The Preparation - Back Story - Part 6

What Follows is the most surreal 5 Hours of my life. In the preparation room there were all sorts of stuff that I recognised as hospital things but that was it. I don’t remember there being a computer in that room above the bed. That was a statement in itself “This must be the business room, no time to lie around and watch TV here” I thought to myself. A midwife came in; she looked like she had delivered a million children before these because she was very calm and confident. She went through the usual stuff and asked Emma what pain relief she wanted. It looked like she was going to give birth naturally but because of the twins it would be advisable to have an epidural just in case they had to do an emergency C section but we had never really got to the stage of talking about that sort of thing. So she said epidural. Emma was then introduced to gas and air, she was still having contractions but now she could breathe in the gas and air as she was going through them.

A specialist came around to examine Emma, at some points during the exam, he had his tongue out which to me looked as if he was reaching down the back of some sofa looking for something he had dropped earlier. Anyway at about that point she was about 9 centimetres dilated so there was still a while to go.

The midwife came back in with a set of hospital scrubs for me to wear during the main event. I was quite excited about it actually (I’m a fan of the TV show Scrubs) even though I may have looked a bit of an idiot, I felt quite cool and I just wanted to randomly run around and shout “I need 10 milligrams of thorosine STAT”, but I didn’t. In fact I got told off for going in the corridor wearing them trying to find Emma’s mum and dad to tell them what was going on.



Emma’s mum and dad eventually came in the room to tell us that they were going as visiting hours were over so they wished her good luck and off they went home to await news.

Emma continued with the contractions. After some of the contractions when she took the gas and air mask off she looked completely stoned which was confirmed when the anaesthesiologist can in and asked if she knew what was involved in the epidural. She just said “Needle, back, numb”. Short and to the point I suppose but the half shut eyes and the way she said it in a Cheech and Chong way made me laugh.

The anaesthesiologist was ready to do the epidural. Emma had to sit up on the bed; she leaned over putting her hands on my shoulders and we waited for a window where she wasn’t having a contraction. Looking back on this I wouldn’t trust this chap to fix my fridge let alone place a tube between a small space in the lower spinal cord. It took him 3 attempts to get the tube in and during his attempts he was shaking his head in frustration. I could also hear the grinding where the needle brushed against Emma’s back bone and she told me since that she could feel it. Today there are a couple of small scars there and she can still feel a twinge in that area every now and then. Anyway, if I had drawn a bull’s-eye in the right place I think it would have got done quicker.

Emma was examined again and it was time. 10 centimetres dilated, numb from the waist down she was wheeled into the operating room. The older midwife had finished for the night and she was replaced by one that looked 12 years old but she was saying all the right stuff so I wasn’t bothered. The main event was about to start and I had a front row seat.