The Untitled Title Page

Name: Morgan Josephine

DOB: January 24, 2009

Time: 4:02 pm

Height: 21″

Weight: 6 pounds, 5.5 ounces

So it all started Saturday morning.  Emily has had previous experiences in the past couple of weeks with contractions.  They would usually wake her up, make her feel uncomfortable, but they were sporadic and she was able to go back to sleep and ignore them.  6:30 am some more of these contractions began, but this time Emily was not able to ignore them, they were more intense but still a little sporadic.  I finally woke up sometime around 8:00 because I noticed her squirming around more than usual, so I asked her what was up and how she was feeling.  She let me know that she was having contractions again, but she couldn’t ignore these.  We continued to time them for about 30 minutes and they were still all over the map.  8 minutes, 5 minutes, 7 minutes, but still intense enough that we knew these were a little different.

Now…every weekend since Week 37 we have been having our last “date night(s)” as a couple just in case we would not be able to again.  We did that at week 37, a couple of nights, same with week 38, so we decided to give it one last go in week 39.  Earlier this week, I was talking to Glorious about The Cheesecake Factory, and he mentioned how somebody told them that cheesecake was supposed to help make labor easier.  Of course this was all scientifically backed by years of research.  We had been meaning to go back and get the baby (and us too…ahem) an entire Godiva Chocolate Cheesecake for her birthday.  And that is exactly what we did Friday night.  But we also had a slice of Chocolate Mousse Cheesecake with our dinner.  I realized that I did not like that one as much because it tasted too “cheesecakey” to me.

So it must have been that cheesecake, right?  All that crazy sour cream cheese is really making her uterus go crazy.  At about 9:00 I mentioned to Emily that she might as well get in and take a shower now while she can just in case this is more down the path of labor than her other previous contractions had been.  She proceeded to shower, and every time she would feel the start of a contraction, or have one end, she’d put her hand out of the door and bang on the wall.  They were now coming in at every 5 minutes pretty consistently, and a minute long, give or take 5 seconds.  Side note, Emily also proceeded to shave her legs, because you don’t want to birth with hairy legs, right?  I mean, when the midwives get down there, and see a little stubble, they just storm out of the room.  :)

After Emily was finished with her shower, she put on some clothes and said that she was going to go downstairs and watch some TV to try and get her mind off of the contractions.  She thought it would be a good distraction and help them go away.  I decided to get in the shower too, and used my fancy badger hair shaving brush that Emily bought for me during our recruiting trip up here, so I would be extra silky smooth if the baby was going to come today.  That and trying to email people to get their cell phone numbers in case the baby did come, took us to about 10:30.

I went downstairs to see how Emily was doing and find out how her contractions were going.  Still about the same, 5 minutes apart, about a minute long.  Definitely a pattern, and not tapering off either.  Emily had decided that it was time for her to use the birth ball, so we both came back upstairs to our room, rolled out the ball, and then out of nowhere the contractions seemed to move up to being only 3 minutes apart and still about a minute long.  She had a few of these and we called our Doula Wendy at about 11:30 to let her know what was going on and get her advice.  From what we told her, and what she has seen, it sounded to her like this was the real deal.  Okay.  But she also said that typically, contractions that begin in the morning, tend to run through the afternoon and go into the evening, when the baby will be born.  Okay, she will call us back in 60 minutes to see how things are going.  Since we hadn’t eaten since about 9:00 pm Friday night, Wendy wanted me to get Emily to eat some protein and drink about 16 ounces every hour.  She asked if I felt whether she should come over or whether she would be in the way, and I let her know that I thought we were doing find so far.  Good luck to me on getting her to eat though.

I went downstairs and told Emily’s mom what was going on and asked if she would be able to make some eggs and toast so that I could go back up and be with Emily.  She did and I was able to get Emily to eat probably a good 6-7 forkfuls of scrambled eggs, and a quarter of a piece of toast in the next 45 minutes.  She was drinking pretty well too, and really using the birth ball to help with each contraction.  There were 2 times where she mentioned about going to the hospital, but I told her she did not use the secret word.  Emily kindly pointed out that we had never defined a secret word, at which point I told her that I guess she was out of luck on that one then.  Sometime around 1:00 Emily also mentioned that she did not feel she was coping well, this was a signal to me that the contractions were in fact increasing in intensity and I decided give it a few minutes and call Wendy back.  She conveniently lives 1 left turn, 1 right turn, and another left turn away from us (about 5 minutes if you take your time), so she made it over here pretty quickly.  I gave her the quick recap of everything that was new and she talked to Emily about it and let me know that I should probably get the car packed just so we have everything ready to go when we need it, whenever that might be.  I also called the midwives and spoke to Ali and let her know what was happening and that Wendy was coming over.  We heard about Wendy from the midwives at the Birth Center, so Ali was comfortable with letting Wendy determine when we should come into the Birth Center, to just give her a call back then.

