The iceman: A husband’s perspective on delivery

A note of caution: If you are currently pregnant, this story is one you may want to wait and read after you’ve delivered. By reading further you agree that neither the author nor Wiser Mom nor anyone connected with the blog may be held liable for contact PTSD symptoms, nightmares, hysteria or other undesirable effects incurred from reading the following account.

There is a huge backstory leading up to this, some of it was documented in real time on this blog. But for those of you who need a refresher or are new to the story, this post drops into it when Myg was exactly 35 weeks pregnant. She had been in the hospital for a week with mild preeclampsia after a third trimester filled with ER visits and two other hospital stays—one overnight and one five days long. Unexpectedly—we had been told a few hours earlier that it would be another week—the OBGYN team decided on the morning of week 34 and 6 days that it would be best to induce labor immediately and not let Myg’s condition deteriorate. The babies were healthy in utero and would most likely be fine after delivery, whereas Myg would only get sicker and not begin to recover until afterward. We catch up with our protagonists at 4 a.m., January 22, 2009:

Myg is being rolled into the operating room for delivery and I am right behind her in disposable scrubs and surgical mask. Twins are considered high risk, so all twin deliveries are done in the OR, just in case. A Pitocin drip to induce labor was started about nine hours earlier, and she was given an epidural at 11:30 p.m. that worked just as you’d want—she has gone through transition smoothly with not too much discomfort and is now 9 cm dilated. She has also been given magnesium sulfate—known in the medical parlance as “mag”—to control her preeclampsia symptoms. Mag will keep her blood pressure, already high and spiky, from getting out of control. It also has a host of nasty side effects, including the possibility of hot flashes that some recipients have said feel as if you’re burning from the insides and your eyeballs are melting. The other effect is that it is a powerful muscle relaxant. Exactly what you don’t want when you’re about to deliver a couple of babies.

The last belly pic

My previous experience with operating rooms is that they are cold. But as Myg is wheeled into the OR to deliver our twins, I don’t notice the temperature. I notice the table. The scene is like something out of David Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers, which should put a chill into anyone who has seen the film and anyone who doesn’t get the reference should be thankful they don’t. The operating/delivery table has padded swivel legs and stirrups that my memory says are stainless steel, but that sounds unnecessarily cruel, maybe they were just worn leather. Like the straps you’d find on an electric chair in Texas. Overhead, a large array of klieg lights dangle at the end of an articulated arm looking oddly like a female mantis with the severed head of her lover held in the caress of her deadly mandibles. A wall made of monitors and other machines that go bing! stacked about twelve-high is teetering dangerously close to the table. The only man in the 11-person delivery team sits next to them in oversized glasses holding a clipboard or notebook or tablet computer. He is unmistakably Hell’s bookkeeper. Other odd apparatus are arranged about the room but my attention is focused on Myg as she is helped onto the table, still strapped in, and her feet are arranged in the stirrups and a flimsy sheet is arranged over her.

Once again, Myg explains to the doctor and the nurses that we’ve had no birthing classes, no Lamaze, nothing, because she’s been on bedrest since week 26 and no one at the hospital could find any resources that would come to the house, other than the midwife/dula team we can’t afford because I’m in grad school and Myg’s on disability and frankly, we’re as poor as we’ve ever been and thought that it was the best time to have twins because we plan everything and it always works out—just not how we plan it, or we would have gone to birth classes in the second trimester when Myg felt well enough to go on vacation—therefore, we’ve only read about delivery. Yes, in a book. Oh, and online, too. (This works for me, give me a book with instructions and I’m golden, not so much for Myg, and she’s the one that has to do it, so I’m nervous but keeping a good attitude.) No, Myg hasn’t watched A Baby Story, because she’s terrified. (Five months after delivery she still can’t bring herself to watch it.) We need some coaching, please. The staff says not to worry and explains that when she feels a contraction she needs to take a deep breath and hold it and when they tell her to push she needs to push like she’s shitting a watermelon and keep pushing as long as she can—they’ll count to ten—and then she can relax until she feels the next contraction or like she wants to push.

And that’s it. Ready for your skydive/bungee jump/moon launch? Good, me too.

