(Email me and I can send you the link for the pictures - I’m hthaden at gmail dot com)

Freaky Supermarket Lady
A little over a week ago, Heidi took the older kids to the supermarket with Emily. Their intent was to have Heidi walk about to induce labor. Taking the kids along was a secondary strategy to help things along. As she was going along, she was accosted by a lady who walked right up to Heidi, cooing, “Oh, you’re so pregnant!” She dropped her hold of her own child in tow and placed her hands on Heidi’s belly. As she rubbed, she continued, “Oh, this is going to be a boy.”

“It’s a girl,” Heidi corrected.

“This is a boy,” insisted the lady. “A beautiful baby boy!”

These people lurk everywhere for pregnant ladies: these public location belly-touchers who believe every pregnant belly belongs to the public domain. They look normal enough, but just when you least expect it they pounce with their wild speculation and touchy hands. Never asking permission, rarely asking about the mother, they produce their idle declarations about everything from gender to hair color with the strongest of convictions and defend them in the name of intuition.

Remembering it’s best to not make eye contact with these people, Heidi dropped her gaze in an attempt to get away.

Heidi gathered up the kids and decided against mentioning the high-definition ultrasound that clearly identified very female-specific parts of the baby’s anatomy deciding that sort of information would merely serve as a challenge and hinder her escape.

Mo Naps
Emily had stayed with us for a good chunk of the summer. She needed some time off from college to recharge, and Heidi needed company while I was off at work. It was a mutually beneficial situation. Emily was especially excited at the prospect of being present while her namesake was born, and we tried just about everything we could to make that happen. Emiline refused to be moved. Walks, trips to the library and supermarket, trampoline use, nothing was making this kid come out; still, Emily held out hope.

As her flight loomed near, Emily accepted the fact that she would likely miss the birth. Emiline was simply following her own schedule with this labor. All too soon, it was time to take Emily to the airport to catch her August 29th flight. We all climbed into the van so the kids could say their goodbyes. Once we started moving, the unthinkable happened. Moira fell asleep.

Mo isn’t allowed to take naps any more, though she desperately needs them during the day. It’s more a factor of her parents’ mental health than anything that prompts this moratorium on the little girl’s napping. If she doesn’t nap, she becomes extremely cranky by the time bedtime hits around 7:30 or 8, but once we get her into bed, she falls asleep almost instantly and, more often than not, stays in bed. Heidi and I get to use the time between the kids’ bedtime and our bedtime to recharge ourselves with conversation, projects, movies, and general togetherness oriented activities. All the kids wake up around 6:30 AM, the earth goes round again, and this is how our days work. That is, unless Mo naps.

When Mo naps, even for thirty minutes, her little batteries go right to the top. She’s delightful and cheerful and keeps going long after her siblings succumb to the night. On these evenings I call it around 10 or when her exuberance becomes more than I can bear in my fatigue, whichever comes first. Then we read book after book or watch movies on the laptop until she decides to curl up in my arms and fall asleep.

At 9:00 on Wednesday I had Mo climb into bed with Heidi and me, and we read library books in near darkness until she started dozing off. That wasn’t quite doing it, though, so I put my arm around her and turned off the lights at 9:30. Heidi and I spoke in the dark as our little girl nodded off. “I’m feeling a lot of pressure,” she said.

“What kind?”

“Down low.”

Heidi never complained of pain with this pregnancy. It was always pressure. I was beginning to wonder if her already remarkable pain tolerance had elevated itself to supernatural levels. Perhaps she would find herself pushing a baby out and joking about a bit of pressure low down, and wasn’t it odd? “You’ve been feeling a lot of pressure down low lately. I wonder how much pressure you can take before your water breaks?” I mentioned.

Heidi and I continued to chat for a bit though I found myself getting more drowsy than I expected. I had every intention of waiting until Mo was asleep then getting back up to work on a project for my job.

Water Breaks
At 10:30 I woke up for no particular reason. Mo was asleep next to me. Heidi was coming out of the bathroom. “My water broke, Kit.”

“You sure?” I asked. Heidi nodded. How much more pressure? Apparently not much. “OK, let’s start making the phone calls. How long do you think we have?”

