How Sophia was Born

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On Monday morning, the pain started. It came with fever and chills that shaked Zulay's body. That Sunday afternoon, she had had three contractions at irregular intervals. However, the pain she was experiencing right now was different from the contractions she had been having for the past few weeks at night. We figured it must be a cold, or worse, a UTI. Zulay was in a lot of pain, but we made the trip to the lab to do a urine test. The technician was nice enough to get our email address to forward us the results later that afternoon.

As the day progressed, the lingering pain drug on with the fever. Our doctor was busy delivering babies and we played phone tag while she was in and out of the operating room. I felt pretty powerless throughout the day watching my wife shiver in pain, all the while waiting for the results from the lab. I can deal with my own pain, but suffering through oberserving someone else's pain, and what is more, my wife's suffering, is much harder to endure. All that said, she was incredibly brave and strong through the whole process.

The results came at three that afternoon and everything looked perfect. We forwarded them to the doctor. By this time, the pain had started to gain intensity and then subside. We weren't sure if they were contractions at first, but a few hours later, Zulay was certain. The doctor asked us to meet her in her office at six to take a direct look at how things were progressing. The only problem was that her office is half way across town, and it was rush hour. After trying all the taxis on my list, we were able to convince one taxi to take us and off we went. The contractions were regular in the taxi, only five minutes apart. Zulay stayed calm through it all and I dutifully noted the time when the contractions started and their duration. Thankfully the majority of the traffic headed in the opposite direction and in a short hour we had arrived. However, the doctor most certainly was stuck in traffic. She would arrive forty-five minutes later. During that time we walked around, looked for a bathroom and got some tylenol to control the persistent fever.

The doctor did a “tacto”. She easily felt Sophia's head very low, however Zulay had not dialated. She began to explain to us that the walls of her uterus had not shortened. The walls need to rise up and shorten in order for the cervix to dialate, but they had not. She explained that this typically implies that they will never rise up, but if we wished, we could try pitocin to try to relax the uterus and force dialiation. If after a few hours that didn't work, it would have to be a C-section. In either case, Sophia was coming tonight. Zulay was set on giving birth and didn't want to opt out for a C-section. The doctor gave us our perscriptions and sent us off to the clinic.

We looked for another taxi to take us to the clinic, now a half hour away. Thankfully this time it was a traffic free ride. The sad part of this story is that weeks before we had arranged everything for “the moment”. However, when we left, we weren't sure if this was the moment or not. I had my doubts, figuring the pain Zulay was feeling was somehow linked to her fever, and she didn't think the pain running through her abdomen were contractions either. Still I grabbed a set of clothes for myself just in case and left a spare set of keys in the team office.

Now that we knew that the moment had arrived, I needed to get those bags in my hands. The team, at this very moment, was giving a presentation in a local church and would be occupied for the next three hours. Thankfully, one teammember had held back since he didn't feel too good. Despite his cold, he was game to bring us our bags.

At the clinic, Zulay was received and the medicine applied. While they prepped her, I began to get the word out to those in the church for prayer. And then the messages started. I had my cell in my left hand and Zulay's in the right hand sending consecutive texts, receiving calls, asking for this and that and so on. Zulay began to feel the effect of the pitocin.

For those of us new to the whole birthing process, pitocin is a drug that is used to induce birth. I've heard tales from the maternity ward from mothers that have had the blessing to undergo pitocin. They talk about flames strolling around inside their bodies from head to toe, pains that make the electric chair enviable. It was the one thing that Zulay didn't want. And sure enough, here it was unfolding itself drop by drop into the IV in her arm. The pastor soon arrived with his wife. They both took a few minutes to talk with Zulay. They both came out with sad, guilty looks on their faces and individually confessed they didn't have any words of consolation to give when they were with at her.

Our teammate Arturo showed up the bags and I quickly realized that I didn't think to pack our phone chargers with everything else. With the amount of calls and texts we we receiving, I calculated we had maybe until early morning. By now, the team was out of church and I had been able to ask them to go to look for the phone chargers and other assorted items. I stayed with Zulay giving her massages in her legs while she valiently suffered and sweated her pain, fever, and time. The doctor arrived just before 10pm and checked how the dilations were progressing. In fact they had doubled, from 1 to 2, but were very far away from the goal of 10. She broke Zulay's water, (which Zulay said was the most painful part of the whole experience) and everything looked “good” with the water. “Good” is mostly definitely reserved for the medical evaulation of the water as the water looks nothing close to “good” from a layman's perspective.

