Adam's perspective:

I’m not joking around when I say that this past week and a half has been some of the craziest times in my life. I don’t really know where to begin. I was thinking about writing things down as the days went by, but there just wasn’t time.

I guess I’ll try to start with last Thursday night. Kate had a trio of symptoms which, on their own, weren’t a big deal. Since she had them all at the same time though, she was a little unsettled and she called the Midwife on call at the Women’s Center. She said it sounded like nothing, but told her to come in and get checked out just to be sure. In we went and sure enough; everything was fine. That was our first exposure to the Labor and Delivery section of Mt. Auburn. It was pleasant. The Midwife described a couple warning signs that we should be aware of which, should they occur, would necessitate contacting the hospital to get checked out again. We went home and got some sleep, reassured.

The next day (Friday), sure enough, Kate experienced one of the warning signs and she and I headed off to the Women’s Center in the middle of the day. Stressed. They checked her out upon arrival, and we hoped they would say it was nothing. That’s what you say to yourself when there’s a lot at stake. However, we were unpleasantly surprised when they sent us through the admission process, wrapped Kate’s wrist with an ID tag, and sent her up to Labor and Delivery. Say what?

They wanted to put Kate on monitors and observe her for a couple days to be sure everything was okay. A couple days? Remember when this was just a doctor’s appointment? Holy shit, what is going on here? So we spent a couple nights at Mount Auburn in Labor and Delivery listening to the baby’s heartbeat and watching the graph of Kate’s contractions. It was bad, then it was good, then it was bad, then it was fine, then it was good again after they put her on some pills. Good enough that they sent us home Sunday morning.

Back to relatively normal, except at this point life was to change quite a bit. Kate was to be on bed rest for the remainder of the pregnancy, not allowed to go to work, only able to get up to get some snacks or use the bathroom. This was a pretty big deal and we were doing our best to acclimate to it. I went and did a bunch of shopping for foods Kate would like and that would be easy to prepare. We didn’t want her up on her feet longer than to just grab something from out of the fridge and go. I was starting to warm up to my new position as caretaker and preparation chef and whatever else I needed to be to keep Kate comfortable and nourished and not too stir crazy. And off her feet.

The rest of Sunday sucked. Kate was in a lot of pain, and having a lot of contractions, and we were like ... this is the way it’s supposed to be? They just let us out of the hospital like this, so it must be fine. Fine equates to frequent excruciating, writhing pain on the couch. Great.

Monday morning we had an appointment at the Women’s Center to get checked up on after our weekend hospital visit. Kate had gotten much better over the night, and we were feeling so good that she even considered blowing off the appointment so as to not upset things. We went in because we follow the rules. Again, we were expecting a routine exam, and to be patted on the heads and sent on our way. Quickly this spiraled from routine exam to being wheeled up to Labor and Delivery again, prepped for labor, then taking a crazy ambulance ride to Beth Israel Hospital, home of the best Neo-Natal Intensive Care Unit in Boston. Let me explain a couple things. When I say “prepped for labor” I don’t mean that they wrapped her head with a warm towel and soothed her spirit with quiet music and a comfortable environment. Nay, a dozen blue-paper dressed people with masks on their faces descended upon her yelling things like “stat!” and “20 milliliters!” and “geocortizone glycol!” and “scythe!” while jabbing needles in her arm and her butt. This was the most stressful, terrifying part of the pregnancy so far for me. Little did I know that would change in a week. There were other disturbing parts of the exam that took place downstairs which resulted in our speedy ascension to Labor and Delivery, but I’m neglecting to mention them on purpose for the sake of Kate’s personal space. Those were the previous most terrifying parts of the pregnancy for me. Fleetingly. The view from that room was fantastic. The winding Charles was below, green fluffy treetops bordered everything, and the skyline of Boston bloomed in the distance. There was a nice flatscreen on the wall, and the panelling looked like it was cherry wood or something. Kate and I looked at eachother at one moment and said that we would have loved to be delivering in that room. 4 months later.

The ambulance ride to Beth Israel was strange. We had a weird sense of calm after leaving the insanity of that delivery room. Kate had an electronically delivered, measured dose of Magnesium Sulfate coursing through her veins, which had calmed her, and stopped the contractions. The EMT guys operating the ambulance seemed like they were 16, and they were so sweet and calm and funny. We blew through red lights and crossed double yellow lines, passing stacked volumes of traffic. The sirens didn’t sound very loud from inside.

