@ the hospital

So where was I? We arrived at the hospital safe and sound (I drove more carefully this time), and checked in at the Emergency Room desk. They quickly got Jennifer loaded into a wheelchair and wheeled us up to the baby station on the 3rd floor.

*Disclaimer* - The details are going to be fuzzy in parts of this story for several reasons. The MAIN reason is that my head was spinning from nervous excitement. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

So they get us into one of the birthing rooms, and I start to breath again. I notice that Jayden has deposited himself onto a little loveseat against the wall. I think he was nervous too, but probably less nervous than me because he had been to a Big Brother class a few weeks prior. If I remember right, the class was in a room almost exactly like the room that we were in that night. So he was at least comfortable with the surroundings, and he probably had a decent idea of what was about to go down. Regardless, I was very proud of him for being so well-behaved.

The next thing I noticed was Jennifer getting hooked up to all the monitors and IVs and whatnot. The nurses were having a pretty difficult time getting a loud heartbeat from Julianna, and that was stressing me out a bit. They told us that she was just in a hard to hear location, but I wanted to hear that strong, little heartbeat! Jennifer didn't seem too worried so that calmed me down a bit. As a matter of fact, Jennifer was my support through the whole thing. I know that sounds backwards since I was supposed to be there to "coach" her, support her, and comfort her. Oh well! I had the best intentions going in to do just those things, but without her calm demeanor I would have been totally useless.

Right about that time is when my mom and John showed up to take Jayden to their house for the evening. At that point we had absolutely no idea if Jennifer was even going to go into labor that night so it made no sense for Jayden to hang around.

That reminds me...Jennifer wasn't really having contractions until awhile after we arrived into the delivery room. The nurses first had to decide whether her water had truly broken, and then whether or not they would have to induce labor. Well it turns out that she started having natural labor contractions very soon after that first examination.

So now it's just me and her in the delivery room; trying to stay comfortable in between the increasingly painful contractions. It didn't take long for the pain to really start bothering Jennifer. She asked for something to make the pain go away, Demerol I think, and so that she could maybe sleep for a bit. At this point it's around 1 a.m. Whatever they gave her kicked in VERY quickly and Jennifer was knocked out. I thought this would be my chance to finally get some sleep (remember I had been up since 4:30 a.m. that morning!), but no such luck. About every 10 minutes Jennifer would mumble/groan and try to hold my hand through one of the contractions. It was pretty funny actually, because she wouldn't say much at all. She would just reach out her hand and sorta wiggle it at me and moan. Luckily, I am a smart dude so I figured out what she was wanting. I don't know how, but holding my hand apparantly helped.

She was able to sleep for about an hour and a half before the nurse came in to do another exam. Before the pain medicine, I believe Jennifer was dilated about 4-5 cm. When the nurse came in around 2:15 she was at 8 cm!! I was shocked, and apparantly so was the nurse. She mentioned something about getting ready to give birth as she was leaving so I thought I should start trying to wake Jennifer up. That was not an easy task.

As Jennifer was coming to, she mentioned that she had to go to the bathroom. She already blogged about this, but I'll cover it again from my point of view. The nurse and I help her to the restroom, and I stepped inside with her. I HAD to because she was still pretty much completely out of it. Almost as soon as she sat down she mentioned off-hand that she had to poop. I figured that the nurse might want to know about that so I stuck my head out and told her. I wasn't expecting the reaction that I got! "Oh no you don't!", as she ran past me into the restroom. She told Jennifer that if she felt that sort of pressure down there that it meant she was ready to have the baby. Jennifer said, "No, it means I have to poop." hahaha. It was pretty funny, but I felt sorry for her too.

So the nurse takes her back to the bed and examines her again. Meanwhile all sorts of equipment starts showing up, brought by other nurses. Our room was really starting to buzz with activity. This is another time when my head started spinning so again, the details are fuzzy. The next thing I remember well is the nurse saying, "Hold this and press the red button when I tell you to. The doctor will come when you press that button." Then she tells Jennifer that she's going to try pushing and see how it goes.

The nurse tells Jenn to push whenever she feels a contraction coming and Jennifer says, "Right now." So she starts to push and about two seconds later I hear, "Push the red button!" I pushed it...hard...twice. This was about 2:30 a.m.

The doctor came in pretty much immediately so she must have been close, and this is when I found out that I was gonna get more than I bargained for. The doctor told me grab Jennifer's foot with my right hand and hold her back with my left so that I could help her push when the next contraction came. Well, it came before I was mentally ready, but who was I to hold her up?

I don't know how many times that Jennifer had to push, but if it was 20 times I'd be suprised. I got severely reprimanded only once during labor. I was leaning towards Jenn, telling her over and over again that, "it'll be ok...you're ok." Jenn grabs me and says, "You can say anything else you want, but STOP telling me I'm ok. Because I am NOT ok." Yikes! I think I switched it up and told her that she was doing a good job, and that the baby would be here soon, and yada yada. Whatever I was saying must have been better than "you're ok", because the next push provided the biggest shock of the evening.

I saw half of a head come out! I remember pretty vividly telling Jenn that she can't stop now because the head was only halfway out. It looked to me like she was about to go on break, but I could tell that one more push was gonna do the trick. Sure enough she pushed one last time, screamed maybe just a bit, and saw Julianna Elizabeth Fountain for the first time!

I remember that I could see her mouth moving, but no sound was coming out. Then she was out of sight for a bit, and then my body was floating towards the doctor as she held out the scissors to cut the cord. I think I did a good job (Jules has an innie belly button!), and then they laid her in Jenn's arms.

I am decent with words, but I haven't been able to describe how I felt seeing Jenn holding Julianna that first time. I am a softie, and usually I cry very easily when I am happy/proud. This was different somehow. I was choking up one second, and almost laughing the next. I think the emotions were so powerful that I actually wasn't able to do anything. That's the only way I can explain it.

Well, I have typed enough for today...some would say too much perhaps. I'll write just a bit more tomorrow about what went on after she was born. I bet you can't wait! Stay tuned.

-Jeff