My phone's beeping, set to maximum volume, broke the morning silence around 6 in the morning. It was the wife, informing me she managed to get some rest and is currently in the labor room.
Labor room. I re-read the message a couple of times. And after an incredibly hectic 10 minutes rush, I was on my way to the hospital - I would also like to take this opportunity to virtually apologize to all the road users I've annoyed or pissed with my driving that morning.
As I throttled into the freezing labor room, the wife gave me a weak smile, I guess she wasn't able to rest much. She was strapped to a drip, a monitoring device and a breathing apparatus. I was briefed that the drip is part of the labor induce process and the device is to monitor baby's heartbeat and mother's contraction cycle. Nothing on apparatus, so both of us thought that was for the 'happy gas' later on.
The wife updated me on the latest status, how she was medicated since two something in the morning, and injected painkillers to ease the contraction a little. By 4 something, she was already in the labor room with the drip, how the 'width' was still fall short of the required length and how she was later strapped on to the breathing apparatus.
Some moments passed before a nurse came in to brief us on the latest update. Apparently, the drip has been stopped for a while, as in the previous two attempts, the nurses noticed irregular heartbeat from the baby when contraction happened. Hence, they provided supplementary oxygen (via the breathing apparatus) to the wife as they suspected it could be due to lack of oxygen after the first attempt.
My heart sank, as I felt the wife's grip tightened.
The nurse mentioned that they have already informed the doctor and he's already on his way, and we'll have to wait for the next course of action for now.
For a moment, I was overwhelmed with fear, I felt lost and at the same time, I had to console the wife that everything will be alright, we'll just have to wait for the doctor for now. I reviewed the graphs from the monitoring device and true enough, the baby's heartbeat dropped when strong contractions happened. 'It's looking alright now so don't worry', I told the wife.
And all I could do then was pray for the best.
It was around half past seven when we finally breathe a sigh of relief when the doctor appeared before us. And after briefing us on the situation, he suspected that the baby has discharged inside the womb and would need to draw some sample of the amniotic fluid to confirm, which basically mean he has to 'poke' open the amniotic sac.
It was 'okay doctor please do your thing' decision until I saw the apparatus he was going to use for the procedure. It sent a little shiver down my spine as it's basically a long, long plastic tube with a small opening on one tip and a suction cap on the other end. Doesn't look very comfortable. As he started, the wife started wincing in pain as well. 'It's okay, take deep breaths, you're doing good', I kept repeating. Honestly, if the situation reversed, the doctor would have received a couple of flying kicks from me.
After sometime, he finally stopped. It looks like bad news and I wonder how many more I could take for the day.
'No fluid', he said. 'Most probably it's because the fluid has thicken, which means there could be more discharge than expected'. And he laid out the options, that we could either go for emergency Cesarean now, which he stressed we should, or we can still wait for natural birth, which could happen in the next 6-8 hours with inducing. And if not, we could then fall back to Cesarean.
Here's the doctor, who staunchly advocates natural birth and has been known to have naturally delivered babies in complicated cases such as the mother fainting, experiencing high blood pressures, breech birth and umbilical cord entanglement, strongly recommending us to proceed with Cesarean. And for me, the options literally translated to, 'Cesarean, now'. I looked at the wife and we connected. Then I looked at the doctor and said, 'We'll go for Cesarean'.
'Good', I think he replied as he belted out instructions to the nurse and he started on the paperwork outside the room. I reassured the wife (and myself), that it was the right decision as we should minimize risk and get the baby out as soon as possible. I packed all her stuff from the labor room, as the nurses prepped her (with some fumbling on the portable oxygen tank) for the impending surgery. And in less than 30 minutes, the wife was being reeled to the operating theater after a slight detour due to issue with the 'staff only' lift.
As she was reeled into the operating theater, the nurse instructed, 'Daddy cannot enter, please wait here' and the wife was out of sight. The time was inching closer to nine in the morning, and I waited. And waited.
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