Moral-Flexibility.Net

Obviously the entries about my daughter Jillian were lost in the last crash (and as my most recent backup predates her delivery, we’re not likely to recover them). So in the interest of some sort of continuity here is the story of Jillian.

It really started Wednesday morning (November 24th) at 03:00hrs, when I was shaken awake by Lisa telling me we had to go the hospital (I think I had been asleep a few hours at that point). Never one to argue with a pregnant lady I threw some clothes on, grabbed the Baby Bug-out-bag, jumped in the car, and after mere moments we arrived at Mt. Sinai Hospital, ducking through their emergency room to be directed down a series of corridors and up a series of elevators to arrive at Maternity Triage, only to be told we had to find our way back to admitting to complete a series of forms, provide our insurance card, complete a field sobriety test and answer a skill testing question or two.

This completed, we trundled back to Maternity Triage and after the inevitable delays always associated with hospitals (and I am CERTAIN that my sticking up for the medical staff failed to help Lisas inpatience) we were told Lisa was not in “active labour”, and that we should go home and relax (uh, right…).

So home we went. A tense 20 hours spent with Lisa unable to sleep, and Erik fretting. Finally I fell asleep around 0100hrs out of exhaustion. I was shaken awake by Lisa at 0300hrs (sounding familiar?) advising that she had been in touch by telephone with the hospital, and that they were adamant that we had 12-18 hours to go. A short conference confirmed that we had no faith in this advice, and we once again went through the maternity “bug-out” procedure, arriving at Mt. Sinai again (now familiar with the drill we cleared admitting in record time), waved at the guard and announced our presence in Triage again (Ha! We’re already admitted! Deal with us!).

As it turned out Lisa was 4-5cm dilated at this time, and we were quickly transfered to a delivery room. Initially being handled by the Charge nurse we were handed off to “Flunky nurse #287″ who disappeared shortly after her introduction, not to be seen again until it was time for the epidural two hours later.

The epidural was the break point in this exercise, with Lisa being completely exhausted and Erik just slightly better. Once the epidural was administered we both lost consciousness. We were roused by the arrival of Lisas doctor at 0900hrs who, after a quick examination, pretty much clapped his hands and said “lets light this candle!”.

With 10 minutes of setup time, and about 15 minutes of pushing (With Lisa feeling no pain) I was presented with a goop covered minature human. Despite my earlier affirmation that cutting the umbilical cord could be left to the medical professionals, when offered I took the scissors and cut the cord (how often is this going to happen?).

And there we were…. this small living breathing thing, our daughter, in my arms.