Flashback: The Birth (Episode 1)

For months now, I've been meaning to blog about the actual birth of Leah and Riley, but I've never really gotten around to it. For some reason, I haven't been able to muster much enthusiasm. I guess, as a guy, I've never really been all that interested in the intimate details about people's water breaking, or how they were such-and-such centimeters dilated after four hours, or how the baby's head got stuck in their such-and-such. As a rule, us guys really just don't wanna know. Trust me.

But hey, the year's running out, and I'd better write something about my daughters' births before the whole experience vaporizes from my brain. So here goes. I promise to stay away from the gruesome stuff. Okay? Okay.

For those that don't know, Kathy had our twins vaginally, which is apparently getting less and less common with the increasing popularity of c-sections. Surprisingly, although having twins seems to be all the rage right now, it's apparently still rare enough that doctors and nurses still get all excited and giddy about getting a chance to witness the vaginal birth of twins. While Kathy was giving birth, there were by my count, four OB/Gyn doctors, two nurses, and four pediatricians in the room. That's ten people. Or about five times the number of people that I see in the delivery room in those birth scenes in the movies.

I guess the point of having all those people in the room is so that they can take quick action if things go wrong. But in our case, things were going well, so what we had here was one doctor standing there ready to catch the baby, and about seven other people sitting there watching Kathy push, feeding her ice chips, and saying encouraging things like "You're doing great! Keep pushing!"

Of course, the fact that there were seven people feeding Kathy ice chips and saying encouraging things meant that there wasn't much left for the dad to do. I think the whole ice chips and "you're doing great" thing is pretty much all that the dad's got, isn't it? So I sat there mostly silently, awkwardly stroking my wife's head occasionally from my spot wedged amongst the seven other people around the bed. Once in a while, I would report to Kathy that the baby was almost out, although honestly, I wasn't entirely convinced that big ol' head was gonna fit through that little hole.

But fit through that hole it did. Twice apparently.

Intermission.

Sorry, Leah and Riley, you'll have to stay tuned for Episode 2...