The Grand Entrance

Reader discretion is advised: the following post contains material that may be objectionable to some readers.  Namely, use of words like 'placenta,' labor details and phrases such as 'I don't care if the entire world sees my naked derriere, just get this kid out!'  OK, maybe that last part doesn't appear in the story, but I was sure thinking it.  Please proceed at your own risk of knowing more about your friend than you might have wanted.

Benjamin Reece Yorgesen’s Birth Story

 It was a dark and stormy night… No really, it was.  Hail was pouring out of the sky so hard and fast that it was overrunning the gutters on our apartment building.  Lightening streaked across the sky.  Luckily though, it wasn’t a portent of doom for the long night ahead.

After settling into the room and the labor-inducing drugs got rolling, the anesthesiologist came in for my epidural.  I had one with Josh and after experiencing that pain, I was reluctant to try it au naturel.  In fact, I think my reaction was more along the lines of “heck YES I want drugs!”  Once again I had a really good epidural, though David wasn’t too thrilled when he caught a glimpse of that needle going into my spine.  Through most of this he had been kickin’ it on the couch playing on his iTouch.  Knowing that his punishment would be coming later, I didn’t mind at all.  Let me also say right now that whoever invented the epidural deserves sainthood.

Finally, around 2am my water broke spontaneously.  Of course, this was when David had decided to go out and get some food.  He got back in time for excitement that soon followed.  Baby Ben had been doing fantastic up to this point.  When he lost his nice warm bath, however, things changed quickly.  His heart rate, which had been around 120 bpm, dropped down to 60.  All of a sudden the room was filled with doctors and nurses.  They strapped an oxygen mask to my face and started moving me from side to side to see if it would help.  Each time I had a contraction, Ben’s heart rate would drop dramatically.  No one saw through the mask, but I was pretty much in tears at this point because I was scared something was really wrong.  They quickly put a monitor right onto Ben’s head and hooked some sort of tubing system up into me for an amniotic transfusion, or something named like that.  Pretty much they put fluids back into my placenta that I had lost.  This did the trick and Ben’s heart rate stabilized.  They tried to give me drugs (more shots) to stop my contractions to give him a break for a while, but things were already in gear and there was no stopping now.

At 3:20 am they told me I could start pushing.  Well, actually I told them I had to start pushing otherwise I would go crazy.  David told me later that he could hear me over his headphones.  Thanks, Love.  Nice to know I can be louder than a zombie attack.  (I say this totally in the spirit of having fun.  David had been keeping out of the way of the nurses and doctors in the room and we hadn’t been able to talk at all, so he had no idea I was getting that close.  David was a great support through everything and I’m blessed to have him as my husband.)

When I started pushing, David was wonderful and his calming voice was pretty much the only thing I heard.  Only once was he in danger, and that was when he kept saying at the end that I needed to relax my legs.  I wasn’t able to say much of anything, but I was yelling in my head “YOU TRY TO RELAX WHILE YOU’RE IN LABOR!” Sixteen minutes later, I was holding my baby.  Ben came out perfectly healthy, confusing the staff as to why his heart rate had been a problem.  They assumed that the cord was wrapped around his neck.  The only abnormal thing was that Ben came out like Super Man, with an arm raised above his head.  Though, perhaps I should compare him to a villain because of the damage that little hand did on his way out.

Unlike last time, I didn’t have to watch my baby be whisked away to the NICU.  I never had to let him go.  We marveled over his dark hair (there really isn’t much, but Josh was blonde and essentially bald) and instantly fell in love with those big, open and alert eyes.  We chose the name Benjamin not so much for a particular person, but for the biblical context of that being the line of kings and great men and women.  We also liked that it could be shortened to something easy, which is important to me.  Reece came from my grandfather.  He’s actually my mother’s step-father and he is the only grandpa I’ve really known.  While we’re not flesh and blood, it never stopped him from treating us any different.  We’re happy to honor him by carrying on his name.

Welcome to our crazy home, baby Ben.  Your brother might ignore you, your mother might sound like an elephant because of her sinus cold and your daddy might scare you at night with his snores, but we all love you very much.