Fertility Odyssey Epilogue:September 10th, 2005....

The BIG day....Where should I begin ? Well, I guess I should begin on Wednesday September 7th, 2005. It was a day like any other day....I accompanied my very pregnant Special Lady to her gynecologist office for a checkup on how her "condition" was progressing.

I got the normal number of odd stares at the Dr's office...I get the feeling that many people thought I was the overbearing asshole of a husband, rather than the supportive, lovingly whipped man that I was and still am today.

Anyway, we go into visit the Dr., and she takes a peek at My Special Lady's nether regions and does a Don Knotts caliber double take( I swear, if she was drinking coffee, My Special Lady would have had a caffeine laced douche)...Okay, she didn't do a double take, but she did ask My Special Lady how she was feeling, to which My Special Lady replied "Fine...Why ?" and the Dr. Replied with "Because you are 2 centimeters dilated and 50% effaced." Now to those of you who might not know the terminology, I cannot tell you what the fuck effaced means, but I do know that 2 centimeters dilated meant that the bomb bay doors were opening, if you know what I mean.

"Oh", My Special Lady replied. "what do we do ?" or something of that nature, I will be honest, a lot of the next three days are blurry/ and or blotted out to retain what little sanity I still possess. And the Dr. Told us that it was probably nothing, but that we needed to get over to the Maternity ward..."Just so they can check on you."(Cue dramatic piano music.)

Yeah, right. We wander over to the maternity ward(luckily, it was in the same hospital) and they get us into a room ,and hook up all these electrodes to My Special Lady's belly, and the nurse gives My Special Lady a quiz about her health, and the nurse then walks over to the side of the bed with the clipboard and has MY Special Lady read a few questions off of the paper, questions that she answers "no" to, and then they leave for a few minutes.

Curiosity gets the better of me, and I must ask what the questions were, because she asked all the vaginal questions and the hemorrhoid questions in front of me, what was it that I could not hear ?
"Oh, " My Special Lady says, "She was just asking if you beat me." YIKES !!! I fully understand the need for the question, but it's a little weird to realize that it was asked about me. It's kind of hard to explain, but I felt like they must have assumed that I beat her or something,which I know they DO have to assume(unfortunately) but it still felt sort of personal, you know ? Stupid on my part, I guess.

So the nurses come in and look at the readout on the machine that is hooked up...They stare at it for a few seconds..."Did you feel that ?" they ask My Special Lady.
"No" she replies.

"Oh, you see, you're having contractions a few minutes apart. You're not feeling them ?"

"Um...Nope." She said.

"Hmmm." And the nurses leave the room.

They come back a little while later and tell us that she's staying at least the night, and may be for the next couple of weeks.

As I said earlier, the next couple of days are a little bit hazy. Our friend G. Was visiting from Los Angeles, and she was basically treated to take out in a hospital room, and staying at our apartment by herself, as I was sleeping in a chair in My Special Lady's room( a BROKEN chair, by the way, a recliner that would unrecline every time I moved- very comfortable for an overweight bastard)I remember many many nurse, doctor/resident visits- there always seemed to be one at about 5:30 in the morning, and they ALWAYS TURNED ON THE BRIGHTEST LIGHT IN THE FUCKING ROOM !!!!- In fact, one of My Special Lady's favorite memories is after one of the residents left after her 6:00 a.m. visit, my murmuring in a rather pathetic(and surely overly dramatic) tone: "Dear God, she left the light on."

I remember them telling us that My Special Lady was going to be able to go home and be on bed rest until labor started, as even with the relatively frequent but small contractions, she was not in labor yet, but then that was modified to say that she was not leaving the hospital until the babies were born, as Baby A had turned and was breach, and they were afraid that if her water broke, the cord could "drop out"...I think I'm remembering that correctly.

I remember them forgetting to feed her at least once. That was fun. I remember running back ad forth to our apartment bringing movies and her laptop and stuff to her. We watched the Blues Brothers with our visiting friend, so that was kind of a tour of Chicago with us.

By Friday, they had pretty much decided that she was going to be in the hospital for a few weeks, and they had given her a steroid shot to stimulate the babies lung growth, just in case they decided to exit early, and her 'roid rages were a bit much(she pulled my arm out of it's socket)...Okay, I'm kidding about the rages, but the shot did happen. But what I was getting to was this, My Special Lady decided that since she was going to be there for awhile, I might as well go home and sleep in a real bed for a night. I took her up on the offer and went on home.

