In early June 2008 my wife and I were surprised with the (early) birth of our son. We had expected him to arrive at the end of June, but the great expert doctors decided that an early birth would suit everyone a lot better.
We arrived at our hospital at the designated time and began preparations for what was about to happen. At first, an induction was attempted. During the course of this setup, one of the nurses accidentally left a cap on my wife’s intravenous partially loose. Shortly after, someone noticed that the cap was literally off and her blood was literally pumping all over the place. Naturally, being the big girl’s blouse that I am I nearly had a heart attack myself, but the issue was quickly resolved.
An uneventful series of hours then commenced, with periodic checkups by various nurses. Throughout the first night we didn’t expect much to happen at all in the way of a birth. We joked quite often that since it would be my birthday in literally only a couple hours so I had better like my present (har har). My birthday rolls around and even I was apprehensive at the prospect of a birthday baby. During the day the next phase of the induction began, and this was apparently the show that all the doctors and nurses were actually waiting on (for modesty’s sake, I prefer to not know the exact details here).
12 hours after stage two had begun, my wife was having some serious contractions. The monitor attached to her abdomen was registering contractions of 100 pounds and higher, which is apparently quite strong since a uterus only needs 50 pounds per contraction to actually open up in the way required for birth. Even with al the consistently powerful contractions she was experiencing, approximately 36 hours after being deliberately induced the doctors were quite disappointed with the results as she had only dilated less than an inch with all the specialised medication my wife was dosed with.
At 9:30am on a Sunday morning, the doctor on duty suggested…heavily…that we have a Caesarian section to get the baby out as waiting for a natural birth was going to cause some major issues for mother and child.
At 11:08am on that same morning, our baby was born without any problems to worry about. My wife had been on magnesium medication to relax relevant muscles, and that had been passed onto the child, but other wise they were both fine.
Our son is the first in both our families in various ways that are probably quite common once you factor in the size of the Earth’s population. But I have to chronicle this before I forget it, in the hopes that future generations will be able to trace their delinquent relative who ran away to America.
- Derek is the first grandson to both of our mothers (a dubious distinction when I consider they think of themselves as young).
- Derek is the newest generation for my side of the family…which is probably a duplicate of #1. The way I understand it, he is NOT the newest generation on my wife’s side, but this may be wrong.
- In breaking another tradition on my side, he is the second male born to the first generation in at least 100 years. Up until my own birth, the first child of each generation was a girl – if you ask my mother, that tradition wasn’t even broken (thanks Mum).