Don't Mess With Texas!

I didn’t have time to proofread this as we have to get going to the hospital, but I thought it was important to finally get the birth story up on the interwebs.
Monday was one of my favorite teaching days of the year.  In my senior elective we talked 80s foreign policy, and after two dull and downer weeks of the Market Revolution and Slavery, respectively, we got to discuss Manifest Destiny, the Texas Revolution, and the Annexation of Texas.  I love hearing all the tales of Texas Independence that the students tell, debunking what myths I can, and ultimately agreeing to disagree on a lot of stuff.  I play the gadfly, continually needling students about the Texas creation myths including the Battle of the Alamo, the Yellow Rose of Texas, etc...  At some point between the first and third time I produced this little riff, I must have messed with Texas, and one thing we know: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lo1DwpijYnk
I finished my last class and checked my phone at about 2:45 pm, saw a message from Anna, thought it odd, listened, and the adrenaline started pumping.  It reminded me of talking to Greg (Anna's dad) on that sunny Saturday morning in July of '09.  I quickly packed up my room and my things, luckily found three colleagues in a meeting so I didn't have to worry about calling later, and then I took the bus back to Sugar Land.  Fortunately, the bus stop is only a block away from the hospital. I found Anna in the "Pregnancy Triage" room, which sounded ominous.  She was having "cramps," which were identified soon after I arrived at 4 pm as contractions.  Anna had left school around 1:30 pm. just to get checked up. She said that she had been feeling a bit “whoopy” in the morning, and I recalled that on Sunday Anna had complained about heartburn.  I told Anna to tell her nurse about it on Tuesday when she came to administer the progesterone shot on Tuesday.
By 4:30 Sugar Land Methodist Hospital was calling these cramps “contractions.”  We made arrangements for Anders and called the appropriate people at work, and girded ourselves for another wild ride.  We were told around that time that Anna would be transferred “downtown,” which was a bit confusing.  A quick aside, when someone says “Downtown” in the context of Houston it can be confusing because Houston looks like it has three downtowns owing to the city’s proud eschewal of zoning laws, which were so popular in the 20^th century.  The downtowns with tall buildings grouped together are: the business district, the Texas Medical Center (TMC), and the Galleria (Rich People Downtown).  So, I thought we were going to the business district, wondering where the hospital was in the business district. 
The contractions started coming more frequently. I was now riding in the ambulance rather than following behind the ambulance.  The medics arrived between 5:30 and 6:00 pm to take Anna down to the ambulance, through Houston rush hour, and to the TMC, not the business district at Children’s Memorial Hermann Hospital.  Three EMTs showed up, two petite and polite Texas women, and Michael, a rotund, loquacious, OCD Cajun.  They were so small, and he looked like the guy you would see during the Crawfish Festival at Pappadeaux drifting out of the kitchen to chat up the customers.  He sounded just like the judge on “Maine Justice,” the SNL sketch starring Jason Sudekis.  Or, if you went to grad school with me, he sounded like Dr. Todd Pfeffer doing the impression of his high school gym teacher in North Carolina, Jim Spivey, and his “Am Assembly Snow SchEEEDuooole.”  Or, just one more, he sounded like Jackie Gleason’s “Beauford T. Justice” from “Smokey and the Bandit.”  I don’t think I can do justice to how unnerving this guy was for us.  The Cajun accent has to be the dumbest sounding accent in the country.  I used to think it was the Appalachian accent, but with the Appalachian accent they talk at such a fast mumble that you miss 40% of the words, which puts you back on your heels.  You understand every word of the Cajun accent, and the words coming out of Michael’s mouth didn’t make him sound any smarter.  For example, he kept making “women’s lib” jokes about Anna moving herself from the hospital bed to the gurney. WHAT???!  Before the transfer, he became obsessed with finding a brown blanket to cover Anna for the trip out.  By the way, it wasn’t cold outside, and Anna wasn’t cold at that point either, but in lieu of transferring Anna to the gurney, Michael spent precious minutes looking for the blanket, accusing his coworkers of stashing it, and leading me to the point that I was ready to do violence on Michael.  Finally, one of the women snapped at him, “She’s going to be okay without the blanket! We need to get going!”  As she finished, he pulled it out of his cart with a big, dumb grin on his face, “Awh seh, hew itchis! Wewl, Ah gess we caaan git goin’ nah!” 
