Welcome, Evelyn
On October 22, 2016, just before noon, I arrived at the NYU Medical Center in Manhattan. What happened next is something I hadn’t seen in 30 years: the birth of a baby. In this case, my newest granddaughter, Evelyn.
My daughter Molly and her husband Barry had invited me to New York for the event, and I booked a week flanking the due date. “No way,” I thought. “Babies come early, sometimes very early. Or late. It’s 50/50 I’ll be there at the right time.”
I arrived on Friday, just enough time to re-acquaint myself with granddaughter Blythe — Molly and Barry’s firstborn — now 18 months old. Blythe is a happy baby; she probably didn’t remember my earlier visits, but warmed up to me fairly quickly. And I got some quick training from Molly, so that I could cover Blythe when the time came.
Very early the next morning I awoke to a commotion. “Come ON, Barry! Let’s go,” I heard Molly call. “And dad, I’m glad you are here. Blythe is already awake. Here is her bottle. We’ll let you know what’s going on when we get to the hospital.”
Through the magic of text messaging, Barry was able to keep me posted. “The baby is definitely coming today,” he said. “And Molly and baby [still in utero] are doing OK.”
Between contractions, Molly arranged for the nanny to come relieve me. And Barry’s parents picked me up at 11 AM for the drive to the hospital, all the while getting texts regarding progress: Minutes between contractions. Dilation in centimeters. Molly’s comfort or pain.
Babies are delivered mostly in hospital rooms now — not an operating room like the last time I was in a maternity ward. Until about 20 minutes before the birth, all of us — me, Barry, Bill and Debbie (Barry’s parents) — were in Molly’s room.
At one point, the doctor came into the room to check. Molly had a particularly painful contraction, and I saw a flicker of fear cross her face. I felt the tears of sympathetic pain well up in my eyes, just like they did when she was a kid and got hurt. My little girl. :(
Then the doctor asked everyone other than Barry to leave. Bill, Debbie and I quickly stepped out to the waiting room. Twenty minutes later, Barry came out and invited us to return. Evelyn made her debut at 1:34 PM.
It’s so much more civilized now. Delivery teams still do an Apgar (and Evelyn was off-the-charts at 9.9!), but basically they let mother and baby bond, skin-to-skin, to allow the trauma to subside and allow baby to acclimatize to the wonderful breathing world outside. The measurements, the blood tests on baby (requiring a pin-jab into her heel) and the other intrusions could wait a few hours. Just time for warmth, and love, and some suckling and sleep. Nice. Like I said, it’s much more civilized nowadays.
Molly was surprisingly well. Despite the pain of the final 30 – 45 minutes of the birthing process, she had been able to remain pretty comfortable — even while giving birth to such a large baby (8 pounds, 9 oz.!) She was happy and energetic when we came back into her room, and I was relieved, and incredibly happy, that mother and daughter were doing so well.
Modern times require immediate updates, don’t you know? Not only had Molly been texting her extended family during the labor, she and Barry wasted little time letting friends know the happy news:
Molly left the hospital the next day, wearing a tee-shirt that said “Strong is the new skinny.”
Wow. Just wow. ;)