Loading my car took a while because I was trying to attach my cool car seat that I bought to match the interior of my car and was having some difficulty with it.  I have never attached or used a car seat before, plus I wanted to get back upstairs and see how Emily was doing.  Needless to say, it was a pain, but I got it taken care of.  Everything was put in the trunk too, and we also threw in Emily’s car seat that is supposed to go into her car.  I get back upstairs and Wendy tells me that we are probably going to be leaving within 30 minutes, that we are getting to that point.  Alrighty.  She wants me to move the passenger seat all the way forward with the bith ball in it, so that Emily can kneel behind it into the rear seat so that the position is almost like using the birth ball.  That means I had to take the car seat out and have Wendy put it in her minivan since my trunk is now full.  It was a pain getting out just like it was getting it in.  And knowing that we know had a countdown, I was trying to get it all done as quickly as possible.

I get all of that done, get back upstairs and ask how things are going.  They are finishing a conversation about laboring in the tub, and Wendy thinks it is a good idea, so we are going to leave now for the Birth Center.  I called up Ali and let her know that we were planning on going in now, and let her speak to Wendy.  Now, in order to do this, Emily has to have a contraction, then feel well enough to stand up, walk out of our bedroom, down the stairs, through the living and dining room, down the drive way and into the backseat of my car.  Easier said than done, and that was not terribly easy to say either.  Well
, she did it.  We got in my car, put in a few last minute items, and were on our way.  It was about 2:00-2:15 and the Birth Center was 20-25 minutes away.

Now…up to this time, I felt that I was handling everything pretty well.  I was not nervous or stressed at all, but I absolutely do not like seeing Emily in pain.  During the car ride, I could tell that she was in much more pain than I had seen before, since I just spent the better part of the last hour getting things situated while Wendy helped her cope and labor.  It made me cry a few times when a contraction would hit because I knew how uncomfortable she was feeling, and all I could really do was drive safely, go slow over bumps, shift smoothly and let her know how proud I was of her.  Of course, this was also the first time I had ever driven to the Birth Center from home, since I always come directly from work, so I had to work the directions back home in reverse and make sure I did not mess up.  Luckily I did fine, and Wendy was behind me the entire time to make sure of that.  Of course, before we drove off Wendy said “if Emily is in really bad pain, or says she can feel the baby or the baby is coming out, just pull over.”  Oh yeah, sure…and you want me to drive slowly AND safely?  Well, I still did, but I don’t have 400 horsepower to drive like my grandma.

We arrived at the Birth Center about 2:40, and luckily Abigail, one of the student doulas, was able to arrive before us and start the bath and prepare the room.  The Birth Center has 3 bedrooms, and we spent a lot of our time meeting in Room 3, so we headed straight there.  Emily was FOCUSSED on getting to that floor by the tub and getting her birth ball back.  I went back and forth with Wendy a few times to make sure we had everything inside.  Ali showed up a few minutes later and then so did Tonya, one of the other student midwives.  Val, the other midwife, was not on call, and when we told her that we hired Wendy as our doula, she mentioned that meant she would not be at the birth because the universe cannot handle her and Wendy there together, or something to that affect.  It looks like she may need to take up a side-job in ESP or something.

So Emily labors for about 10-15 minutes or so and decides that she want so get in the tub.  It is filled up now, so we do not have to wait anymore.  Interestingly, after every contraction now, Emily needs a drink of water.  She is stil very lucid and with us mentally too.  All of the books and our Birth Zone classes had all said that you will typically enter into an oxytocin-induced state of loopiness.  That absolutely was not the case with Emily, and you will understand how as we proceed.  Emily’s contractions seem to be a little longer now, and she is really needing to use much lower-toned sounds to get through them.  Wendy was great at helping her really use her moaning to move through each contraction, she would also squeeze onto our hands during each one, but surprisingly to me, not with as tight a Kung Fu grip as you might expect.  No broken bones or bruised knuckles here.

Emily enjoyed being in the tub for a few minutes and I ask if I should go in now, so I change into my bathing suit and hop on it.  For those of you who may not have realized yet, by this point, Emily is naked.  Once we got into the Birth Center, the clothes went off, no sense in them now.  Your inhibitions fly out the window when you are this far along.  Well, how far?  Tonya asks if she would like to be measured and we agree.  Part of Emily and my agreement was that all measures of progression or otherwise, would be shared to me, and then I would share them to Emily.  This way, if you are not as far along as you may think you are, you will not have that number of centimeter dilated hanging over you, thinking how much more you have to go.  Since Emily was in the tub, Tonya could not do it so the lefty Ali came in and measured.  8 centimeters.  No sense in not letting everybody know that.  We are CLOSE.  And to think, with everything that Emily has read, all of her doula training, the classes, the people we know, to think she would be at this point in labor at this time was not something she was expecting.  That is partly why we maybe were not taking things as seriously in the early portion, since Emily knew very well the amount of time and the steps of progression she should be taking.  Typically, early labor is supposed to be from 6-12 hours, active is from 4-8 hours, transition is from a few minutes to a few hours and pushing about an hour.  Best case on average for a first-time mom you are looking at 11 hours.  At this point, we are at 3:00, about 8 and a half hours in, and all Emily has left to do is transition and push.

