For fathers: remember when you first became a daddy?

[OrigamiSensei]

Middle of the night, probably 4AM. I woke up to my wife moaning incoherently and mumbling nonsense. I woke my mother-in-law who was also staying there and we hustled her over to the hospital, which was about a five minute drive. We bypassed the ER and took her straight up to Maternity. By this time she was pretty much out cold but they had her resting comfortably and the baby was being monitored.

Shortly after that I was watching the monitor and the fetal heart rate crashed from 140 or so to 30 in the space of less than a minute. The attending nurse caught it as well and all hell broke loose. The OB was behind the counter at the nurse's station and literally jumped over it to get to the room, barking "Get the anaesthesiologist - now!" They were swabbing my wife's belly with iodine as they wheeled her out of the room. Within the space of 5-10 minutes - minutes that lasted an eternity from the viewpoint of a very frightened first time father - they had the baby out and I was the proud, scared father of a healthy baby boy.

It turned out that the placenta had separated from the uterine wall. We were extremely fortunate that we were already in the hospital because if the placental abruption had happened at home it's fairly certain we would have lost the baby and there's a possibility I would have lost my wife as well. I'm just thankful it all worked out.

Second time around was a routine c-section. My wife didn't enjoy it very much but I had a grand time, no doubt due to the relief of it not being a life and death emergency.