We arrived at Beth Israel and took the elevator to the 10th floor; the Labor and Delivery floor. A floor we would become more comfortable with than we’d like, although truthfully, we were never really comfortable when we were up there because it meant bad things. We got situated in room 1, and met nurses and high risk pre term labor doctors, and frankly, I don’t remember much of Monday night. I do remember sleeping in a cot narrower than my body, and waking up and going to work the next day in the same clothes. Work was hazy. It was really difficult to concentrate on work, or on anything at all really. My head was muddy and my heart was elsewhere. She was in a hospital bed on the 10th floor.

I went home after work and brought clean clothes back to Beth Israel for myself and for Kate. It had become clear to us that Kate would be hospitalized for the remainder of the pregnancy. But was that really worse than being on bed rest at home? At the hospital she had teams of people to care for her, and technology to monitor her progress, and limitless resources to fall back on should the worst present itself. She was safe. We were in a good place. It sucked, but we were in a good place considering our situation. The food at Mount Auburn was way better though.

Tuesday, they brought Kate down to the 6th floor while I was at work. There are two halves to the 6th floor: Post Partem and Anti Labor. Guess which one we were in. Doesn’t Anti Labor sound like some sort of social movement? The cool thing about Anti Labor is that the rooms are relatively cozy. They are set up like hotel rooms, because people often stay in them for months. And that was our aim -- we were going to do everything we could to hang out on the 6th floor for as long as we possibly could. Every week, every day, every hour that we could buy the little guy inside Kate the better. We were ready to endure the long haul in room 648.

Let me back up a little bit. Remember all the yelling and stabbing in the delivery room at Mount Auburn? One of the things they injected into Kate’s rump was a shot of some form of Steroids. The Steroids’ purpose is to go into the baby’s lungs and get them to develop a little early. It takes about 48 hours to take effect. Remember the Magnesium Sulfate I mentioned earlier? Not the greatest stuff, but it does a fantastic job of arresting contractions. The reason I mention both of these things in one paragraph is that they have a relationship in this context. They don’t want you on Magnesium Sulfate (Mag from now on, because that’s the hip way doctors and nurses refer to it, and it sounds bad ass) for too long -- so they default to 48 hours: just enough time for the Steroids to do their thing. That being said, you can understand that Tuesday night went well. Kate was still on the Mag, and was relaxed and not in pain. A promising start to our potential 4 month stint in room 648. This was 24 hours after the Steroid injection.

Wednesday morning, I kissed Kate sweetly on the forehead and went to work. Again, I had difficulty concentrating, but was feeling a little positive about the situation; Kate was responding well to the medication. I was nervous though, because I knew that after they took her off the Mag, they’d be putting her on Nifedipine which is what she was taking the previous Sunday when she was in so much pain. It didn’t seem to work so well.

Wednesday night was 48 hours after her Steroid injection. They took her off the Mag and gave her a low dose of Nifedipine to see how she’d respond. It takes about a day for the Mag to work its way out of the system, so naturally, Kate felt pretty good. We were reading trashy magazines and surfing the internet. We watched TV and ate terrible cafeteria food. I’m not going to trash-talk their chicken fingers though; they totally kick ass.

Thursday morning was okay. Kate was starting to feel little contractions again, but they were little and infrequent. No biggie according to the medical staff. Cool. We remained in our groove.

Thursday night I got back from work and during the day they had doubled Kate’s dosage of Nifedipine because it seemed like she wasn’t responding that well to it. She seemed okay though, so maybe we’d found the magic number. Again, our definition of “okay” is a bit skewed: she was having occasional very painful contractions, but they weren’t frequent or intense enough that the medical team was worried about them. We were worried about them. We worried about everything. Kate didn’t want to sneeze. But what do we know, right? We’re not doctors. I’m totally not being “ironic”; the doctors here at Beth Israel are amazing and brilliant and we love them. They just didn’t know that little Cole had plans of his own.

We tried to sleep thursday night, but there was a good amount of pain and discomfort, so mostly it was tossing and turning. This was manageable pain though -- if this was what Kate needed to put up with to give Cole the best possible chance at life, she would endure. Kate is a trooper and has a heart of gold to go along with her body of steel. She can do anything. Also, the doctors had assured us repeatedly that these contractions were not worrying them.

Until Friday afternoon when they did start to worry about them and they sent Kate back up to the 10th floor (remember them? Yeah -- Labor and Delivery. The one place we didn’t want to go back to for 4 months.) for more closely monitored observation. I was at work when they transitioned her so I left. I think it was one or two in the afternoon or something. Sorry work! I had to go.

