How Life Changes Over 48 Hrs.

48 hrs. ago, Sharon went into labour.  48 hrs. from that point, I hold our boy's body in my arms

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After the long basketball marathon I had on March 29, I was telling the guys that I had a feeling the baby would be coming soon.  Little did I know that it would be later on that night.

Went to bed at 12:30am that night cause I needed to unwind and heat up my knees.  I had a hard time falling asleep, when at 1:30am, Sharon told me she was cramping.  She had been cramping for a while, so I figured it was just her false contractions acting up again.  I told her to try to sleep it off.  Too bad she couldn't, because the contractions just kept coming up.

So at 2:30am, she told me to look up signs of labour.  Sure enough, it read into the classical form of true labour (sans water breaking).  So she did what I thought she would do:  take a shower.  If she was going to give birth this day, she's gonna be fresh doing it!

Called the mid-wife at 3:00am and made plans to call her again once the contractions became longer and more painful.  You know that stereotypical image of the mother going through contractions and squeezing the life out of a person's hand (a la Fresh Prince)?  There's a reason it's a stereotype.  It's because it happens.  Sure as heck happened to me (not that I'm complaining).

Speaking of stereotypes, of course this baby would be coming in the middle of the night...lol.

Called the mid-wife at 5:00am because Sharon said they were really bad.  Arranged to meet at the hospital at 5:30am.

I did avoid one stereotype, I'm happy to say:  I didn't drive like a maniac to the hospital.  Fitting though that one of the songs that played during the drive there?

This one:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlgHudEv_VA (the first few words of the song, anyway).  It was followed by this song:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPyq4iqt6Go (our first dance song).  I dunno, just something I wouldn't forget while driving there.

Anywho, got to the hospital at 5:31am, and Sharon went to one of the birthing rooms.  Our mid-wife did some checks on Sharon and said to her, "you'll never guess how dilated the cervix is?"  Sharon, in an annoyed (but understandable) tone:  "I have no idea".  Mid-wife:  "9 cm."

I think it was at that point I realized that maybe, just maybe, this wasn't a false alarm.  I mean, the water didn't even break.

It broke shortly thereafter.  After the mid-wife broke it.

A lot of men don't want to see the "action" going on down there during the delivery.  I was always going to be a game-time decision.  In this case, I didn't really have a choice because it was just Sharon, the mid-wife and me in the room.  And Sharon's legs were cramping up really bad, so it was my job to massage them.

All the fluids, all the smells, all the grossness that people wouldn't find nauseating did not affect me at all.  In fact, there was a point that I was so intrigued by what was going on and plus I had such emotions going through me (my wife was in horrible pain which pained me, but our child was coming which made me thrilled) that I couldn't think of anything else.

But there were a few specific things I remember during the birthing process that made me laugh:

-Sharon saying to the midwife "just give me drugs".  The midwife responding, "there's no time".  The look on Sharon's face after that

-Sharon saying to the midwife, "I don't know if I'm having contractions anymore".  The midwife saying, "are you having one now?"  Sharon:  "no (pause 0.2 seconds)...YESSSSSSSSSS"

-Sharon smacking me on the face by accident.  My glasses falling.  Right into the goop and fluids pooling right where the baby was coming out.  Me trying to massage her cramping legs while simultaneously trying to clean my glasses while trying to explain to the midwife what just happened/what I was doing after she turned away for a brief period

-Sharon screaming "can't you just pull it out?" after our baby had decided to just stop coming out when it's head was just halfway out

During the actual birth, it was crazy to see a full head of hair coming out.  Even crazier to see it stop half-way (lazy like Dad!).  But Sharon made it happen, and at exactly 7:00am our child was pronounced borned.

I checked and there it was...ballsack and pee-pee.  We had ourselves a beautiful, alien-looking boy!  The old Chinese lady was right.  He cried for only a little bit but was then quite content to be with Mommy (Mama's Boy?).

After that, it was like a blur.  The placenta came out (looked like organ meats), and unfortunately there was a lot of tearing so Sharon had to have a lot of stitches.  I witnessed that to, and felt horrible for Sharon (luckily, Sharon is a fighter and will no doubt recover quite fine after a few weeks).

So we looked at our Indian looking (ie. damn hairy) child and named him to what we both agreed before:  Eamon Al Marquez.  I mean, Filipino Dad, Indian Mom, so logically an Irish name, right?

Eamon weighed in at 6 lbs 4 oz and 19" long.  The head wasn't too too big and neither was the nose.

The whole thing just seemed surreal.  Weren't we supposed to still be at work?  Wasn't that alien just a few minutes ago inside her?  We didn't even have time to tell our families she was going through labour.  And wasn't labour supposed to be like 18 hrs. long and not the 2.5 hrs. of active labour Sharon went through?  And 18 years.  18 YEARS!

Well whatever happens, Eamon will know that his parents love him more than anything else.

When I had the chance, I broke the surprising news to the families, friends and of course Facebook so everyone would know.

Stayed in the hospital until March 31 at 1:30pm and made our way home with our baby.

Since then, he's been a little fussy and been a little congested and he can't sleep and he's been feeding like crazy and his parents are more than tired, but he's worth it.

And of course I gotta go right now to change a diaper...

Look at them sideburns...get this kid a leather jacket!