I'm on the couch dreaming peacefully in a medicine head type state where I'm dead asleep when I hear a soft, faint sound saying, "Honey." As I turn my head Brianne is limping down the stairs and she asks me to rub her hips because they are aching. I remember looking at the clock as it read 12:00 AM. As I sit up to do my husbandly duties I remember feeling like I had the flu and that my stomach was upset. I thought, "Oh crap, I have the flu now." After the brief massage, I fall back asleep thinking that tomorrow is going to be an even longer day.
1AM. Brianne come's down and says, "Honey, I'm having contractions." I remember sitting up, turning to Brianne and saying, "Seriously Brianne? Are you kidding me?" Just the thought of her going into labor after she had been on her death bed 8 hours earlier and me arriving at mine seemed so absurd that my response seemed appropriate at the time. After getting a "Yes their contracts" look and response from her, I pulled up my contraction counter app and started counting.
After an hour of counting with the contractions getting progressively stronger I new it was time to go to the hospital. My stomach was in knots and I couldn't tell if it was the flu or nerves. Having done this before, Brianne and I had talked about our plan briefly and went into action. I called my Mom to let her know that she had to come over and watch Jackson. Brianne called her Mom to let her know to meet us at the hospital. The car was already packed up and I had put the infant car seat in 2 days earlier with the nagging influence of my wife ;) I grabbed our blankets and pillows and computers, got Kona all set up into the bathroom and we shot off into the night.
Driving into the hospital, it was completed different than the first time. The previous time Brianne's labor had progressed a lot further before we left for the hospital so in the car she was on her knees bent over the seat in pain. This time, it seemed like we were just driving into the hospital for a normal appointment. We talked about how we'd look back and laugh one day at the circumstances around our labor and how we hoped that this was the real thing since we had to inconvenience so many people.
Upon arriving at the hospital, Brianne and I walked into the maternity ward. I resisted the urge to scream "Woman in labor," (which I had done the first time) and checked Brianne in. We walked down to our room and I remember her having to stop a few times because of the pain. It's such a helpless feeling to watch your wife in pain knowing that there is nothing you can do to aid or empathize. As we get to the room and Brianne is changing into her gown, my stomach flu is full steam ahead and I am doubled over in pain. As I see Chris and Justine (our photographer) arrive, I remember feeling a sense of relief. Not 2 minutes later I was in the bathroom puking my guts out. It was one of the worst feelings I've ever had during one of happiest times of my life. As I come out of the bathroom I can barely stand up let alone be with Brianne, who is having to go through several failed IV insertion attempts. She is in so much pain from both the failed attempts and the labor that I can't stand seeing her like that. I leave the room to take a breath and think to myself, "I know you feel like crap, but you're wife needs you, and so does your daughter." The thought of seeing my baby girl for the first time, the one I had dreamed about my whole life, gave me the motivation to suck it up.
Brianne is contracting heavily and has gone from 4cm dilated to 9cm in 45 minutes. This takes our total labor time to around 2.5 hours. She is on track and doing well. During each contraction, Brianne and I make eye contact as I hold her hand. I tell her to breathe with me as we go through the contraction together. I was her focal point for her entire labor. I felt so much more connected to my wife this time around and I empathized with her pain as my stomach was turning upside down. When asked for an epidural, my wife said, "Absolutely not." Then she said something that I'll never forget, "Pain is temporary, Pride is forever." I remember tearing up with pride as I looked at my wife, lying on a table trying to push a bowling ball out her vag. She has an inner strength that I have come to admire and I have a new found respect for her and mother's who undergo natural child birth.
As Brianne begins to push we are still connected and going through our breathing exercises although she is now screaming in pain after each push which is hard for me to hear. After each round of pushing I have to sit down as I am still very sick. After 45 minutes of pushing, Brianne hits a point where she wants to quit. As I looked in her eyes I felt that we shared a moment and I remember saying, "Honey, you're doing great and Malia is almost here." For me it felt like the world stopped and we shared a moment between the two of us that I can't describe. With the next few pushes I saw my daughter's black hair and eventually saw her complete body come out into the world for the first time. The overwhelming feeling of excited, exhaustion, and love flood over me as Malia is placed on Brianne for the first time. As I look at my two girls for the first time, my only thought is, "I am never going to let anything happen to you two."
As I held my daughter in my arms for the first time and listed to her little voice cry out for the first time, I teared up thinking about all the things we are going to go through in life. I looked at my honey girl and said to her, "Hi Peanut. I'm your daddy and I love you more than life."
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