The tub was really nice, there was plenty of room for Emily to position herself in, and I was able to sit in a corner and help drizzle water on her lower back and hold her hand or her foot too.  Ali had her 2 young boys with her, and Abigail is fairly new, so Tonya took the reins and we knew her fairly well so it was all really very comfortable.  The rooms really are like suites at a hotel, dim lighting with candles, and since it was a Saturday afternoon, peace and quiet.  Except for the animal moans every few minutes.  I am not sure how to explain them really.  Very low on the octave scale.  Throaty.  She moaned the word “low” a few times.  Or “oh baby oh baby oh baby…”

Now…during certain parts of labor, the oxytocin is supposed to kick in and you are supposed to lose your sense of humor.  Everybody who knows me knows that I like to joke around.  But I made a promise to Emily that I would not joke during labor, I knew that it would be tough, maybe the toughest thing I ever did.  Maybe even tougher than that one time I passed a kidney stone, but I would give it the old college try.  And do you know what happened?  What must only be the most awesome pain coping technique known to womankind, Emily transformed into a standup comedianne.  There were AT LEAST 5 instances where all of us were cracking up out loud.  On a few of them, Abigail and Tonya seemed to try and hide it by looking at me as if to say “um, we can’t be laughing” but there I was, shrugging it off and laughing away.  When you hear your wife say “Booya!” during and after a contraction, you know that a) you have a very special woman as your wife and b) you say booya around your wife too much.  At one point, MID-contraction mind you, Wendy told Emily “easy” as in take it easy with the pushing on this one, when my sweet wife, stops dead in her tracks of labor, turns her head, and gives Wendy a look that must only say “are you serious?  EASY?”  Again, outbursts of laughter.  At this point, I no longer felt I had to keep the lids on my comedic repertoire, but I really do not even recall if I used a single zinger.

Do you know what is really cool?  Seeing this all happen, in the water.  If you asked us back in May, would we be giving birth outside of a hospital we would have told you no.  If you asked us if we would birth in a tub we wouls tell you no way.  But you know what?  All it takes is exposure.  Read some books, take some classes, watch some videos.  Get informed about the whole process.  I never thought I would be okay with a water birth, but there I was, in the tub, about to catch our baby.  You could feel her head, and see as it progressed out more with each contraction and push.  She had her left hand up with her head as she was coming, so Tonya just needed to make sure it did not fly out and that Emily was able to pace it nice and easy (there is that word again) to avoid any tearing.

Transition was fast, and the only reason pushing took 45 minutes, slow compared to the way Emily progressed through all the other stages, was because of that little left hand up with her head.  4:02, out came her head, then the rest of her.  It was so pe
aceful.  At one point just before this I sat there with my mouth agape, looking at this little head making its way out.  The realization was inevitable.  All I have ever wanted, ever wanted, was to be a husband and a father.  You can take everything else I have accomplished away, all of our stuff, it just did not matter.  Not one bit.  Do you ever have that feeling where you know that life is good and if it was your time, you had lived a full life?  I think I felt that at that moment.  It only lasted a second, until I realized my mouth was wide open, but it was here.  THAT day had finally arrived.  And out she came, I put my hand on her back while Tonya helped with the rest and up she went to Emily’s chest.  All was well.  I gave our little baby a kiss on her head, her first kiss, my favorite kiss.  The cold air of the world hit the roof of her mouth and she let us know with a few notes that only a parent could love that everything was alright.  Ali asked for our camera, she could not find it, only the camcorder.  Turns out, in all the rush towards the end of Emily’s laboring at home, I left it next to her phone on the floor.  So out came her iPhone for our first family portait, and another.  Those we will keep close to the heart.  Then the camcorder to record her first few minutes here with us.  Maybe she will want to watch it one day, I am sure Emily and I will be watching it much sooner than that.

And there we were, the Vanzulli clan has a new addition.  We had a name in mind, but did not settle on it until today.  God definitely gave us increase with this sweet little baby.  Life is good.  Nothing else really matters, you know?  And now we adjust to a new life, a life without going out to eat all the time, or dates on a whim, or late nights on the Wii, or 2-seat sports cars.  But when you look at her face, and the tears well up in your eyes, you just know this is what you have been waiting for your entire life.  Forget about meaningless goals and achievements, I would take this any day of the week, for any price.  Everytime.