Joy of Joys!

Thursday the 19th, my first child, a daughter, was born. It was a little unexpected. Here's the scoop, from my point of view.

Mrs. wakes me up before 7:00am. She's gone to the restroom several times and continues to feel as if she has to go. Around 7:00 she gets to having dizzy spells and a slight pain. Doctor's office opens around 7:30am on this particular day, so we decide to eat a light breakfast before we leave.

At the Doc's, we sign in at 10 'til 9:00 (breakfast + getting ready (ie. dressing) + feed and walk various animals). We wait another hour (almost) before they assign us a examination room. Midwife/nurse comes in, we tell her the scoop. She pokes and prods my wife. Then...

"You're dilated 3cm. You've gone into labor."

Hey! Wait a minute. We're not due for 4+ weeks. Shouldn't the water have broken? What happened to the gushing fluid? The painful contractions, etc.?

So they send us to the hospital. Pretty routine, it sounds like. They call ahead to warn the hospital staff. We leave and...

Stop at the bookstore! On the way to the hospital! Mrs. was worried that it would take a while, so she wanted to pick up a book to read if she got bored. During all this she feels slight pain, again.

I'm freaking out. Is the baby, OK? Why is it happening so soon? Got to get to the hospital so my wife and child can be taken care of. "Did you get your book? We're not making any more stops!"

We get to the hospital without any accidents or cops pulling us over, nothing like in the movies (I was disappointed). We start the paperwork (wife still doing fine), they put her into a wheelchair and usher her to a room. She gets out of her clothes, into a prepared gown, onto the bed, and strapped to the instruments. I sit down and proceed to tap my foot/wring my hands. So far, so good.

Nurse informs us that the tightening of the belly is actually a contraction with my wife talking through it. I'm starting to feel pretty good about this. Wife's doing great. Then she starts turning into a pretzel at 60-90 sec. intervals. Nurse, "Breathe, don't push." So I step in to help. "Breathe, relax the muscles" + backrubs seems to help. Slowly gets worse. Doctor finally shows up. I repeat my new mantra and the doctor says, "No, it's OK. She can push now." She's told push for 10 sec. and repeat. My new mantra becomes "Deep breath and push, 1, 2, 3,..."

In between spells, she has to sign paperwork (because fathers are idiots who can't sign anything or make decisions while they're wives are in pain), gets told not to flex in certain ways and how to hold her legs so the baby will shoot out. The doctor and nurses, while prodding around down there, talk about vacations and the weather. (As silly as it seemed to me at the time, "My wife is in pain, can't ya'll focus on her, instead?", the Mrs. said it actually helped with taking her mind off of the pain.)

The bad aspects of the whole birth are few:
1. It happened so fast, the Mrs. couldn't get any pain killers to help.
2. I thought they would make me wear the gown/booties/face mask/hat before things got going. Nope. I saw everyone else bundle up. I jumped when fluids came out because I was still in shorts and sandals and it creeped me out to think of that stuff splashing all over my legs. (Yeah, I could wash it off, but come on!)
3. We thought, when we left for the hospital, that it was just a check-up at the doc's. So...we left clothing, my phone (hers died shortly after we left), and camera at home. I couldn't take any photos until I could get home later. Fortunately, a nurse found a camera and took several photos of me with my daughter when they first took her to the NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit).
4. She came early. As I mentioned before 4 weeks, 6 days early. Because she was early, she has to stay at the hospital for observation.

Mrs. is doing fine now. I am so proud of her. She really didn't scream or anything. The doctor commented after I left that she was very stoic during the entire process.

I'm not freaking out any more (other than trying to clean up home for babies arrival). After I left with the baby, Mrs. was told that I was a great coach. We didn't even take any classes on how to do it! (I have to thank Nurse Christina for the role she played because I wouldn't have known what to do without her guidance.)

God willing, I think everything will be alright. (More on baby and post birth in following posts.)

The answer is...

In some small way, I do get a big ego when people come to me to ask questions as if I'm an expert in the subject. When I think about it, however, I tend to feel embarrassed because for the most part the things I'm typically asked are simple things.

When working with fish, my coworkers (and sometimes the managers) would ask for my advice. Typically it would concern ratio of gravel per gallon in an aquarium, number of fish in said tank, types of fish that are cohabitable, etc. Basically simple questions that with time they would have found out anyways (or should have already known). Even the pastor of my church calls me, occasionally, to ask a question or two. I frequently get this now that I've gone back to training. Customers/clients are frequently needing advice on how to handle a variety of situations, i.e. potty training, barking, socialization, etc.

I don't mind. I like to be helpful. What worries me is that I may become a know-it-all and ramble on when a short answer would be just fine. How much is enough? Do I get a boring monotone after a while?

My wife is looking forward to the first match between our daughter and me. "Why" will be followed with a long and boring answer. "Why" again followed by another long answer. The Mrs. fully believes our children will learn to ask me questions only if they really want the answer for fear of being bored by the lecture that will follow.

On one hand, I could say, "Be careful what you ask the person who knows everything, for you may get more than you expected." On the other hand, I ask for the wisdom to understand I don't know everything and the wisdom to make my answers more effective with less blabbing.

Which will it be this weekend at work?