I sit at my wife’s head, looking down at the part in her hair. I want to kiss it, but my mouth is covered by the mask. The delivery team sees a contraction begin on the monitors and they all say in disjointed unison like a girls’ rugby scrum: take a deep breath, now PUSH, hold it keep pushing don’t let it out one … two… three… four… don’t let it out keep pushing and Myg lets it out and stops pushing around seven.

She looks at me with a holy shit expression that says this is not fun I do not want to do this but I have no choice oh fuck…

I whisper sweetly into her ear and she tries to relax for the brief couple of minutes before the next contraction. I try to say encouraging things. I hold her hand. I feed her ice chips. And it goes on and on and on. Myg gets tireder and tireder but continues to labor. Labor. The word in its most radical form. She labors.

Of all the things I am in relationship to Myg, at this moment I am nothing but an ice machine.

I am an ice machine.
I am the best ice machine.
That is all.

The iceman. I’m good with a Styrofoam cup and chips of ice. See? I can get them out of the cup and put them into your mouth where they melt and soothe and if I knew where the crushed ice machine was I could refill the cup all by myself. And when you stop to think about it, what else does one need in life but some ice chips? All your needs can be met with a foam cup full of ice.

With every contraction the routine is the same. It goes on and on. The mag has made it next to impossible. Myg gets tired. I just want to sleep, she says. Can someone else take over for a bit? She tries not to think about the fact that this is Baby A, nicknamed “Doot” in utero, and that after she gets this done she has to do it all over again for Baby B, “Bing.” She’s ready to be a mother. Or, she really wants to be done with pregnancy and wants these kids out of her, at least.

The team all cheer her on with every contraction and it’s annoying. If it’s annoying to me, I know it has to be irritating her. Myg, amazingly diplomatic, says, okay, I only want one of you to count. She points to the resident. You. You get to count. Everyone else has to be quiet.

I know inside she is thinking along the lines of: Shut up, you dumb fucks, I know the routine now. It’s not complicated. I hold my breath, I push for an eternity, the kid doesn’t budge. I do it again. You had to go to med school for this? If you have any suggestions besides “push” and demonstrating that you watched enough Sesame Street to count to ten as a group, then please enlighten me. Otherwise, I’m coming off this table and there will be carnage that will require a SWAT team and weeks of forensic analysis.

The diplomatic tack works for about two more contractions. But now it’s clear that Doot is moving, they can see his head, everyone is more excited and seems certain that he is about to come out on the next push. Everyone but the bookkeeper starts shouting “encouragement” again. Myg looks at me and says, we’re done with this. I nod and agree. If we want more children, adoption, as we have often discussed, will be the way to go. We’re finished with the biological imperative. The Team tells me to come around to look from their angle. Doot is nearly here.

I walk around and look up between my wife’s legs at the mystery of mysteries, the holy of holies, the place I like to think is my playground and not anything that involves spectators. I’m a guy, I love sex. But I’m also a pretty waspy guy who was brought up right and went to church as a kid. Sex works best in the bedroom. Without a team of specialists with instruments and years of expensive training. And I know, I know, this is not sex—this is the end result of sex when all the pieces of the biological Rube Goldberg contraption fall into place. And we’re in a hospital. Everything is sterile and clinical and has nothing to do with my sex life with my wife and OHMYGODWHATTHEFUCKISTHATTHING? An angry red maw of engorged flesh has replaced Myg’s lady parts, and it’s being stretched wide by a red playground ball with wet black hair that I can just see a crescent of—no way is that thing coming out of that hole. It’s not happening. Meanwhile, the Team is grinning at me like they’ve just shown me the fountain of youth.

I admit, the miracle of life and childbirth are beautiful things, perhaps the essence of beauty—but it’s this as a concept, as an abstract. All the great and mysterious things about the universe, they are summed up by these moments but only metaphorically. In reality, it’s a gruesome visceral experience. It’s difficult, painful, and fraught with a lot of danger that modern hygiene and medical technology have mitigated but not eliminated. Sure, I love the primality. Put someone else’s spouse there and I’ll come in with a camera crew and wax eloquent like David Attenborough and win the Palme d’Or. But when it’s my beloved and my immanent offspring, I’d take no pain, no blood, and no risk if it were offered. Something antiseptic and external—stork delivery, even. I back away from the Team trying to appear nonchalant and not like I’m retreating from the mob at Bedlam.

