Verity Arrives

Verity was born February 22nd, 2019, at 10:28PM. She weighed 7 pounds, 14 ounces, and was 20 inches tall.

The week of February 18th didn't start out looking like it would be too eventful. Kim still had a couple weeks before her official due date, and we were in no hurry to get the baby out, because although Kim has always been excited to be done with those last weeks of pregnancy, we found out that our primary OB/GYN was going on vacation for the next weekend. Kim was still newly recovered from an ankle break in October, and had had a number of other minor pregnancy complications to deal with, so we figured we had the issues out of the way and had a week or two to relax and prep for the delivery.

As it turns out, the baby was not going to cooperate with that schedule.

Kim started having some minor Braxton-Hicks contractions mid week, and although those don't necessarily indicate that labor is imminent, they seemed to be getting a bit stronger and a bit more frequent. I tried to make sure work was wrapped up fairly well just in case, and we put Nana on high alert to be ready to drive up to stay with the big kids just in case we needed to head to the hospital after all.

On Friday, Dr. Gallo, the OB/GYN was officially out of town. The contractions were more regular than ever, although they still weren't quite at the interval that was required to head to the ER. We were still hoping it was a false alarm, so that we could deliver with our familiar doctor. Still, Nana decided to head up from Parker just in case.

Kim's contractions continued to get stronger and more painful through Friday, and eventually got serious enough that we thought we should head over to Northern Colorado Medical Center just to be safe. It felt oddly familiar, having been the same exact hospital and floor where Amity had been born almost exactly 7 years earlier (Only 1 week shy, in fact). By all accounts, at that point we should have qualified to be admitted, but the maternity floor was astonishingly full, so even though Kim's contractions were frequent and getting more and more intense, the hospital staff told us that if her water didn't break within the next 2 hours, we would have to go home and come back when it did.

This being our 3rd child, Kim was not happy at all to hear that, because she was convinced at this point that the baby was going to be there that night. We decided to start walking the halls, with the plan that with enough walking, things would progress and her water would break. We would walk for a few minutes, another contraction would come on, and then we would stop and wait for another couple minutes while Kim breathed through the contraction and waited for it to pass. We passed one staff member a number of times and saw that he was a PA working that floor, and he was very polite each time and offered to help or get us anything we needed.

While the contractions didn't let up, the clock kept ticking and it seemed inevitable that we were going to have to head back home and spend a sleepless night with a stopwatch, monitoring Kim and staying ready to go at any moment. We were on our last lap of the maternity floor, ready to head back to the triage area, when we saw the PA come around the corner again, waved at him, and then Kim looked up at me with a worried look as she felt a particularly heavy contraction coming on, and nearly collapsed as it made her double over. The PA came up to hold her other arm, and at that moment her water finally broke, and he called out to a nurse and ran to get a wheelchair. We finally raced away to a delivery room, with a feeling of relief that we wouldn't have to go back home while we knew that the baby was going to come any time, combined with the excitement and worry of finally heading into a moment that we had spent most of a year anticipating.

We got Kim settled in the delivery room, and the staff got right to work hooking up all the various monitors to keep an eye on Kim and the baby's vitals. Now that we were quite familiar with this, we asked them to set up the epidural right away, and they put a call out to the on-call doctor, who was covering for Dr. Gallo, and who we had only met once before. We were happy to see that the PA that we had now become pretty familiar with and who had been there right when Kim's water broke was going to be overseeing the nurses and everything else while we waited for the on-call doc to get there.

Kim was pretty comfortable at this point, although she was looking forward to the epidural as the contractions were getting more and more intense. Our on-call doc came to the hospital and checked in on us, and we talked over what we wanted to do in terms of the epidural and other plans. He decided that he was going to head home and wait there, which both of us were a bit uneasy about, since we knew that this baby seemed ready to go, and past experience told us that once the epidural kicked in, things would proceed very quickly. We both speculated that he wanted to get back for the end of a movie that he was watching with his family - which is certainly understandable on a Friday night, but also not exactly comforting.