When I got up there, we were back in room 1. It was strangely familiar. Kate was hooked up to the same machines, and Cole’s little heartbeat was echoing off the shiny surfaces in the room. It was always comforting to hear that 150bpm. Also strangely comforting was the barely audible rhythmic sklurking of the IV pump through which they had again started feeding Kate the Mag. Here’s the weird part: Kate looked great. She was calm, and snoozie. It was at this moment that I realized how much pain she had been enduring when she was off the Mag.

Bunny showed up that night and generously gave her evening to give me a break and spend time with Kate so I could go and meet my friend Jon who was staying at our house that weekend. Jon and I walked to Kenmore Square and got UBurger. Not bad.

Over the next 2 days we spent a lot of time talking about some seriously dire possibilities with the NICU staff (NICU is the acronym for Neonatal Intensive Care Unit) and the drawbacks of long term use of Magnesium Sulfate, and other things that made our little heads explode. It was a tough couple of days. Kate was totally stable when on the Mag though, so even while she was up in Labor and Delivery, she was relatively comfortable. Not comfortable were the conversations we had about how we would handle any one of the seven hundred thousand terrible things that could happen to Cole were he to be delivered that weekend.

Kate’s mom Jane arrived on Saturday to keep us company and check in on her daughter. She was great to have around, and her presence allowed me to go out on Saturday night and Sunday afternoon to breathe some fresh air and enjoy the weather. And damn, what beautiful weather. Thank you Jane. It’s funny how when you’re inside for so long you don’t even remember what fresh air is like. Poor Kate must be going absolutely crazy. As of this writing she hasn’t been outside in a week and a half. Damn.

On Sunday morning came the good news: they felt that Kate was stable enough to return to her cozy 6th floor room. This was such great news! She was stabilizing on the Mag, and not responding negatively to it. They said they could safely keep her on it at a low dosage indefinitely due to the way her body was handling it. Kick ass! The psychological effect of moving back to room 648 was enormous and we were soothed upon arrival. Again, we settled in, ready to take on weeks and weeks of monotony in our little room. We were feeling hopeful.

Monday morning came, and everything was great. We had slept decently for the first time in many days, and were expecting a leisurely lunch with Jon before he headed back to New York. Jane was driving home because she was comfortable enough with how we were doing. We had ordered burgers from a nearby restaurant, and Jon was going to be a gentleman and go get them for us. When he arrived to snag the 15% off coupon Jane had left for us, no sooner had he sat down, then the nurse came in and said that they wanted to bring Kate back up to the Labor and Delivery floor for closer scrutiny. Cole’s heart pattern had been doing concerning things, and they had noticed from their remote magic heart monitoring station. These people were doing their job, and doing it well, but WHAT THE FUCK!? We just got here, we wanted to relax, we were happy, and now you’re ruining everything!? What about the burgers?! Just when we thought we’d figured everything out, something we had never even imagined reared up and spun us out of orbit. His heart?!

Jon went to get the burgers. Kate was taken upstairs with me in tow. We were sort of numb at this point. Numb yet confused and scared. This time they took us into room 6 and we knew things were different. Nothing was familiar -- not the room, or the expectations of the conversation, or the source of the fear, or anything. We were totally out of our element. The nurses hooked Kate up to the monitors again, and we were just sort of starting to process what was going on, when Jon buzzed in that he had arrived with the burgers. Kate was no longer allowed to eat (sad face) so I went out to the lobby where Jon and I ate the burgers while watching some sport on TV. I think it was baseball. My brain was a mess. After eating, I suggested that Jon just go home -- visitors weren’t allowed on the 10th floor anyway. He took off and I headed back to room 6 where I was expecting to find the same old thing. I was expecting to lie around some more listening to monitors go “beep” for another stretch of hours. When I sat down next to Kate, she gave me the news that she had just learned that her labor had progressed.

The Doctor, who had given me his seat, was a nice guy. He was funny, but also very honest and clear. He wanted to get the baby out right away by C section.

Wait.

What?

Weren’t we doing everything we possibly could to stop the baby from coming out? Wasn’t every hour that we could keep him inside important? Essentially, he felt, as did Kate, that the labor was progressing and there was nothing they could really do to stop it. The mighty Mag wasn’t even enough, so they should take control of the safest way for the baby to be delivered. Did I mention that the baby was breach?

