A number of people have asked me when I will be doing a hate-filled treatment of the night my wife went into labor. Such situations are comedic gold mines, no?
No.
But I can give it the ol' college try.
There's a lot they don't tell you about the child birth in a standard public school education. For one thing, they don't mention that the whole experience is comparable to sitting in the front row of a Gallagher performance, and I'm not just referring to the splash zone. You are immediately struck by how shockingly unfunny every aspect of it is.
First of all, we did not go into the hospital expecting to become parents that night. I mean, we knew that she was pregnant, but she wasn't due for another month. The Hateful Wife had merely... done... something... with her... preciously precious precious parts that might have involved either urine or something... soupier.
See? That's not really comedy gold there.
When we arrived at the Catholic hospital, the midwife on call was the one I seriously prayed to multiple gods that we wouldn't get. Why? Because she had come up with a voice for my wife's uterus that sounded like Julia Sweeney on quaaludes. Seriously. 'It's Pat' on downers. Yep. That is a noise I want to associate with the inside parts of the hate womb. And fuck me if she wasn't wearing a kitten iron-on sweatshirt and didn't have one of those miner's flashlights strapped to her head when she walked in the room. The woman just did not inspire confidence.
So, we explained the situation to this woman and, well, apparently it was very interesting, but she wasn't very forthcoming with explanations. Instead, she ordered blood tests and turned on that mining flash light.
....
At this point, I will change the subject to avoid talking about what happened next. Earlier in the day, the Hateful Wife and I had been texting each other back and forth about dinner. I had been planning on making burritos and she wanted to know what she needed to pick up at the store. I sent her a detailed list of what we needed via facebutt. And then she called me to tell me that we had to go to the hospital because it was probably nothing, but....
Okay, let's check back in with what was happening at the Hospital.
..vagina.
The midwife hemmed and hawed for a few minutes, then stood up, turned off the mining lamp, and had a word with the nurse outside.
A second nurse came in to have a go at Katie's veins because the first nurse couldn't tap into them. At this point, we were informed that Katie had wiggly veins.
By this time, we had been in the hospital for nearly two hours without anyone actually telling us what the fuck was going on. In fact, no one had even mentioned the possibility that Katie would be going into labor yet. All we knew was that something was up, and that is a fucking terrifying situation when you want your hateful spawn to grow up and reign over the Earth with swift, terrible smarminess.
So, when the midwife came back in, Katie asked her what was going on.
The midwife replied that there may have been some traces of amniotic fluid in the sample they had taken from Katie's pants, which meant that they would need to do more tests.
We then asked her what was happening in a broader, less immediate sense.
The midwife then told us that there was a possibility that Katie had leaked some amniotic fluid.
Finally Katie, frustrated with the evasiveness, bluntly asked if we were going home with a baby that night.
"Well, probably not this evening, but definitely some time over the weekend."
Moments later I was following an ambulance to another hospital, scared shitless and grieving the end of my potential adult adolescence, because the religious hospital felt like splitting hairs about the definition of premature.
Oh wait, you missed something crucial back when I was talking about burritos to protect your virgin eyes from graphic descriptions of the prodding and poking of my hateful wife's womanly wanton lotus. In the midst of the midweirdo's spelunking expedition, she casually mentioned that they actually had several projected due dates for Katie over a window of a month and a half, but had only told us about the later ones.
A month and a half?! What kind of bullshit quack fuckery is that?!
So once Katie asked if she was going into labor, Midweirdo told us that technically, the child would be 6 hours premature from the earliest projected due date. Because of this, there was an off chance that we may have to be transferred to Maine Medical Center, but that wasn't too likely. Then it became very likely. Then an old guy and a nervous fat kid were strapping Katie to a stretcher while I frantically started calling relatives, telling them to change course for MMC because the head of peditrics didn't want to take the risk of the possibility of giving birth to some kind of godless, premature squid baby based on the month and a half window of crappy projections.
At this point, as I was reading this aloud in the proofreading stage, Katie interjected that the projections were "total crap because they based it on her last menstrual period, which she had written it down and knew exactly when it was, which means that he was at exactly thirty six weeks."
So yeah, because our child was six fucking hours premature according to a woman who assigned voices to other women’s uteruses, we were shipped off to a different hospital - one with a neonatal care unit that wasn’t covered by our insurance.
Okay, wait. What? Yeah. The largest insurance provider in the state didn’t have a contract with the largest neonatal care unit in the state. Thanks for fighting socialism and Planned Parenthood, tea baggers. Its good Christian patriots like you that have ensured that insurance providers are free to NOT FUCKING COVER THE BABIES YOU DON’T WANT PEOPLE TO ABORT. Let the eagle soar.
But I digress.
I followed the ambulance up Congress Street to Maine Med, but eventually had to break off my pursuit to find long-term parking. I probably could have followed the ambulance to the entrance, but I was convinced that there would be an endless stream of horseplay-induced groin injuries, sucking chest wounds and fork-to-eye accidents that night, and I didn’t want to be that asshole that didn’t have blood on their clothes taking up one of the choice “Oh god, there’s blood everywhere” spots.
I ran through the night, my arms flailing through the air like Kermit the Frog after he’s announced the guest on the Muppet Show down along the trail leading around the Hospital. I like to think that I plowed over dozens of injured patients like a comedic juggernaut, throwing a few people in body casts into the road, clothes-lining old ladies and doubling back just to uppercut a seven-year-old orphan who’d just had his appendix taken out, all the while screaming “MY WIFE IS HAVING A BABY” but that probably didn’t happen. In fact, I don’t recall seeing a single person until I got to the emergency room.
I burst through the doors, and looked helplessly at the empty waiting room. Every previous experience I have ever had with emergency medical care had involved a prolonged wait next to someone with a bad case of arterial spray and/or an unexploded firework lodged in one of their eye sockets, so I was absolutely baffled by the idea of my wife getting immediate medical treatment.
A security guard saw my puzzlement and asked if he could help me. I explained my situation to the guard, and he offered to escort me there through the secret, actually convenient service entrance that didn’t force you to navigate winding corridors of abject patient fuckery that have formed from years of constant expansion, provided I didn’t tell any of the other staff members.
Montalban (not his real name) the security guard and I quickly found Katie in one of the birthing stations. A nurse was checking her out. In the course of the ambulance ride, Katie’s lady parts had apparently gone from a smidge dilated to the Lincoln Tunnel. Of course, the smidge dilated part could just have been the Midweirdo misinterpreting Katie’s belly button. Her estimation skills had already proven wonky, after all.
Our friend Tia showed up shortly after I arrived with a sandwich for me. She had previously agreed to photograph the birth and help keep relatives out of the room.
The next hour and a half is a bit of a blur. There was screaming and blood work. There wasn’t time to administer drugs or an epidural. Katie repeatedly punched me and then apologized to the nurse for shouting fuck at the top of her lungs, only to be reassured that it was a completely appropriate thing to say, given the circumstances. I started sobbing about how much I wanted a burrito. The doctor walked in, slapped me and yelled "compose yourself, woman!", then took a look a quick look at my wife, gave us the thumbs-up and left. And then, as suddenly as it had begun, it was over. My hateful little man, Frankie, was out, cradled in my arms as Katie proclaimed “That was fucking ridiculous!”
And it was.
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