Thursday, March 24, 2011

On childbirth

When Rena was born, I wanted to remember all the details, so I tried to record them as a note on my iPod. I went back and reread it, and had ended up with a dry list of facts I recorded between IVs, monitors and epidurals. Ari did a much better job, which Isis published today on their Parenting Starts Here blog. An excerpt:

The surgery went really well. Shortly before the baby was delivered, Aliza said something along the lines of "okay, call it. Boy or girl?" Neither of us really wanted to guess. I had a brief glimpse of a little blue thing get handed to the pediatricians, who then went to work. It took a few minutes before the baby started crying. They were probably the most terrifying moments of my life. I heard a lot of suctioning, and oxygen being pumped, while several people called out facts and figures. (The baby’s first APGAR score was a 5, the second was an 8. As a teacher, Aliza totally understands the need for the occasional retest.) One of the nurses came over to our side of the drapes to tell us that the pediatricians were doing their thing. Before she walked away, I managed to ask, "is it a boy or a girl?!" Amidst all of the carefully organized chaos, nobody bothered to inform us. The nurse ran over to peek, then came back to tell us that we were the parents of a little girl.

If it's not TMI, you can check out the rest of the story here.

Labels: ,

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home