With barely enough time to nod our heads in agreement, things started springing into action. We were trying to process the magnitude of what was happening when the anesthesiologist came in and asked a hundred questions and prepared Kate for her spinal. We were trying to process some more while Kate was wheeled away and I was ordered into the recovery room to put on the blue-paper outfit. They said I’d only miss her being anesthetized. 5 minutes ago I was eating burgers with Jon, not expecting much. We’d been through this before. Now I was staring out the window waiting for the nurse to come and get me so I could help Kate handle them pulling the baby out of her. She was giving BIRTH. We were going to be a family. I was going to be a father. Kate was going to be a mother. Kate was going through some serious surgery, and I was staring out the window wearing a blue paper outfit. Holy crap was this not how I had expected the day to go.

Remember when I said something about the most stressful, terrifying part of the pregnancy so far? This was it.

After a wait of what seemed like 16 hours, a nurse came and brought me into the OR. There was Kate, on her back on the table with people hovering around her. There was a screen up on her chest so she couldn’t look down and see them opening her up. I went behind the screen to join her and sat and held her hand and stroked her hair and probably said ridiculously unhelpful things. My brain was moving in slow motion. I was still in the other room, still having the conversation with the doctor who was at that moment performing the operation on the other side of the screen. I was still staring out the window thinking about what this all meant. I was still having a burger with Jon in the lobby. I was downstairs hunkering down for a 4 month stay in room 648. Kate was right in front of me giving birth. All of a sudden, I was ready. I was there. I wasn’t scared anymore, I wasn’t processing any more, I was there and finally comfortable and breathing and calm. Kate was uncomfortable and scared and had no idea what the fuck they were doing to her. We asked the anesthesiologist to take advantage of his height to look over the screen and tell Kate what was happening when she felt these crazy sensations. His descriptions comforted her. I hoped that I was comforting too.

There was another person in the room. He was very tiny. We were aware of his presence, but couldn’t see him. He was on a very small table surrounded by an army of women with tools and probes and tubes. They were wearing a different light orange paper outfit than the people in blue working on Kate. They moved in fast-forward. They were very well organized. I didn’t know if I should concentrate on Kate, or on the new little person. I concentrated on Kate; Cole seemed to have plenty of attention. Kate was trying to see Cole and was telling me that though she was still being operated on, I should go see what was going on with the little guy. Semi-reluctantly, I stood up and went over to see what was going on.

Hello there.

He was tiny and pink. He was like a toy. His head was like a little peach -- fuzzy and red and probably sweet. He was squirming all over the place, trying to find boundaries that were not there. He peed all over the place. Nice work, kiddo. He had made the craziest little noise earlier. Like a confused kitten. One of the doctors asked if I’d like to cut the umbilical cord. Hells yeah I would. She handed me some scissors and held up the rubbery snake attached to his belly. It was thicker than his arms and his legs. I cut through it where she showed me - it took a couple snips. It felt like an asian food that I wouldn’t eat; something amphibian or aquatic. Except it wasn’t -- it was his lifeline. Time to fend for yourself little man. Good luck! Except he wasn’t by himself. He had this entire team of amazing people who knew exactly what was going on caring for him. He had the latest technology and the deepest wells of knowledge behind those amazing people. He had me and Kate. And for a few moments, he breathed on his own.

I couldn’t stop looking at him. I touched him, put my finger in the dimple of his palm. His tiny hand gripped the tip of my finger. He was strong. Mesmerized, I stepped back as the doctors continued to work on him. They wrapped him up in a little blanket with his hands sticking out by his face; a warm little burrito.

Hey! Remember Kate? I turned around and saw her straining in my direction. Vainly, I thought she wanted to see me. I returned to her side and comforted her. “Here I am”, I said. “Where is he? Can I see him? I want to see him!” She was saying. Of course! God, I’m an idiot. I turned just as they brought him over for Kate to see. He was the sweetest little thing. Then they whisked him away to the NICU. Come back!

Kate was still in surgery. Putting her back together seemed to take longer than taking her apart, and appeared to be more uncomfortable. I did the best I could to ease the situation, but because she is incredible, she got through it with composure and grace.

We had a baby.

The people in the OR, as they wheeled Kate out, were saying “Congratulations!” It didn’t feel like the right thing to say. At that moment, my heart was so conflicted. We had just spent weeks in Anti Labor, doing everything we could to keep the baby inside. We were doing our best to give him as much time as possible to develop! But now he was on the outside, out in the cold! Had we failed? Was he going to be okay? We couldn’t know. At that moment, I just didn’t know how to feel. But I was definitely thrilled with and in awe of our little son.

After a couple hours of contemplation, and just a little time to recover from the overwhelming everything, I have decided that Congratulations is a good thing to hear. We are full of hope for Cole. He is doing well, and was born with more weight and better lung capacity than we could have hoped for. And just because he’s outside in the world doesn’t mean he won’t grow and flourish.

We love him.