Saturday, March 27, 2010

How My Son Joined Us

This is late for me to blog about this, but I've been busy, as you can imagine.

I mean I do have a baby now, they tend to take up a tad of your time.

Anyway, his trip to join us here was mostly calm, but a hurricane did disturb the waters there for a little while.

My sons due date was March 20th, but Kimmy (my wife) ended up having her blood pressure rise up to borderline high and since she was so late in the game the doctors figured they should just take him out.  Why play with fire, right?

So the induction was scheduled for March 18th (why couldn't it of been March 17th?...oh well, can't win em all!) which was only two days before the original due date.

My wife and I had to arrive at Bellevue Women's Hospital at the buttcrack of dawn almost, 5:45am, to fill out a little bit of paperwork and we were into our room at 6:00.

Then came all the hooking up that had to be done to my wife.  The IV to pump fluids into her and a little later the Pitocin.  Kimmy was not a fan of said Pitocin.

Everything was going quite smoothly.

Until the weird, annoying, english isn't my first name South American anesthesiologist became part of the picture.  Kimmy wanted to be numb for the oncoming explosion of pain she was just starting to feel through the intensifying contractions she was starting to feel.

I can't remember the doctor's name because, I'll be honest, I couldn't understand 90% of the words coming out of his mouth.  He wasn't very good at what he does, I know that much.

His job was to come in and get Kimmy hooked up to the epideral and ease the pain.

Guess what he didn't do? Yeah, not good at his job.

From the moment he started I knew there was something wrong with however he was trying to fix her up.

He kept making faces and mumbling and when he did say something I could understand he commented on how she wasn't sitting up straight (when she was) and kept making it sound like she had scoliosis or something.  If they would have taken my blood pressure at this point they probably would have told me to calm down before I had a stroke.

So, only fourty-five minutes later and this idiot gives up. 

He says he is going to go get a Dr. Kim.

So in comes Dr. Kim.

This. Guy. Was. Awesome!

Dr. Kim is a little asian man standing about 5'3" or so.  He was hysterically funny.

As soon as he came into the room he started getting on the nurse, asking why he wasn't invited to the party she had and he felt left out and carried on with his jokes through the whole epidural process.

It took him all of TWO minutes to find a spot and in it went.

Two minutes.  TWO!

Now the epidural is in and everything should progress nice and smooth.  Or so you would think.

The first five minutes or so of the epidural went fine, she was giggling and laughing because, as she said with a laugh, "I don't feel anything".

The doctor came in almost right after the epidural.  Dr. Nicholas Kulbida (the husband of WTEN news anchor Lydia Kulbida, small world right?) was our doctor.

Then, after feeling up my wife and checking her out, doing what doctors do, he realizes that there is a problem picking up the babys heartbeat through her stomach.  So Dr. Kulbida takes these suction cup thingys and reaches into my wifes hoo-ha and sticks them on my sons head to get a read on his heart rate.

They found his heart beat just fine with the device they used, but while they were busy getting that all taken care of I was keeping an eye on my wifes blood pressure.

It was going down.

And down.

Down further.

And more.

Until it finally crashed from about 150/90 all the way down to 70/27.  Incase you were wondering, that's REALLY bad and far lower than it should be.

In addition to Kimmy's blood pressure crashing, the babys heart beat was becoming erratic as a result of Kimmy's crashing blood pressure.  His heart rate was ranging between 130-150 bpm (beats per minute) when she wasn't contracting, but when she did have a contraction his heart rate dropped to between 50-60 bpm.

Not good.

When all the machines were beeping because my wife and child were in danger of dying (at least in my head) and Kimmy looked at me to see what was going on, I just nodded and smiled.

For anyone that knows me at all, I'm an emotional person and I tend to wear my emotions on my sleave as they say.  So for me to look at her with an un-crying face and smile and nod was an incredible thing.  It took every ounce of strength in my body to keep the tears inside.

So after seeing her monitor beeping like mad for about 4-5 minutes, the doctor looked at the nurse and with urgency in his voice said, "Go and prep the OR NOW, we need to prep the OR NOW, we have to get this baby out".

I was petrified.  That moment was most likely the most scared I've ever been in my entire life.

So they got her all ready and I was holding her hand, rubbing her arm and her hair telling her everything is going to be alright.

They took her away to the operating room and I had to stay back for about ten minutes while they got her all prepped for surgery.

I was stuck in that room.  Pacing back and forth it friggin seemed like I was in there for HOURS instead of about ten minutes.  I had to calm myself so I didn't make myself hyperventilate.

Finally the nurse came and got me.  Thank God she finally came and got me, I was going crazy in that room.  I had my monkey suit on and I was ready to get in there.

I can't really tell much about being in the OR with her because I could only see from her chest up.  They had to cloth shield up because they were operating on her.  So those details are lost on me.

I do know when Dr. Kulbida finally got my son out though.  It seemed like it took forever, when it was really a very short time.


At 1:52pm on March 18, 2010 I heard my son, William Frederick King Jr., scream himself into the real world for the first time.  I stood up so that I could see him.

It was the deepest most calming sigh I've ever released in my entire life.

It was at 1:52pm on March 18, 2010 that I became the happiest person on the face of the earth.

Now it's time to be a father.

I'm ready to teach.

6 comments:

  1. Will, you are awesome. That was your best blog yet :-) I may have a tear or two after reading that..... you and Kimmy are going to be great parents! I can't wait to meet this handsome little man :-)

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  2. Will, that is an awesome event with a great happy ending and beginning. I had chills reading it because the exact scenario happened with Randy's birth at Bellevue. His heart rate went down to the 50-60 range and the next thing I knew it was utter chaos just as you descibed. Have fun with him.

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  3. Will...that was so beautiful...I'm printing this out to show Will Jr. when he is older...

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  4. I'm glad I found this today. Today is the 6th birthday of my oldest child. My experience as a father was very similar. However, when my wifes pressure changed it was 6 weeks early. Today I am the proud father of two wonderful children. There is no better feeling then looking down and seeing that face and knowing they are yours.

    For all the props Dr. Kulbida deserves his wife is equally impressive. She's very involved with the March of Dimes, an organization I'm forever grateful to.

    Congrats and I hope mom and baby are doing well.

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  5. Stumbled across your blog via timesunion.com. This post made me tear up at work, I'm glad everything worked out and I hope the little dude and his momma are doing well. :)

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  6. Everyone is doing great so far!

    My wife is sore from the C-Section still, but it's getting better and my son (Will) is growing fast as ever and is very healthy!

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