Jack’s Birth Story

I should have paid closer attention in my high school health class.

Starting sometime in the second trimester, Krista told me she thought Jack was going to come early. Not premature early, but before 40 weeks early.
She had been having a ton of Braxton Hicks contractions, which is why I assumed she brought it up.

Having felt like I had earned a medical degree through reading every article I could find about pregnancy online, I reminded her that Braxton Hicks had no correlation with labor.

Just call me Dr. Davey.

I also told her he was probably going to come late. Many first babies are late, we were both late, blah, blah, blah.

I mostly wanted to set expectations that she could be pregnant longer than 40 weeks. This was for me as much as it was for her. Or maybe it was more for me than it was for her. Krista is productive regardless of the circumstances. If I knew Jack could come at any moment, however, I would sit around, doing nothing, just waiting.

And for about five days, I basically did just that.

Just Get Through the Wedding… and a trip to Richmond

Krista’s last wedding was just shy of the 37 week mark. We had a contingency plan in case she were to go into labor. But we were really hoping that she would make it through the wedding.

And we did. It was a great wedding, and since we had a second shooter and an assistant (thank you Kira & Quinn!) with us, Krista could stay off her feet a lot of the day.

The next day we were going to Richmond to visit the Alsops and spend the day with friends. During the drive—and in terrible traffic on 95—Krista started to have really painful cramping. We pulled over to find a bathroom. The cramping subsided, but she had discovered a few other symptoms.
I’ll spare you the details.

She started contracting regularly, but the contractions were fairly spaced out and barely more intense than her the Braxton Hicks contractions.
We decided to keep going. They have hospitals in Richmond, right?

Nearly all of the friends we were with had just had babies or were pregnant. And they all agreed that Krista could go into active labor at any time. And because I took a health class in high school and WedMD basically qualified me as an OBGYN, I chimed in and reminded everyone they were probably Braxton Hicks. Needless to say, I wasn’t in a rush to leave Richmond that night.

A Trip to the Hospital

Throughout Monday and Tuesday the contraction intervals decreased and became a little more intense.

On Tuesday, they got even more intense and came about five minutes apart. Of course, I didn’t find this out from my wife.

Krista had been texting a few of her friends we saw on Sunday—one of which was Amy Demos, who I guess relayed the news to her husband Jordan.
I was taking a nap Tuesday afternoon (it’s hard work waiting for a child to be born), and woke up to a text from Jordan congratulating me that Krista was in labor.

Of course I’d find out that my wife was in labor from a friend hundreds of miles away.

Krista said they weren’t painful, but they were more uncomfortable than they had ever been. So we went to the hospital for a labor check that night.
At the hospital they told us Krista was about 1cm dilated, 70% effaced, and confirmed she was having contractions every 5 minutes. Since she was just days past 37 weeks, they said—as we expected—they wouldn’t do anything to help her labor along. They gave her the option of either walking for 2 hours and getting checked again, or going home and seeing how things played out.

They mentioned that it seemed to be extended prodromal labor. Prodromal, labor?

This was the first time I had heard of prodromal labor. My internet medical curriculum had not covered this.

I shoulda paid more attention in health class.

Prodromal labor is also known as false labor, which is a misnomer because it is real labor. It does actually move things along—it just doesn’t result in the birth of a child.

And it could last weeks. So we went home. The deciding factor was that we couldn’t eat while we were there (in case she did go into labor).
Krista also hadn’t been sleeping well, so we decided it was probably best to get home and sleep in our own bed.

<<Related Post: Why We Write Letters to Each Other Everyday>>

Our Next Appointment

We had our next regularly scheduled appointment on Thursday.

The contractions were still 5 minutes apart and each day they got a little more intense. As a result, Krista was still not sleeping very well. And by not sleeping well, I mean I woke up around 5 in the morning to the sound of Krista cleaning the house.

The doctor we saw that day was the only doctor in the practice we had not yet met—but he quickly became my favorite. He checked Krista to see if there was any progress. There was—she had dilated another centimeter and was fully effaced.

I asked him, tongue-in-cheek, when this baby was going to be born. I didn’t expect an answer. I found that OBGYNs were kinda like meteorologists: They made predictions that conveniently seemed to cover every possible outcome.

