Noah has arrived

It’s 5 days after the birth of our son Noah. It’s 9:15am, Wednesday April 23rd, and I’m finally catching up on some writing, and have a small piece of quite time. Noah and Silvia are sleeping, and the only sound is the rhythmic clicking of Noah in his swing. It’s a very peaceful morning.

This is going to be a story type post, about the events that lead up to, and followed the birth of our son Noah. If you want to skip to the pictures, they are here. If you are curious how everything happened, read on…

Thursday April 17th: we had an important visit with our OBGYN Doctor, Dr. Rosales, about our coming baby. We were now in our 41st week, and just 3 days away from week 42. That meant the baby had to come out very soon. As we expected, the Dr. advised that we go into the hospital early the next morning (4am) and try to induce the labor. This basically means that they put an I.V. into Silvia’s arm, and add Oxytocin to her system. Oxytocin helps induce contractions, and therefore dilation. Also they physically break the water (pretty easy actually) with the hope that the combination of these things, would lead to proper dilation, effacing, and eventually birth.

Unfortunately things didn’t go exactly as planned. We started the induction at around 5:30am, once we got settled into the hospital, and at around 10am Dr. Rosales came and broke the water. Things were expected to pick up at that point, meaning strong contractions, followed by dilatation into 5cm, 6cm, 7cm, eventually 10cm, which is the point at which pushing can begin, and the baby can come out.

Unfortunately for Silvia, she sat through very painful contractions all day, and never dilated beyond 5.5cm. Much to our heartache and pain, at around 8pm the Dr. informed us, that unless something significantly changed, we’d have to do a c-section. This news really hit us hard. We had been battling the contractions all day, hoping for the best, both very tired, and exhausted, and neither of us was expecting this outcome. Silvia was not prepared at all for surgery.

But we endured, and at around 10pm, they pushed Silvia off for anesthesia, while I changed into pull-on scrubs so I could join her in the surgery room. Things at that point happened very quickly. They literally pushed Silvia off, came back for me 10 minutes later, and we walked quickly to the surgery room because, “the Doctor won’t wait”. I entered the surgery room, to find Silvia on her back, full scrubs, with a sheet draped vertically over her neck area, so she couldn’t see below her neckline. She was very scared, and nervous. I felt I calmed her a little when I sat next to her and took her hand, and stroked her head. The moment was very intense, and Silvia asked me “did they cut yet”, I told her, “no, not yet”. She was very scared.

At this point the Dr.’s and Nurses were moving at truly professional speed, I saw them all working in sync very quickly, and within maybe 1 minute, they were pulling Noah out of Silvia’s belly. Seconds later, we could hear him begin to cry for the first time – and…wow; nothing can describe that moment. The moment we begin to hear him cry, almost felt like I strange movie that we were in. It was almost in slow motion. As I replay the events over and over in my mind, it takes my breath away each time. Within seconds, they moved Noah over to an exam table, and started to clean him up. At that point the anesthesia Doctor near me told me I could go take pictures, so I did. I snapped some shots of him crying on the table while the nurses cleaned him up. I returned to Silvia, (who was still very scared, but happy with tears at the same time) and comforted her while they stitched her back up, which didn’t take more than 2-3 minutes. They brought Noah over to us, and that’s when Silvia first saw him, and we held him together for the first time.

At that point, I went with Noah to be weighed and for his vitals to be taken, while they took Silvia to a special recovery area. She was examined while the feeling sensation came back to her legs.

For the next 3-4 hours, I walked back and forth, visiting Noah in the nursery where they cleaned him up, and Silvia where she lay in the recovery area. It was now about 2:30 am. I was exhausted, and since there was nowhere for me to lie down, I went to my car, and took a quick nap for about an hour.

I came back to Silvia at around 3:30am. Feeling and movement had resumed to her legs, so they took her to a regular recovery room at which point they also brought the baby into her room. We were all together, enjoying the first moments with Noah. At about 5:00am, I came home to get some rest.

I went back to the hospital around 9am Saturday morning. We spent the day together, enjoying Noah, taking pictures, making calls, receiving calls, trying to keep people as informed as I could. In the middle of the day, we moved from our small room, to a very nice recovery room, where we had more space, and a window. This was actually very nice, just knowing that we had a larger room where we would be for a few days. Saturday night, I left around 11pm.

Sunday, I arrived at the hospital around 9:30am, and the day was much of the same. Enjoying Noah’s first moments, visits from friends, making calls, receiving calls, visits from nurses and doctors, for ‘vitals’, and other monitoring. This schedule continued until Monday, (with a nice Laker game on Sunday, it was our first Laker game as a family, and the Laker’s won! ☺) On Monday, during the middle of the day, we got our things together, I got the car, and we brought Noah to his new home for the first time.

When I get to sit back and actually reflect on the last 5 days, when I’m not changing a diaper, or helping Silvia, or getting something for Noah – when I get to actually stand back and appreciate all that’s happened, and look at our life, it’s truly amazing. Our life will never be the same. It’s the strangest feeling to look into a child’s eye (your own child’s eye) and see your whole life change – revolving and transforming around this cute little innocent gaze. The moment he makes eye contact with you – you feel a life change, from deep inside your heart and soul.