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Amity's Arrival

Amity's Arrival from Kim Adamson on Vimeo .

Amity's Story Begins, Part V

Around 5:30 on Saturday, it finally happened. We held her. It seemed like the nurse (Megan, who was fantastic) might have made an exception for us and let her try to breastfeed, because we really hadn't expected to be able to and it was an awesome surprise. That had been a huge concern for us because we had heard so much about the health benefits and so many horror stories about how hard it was for a lot of women and their babies. They say that starting within the first hour is really critical, so both Kim and I had been stressing about whether it would be a huge roadblock since it had been over 15 hours since she had been born and she hadn't really been held at all. Turns out that our fears were unfounded. Amity got right to it without a single problem, and it was a massive relief on a couple of levels. First, because of the aforementioned anxiety, but second and more importantly, because a healthy appetite is one of the best signs you could hope for of a healthy baby. A...

Amity's Story Begins, Part IV

That first day in the NICU was the hardest. We weren't able to hold our girl, she was hooked up to a lot of lines, and we were pretty unable to do anything for her except just sit there and talk to her. She was hooked up to a status monitor which we would develop a love-hate relationship with. It provided a certain amount of comfort because we could observe all of her vital signs at a moment's notice, and see without a doubt that everything was checking out just fine. We also knew that if anything started to go wrong multiple nurses would be there within seconds to check on her. However, whenever one of the values would go out of the acceptable range, an alarm would go off. It wasn't bad as far as alarms go - fairly soothing and benign, really. It was just the knowledge of what it meant that became stressful. Not all of the sensors were 100% reliable 100% of the time, so occasionally the alarm would go off for no good reason, and every time that happened there was a momen...

Amity's Story Begins, Part III

At some point while the nurses were tending to the baby, I realized that I hadn't even checked the gender. I walked over in the midst of everything, saw that it was a girl, and barely managed to tell Kim before we both got choked up about it. I think I had honestly been expecting a boy, but now I don't think I could imagine it any other way. After the nurses had been working on the baby for a few minutes, they wrapped her up in a blanket and brought her over to Kim. The baby was really pale, and not very active. Kim was only able to hold her very briefly, and it was pretty emotional. I was faced with a big decision - I felt like I really needed to stay with the baby, but I didn't want to leave Kim in what was going to be a really hard situation for her. I started to ask her what she wanted and she told me to go with the baby before I even finished. The baby was loaded up on a crib/table thing and I followed the nurses as they wheeled her down to the NICU. I remember t...

Amity's Story Begins, Part II

After we got the epidural done, things started getting better almost immediately. After 30 minutes, it had gone from something traumatic and distressful to a place where Kim was almost napping, she was smiling, and we were actually able to talk together and be excited again. It actually worked well, because Kim and I had time alone together, we could talk, and we had a reprieve from all the chaos for a few moments. After an hour and a half or so, it was time for Kim to get checked again. She was feeling contractions getting stronger, and she was starting to get the shakes, and I thought that the epidural had really gotten things going - and it turned out, Kim was almost entirely dilated. Karen (our midwife) told us that she was at 9.5 cm - we got things arranged, myself and Laura (the nurse, who reminded me of Megan Lawson and who was amazing) held Kim's legs, and Karen decided it was probably time to push. One of the most interesting things to me was how the process ...

Amity's Story Begins, Part I

I am a father. Our daughter was born March 3, 2012, at 2:13 in the morning. 3-3-12 @ 2:13. Interesting symmetry there - 3312213. We had no indication on Thursday night that Friday would be different from any other day. We thought Kim's water broke during the day Thursday, but she went in and got checked, and it was a false alarm. I had been stressing about grading and a lesson observation that I had scheduled for Friday morning, so I ended up staying up until midnight (as late as I've stayed up this semester). I was up early and out the door, and I got to Berthoud with a bit of time to spare. I got stuff set up for my demos (I brought in a bass guitar and some other stuff for wave demonstrations), got my printing and lesson plans set aside, and then about 2 minutes before the lesson started Kim called me and said that her water actually  did  break, and that yes, she was sure. Her contractions weren't bad and she hadn't talked to the midwife yet, so I said I w...