On the date of baby Van's eviction, so excited and not sure for what, per my invitation, I joined the expectant parents in my sister, Whit's, hospital room to await the arrival of the latest addition to Whitney's collection of boyfriends.The six hours of wait time I was present for were chill. Ethan, Whit and I lounged in her dimmed hospital room—one of us unable to feel her legs—making little effort at eavesdropping on the birth in the adjacent room and trying to interpret the screaming sounds.
Get a freaking epidural, our sedate pregnant lady said. What's wrong with people?
During the wait, Whit would often ask, Am I having a contraction? I think I feel one.
In response, I would check the screen monitoring her body's efforts at evicting baby from his comfortable, aquatic home. Nope.
Later I would ask, You feel that one? It was huge.
Nope. I love my epidural.
During my frequent trips out to the hallway while the doc checked Whit's dialation, I updated the unpresent family members via text.
One response, this one from out sister Cat, read you're gonna freak.
We shall see.
After one check, Whit's beloved doc emerged from her room. She is complete, his greek voice informed me.
Back in the room, I hovered in the corner, afraid I was in the way, clutching Whit's pink camera and watching nurses wheel in all the equipment the ancient Egyptians couldn't possibly have conceived. The light. The table with shiny, hopefully sterile torture tools. The biohazard tin. The baby warming drawer.
When two nurses disassembled the bed, making it the birthing space, Ethan positioned himself at the head with his wife, and I balanced between the head of the bed and the foot, poised to snap some grunting action shots (chest up only, of course) and step down to the hot zone to watch el bebe's arrival when the time came.
Before the doctor returned to the room, Whit's nurse took ten minutes to coach the initial pushing.
Then the doctor arrived.
5 minutes.
Just 5 minutes after the doc landed at the foot of her bed and a total of 15 minutes after she began to push, Whit's bad ass pushing produced one healthy baby.
Okay, one healthy alien. 'Cause I learned that right after they come out, newborns look like grey aliens. However, after he'd been thoroughly mauled by the nurse checking his weight, height, head size etc., and the swelling had reduced, replacing his grey hue with pink, Van looked more like a cloth covered football with a studious face than a small one from outer space.
It was my privilege to stand back and snap a picture or two of the parents and their latest edition of Ingram. (What I lacked in quality I made up for in quantity.)
People often say, Oh, to be a fly on the wall. I was.
I'm not sure what there was to freak about. I watched an incredible woman do her darndest to figure out how to engage muscles she can no longer feel in order to get a look at her son. I watched a husband stroke and encourage his wife. I watched a much-wanted baby crown, cry for the first time, get plopped on his mother's heaving chest and be told within 15 seconds of his landing that his mother loved him.
I didn't freak. I cried.
DeliveringTale by sister, Megan. Read more of Megan at Remarks from Sparks.
Read more about mom, Whitney, in her own words at Rookie Cookie.