“Well, everybody is different. This progress could mean that your wife will go into labor imminently…or she might not go into labor for many, many moons,” was along the lines of the answer I expected.

But then he surprised me.

“It’s very likely you’ll have a Memorial Day Weekend baby. Wouldn’t be surprised if it happened tomorrow.”

Of course that answer wasn’t good enough for me.

“What’s your confidence level on that?” I asked. He told us to give him a call the next day if the contractions got any more intense. He was the doctor on call, so he would have Krista come in to get checked.

I spent most of that evening reading stories about women who experience prodromal labor for weeks, and eventually convinced myself that this sorta in-between-labor-hell was going to last forever.

Friday of Memorial Day Weekend

Krista didn’t sleep well, and woke up early. She told me that the contractions, again, got more intense. But it wasn’t “can’t talk, can’t walk” intense.
I reminded her that it was Memorial Day Weekend, and if we went for a labor check, we would have to cross the bridge. Going into Annapolis would be easy, but if we had to come home, we would surely sit in hours of beach traffic.

She agreed that it would probably be best to hold off.

I went for a 5-mile run to try and clear my mind. I also had an early podcast episode to record with Vanessa Kynes about Pinterest.

Shameless plug: You can listen to that episode here. It’s really, really good.

As I was getting ready to sit down for my interview, Krista’s doctor called (the one we had seen the previous day). Krista told him how things had progressed, and he asked her to come in for a labor check.

While she was on the phone, I again reminded her about beach traffic. She relayed this concern to her doctor.
But he said we probably wouldn’t be going home.

Of course I still recorded my podcast interview.

I know, I know—probably should have left right away. I wish this was the only way I delayed things that day.

Strike one.

After I was done the interview, I still had to finish packing for the hospital. I was mostly ready to go, but still needed to get a few things together.
Krista was not amused.

So we’re finally in the car heading towards the hospital and I realize how hungry I am. Krista reminded me that I could find something to eat at the hospital. But is there anything at the hospital that’s as delicious as a Wawa Italian hoagie? I submit to you that there’s not. And I also reminded Krista that it wasn’t guaranteed that she’d be admitted.

“Prodromal labor,” I reminded her, “could last for weeks.” How encouraging. I coulda been a doctor.

Strike two.

Fast forward a few hours and we’re at the hospital getting admitted. Krista was 5cm dilated, 100% effaced, and the baby was at station zero. WTF is a station?, I thought. It’s like every time we show up to an appointment I learned another metric for measuring the labor process.

I really shoulda paid more attention in health class.

Friday Afternoon and Evening

Even after we were admitted, I’m not sure I totally believed that Jack was on his way.

To move things along, we walked as much as we could around the labor and delivery wing of the hospital. We figured that since we were admitted, we might as well help things progress any way that we could. As the afternoon wore on Krista got more and more uncomfortable and our walking got slower and slower.

Around dinner time Krista was finally too uncomfortable to walk so I meandered down to the food court, where—naturally—I felt most comfortable.
I know Krista had mentioned things were getting more uncomfortable, but she was still smiling and joking with me so how uncomfortable could she have been, amiright?

Well, she wasn’t smiling when I got back.

Her contractions had progressed to the point of being one minute apart and she was really uncomfortable. As I walked in she was asking the nurse when people generally get an epidural.

And then of course I chimed in. “I don’t think you should get the epidural until you absolutely have to. What if it slows things down?”

Strike three.

Fortunately she had other things on her mind and she decided to listen to the nurse; otherwise I might have been kicked out. Double fortunately she didn’t listen to me and requested the epidural. Because 15 minutes later as the anesthesiologist entered the room, she was in tears. The contractions weren’t giving her a break from the pain, and she couldn’t stop shaking.

I did what any supportive husband would do—I comforted her. And I also may have taken some pictures of her in tears.

Ya gotta record the WHOLE story, right?

Friday Night

The doctor broke Krista’s water not long after that and things seemed to be moving quickly.

Her contractions were still about one minute apart. The nurse said that sometimes that happens after women are given pitocin—but Krista wasn’t given pitocin. They were happening naturally that way. Since Jack apparently wasn’t feeling the whole being squeezed every minute thing, Krista had to be given a shot to slow down her contractions.

This did the trick for a while. And then it wore off and she had to be given another shot. Apparently she’d only be able to receive that shot up to three times. Then they’d have to explore other options.

