She's here

Last Wednesday morning, we celebrated the arrival of our little girl, Haven Makenna Thomas.  She came into this world at a healthy 8 lb 2 oz and was 20 inches long.  Tamara seems to think that she lost about 5 inches during the whole process, but since she was completely intact, I’m not quite sure where those extra inches would be.

When a man first hears the words, “I’m pregnant” come out of his wife’s mouth, it’s usually accompanied by a sudden sense of terror and joy along with a stack of mental images that include pickles, ice cream, and a frantic rush to the hospital at some ungodly hour in the morning.  Little Haven managed to fulfill the better part of these nightmares.

I got in bed pretty late Tuesday night.  There were a bunch of things I was trying to get done before we went into the hospital at 5 am to have the doctor manually start the birthing process.  So, I was rock solid, sound asleep when she tapped me on the shoulder and said “My water just broke.”  I believe there are some things that are programmed into the male body, either by God himself, or centuries of genetics.  One of these would be the reaction to that simple statement.  Next time you find yourself in the throes of insomnia with nothing to do, just reach over, tap your husband on the shoulder, and say “My water just broke.”  See if he isn’t up and across the room before his eyelids even open.

That’s what happened to me.  I had my clothes on and phone in hand before I was really aware of my surroundings.  Lucky for us Tamara was able to relay some detailed, specific instructions, or I would have probably dressed the dog, turned the oven on, and took off for the hospital.  As it was, we were able to get in the car and on the road in short order.  Thankfully, traffic is practically non-existent at 2:45 in the morning. 

If you work at the Ft. Smith airfield and picked up a low flying missile headed up 71 last week, then that was probably me.  The doctor warned us that we needed to get to the hospital immediately, and I did my best to comply.  Considering the statute of limitations on vehicular misdemeanors in the State of Arkansas, I will not go into a great deal of detail about our ride to the hospital.  I will merely say that we got there as fast as we could.

A huge sense of relief flooded me the moment my wife stepped out of the truck and headed for the elevator at the women’s center.  I knew, right then and there, that we weren’t having the baby in the front seat of our brand new vehicle.  I can’t even imagine how we would have gotten the stains out.  I was glad I didn’t have to pull over and tell her to get out and have the baby on the side of the road.  She would have yelled at me and probably not gotten over it for a good long time.  Thank the Lord that we didn’t have to cross that bridge.

The check-in process took a lot longer than I expected.  Knowing how quickly Tamara’s labors go, I couldn’t help but think the night crew wasn’t moving with the same sense of urgency that we had.  The antibiotics were not hung and waiting, Tamara’s doctor had not been called, and they were generally reticent to do a single thing to her until we were entered on the computer.  This was all about to change.

Not more than a minute after I walked into the delivery room, Tamara kicked the sheets off the bed and said, “CAN YOU GET ME SOME WATER!  IT’S HOT IN HERE!  PLEASE TURN THE AIR DOWN!  I’M ABOUT TO PASS OUT!”  At this point she sat up so she could breathe.  That was the only signal our baby needed.  The very next words out of her mouth were, “I’M PUSHING!!!”

The nurse, bless her heart, was not ready for this.  She yelled at my wife, telling her she couldn’t push yet, because she didn’t have the clamps.  Tamara simply said, “I’m sorry.”  I could tell she didn’t have control at this point, and that baby was coming whether there were nice shiny clamps prepared to greet her or not.  The nurse’s only response, before she scampered off, was to tell Tamara to breathe.  This is where I stepped in.  I’ve had a great deal of experience with breathing, so I got down in my wife’s face, morning dragon breath and all, and got her to focus on me and breathe.  I felt pretty good for filling that vital gap in time, so I was a little disappointed to hear Tamara say later that the breathing wasn’t any help.  The baby kept moving toward its inevitable exit.

Sometime during those intervening seconds, a doctor materialized behind me.  By the time he showed up, the baby was crowning.  Before they could get a pad down, Haven was making her entrance.  My wife is used to pushing through the contractions, so she stopped when they stopped.  Both nurse and doctor seemed to finally get on the baby bandwagon and told her she needed to go ahead and push since the girl’s head was already out.  She did, and out the rest of it came.  Relief for Momma was instant.

Haven was cleaned up, measured, fed, and whisked away to the NICU.  Since we didn’t get the requisite 4 hours of antibiotics before delivery, there was concern that she might have picked up Strep B during her delivery.  They needed to monitor her closely for signs of pneumonia.  We also found out that she was Coombs Direct Positive, which is a blood type mismatch that increases her chance of jaundice.  When I first heard my wife say it, I thought she was mixing medical and banking terms {Who cares if somebody named Coombs had a direct deposit}.  But, that got me thinking, if this whole Obamacare thing goes sideways, doctors might be able to generate extra funds by letting corporations sponsor diseases.  Can you imagine going to the doctor and hearing him say, “Looks like you’ve got a bad case of the Energizer Pink Eye.”  Or maybe announcing before your procedure, “This colonoscopy is being brought to you by Drano!”  It could happen.

Well, it turned out that the special care was unnecessary.  Our little girl was as healthy as could be, and I am extremely grateful.  God has given us a special blessing.  Two days later, we brought our little bundle of joy home.

It was fifty-nine minutes from start to finish.  That’s a quick entrance.

Welcome to our world, Haven.