.07% — from my side. Written by Justin Jones
By: Justin Jones
Tags: Birth, Birthstory, Vbac, C Section, Cesarian Section

The storm

After many hours of waiting and watching the entire 10th season of Friends on my iPad (hospital wi-fi sucks), the clock struck midnight. My wife had just fallen asleep and the doctor came in for a dilation check. “Okay, 10cm, 100% effaced and +2! You are ready to go”. We both burst into laughter out of disbelief. All of those months had led to this moment, we finally made it. Miscarriages included, my wife had been pregnant for what had been 13 consecutive months but it felt much longer.

The doctor left the room to tend to some other patients but assured us she would be back shortly. The nurses got my wife all prepped for pushing as I texted our trusty list of friends/family members that it was baby time!

We had two nurses that night, one in charge, we will call her Jules and the other was in training, let's call her Rachel. Rachel was close to finishing her training so Jules was kind of hanging back and letting her take the reigns on this. They were both amazing, personable, attentive, and caring.

Jules turned the lights in the room on and they both started prepping a table full of different metal clamps and all sorts of weird tools. I looked over at my wife and she just smiled, so happy that she was about to finally meet our new kiddo.

Once the table was prepped, Rachel came over and said…”Okay, we’re going to start pushing to get things started.” She grabbed my wife’s right leg and told me to grab her left. We held them up to make it easier for my wife to push. “On the count of 3, you are going to push as hard as you can, ready?” My wife nodded. “1, 2, 3! PUSH PUSH PUSH!” Rachel yelled with encouragement. “How’d that feel?” she asked, “Not bad.” my wife replied.

Jules calmly but quickly walked around me and grabbed an oxygen mask. She placed it over my wife’s face. My wife worriedly asked, “Is this normal?” Jules responded very calmly, “Totally normal, we are just trying to get the baby to recover after that push, this happens sometimes. We need you to lay on your side.” My wife was very confused and started to scoot slowly onto her side while Rachel tried to help her make the transition easier. “Quickly, on your side, we need to get your baby to recover. You need to move fast! Fast!” Panic started to set in a little bit as they flipped my wife to her other side. I noticed they kept looking at the baby’s heart rate monitor and weren’t noticing anything. “Okay, we need you to get on your knees and elbows as fast as you can!” Jules explained. My wife looked over at me with pure fear. All I could do was smile like an idiot and say, “Everything is fine! You’re doing great!”. Jules reached down and hit a button on the side of my wife’s hospital bed. A voice came through a speaker asking what they needed. Jules said some sort of hospital code with a serious tone. The voice responded, “On our way.”

Within 10 seconds the room flooded with nurses from the entire floor. The doctor came in and gave us a quick rundown. “Okay, listen, we are going to get this baby out right now, so we need you to push as hard as you can okay?” I could tell my wife was terrified but she buckled in like the champ she is. Her face changed from terror to determination.

As my wife pushed the entire room of nurses erupted with encouragement. It felt like they were cheering for their favorite sports team. “PUSH! YOU GOT THIS GIRL! YOU GOT THIS! GO! GO! GO!”. No baby. No progress. My wife started to get nauseous. One of the nurses grabbed a barf bag and tossed it to me, “Hold this by her face in case she throws up.” I did my best.

After several pushes and no luck, the doctor grabbed some sort of “baby-vacuum”. “We’re going to get this baby out now! Okay?” the doctor exclaimed. My wife nodded still determined and bad-ass as ever. A nurse came through the door shouting “NICU is on the way”. What felt like a second later, the NICU doctor came in with a NICU nurse and some sort of incubation table.

The doctor tried the vacuum about 4 or 5 times and each time the vacuum would pop-off unsuccessfully, throwing blood splatters throughout the room. Some blood hit my wife's face and without hesitation, a nurse wiped it off before she even noticed. Another nurse shouted, “We’re prepping the O.R. doctor!” Hearing that struck something inside of me that felt like I was having an out of body experience. How could this be happening? What was even happening? Why couldn’t they get the baby out? My wife looked at me periodically to check and see if I was freaking out yet. All I could do was smile and tell her, “You’re doing amazing! You got this!”

One last attempt with the vacuum and one more pop-off. A nurse shouted, “The O.R. is ready but we need to go NOW!”. The doctor slid back away from my wife and stood up as the nurses started prepping my wife to move her. “Code green!” The doctor looked at me and said, “We have to take your wife to emergency surgery, there isn’t time to explain. Someone will come back for you.” My heart sank. I turned to my wife as she was already getting wheeled out of the room. She looked back at me with a look that I can’t even describe. I muttered something along the lines of “You’re going to be fine! I love you.” and just like that, she was gone from the room. Everyone was gone. Everyone but me.