Back around at Myg’s head, I smile and hold her hand. I lie. Just a couple of more pushes, babe. He’s almost here.

Myg pushes again. She has stopped paying attention to the cheering section. They’re doing it wrong. She has figured out that when she lets her breath out during the contractions and pushes not just with her stomach and bowel muscles, but even with her chest and neck, that they scream more encouragement and the baby moves better.

And I am also happily wrong. In just a few pushes, Doot arrives at 6:52 a.m. and gives a little cry as they hold him up and I look at my son—a weird red lizard dripping stringy white mucous, with what appears to be a version of Winston Churchill’s head run through a Play-Doh Fun Factory. They put him on the heat table and begin wiping him off and sticking his feet onto ink pads and making footprints. They put him in Myg’s arms for just a second and she is overjoyed and I’m choked up and she cries a little and then they take him back to the table where they swaddle him up and at the same time the doc is telling Myg she needs to get ready for round two.

Doot chilling on the warming table, 30 minutes old

They break Bing’s water and ask Myg to give a push just to get him down into position. Myg is in a daze. She has successfully delivered a baby. She knows she can do it again, how about in 18 months? It’s about 7 a.m. The doc has her hand inside Myg, a contraction comes and Myg pushes and I see a slight look of surprise on the doctor’s face. I felt the cord, she says. She looks up at the monitor and says, okay, Myg just give me one more push, and I’m going to see if I can get his head into position. Myg pushes. No, I feel the cord. The doctor shakes her head and she gives some unseen unheard command.

The operating room, already burgeoning with attention to Doot’s birth, blossoms. The 11-person team moves in complex synchronous harmony about twice as fast as they had been. What’s going on? Myg asks. The anesthesiologist begins turning dials and jams a mask over her face. Are we doing a C? There is worry in her voice and I realize something has happened, something with Bing and they’re going to do an emergency C-section.

A nurse flags my attention calling me “Dad” and it seems strange but I know it’s me.  Follow me, Dad. She leads me out into the hallway with some rehearsed reason for why I can no longer stay in the room with Myg. You might faint, she says. Wait here. She points to a spot on the carpet in front of the delivery OR doors and leaves me there. I do as I’m told. After five minutes I begin pacing. I am worried but have faith in the Team that the C-section will go smoothly. I call my mother and tell her about the arrival of her grandson and let her know that the second is on his way. The doors slide apart and someone notices me as he moves past carrying arcane medical devices. The second baby is out, he says. I am relieved. He doesn’t say anything about Bing’s condition. I assume everything is fine. A manx cat appears pushing a small cart bearing Doot. The cat speaks. Do you want to come with me to the nursery? Apparently, it’s a nurse.

It’s not until hours later that I understand that when Myg pushed and the doctor felt Bing’s umbilical cord that it was a fairly rare and serious situation known as a prolapsed cord. The monitors showed his heart rate had dramatically dropped to 80 bpm when Myg had pushed. He would not have survived a vaginal delivery. Now I go cold when I write those words. On that day, I was supremely confident and ecstatic.

What they did not tell me and part of the reason I was in the hall during the emergency C-section is that because Bing’s heartrate was dropping they had to open Myg up immediately. As in before the anesthesia was in full effect. Myg apologized later to the surgical team for all the screaming. I didn’t hear a thing two sets of doors away in the hallway. Are you numb? The doc asked. You’re numb enough. Myg says the cut wasn’t painful, but that having her guts moved out of the way in a hurry was like having a wild animal pawing at her insides. The doctor knew she’d survive that trauma okay—the important thing was to get the baby out.

Bing joins his brother in the nursery after escaping the womb via a window

Both of our sons arrived healthy and whole. Neither required any time in the NICU. They even made it through the bilirubin spike without needing light table treatment. As of this writing, they’ve quadrupled their birth weights. They smile and laugh and roll over. They grab hold of fingers and toys and eat solid-er food. They’re delighted to see me every time I enter the room. Because of my wonderful sons, these five sleepless months full of diaper changes and spit up and two babies crying in tandem at a 4 a.m. that lasts forever have been the greatest five months of my life.

Husband becomes Dad

First snuggle