Next thing we now, the nurses are telling us that she’s fully dilated, but not evenly, requiring Lena to not push quite yet – which was VERY difficult. Moments later the doctor walks in the door in the pushing begins. At this point, everything going on seemed to slow down to a crawl. With every push it seemed like Lena and the child would take one step forward and two steps back. Slowly the head made it’s way down, and in a flash, as if someone had hit the fast forward button, the baby was out with the nurses yelling “What do we have daddy?”. I had to stop for a second before I could process what the nurse had just asked me. I look at the baby and announced she is a girl, and that her name is Meara Aspen Mock.
Obsessively I recorded every moment of the nurse’s taking care of our child, while keeping close attention to what was going on with Lena as they were having some problems with her bleeding. While they measured Meara, I looked back only for a second to catch a glimpse of more blood coming out of a person than I had ever seen in my entire life.
Then, as if someone had pressed the mute button, the pure chaos in the room seemed to disappear as Meara was handed to her a mother for the first time. For myself, this has to be one of the greatest moments of my life. While Lena and I cuddled little Meara, we could hear, muffled in the background, that they had successfully gotten Lena’s bleeding under control. The nurses quickly cleaned up the room and before you knew it, they needed me to take Meara to the nursery for a thorough examination and a bath… The roller coaster is back at the gate…
Time seemed to finally slow back to its normal pace. Meara and I went to the nursery where she had her bath, a couple shots, and her feet prints taken. That evening our room was a bustle with visitors coming and going, all here to see the little baby girl. I admittedly contributed to the barrage of pictures being taken of the poor girl. The one thing that stands out for me that evening was the fact that everyone who walked in that door fell in love with her the second they saw her. Everyone left who had come to see Meara started heading out at about 9pm-10pm that night, giving us our first night the Meara.
That night, along with the next couple of weeks, immediately tested our abilities to be parents. First it was the congestion, which scared us to death because it was affecting her ability to breath. Then it was the Jaundice, which required us to take billi-lights home with us. And last, but not least, the following week we were back in the hospital because Meara continued to act as if she was having problems breathing. There, after two days worth of tests, they decided that her lungs just weren’t quite ready and that she needed oxygen for the next couple of weeks. The worst part of the entire ordeal was standing there and helping the nurses hold her while they put the PH probe down her throat, with her screaming like we’re killing her, followed by the sleep deprived watch at her bedside.
Either way I’m happy to announce that she’s doing perfectly fine and is already growing like a weed. By her first doctors appointment she had not only reached her birth weight, she had surpassed it by a couple ounces. Within days of her birth it seemed as if she was trying to raise her head (and no it really didn’t seem like just random motions… I guess you would have had to be there to understand), and also began smiling at certain voices. So hopefully from this point forward everything will be smooth sailing… All we can do is see…