“I don’t know. My water’s never broken before.”

That’s something I hadn’t considered. Heidi’s water had always broken when she started pushing. Water breaking before labor was completely new to us, yet, there we were facing the undeniable fact that labor was imminent, though Heidi still wasn’t feeling any real contractions. After calling our immediate support players to put them on the alert, I told Heidi I was going back to bed. “Not that I think that you can at this point, but I think you should try to get some more sleep. I suspect this will be a long night, love.”

Heidi, to her credit, actually laid back down in the hopes of getting to sleep, but wasn’t able to pull it off. I had no such problems and was back asleep by 11:30.

Time to Go
“Moira soaked the bed,” Heidi said, waking me up.

“Huh?” About two hours of sleep barely verbal here while my wife was pulling sheets off the bed from under me.

“At first I thought it was… more water, but it was Mo. Soaked the entire thing right down to the mattress.”

“Okay,” I said as I rolled out of bed fumbling for my glasses.

“And it’s time to go.”

“Oh!” That woke me up quick. “Ok, well, I’ll finish the bed here. You start making the calls.” In a moment I was getting dressed and Heidi was on the phone.

“Solid colors for pictures, right?” I asked.

Heidi was between calls. “No t-shirts. Solid would be best.”

That would mean the maroon polo shirt. I wanted to be comfortable. Short sleeves may get a little cold, but they’d be the most practical. Births can get a bit messy.

I heard Heidi’s end of the next conversation with the birth center. “It’s time for me to come in. (pause) It doesn’t matter how far apart they are. I’m coming in. (pause) We’re waiting for the babysitter first, so we’ll be there in about 30 minutes. Ok. Be there soon.” It’s the office manager’s job to screen the crazy pregnant ladies when answering the phone, and that’s who Heidi was dealing with. I think it took a moment for the office manager to remember that Heidi, mother of three soon to be four, knew what she was talking about and relent.

“I already called Becky,” Heidi said to me, “and the baby sitter’s on her way.”

Satisfied that I had everything we needed to take with us, I sat down next to Heidi. “Is there anything I can do for you while we wait?”

“Nope, just sit a minute.”

“I can do that. Ready for this?” I asked.

“Don’t really have a choice, do I?” she answered. “Yes. I’m ready.”

I stroked Heidi’s shoulder and remembered why young couples sat and talked all night all of a sudden, or at least why talking with someone you love in solitude appealed to me. How you could forget the world in the quiet dark and be completely alone but not lonely. “I kind of like doing this in the middle of the night when everyone else is asleep. It’s like the night belongs to us alone.” I said.

Heidi touched my hand on her shoulder gently and smiled a smile that men would die for.

Our babysitter arrived soon, and after we shared some brief instructions with her we were on our way. We arrived in Denton in a little under 10 minutes. The flashing yellow signal lights at almost every intersection were going our way. We passed a few late customers leaving a small restaurant on the square, but they were the only people out on the early Wednesday morning besides us.

Labor and Delivery
We drove up to the birth center and were met by a new face. Erin introduced herself to us as our birth attendant. Jean was already there, too, looking tired. As the morning went on, we found out that she was going on 72 hours and three births back to back.

We unloaded quickly and Heidi settled in to the birthing room. Everything about this space was designed to put laboring women at ease; it certainly exceeded any level of comfort we tried to create at home. Candles here and there flickered their warmth across the room with a single extremely low wattage lamp casting its bare glow on the bed. A rustic trellis entwined with flowers hung on the wall at the head of the bed, and even the neonatal crash cart was cleverly disguised under a table covered with muslin. Along the side of an entire wall stood a tub larger than most wading pools. We started the water in the bath for Heidi almost immediately.

In the meantime, Heidi’s sister Rebecca had arrived to photograph the birth. She floated about the edges of the room continually. Occasionally we’d ask her about this or that, but usually the only real indication of her presence was the intermittent sound of a shutter.