That said, we felt really great about the NCMC staff, and had been through this process before, so we were much more able to go with the flow and adapt than we would have been with Amity or Everest's births. The anesthetic tech came in to set Kim up with the epidural, and did a great job joking around, putting Kim at ease, and getting everything all set up with a minimum of drama. I've always been impressed by that when you consider that they are trying to insert a needle into somebody's spine, without pushing it so far that they cause nerve damage, and said person is actively in labor and may undergo an unexpected contraction at any moment.

Once the epidural was in, Kim relaxed a lot, and we were able to have a bit of time to talk, grumble and joke about the doctor who was too busy watching his movie to be there doing his job, and talk a bit more about our favorite names. We still hadn't decided for sure what we were going to pick.

The next time they came in to check Kim, we expected them to say that she had made some progress, and that the baby would probably be there in an hour or two. Instead, the nurses immediately said "call the doctor", pulled out the giant lights, and got Kim set up for go time. Kim looked a little bit worried, and her hands were starting to shake a lot, which we were told can be a side effect of the epidural.

Pretty quickly, Kim started to get a major urge to push, and the nurses kept shooting nervous glances at each other, making additional calls to the doctor (who they couldn't get a hold of), and muttering about how it looked like that baby was ready to go. We kept watching and listening to the vitals, and could hear the telltale increase in pitch and frequency as each contraction grew stronger and stronger. The PA and nurses got all their gear on, finally got a hold of the doctor, and told Kim to try to hold off on pushing just yet.

Right towards the end of the delivery is always when I get the most emotional, and I remember tearing up multiple times as I held Kim's hand and watched her breathe through each contraction and try to prepare herself for the final push. The PA seemed to be getting more and more concerned, and told us that if the doctor wasn't here very soon, we might want to just go ahead and have Kim push. We agreed at that point, and right around the time we were just going to proceed without the doctor, he walked in, washed his hands, and put on the scrubs and got everything ready to go.

Kim started pushing basically immediately, and everybody's eyes got wide. With Everest, I seemed to remember it taking most of an hour of pushing before he was finally born. This time, I think the baby was out by the end of the second real push. It had been less than five minutes since the doctor got there, and the baby was out. The doctor offered me the opportunity to cut the umbilical cord, and at first I hesitated, but then he egged me on and so I cut the cord.

There are always a tense few moments after the baby is out while everybody is checking fingers and toes, clearing airways, and waiting to hear the first cry. I always have a flashback to Amity's birth, where there's a sudden flurry of activity and an unspoken but obvious sense that something is urgently wrong. This time, though, the moment passed without issue, and we were delighted to hear our baby's first quiet but strong cries.

The nurses got her dried off and fussed over her for a few minutes completing their full checklist for the newly born. Right at that first moment, this baby had a very full schedule.

It wasn't very long, though, before the nurses brought our beautiful baby girl over to us, and let Kim hold her. It was only a few minutes before she started rooting a bit, and without any trouble at all she latched and started to nurse.

Soon we were able to relax a bit, and I got to hold the baby and introduce myself for the first time. She had a few brief moments of being very alert and engaged, but also was really enjoying relaxing and being close with Kim.

After spending that first couple of hours recuperating a bit, a nurse came by and told us she was going to prepare her special newborn spa treatment for the baby's first bath. She came back soon after, with a tub full of warm water and washcloths, and then I helped her as we washed the baby for the first time. The baby enjoyed the warm sensation and she was soaking up all these new feelings that she was experiencing for the first time ever - the lights, the sounds, the feeling of the warm water. She wasn't as pleased with the cool air, but before long she was clean, and we got her wrapped up and dried off.

I was feeling quite confident and when the nurses asked if they should put the diaper and swaddle on, I told them that I was highly experienced with this whole dad thing and had a full handle on the situation. They weren't impressed and thought I put the diaper on too tight and insisted on redoing it.

We slept fitfully but happily for the rest of the night, and kept a surprisingly normal schedule considering that the baby had arrived so promptly. We decided on a name after not too much deliberation - Verity Fae Adamson. Verity to represent honesty and a love for seeking truth, and Fae to represent nature, whimsy and mischief.

Although Verity's story had just begun, her birth was complete. She was healthy and happy, and Kim was glowing, and I felt complete. It was good and it was beautiful. After a day (and a pregnancy) of uncertainty and rapidly changing plans, it felt like, in the end, this was how things were meant to happen all along.