Shout out to our nurse Brooke who let me play 1000 questions with her at this point. (And for the 10,000,000 questions I asked her throughout the day.)

Fortunately the second shot did the job.

Things seemed to slow down for a while after that and we decided to try to rest. We even turned off the lights in the room.

As if I was going to fall asleep.

Jack’s Grand Arrival

Fifteen minutes hadn’t gone by when Krista’s pain returned, which we were told was a sign that it was about time to start pushing.

There are a few things I need to explain before I get on with the story.

First, I always joked that I didn’t want to be in the room for the actual birth. Honestly, I thought the whole childbirth thing was kinda gross.
In my defense, my closest childbirth experience to date had been that video we’ve all been shown in our high school health classes. And does anyone watch that and then say, “Oh wow, childbirth is so beautiful…“?

Before you think I’m some sort of monster, at no point did I ever think about leaving nor did I ever want to leave. I watched the whole entire thing from start to finish.

Watching Krista give birth to Jack is the most miraculous thing I have ever witnessed. It was quite simply amazing and on so many different levels from what Krista’s body could endure to watching Jack take his first breath to holding him for the first time.

Simply incredible.

I should also mention that I refused to do a birthing class. People have given birth for thousands of years without classes. Why would anyone subject themselves to eight hour long class on a Saturday?

Not for me.

I feel at least a little vindicated in my refusal to do a birthing class: Jack got here just fine, right? That eight hour class could probably be summed up in two statements: 1. Do what the nurse and doctor tells you to do; 2. Comfort and encourage your wife.

Sure, one might argue that following directions and being encouraging aren’t exactly my strengths, but I rose to the occasion.

Now back to the story.

One thing that threw me off was how many people were in the room at the time of birth. When Krista started pushing, there must of been close to six people in the room in addition to Krista and me. I probably wouldn’t have thought twice about this except that I had specifically asked earlier in the day about how many people would be in the room.

The short answer was that normally it would be the doctor, the nurse and a tech in addition to Krista and me. But if there were any complications, there would be an additional three people from the NICU around.

Of course I thought maybe something was off, so I was trying to get the nurses attention to ask without Krista hearing me. I assumed one of the worst things I could do was blurt out, “Is something wrong!?” as Krista was in the thick of pushing. I couldn’t get the nurse’s attention, and based off of everyone else’s body language I assumed they had it under control.

Turned out the other nurses simply had time to lend a hand. Shout out to the best labor and delivery nurses around.

Krista had been told earlier that night to expect to push for 2-3 hours. But after only a few minutes of pushing, Jack was making his way out into the world. What’s funny about this was Krista refused to believe us when we told her he was almost there (she thought we were just being encouraging). She also refused to look. She had buckled in for 2-3 hours of pushing.

Jack showed up in 30 minutes at 12:21 a.m. on May 26, 2018. (Narrowly missing sharing a birthday with our friend Tyler Herrinton. Sorry Ty, that was probably my fault—shouldn’t of stopped at Wawa on our way to the hospital.)

It was probably good there was only 30 minutes of pushing since I’m pretty sure Krista was going to pass out in another 5 minutes (the shots to slow her contractions had raised her blood pressure a bit). They put Jack on Krista’s chest, and asked if she wanted to hold him. She said no, which I think caught the nurse who asked off-guard. I think they were worried about postpartum depression or something like that, but Krista had said no because she couldn’t feel her arms after shaking for so long. Hilarious.

(And as you’ll see below, she did end up holding him.)

I should probably end by describing how I felt when Jack was born, but I’m not sure I can.
When thinking about it, this excerpt from C.S. Lewis’s science-fiction book Perelandra comes to mind. In it, the narrator Lewis is trying to get the protagonist Dr. Ransom to tell him about his recent travels to another world:

I was questioning him on the subject—which he doesn’t often allow—and had incautiously said, “Of course I realise it’s all rather too vague for you to put into words,” when he took me up rather sharply, for such a patient man, by saying, “On the contrary, it is words that are vague. The reason why the thing can’t be expressed is that it’s too definite for language.” (emphasis my own)

A special thanks to the doctors, nurses, and staff at Anne Arundel Medical Center for taking such good care of us. Y’all are the real MVPs.