Heidi spent most of her first hour at the birth center balancing on a yoga ball. Contractions were coming six minutes apart. Every fifteen minutes, Erin would swoop in with a doppler mic and locate Emiline’s heartbeat just to make sure she was still doing okay under the mounting pressure of labor. Heidi’s laptop was open and she was watching various home movies of the kids on it to help take her mind off the contractions that were soon coming every three minutes apart. At that point the movies weren’t a suitable distraction any more. We started her medium labor playlist on the player, and as soon as the tub was ready, she climbed inside.

The tub is a fantastic place to labor in general, and this particular tub was simply incredible. When Heidi knelt in the tub, her head barely cleared the top rim. At any moment, Heidi was able to completely submerge her belly and relieve the weight that was always pulling her down. The contractions continued to build and we eventually stopped timing them.

Heidi was hitting what they call transition. Transition gets everything into place to actually have the baby. Transition is when labor gets serious and really starts hurting. Transition is where I let Heidi down last time.

Christopher’s birth wasn’t so great. It wasn’t a bad experience per se, but when it was all done we knew it wasn’t as good as it could be. Many books and hours of research later we decided on a midwife for Moira’s delivery instead of the OB experience we had with Christopher. We were happy and secure with our choice, and happily laboring in the hospital on the big day when Heidi decided to get into the tub. Within moments, Heidi hit transition. It went so fast we panicked. Heidi felt out of control with the pain, and I wasn’t prepared to help her with her new stark reality. Epidurals really hide the facts of a healthy labor. We made it through all right, if you consider that I told Heidi anything she wanted to hear just to get her through to delivery like the epidural was on its way, or that the midwife didn’t even show up in time to catch — that I felt Mo crowning and the nurse actually delivered her — if you consider all those things “all right” then the delivery was all right. Heidi deserved better. I promised myself that this time would be.

In the tub we discovered that my hand on Heidi’s belly made her feel much better about the contractions. I’m positive it still hurt like the dickens, but perhaps she felt less alone. I’m not going to presume to get inside her head, however. Anyway, as I could manage it, I tried to maintain as much contact with her as I could, and we passed the time with a few jokes, some quiet conversation in the candlelight, and many contractions. A mere hour later, Heidi decided that the warmth of the water had served its purpose and she climbed out of the tub for her hard labor and to deliver Emiline on the bed.

Another contraction hit while Heidi was sitting on the edge of the tub. At the same time “Your Body is a Wonderland” started playing. Heidi laughed through the contraction at the thought of this song. “I included it to make me laugh,” she explained through the pain.

Heidi climbed up to the bed and starting riding wave after wave of harder contractions. Jean checked Heidi. She was at a six. A few more contractions hit. Jean checked again and reported.

“What did she say?” Heidi asked, breathing hard. “Did she say a six?”

“No, love. She said, ‘Seven.’ You’re progressing.”

“Not fast enough,” Heidi said through clenched teeth. “I have to push!”

If we had been at the hospital, the nurse would have freaked out, after all, that’s exactly what happened when Mo was born. Erin was sitting nearby and said something that was a pleasant surprise for both Heidi and me. “Mama,” she said in a perfect Texas drawl, “you go ahead and push a little. If it feels good, you go on and push a little more.” So Heidi started to push.

It wasn’t long before the self-doubt set in. Heidi wasn’t yet pushing in earnest, but enough to really hurt. Her fear was apparent on her face, and she looked worried. “I can’t do this!” she exclaimed.

I took Heidi’s head in my hands and got in between her and whatever it was she was looking at in space. Looking right into her eyes I told her, “You can and you will. You’re doing great.” Heidi smiled a tight little smile that was soon replaced by a grimace as she began moving into her next contraction.

Seeing Heidi’s distress, Jean decided to perform some ancient midwife tricks on her to get things to move along. Without going into too much detail, Jean got Emiline’s head started in the turtleneck. If you want to think about that, go ahead, but it’s still cryptic enough to let you gloss over it if you like. The trick worked because Emy started moving after that, though she wasn’t moving particularly quickly, probably because she didn’t have the bag of water shoe-horning her exit for her. We just had to take Jean’s word for the time.

A few pushes later, Emiline crowned. “I can see her head, Heidi!” I told her. It was full of dark hair and her scalp was squished up into a wild texture that looked like brain, but I could see her head coming.

