1: "jävlar is Swedish for "damn." Note 2: Little did I know that 21 jävlar was not a big one by any means. Note 3: One of the few things that Jessica told me NOT to do was stare at the machine and tell HER when she would be having contractions. "I know, trust me").
About an hour later, Jessica took a shower and changed into the disgusting (but surely very comfortable) hospital clothes. And we were taken to the "Department" as the nurses called it. Jessi took a nap and I ran home, to call my office that I wouldn't be coming in for another six weeks and to get a deck of cards and Yatzy that we had forgot there.
Then we played Yatzy and basically just hung out, counting contractions and killing time. (I actually beat the family record in Yatzy, believe it or not).
By four p.m., the pain was getting worse. We were basically told that we wouldn't be taken to the actual delivery room until the contractions were 5 minutes apart. I would have faked it, but they brought one of those machines in again. This time it only recorded 12 jävlar which we took as a major setback. I just wanted them to take us to the delivery room so we could get ready, so that Jessica could start taking showers and crawling and I could give her massages and so on. No matter what the machne says, I could
hear the jävlar getting a lot worse. And Jessica doesn't normally swear.
At six, I went looking for a nurse that would just tell us what the program was gonna be. And better yet, give Jessica something for the pain. And A, trust me, I am aaall for natural birth or active birth or whatever you wanna call it, but my major concern at that point was Jessica. As long as the baby was not gonna get hurt by the drug, I wanted them to give it to Jessi. (I think that she would have been able to hang on a little longer (had she wanted) if she had got the chance to do something else besides lie on a bed). She got a shot of something at 6.15 p.m. Exactly an hour later, we were taken to the delivery room.
The pain just wouldn't go away.
I was pleasantly surprised by the delivery room. It was pretty cozy actually. They had a TV there, a CD player, nice armchairs, a shower, curtains in the fake mirror window they had put up. I put on some Bo Kaspers Orkester and Jessica got another shot. Petidin, if I am not mistaken. I have learned so much from Jessica in three years, and one of the things I admire in her is the way she gets prepared for everything. She had studied everything about the different drugs, she had made lists of things, she knew the pros and cos, and I still get a little teary-eyed, when I think of her getting that shot of petidin. "Wait, wait, there is something about the drug, I should remember, there's something, can't you ask her what the disadvantages are, Risto." (At this point, our Swedish-speaking midwife hadn't entered the picture yet). And she was really worried. For me, like I said, "make the pain go away" was my motto. If I couldn't do it, maybe Mr. Petidin could. Of course, I did ask the nurse, and she said what they always say: "Naw, there aren't really any disadvantages."
Except for one.
It didn't work. Or, maybe it did, but I don't even want to imagine what the "jävlar" would have looked or sounded like without the drug. Bo Kaspers became Sinatra and our Swedish-speaking midwife, Benita, arrived. She took charge the second she walked in. Hannes and Jessica may have been the starts of the show, but it was Benita that was sitting in the director's chair. (That would make me a producer, I think). And she was good, very Finnish (meaning, no-nonsense small talk, but nice) and very professional. She gave Jessica the Epidural at 9.15 pm.
At 9.40 Jessica was trying to beat the Yatzy record, now held by me. We have a photo of her, making a toast to Epidural. Her short speech went, "Epidural to people."
And so it went. Yatzy, talking, Sinatra, Kajsa-Stina, Bo Kaspers taking turns, and just waiting. We had waited for nine months so we could wait a few more hours. As long as the epidural lasted. Jessi was opening nice and clean, so really, all we had to do was wait. The contractions hit a new high at midnight: 111 jävlar which I duly shouted out so that Jessica would be aware of it. Jessica was laughing through them.
Apparently, there is something special with this epidural thing, which launches a vicious circle to use more drugs. And as they added the other drug, to keep the contractions going, "Hilda's" heartbeat started to vary a lot. Everything from 50 to 200. Benita decided to get the heartbeat from "her" head instead. "More accurate," she said. About half an hour later, five more people entered the room, pushing a new machine in front of them. "We need to learn how to use this machine," said the shortest of them, the one wearing a paper hat. Oddly enough, she also had the hat on the photo on her ID card. Is that how they recognize her there? Anyway, this hassle took about hald an hour, and it was bizarre. There were 5-6 people between Jessica and me. I was sitting on another bed, drinking coffee and sending SMS messages to our families, secretly, of course, since you're not supposed to have your mobile phone on in the hospital.
And then, poof, the lady with the paper had and her gang were gone again. It was time to push.
Technical information: Jessica was in a semi-sitting position.
I was somewhere by her right ear, squeezed between the bed and the awesome wonder machine. But hey, it wasn't about me. And then we pushed. I finally got a chance to give Jessica a little massage (arm...) and I did what I could. Which was not a lot. All I could do is sound like a damn poor hockey coach, "you're doing great, push, push, push, yeah, yeah, that's right, one more, one more, looking good, looking good, oh baby..." I was so focused on trying to see what was going at "Hilda's end" that I completely failed to catch Jessica's vomit. She hit the new machine. I bet the Paper Hat Lady was pissed off.
Almost exactly an hour later as I went, "one more, baby, one more push, baby, she's almost outathere, I KNOW YOU CAN DO IT", I actually meant it. Of course, I still couldn't see anything, but I could tell by the look on Benita's face that it was close. And when the other midwife, the one that looked like a Bulgarian short putter guy, only with no moustache, jumped on Jessica's belly ("I'll just help her a little bit"), I knew it had to be close.
And then .. then I saw our baby gliding out like a seal, a little blue but in one piece. And I heard the most wonderful sound I have ever heard. "Her" first cry. Jessica and I were crying and laughing, partly for the same reasons, partly not (my guess since I had no pain). I was still standing between the bed and the machine so I couldn't see if we had a son or a daughter. I only saw half the baby, but I started yelling, "Jessi! Jessi! It's a boy! It's gotta be a boy, that ain't a girl's face!"
Then they put Hannes on Jessica's belly and he just lied there, looking at Jessi with his big round eyes. It was time for our first family hug.
So, A., that was my delivery story. Probably a very guyish story, but that's how I saw it. But you know, the part of getting the baby out of the mother's body is not the whole story. It's not only about whether or not to use drugs and how much you bleed. It takes weeks for the Mom to recover to a point where she feels human again. And that story is seldom told.
