The Arrival

My son was born on September 3rd, 2007 at 6 26 pm. He is named Alton.

My wife started having serious contractions at 1 15 am on the 3rd. At least, that's when she told me. I was in the middle of a round of furious on-line gaming at the Kongregate website. By the time we had convinced ourselves that, yes, these were real contractions, it was 2 30-ish. We got into a room at the hospital at 3 00 am.

As it turns out, having a baby on a minor holiday is probably a good thing. The delivery ward we were in was usually packed, because there are numerous planned inductions scheduled. But on Labor Day nobody wants to schedule an induction. We had an induction scheduled for the 7th ourselves. If we had come in the previous Monday, we would have had to go through a good chunk of the early part of the labor (the contractions) in a 'non-delivery' room (although, because of crowding, they often do deliveries in those rooms anyway).

Instead, there were just 6-8 deliveries occurring during the time we were there. I think this means we ended up with a little more time from nurses.

The process itself was traumatizing, exhausting, vaguely humiliating, astoundingly painful, and heart-wrenching. And that's just my part. When Alton finally arrived I very nearly just fell on the floor and started crying.

My wife, and any other woman who has gone through that, well...my god. I had an idea, but watching it on TV or reading about it or whatever is nothing compared to what it actually is.

Last year I started getting really sick due to an early-onset ulcer. That can be pretty painful stuff. One night I felt like I had drunk a bottle of phosphoric acid, then I started throwing up, and I just felt burning all up and down my esophagus, down into my intestine, and especially in my stomach. I was in agony, and it continued for 6-7 hours before I gave in and went to the ER to try and get something to alleviate the pain. It took a couple of days for me to recover, and a couple of more days before I would eat anything.

I'm pretty sure that's comparable to what my wife went through during the first 6 or so hours. That was the easiest part of the entire delivery process. At the end my wife was screaming, and everyone in the room (which by this point was about 12 people) were telling her to keep pushing and that she was doing a wonderful job. I think she ignored all of them, but I kept repeating everything they said, and, in her words "You had to be my brain."

Alton turned out to be 7 lbs and 14 oz, and 19.5 inches tall (long). This is the same length as my wife and I were at birth, but he's actually a lot lighter than both of us. Which meant that my wife's mom could say he was "really little." That's crazy. That's crazy. There's no way I believe that the human race will continue to propagate.

I know I won't continue to propagate.

Anyway, Alton arrived a brilliant shade of purple, but it turns out that isn't too uncommon, and so after a few good screams (he's got good lungs) he was pink...and loud.
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Ok, I had to go hold him for the last 2 hours, which turned out to be really easy, because he just slept. Now that I'm back I've completely lost my train of thought, so I'll continue this later..