Heidi and I had discussed my delivering Emy — actually catching her when she came out. We decided that I would try unless we decided at the moment that Heidi needed me more. Between pushing, Heidi indicated that I could go and start catching if I wanted to. I put my hand on Emy’s head and felt the weight of her slowly moving down, but when I glanced back to Heidi, her eyes were filled with lonely dread and fear again. Heidi needed me more than Emiline did. “Thanks for the chance, love,” I said to her as I left Emiline to the capable hands of Jean; my hands held Heidi’s as I talked to her through the pushing.

Emiline’s head came out looking like a prize fighter with puffy eyes and bruised cheeks. Then came a shoulder. Then, almost like water, the rest of her body simply flowed out. After they wrapped her in a towel, Jean placed a small wet Emiline on Heidi’s chest. Heidi was immediately smiling; the pain was over, the endorphins were flowing, and Emiline was in her arms. It was 5:19 in the morning.

Modern ultrasound technology is incredibly accurate. Even the most basic machines found in doctor’s offices offer many times the resolution and accuracy of machines from as recently as a decade ago. Still, even in the hands of a highly skilled ultrasound technician, mistakes can be made in gender determination for a variety of reasons. However, some facts remain immutable. For example, while it’s difficult to be absolutely sure that a girl will be a girl, when you see a boy in the screen, you can be 100% certain. Also, I have never met an ultrasound tech who had ever called gender incorrectly, by their own admission. Beyond the ultrasounds, Heidi was debilitated with morning-noon-and-night sickness for Bennett and Christopher. It was so bad her doctors prescribed her a medication used for counteracting nausea in chemotherapy patients at $25 a pill. With Moira, Heidi had migranes. Boys make her sick, girls give her headaches. Emiline gave Heidi migranes. And if that wasn’t enough we just knew she was going to be a girl. We had a sure conviction of this. As sure as I know that I love to eat bacon, we knew that Emy was a girl. With all that said, for the record, Emiline came out a part-perfect girl, so, respectfully: In your face, freaky supermarket lady!

In about twenty minutes it was time to cut the cord. Jean offered me the chance, but I declined. I cut the cord with Christopher. That’s one experience I claim in my life, but allowing the fathers that opportunity seems like a lame attempt to let the dads feel involved. There’s not really much to it: take a bundle of rubber bands or some tragically overcooked calamari and cut it with some surgical scissors and you will have successfully simulated the experience without all the trouble of labor. I had just felt my baby’s head crown. I held my wife and looked into her eyes while she walked in the shadow of the valley of death to witness her triumphant return to the land of the living with a new life bundled in her arms. I am the father of four perfect children. You can keep the cord cutting.

After cord was clamped and cut, Jean took Emiline for a moment to get her vitals. She was longer than Christopher: 19.5 inches. That surprised Heidi. We had expected our 38 weeker to be a bit more petite; Moira was a tiny little thing. Even Jean had estimated that she’d be a little over six pounds in the same ballpark as Mo. When Jean weighed the newborn Emy, her eyes got wide. 7 lbs. 7 ounces is six ounces more than Christopher, our previously largest baby. 7 lbs. 7 ounces is heavier than the birth weights of Moira and Bennett combined. Heidi delivered our largest baby after twenty minutes of pushing without any pain relievers at all. She’s my hero.

Jean was having a long three days. She delivered a baby the night before, had a full day of appointments, and barely had time for a nap before Heidi called and put her on alert. She was going to head home for a but of relaxation for an hour or two before coming back for the day’s appointments. Before she left, she leaned over Heidi, kissed her forehead, and gently proclaimed, “You’re one strong birth warrior, Heidi.”

Heidi took a shower while I packed up. Erin measured vitals every half hour for the next two, and when all was demonstrably consistent and perfectly normal, we were free to take our two-hour-old baby home. So we did.

Home Again
We dressed Emiline with little bother and fuss. Her car seat was already adjusted for a tiny baby, and we had to loosen it for our seven pound girl. We quietly loaded up the van and drove back home.

In the early morning, the small town was going to work filled with people insensible to anything beyond the experience within their cars. Yet in the middle of all the automatic bustle of routine, the arrival of my new daughter was the early morning sun. The world was turning, but that moment still belonged to us alone.