[Los Feliz Slim]

My wife's pregnancy happened under close supervision, for various reasons. Her OB and parinatologist decided it was time to induce about a week shy of the actual due date because the baby was obviously big enough and they didn't want her to go through unsupervised labor. So, we show up at the hospital at 11AM on a Tuesday, having already pre-registered. It was like checking into a hotel.

We spent the next 24 hours in the pre-labor room, and nothing happened. "Failure to progress", they call it. It was C-section time.

My wife started getting REALLY scared when they put the epidural in. By the time we were in the operating room, she had entered a zen state where she was just basically pretending none of this was happening. So she was pretty quiet.

While they're opening her up, they cauterize as they go, so as they performed the C-section there's an occasional burning smell. Other than that, not much was going on. At some point, the doctor says "OK, Daddy, stand up" and I look over the screen. I couldn't believe how small the incision was - I thought they basically split the woman open, but it's really only a ten-inch or so incision, and lower than I'd imagined. There was an absolutely incredible amount of fluid collected, and the doctor had his hands inside the incision. The next thing I know, he's holding a baby up in the air, still attached to my wife by the umbilical cord.

They bring my daughter over to a warming table and start cleaning her up. When a baby is born naturally, the squeezing that occurs forces the fluid out of the baby's lungs; in a C-section they have to suction it out. After they do, one of the nurses says "I'd sure like to get a good cry out of this baby", and I realize she's been gurgling, but not really screaming. About two seconds after that it was like my daughter woke up, and she was PISSED. The nurses immediately were like "Ok, we're done here" and moved on to the adjacent OR to work on their next victim. They bundled my daughter up, I brought her over to my wife (who was still basically catatonic), and off we went to the nursery.

After getting bathed and again expressing her anger at being removed from her home, they finaly bundled my little girl up and gave her to me. We were in the "overflow" nursery at Cedars, so I had a lot of privacy. My feelings at that moment are just like DB's - she seemed to know that I was going to take care of her, and I would've fought a thousand armies to protect her. My wife was in recovery for a really long time, four hours or so, so I spent all that time holding my baby and talking and singing to her in a rocking chair.