Another hour went by. The rest of the team showed up even though they couldn't stay long due to the lack of transportation at night. KT's husband brought me the local version of a philly cheesesteak sandwich. I decided to save it for later to celebrate. I forgot to ask him for the chargers before he left. The funny thing is that he had forgot them at the hot dog stand where he bought me the sandwich. When they left the hospital an hour later, by chance, the taxi passed by the same hot dog stand. There was the bag with the chargers! Stopping the taxi, they grabbed the bag and headed home. The next morning they brought us the chargers.

An hour after the doctor broke Zulay's water, the doctor returned to check on Zulay's progress. Amazingly enough, after much prayer on my part, Zulay had disdilated, returning to 1 from 2. The doctor was clear that we could continue for another 24, even 48 hours, but at the end we'd probably have to do a C-section. It wasn't our first choice, but given the circumstances, there wasn't much else that could be done.

In Venezuelan public hospitals, the woman giving birth is completely alone, aside from the other women giving birth and some distempered nurses. In certain very expensive hospitals, the husband can accompany the wife through the entire birthing process. In the rest of the private clinics, the mother is alone aside from the physicians during th birth. Our insurance gave us access to a private clinic, but not the expensive ones so I had to say good bye as they wheeled Zulay out to the operating room.

The pastor and his wife stayed with me while we waited. We found our room, left the bags there and gathered a few items to have on hand once Sophia was born. Forty-five minutes later, a small wrapped up bundle wheeled past on a cart. I could only see a screaming red, pumpkin shaped face, but it felt like I was looking at myself. I have never thought new born babies are cute, nor beautiful, and my daughter was no exception. Yes, you can hate me, but I'm being honest. Plus, I have never considered myself attrative, so to see my daughter look so similar to me, I felt a bit sorry for her. However, everyone else thought she was just a doll. Whether they said that because they should or because its the truth I'll never know. Now, two weeks later, I do think that now she is rather cute and I am completely enamored by her.

They wheeled her past through two metal doors and a minute later, they put her up to a window so we could see her. We could hear her before we could see her as she has cry that is leaving me progressively hard of hearing. The pastor congratulated me, the wife took a few photos, and oberserved that she's going to be a strong woman.

It felt a little cruel to watch her scream almost naked in the incubator. I wanted to pick her up and comfort her, but there was no way possible. After a few minutes, the curtain was shut and a nurse showed up asking for three diapers, a change of clothes, a blanket, a sheet and a bottle. I had everything ready at hand except for the bottle. I told her that we didn't want to give her any formula, and that we wanted to feed her exclusively by breast milk. The nurse gave me a blank stare. I repeated my point and asked when they could return her to Zulay to start feeding her. They said that simply wasn't possible. They had to wait until the pediatrician showed up in the morning to check all the babies and at that point they would give us our baby. I said that wasn't acceptable and began to argue with the nurse. The pastor looked on and at that moment our doctor came out. She informed us that the C-section was a complete sucess. Zulay was in good conditions and the baby as well. She also caught on as to what was transpiring (our doctor is also an american national) and informed us that in Venezuela there is no way for the mother to be joined with the new born right after birth. Its a throw back to the 1950's and it will probably be a decade or two before a new system gets put in place.

Sadly, I trudged back to my room and the pastor took his leave. Zulay was wheeled in an hour later by two jocular doctors. After a C-section, we were told that the woman is not allowed to talk until she can can walk. Zulay and I talked via cell phone texts, smiled and fell asleep.

The next was stressful to say the least. Low on sleep, low on food, and a constant stream of visitors had Zulay and I on edge. They brought us Sophia in the morning which was the highlight. Everything else was, well, stressful. The interesting thing about visitors is that they come with such hopeful, happy, innocent looking faces beaming with light and expectation. The parents (us) on the other hand are blurry eyed, tired, a tad to very grumpy, and ready to run out of the room screaming. Then comes the inevitable question from the angelic visitors: “How does it feel to be a father/mother?” At this point, the new parent is obliged to say something positive and upbeat, but for the most part, they just smile and shake their head as if overwhelmed by newly discovered emotions. The parent in this moment is in reality overwhelmed by emotion. Its the emotion that fills your entire being, urging your body to grab a machete and run everyone out of the room hacking and yelling like one of ghenhis khan's hordes. However, since there never is machete at hand, the parent just smiles and shakes their head trying control such untoward tendancies.

I can say from experience that things have become better since that first day. We came home on Wednesday and my mother-in-law has been saving our colective butts since. There are the rough moments, the unconsolable cries, the infrequent no-sleep-nights, but overall, we're adjusting. Just don't come to visit.