            Anna rode in the back with the ladies, who told her that if contractions got any closer together, they were 2-3 minutes apart at that time that they would have to pull over and Henrik would be born on the Southwest Freeway. I, meanwhile, was subject to my own pain, riding in the front with Michael.  My ragin’ at this Cajun only increased as he made a series of threadbare jokes to Anna and me about how I was driving the ambulance, and what a crazy driver I was.  It was almost as though he believed that by making more repetitive jokes; he could make up for their lameness.  I would get an update every so often from the EMTs, saying that Anna was doing well.  They even sounded like they were having calm conversations as I heard more and more about my aggressive phantom driving. 
            We were going against traffic as we headed into the city, but in the nation’s 4^th largest city with a sick civic competition with LA to have the nation’s worst traffic; things are never good at rush hour.  We had to navigate through one road construction snarl, two freeway accidents, the two busiest freeway interchanges in the city, and another accident on the surface roads.  I will give Michael his due in the middle of the city and on the surface roads as he could anticipate the morons before their moronicness manifested itself. 
            We arrived at Children’s Memorial Hermann at about 7 pm.  Anna was in better spirits because we were finally there and she would not be giving birth on the shoulder across from the Succeed in Life Center or the South Vietnamese carnival.  The next frustration was the time it took to get some real medical attention.  The EMTs were nice enough, but they couldn’t even tell which side was down on a bedpan.  We could not be seen until the PAPERWORK was finished.  This is when the stress of the day got to me and I started shouting (Dan Seeley is nodding along, smiling his Cheshire Cat-faced grin right now).  Anna snapped at me for snapping (this all will sound familiar if you were with us for the Anders Experience), but the female EMTs loved it: “Absolutely, Dad, you FIGHT for your woman!”  20-30 minutes later a nurse arrived, and another 10-15 minutes later a resident doctor showed up, Dr. Sarah Berg.  Anna reiterated what she had been saying about not wanted to have this baby now.  Dr. Berg replied with a healthy dose of Texas swagger: “There is no better place in the country to be.  We are going to do our best to hold off that baby.  You are in the best place in the country for something like this to happen, there is no better place.  We will keep that baby in.  Whenever you do have that baby, though, it will have the best care in the country here.”  A doctor would never talk this way in Minnesota; you’d probably loose your medical license. 
            For the next hour or so the drugs like magnesium were working, the contractions were spacing out to 6-7 minutes, and appeared less severe to me.  Around 8:45 the contractions became more severe and soon came more frequently.  Dr. Berg returned a bit after 9:30, evaluated the situation, for example, Anna was bleeding from the Gates of Heaven and so called in the NICU delivery team.  More and more nurses, doctors, and random med students began showing up in the room.  The doctor credited with the deliver, Dr. Morris, shared a last name and strongly resembled one of my 8^th grade B squad caggers from last year, but she was not related to him.
