Re: For fathers: remember when you first became a daddy?
My wife had been dialated about 3cm for weeks. When the girl came she came quickly.
Doctor was out having coffee and it was time for the epidural. My wife's freaking out; nurses assured her doc would be back from break in plenty of time.
Doc strolls in. How much is she dialated? She's not 'dialated' at all, there's no cervix left; she's all the way gone. Doc administered epidural in a hurry.
Now we're working with a great delivery nurse. There's a problem: every contraction is causing baby's heart rate to slow. There's a problem with the cord, wrapped around baby or wedged somehow.
Everything is happening too fast for my wife's OBGYN to make it; so we get an 'oncall': burly, surly, bull dyke. No offense to OOT's bull dykes, if any.
I overhear her and the delivery nurse arguing in the corridor, delivery nurse is pushing for an emergency C-section.
Nurse: Heart is failing when baby tries to drop.
Doc: It's OK, don't worry about it.
Nurse: This baby's crashing! (I start to freak)
Doc: I'm the doctor, don't tell me my job.
So they call for the C-section; I get gowned and am told to wait outside the delivery room door. And I wait. And wait. And wonder what the [censored]'s going on. Finally a harried nurse opens the door and beckons me in; they'd forgotten about me.
The incision is made, and this burly doc pushes down as hard as she can on my wife's belly. *Squelch* out comes baby girl. Quietly. Wife is freaking: What's wrong with my baby?
I check out the cleaning table; the nurses are working on her and discussing what they'll have to eat during their upcoming break. I relax; if they're talking about that all must be good. Baby girl is just a quiet one.
I cut the cord, they don't offer up the placenta and it doesn't occur to me to want a bite.
Regarding bonding, it's hard to say. I didn't feel any kind of epiphany or anything; yet my daughter and I are very, very tight. I talked with her a lot when she was en utero so maybe I'd already bonded with her; I dunno.
We find out the sex of upcoming baby in about a month.
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