That afternoon, I started feeling labor pains again. The biggest problem was that the monitor wasn't picking them up (I'm not a tiny girl, and monitors aren't designed for women who are barely 24 weeks pregnant). So, none of us realized how much worse they were getting until later that afternoon. I had been given terbutaline sulfate all along, but it wasn't working, so they tried magnesium sulfate. That didn't work either. As the evening wore on, the pains seemed to be slowing down, so my mom went home. They hadn't slowed down enough, though. And then they were intensifying again, and the nurse couldn't get the big boy on the fetal monitor. That's when things got very hectic.
The hospital had sent in a nenonatologist (a doctor who specializes in treating premature infants) to talk to us. Her prognosis was: a) our son would not live; b)if he lived, he would be profoundly mentally handicapped for life; c) he would never walk or live a normal life. Now, it's their job to be cold-eyed realists, but wow. We were scared enough to begin with, and I'm not sure that was really helpful.
Anyway. When things got hectic, the doctor (whom I had never laid eyes on before) decided that he had to deliver the baby. Now. So, off we are racing to the delivery room. We make it to the elevator, he uses a key to call it, and they're rolling my bed into it. Only the bed doesn't fit. So, rolling the bed back out again and calling another elevator. When we get to the delivery room, the Hawkeye can't stay with me. I'm in hard labor and scared to death. When we get into the delivery room, all I remember is the anesthesiologist was very worried about his paperwork, and how he couldn't put me under without it. I really could have decked him, I think.
Anyway, it was an emergency c-section, and the Hawkeye says they had the Big Boy out in under a minute. They let the Hawkeye look at him briefly, then whisked this tiny, fragile little life (he weighed 1 lb, 9 ozs and was 12 inches long) off to the NICU. Thus began our lives as parents.
This picture is the Big Boy, right before he turned one year old.
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