            So much of what happened over the next hour was déjà.  I was holding Anna’s hand and stroking her hair, but I was not on leg duty like last time.  As the time approached, one of the doctors said: “I don’t want to scare you Mrs. Peterson, but it is really important that you push as hard as you can RIGHT NOW.”  To this point, it had been a steady push through a ten count, slow and steady; they were hurrying Anna, but not rushing her along.  Well, Anna now realized that play time was over and it was winning time.  I’m going to now make a sports analogy that Anna will hate three months later when she reads this.  She got a look in her eyes that Michael Jordan used to get at the end of basketball games when it was winning time.  It was a steely-eyed determination to dominate through the force of will.  She overcame her epidural (I had to leave for this procedure, which sounded like 20 minutes of Hell.  People walking by the room were stopped in their tracks by Anna’s screaming.  Anna had told me earlier that when she met the anesthesiologist that she imagined him as my friend Brad, an anesthesiologist, with whom she has sparred over the years on numerous topics such as whether to drink OJ while pregnant.  This guy had no idea of the 2^nd hand animosity directed at him), which she was overjoyed to have had time to receive this time, and pushed Henrik out just a couple minutes after that non-warning warning.  It turns out that Henrik had the umbilical cord wrapped around his head at that point.  It was such a short time that it did no damage, but only through Anna’s hard work was it such a short time.
            Henrik arrived with a splash.  Anna’s water broke on the way out, but the delivery doc was ready with a splash guard facemask and a hair net.  Henrik did not cry, unlike Anders.  I could tell right away that he was smaller than Anders.  They rushed him over to the NICU team.  Anna later told me that with all the drugs, she felt like things were just happening around her and that she was not a big part of things.  After Henrik was out, this could not have been truer.  The room shifted to the table where they were working on him.  I noticed that the heart rate was in the 30s, and the team was talking in hushed tones. All the worst thoughts rushed into my head.  I didn’t change my position next to Anna on the bed or say anything to her.  I just stared at the NICU team and the heart monitor.  After what was probably five minutes, but felt like an eternity, his heart rate was up in the 60s then the 80s, then the low 100s.  They started using conversational voices and invited me over to hold Henrik and one member of the team snapped some picture of me with him.  After a few more minutes, they brought him over to Anna.  It was amazing to see such a deep, instant bond between the two of them.  Henrik knew her and felt safe in her arms.  After a minute or two, they took him away to the NICU.  I believe that he had a breathing tube while we were holding him, unlike Anders.  Henrik arrived 10 days earlier than Anders at 25 weeks 5 days rather than 27 weeks 1 day.
            Our good friend Deepa, a doctor herself, came into the room right after Henrik was born to bring our stuff, snap a few pictures, and tell us that she recorded the audio of the birth outside of the room.  Anders was staying at her house, which was familiar to him since we go over there a lot and he frequently plays with their daughters Anya and Riya.  Anya was also a preemie, born at 24 weeks 0 days.  She weighed 1 lb 9 oz, which is only 3.5 oz less than Henrik did although he arrived 12 days later.  Deepa was a good, calming presence to have around.  Although I would like to be calm, I usually end up like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zT2ae1WkuC0  (Dan Seeley is nodding even more vigorously now.)  For example, after we were transferred to the 6^th floor recovery room, I accidentally ripped out Anna’s IV in the middle of the night as I tripped over it, trying to help her to the bathroom.  I’m a bull with a portable China shop.
            Odds and Ends: Henrik was born in room 541 at 10:53 pm. We recovered in room 641…  Our recovery show was “Breaking Bad,” rather than “The Golden Girls” as it was last time.  We just finished the first half of season five.  I won’t give anything away, but who knew taking a dump could be profitable police work!... Being born on Nov. 18, makes for the first November birthday in our immediate families.  With Anders we arrived home in November, now this new adventure begins in November.  I suspect that when it’s all over we will have been in the NICU every month of the year save April, May, and June… The hospital is great.  They are relaxed, but have a quiet confident.  In Minneapolis they were so fussy that it put us on edge at times.  Memorial Hermann will not put Anna and mind-altering drugs to try to get milk to flow, and they’ve never even heard of infant massage, so those are both advantages of Fairview.  That said, we received excellent care in Minneapolis, but there were just a few things and there will be things here that just make you go “ugh.”…  Anna and I are doing as well as can be expected…  Anders doesn’t totally get what is going on, but I think meeting Henrik yesterday helped.  He yelled his greeting to his little brother who definitely recognized the voice, then scrunched his face and covered his ears.  So it begins.