The next morning, the 10th, was my birthday, so G. asked if I wanted to go out to breakfast. I checked in on My Special Lady, and she nonchalantly mentioned something about that "her water may have a broken", but they really didn't think so, so I should go to breakfast, and come by after. Being an idiot, I went to breakfast.
We had a nice time at breakfast, I had my very first "Rooty Tooty, Fresh N Fruity" and enjoyed it thoroughly.Then we went on to the hospital.

We were walking down the hallway to My Special Lady's Room when I saw her Doctor and some other folks gathered around a microscope in the room next to hers. Everything kinda shifted into slow motion there for a second. "Hmm, I wonder what they're doing ?" I asked myself.

Well, I soon found out.

"They think my water broke." was the first thing I heard when I entered My Special Lady's room. I think that maybe my mouth literally dropped open." They're testing for ferning. If there's amniotic fluid, it will dry a certain way that they call ferning."

Then the Doctor entered the room."We have ferning." She was excited to see me, and offered to show me the ferning. I was kind of numb, but I went with her, and it was kind of cool.

I want to add something here: I will not print her name for privacy reasons, but My Special Lady's OB/GYN kicked ASS !!!(I'm sure she still does, she's just not My Special Lady's Doctor anymore as we moved to Florida) She was patient with us, and positive every step of the way, and I never doubted for a second that we were in (literally) good hands. That day could have been completely terrifying(and in some ways, it still was), but she was very reassuring and confident, and that was really needed. I will say the same for the nurses and staff at the hospital, they took great care of us most of the time, and they were rock solid when we needed it most.

So, the babies were coming NOW. They threw some scrubs at me and told me to get ready. We realized that we had no pictures of the pregnant belly, so we went into the bathroom and took one, and our friend G. Took a few pictures of us together.

They explained that baby A was still breach, so the were going to do a c-section, which I know was a little disappointing for My Special Lady, but there really wasn't room for argument. We were off to the delivery room.

I called My Parents and My Special Lady's Dad to let them know of the imminent surgery and birth. Then, as we are walking out the door(well, My Special lady was rolling on a gurney- the rest of us were walking) the phone in the room rang. Somehow, my oldest sister had found us at the hospital( we weren't HIDING necessarily, but we were not screaming our whereabouts from the rooftops either, we were just trying to keep noise and interruptions in the room to a minimum) and just happened to be calling to see how we were, I quickly explained the situation and vowed to call her back.

I cannot remember why, but I entered the delivery room after everyone else. I walked in, and I immediately hear:

"You need a mask !!!"

"He needs a mask!!"

I had walked into the delivery room without my face mask on. In my defense, they had not GIVEN me one, but still, I felt kinda stupid.

That problem was rectified, and I now had my mask on. I of course, kept fogging up my glasses by breathing ito the mask, and it escaping upwards toward my eyes, that's not really that important right now. I was in the Delivery room, and thankfully, they had a big sheet setup across My Special Lady so that I could not see her belly. As much as I was there for her, I didn't really want to see her sliced open.

So the Doctor went to work, and I don't know if you've ever seen a c-section, but there's a lot more thrashing and pulling and tugging than I expected. I was just thinking about that, when I heard a baby cry...My first thought was...Gee, I don't know if it's appropriate that someone brought a baby in here....And then I heard...
"We have Baby A."...And then I saw her as they brought her over to lay down and clean her up..The most beautiful, bloody, slimy creature I had ever seen. it was 12:40.

Then it was time for Baby B. They pulled her out. She was just as beautiful as her sister. They popped her over the sheet so My Special Lady could see her, and then they cleaned her up as well. It was 12:41. They then went about closing up My Special Lady. I was looking at the girls on their tables, and the nurses asked if I wanted to come over and see them. "Can I ? " I asked.

"Of course you can. Their yours." That's when it hit me. They were MY girls. OUR girls. I'm a Dad. HOLY SHIT, I'M A DAD.

So there you have it. The best birthday present EVER. My beautiful and healthy RLB and LAB. My Beautiful Fantastic Special Lady safe and healthy. I am a lucky fucking guy.