Baby #13436559

Greetings! Guest blogger Rus here. Okay, remember all that stuff I said yesterday about us wanting to stretch this whole thing out to 34 weeks? Screw that.

Presenting Wyatt Augustus McLaughlin.



You can barely see his horns.

I woke up at 5:50 a.m. when the doctor in the room spoke. No idea what she said, but I got the gist instantly: Wyatt was having another deceleration. A bad one. More scary was the fact that Stephanie hadn't been moving at all... she'd been dead asleep on her side. This was the first decel that happened entirely on its own, without They put her on all fours and Wyatt came back up again. That freaked us out a bit. We talked briefly about the wisdom of waiting until this Friday, but decided we might be a little too freaked out to make that decision with clarity.

Then Dr. Walton turned up around nine and suggested it was time to get baby out. As in Now. Clear enough for us, pal. We agreed.

It was all done with due swiftness, but without any alarming haste or rush. I threw on my scrubs. They took Stephanie into the OR to get her spinal and fully prepped for the c-section; I was called in for about the last fifteen minutes of a thirty minute procedure. Oddly enough, no less than three people asked me if I had my camera as I went in.

The view was blocked off from about Steph's collarbone down, while (under orders) I scratched Stephanie's nose... fat lot of good that did. Between the anesthesia and all the other meds she got that day, it would never stop itching. She nearly carved it right off with her fingernails. More unnerving was how every so often, her entire body would be shaken from Down Below, where Dr. Walton (who wanted to do the procedure himself) was operating. Everything down there felt “like Jello,” said Stephanie. All I could see was the top of Walton’s head.

Until he said “Here’s your baby!” and we instantly heard this squall. He was out. Alive. Upset. Stephanie started crying, so relieved to hear him.

Wyatt came out at 11:07 a.m. on 7/8/08, the same birthday as Stephanie’s maternal grandmother... so now we know why he couldn’t wait. He was 16.5 inches long, and weighed three pounds, twelve ounces.

I stood up and took a few pictures of it before Dr. Walton popped his head over the dividing sheet so Stephanie could get a look at her goopy, purple-headed baby. Took a picture of that, too, along with the placenta (which turned out to indeed be a source of many of our problems; more on that later). They took him over to clean him up and get him oxygenated, and I was called over when they’d gotten some of the mess on the floor cleaned up. I went with him to the NICQ while they stapled Stephanie back together. He was given a C-pap to help him breathe - he was able to breathe, but pressure from the C-pap made sure he wouldn’t wear himself out doing it - and I was sent out as a sterile tent went up for them to insert a bunch of “lines” (tubes to feed him fluids/etc.) went into his belly button.

He’s a squirmy beast, I’ll tell you that. And a fighter. He held off three nurses and crippled two others before they dog-piled him in the NICQ. Seriously, he wouldn’t get one nurse finish taping down his lines until I got in there and distracted him. Once I let him grab hold of my finger - and he wouldn’t let go - he calmed down a lot, and even opened his eyes and looked around... and looked at me. I talked to him for a bit, about what a great little guy he was, how every day was a good day, that he shouldn’t put up with any shit from the doctors, and it was okay to take a few out if he needed to, because they probably deserved it anyway. That made him feel better. Gotta let a boy have his way sometimes.

He's doing well in NICU, doing everything they expect from a 32-week premie, if not doing a little better.

Helmut and Dorthy got in around 6ish, and got to see him down in the NICU as well. Stephanie didn’t get down there until 8... she threw up once and could barely take the pain of sitting/standing, post-op. But she did, with Mr. Morphine’s help, because she refused to not see her baby that day. We’d been moved out of our home in Room A on the Fourh Floor to Room 522 on the Fifth Floor, so we had to wheelchair her down and into the NICU, where a savvy and stoic lady named Sherry is looking after Wyatt. And yes, it made her all weepy again, but that’s okay. I’d taken lots of pictures, and even shot some video with a DV camera Helmut and Dorothy brought, but nothing beats seeing your first child for the first time. Nothing.

We made us a beautiful baby boy. So now you’re all doomed.