Chris and Ami: November 2006

Ami's asked me to be the one to do the recounting of the story of Joseph's birth. Obviously that limits the perspective somewhat, as I can only say what's was going through my head, but I'll do my best to give you all a sense of the experience. (Hey, just be thankful we don't have a video.)

We were scheduled to have Ami induced the morning of the 9th, but Joseph had already started on his way the day before. The nurses advised us not to come in until the contractions were at least 3-4 minutes apart, so we arrived 4am on the 9th. Let me tell ya, besides the act of actually giving birth, there are few more painful experiences than watching your wife go through birth. She was a trooper though. Her older sister had told her not to waste energy screaming, so being the tough woman and obedient little sister that she is, she barely made a sound the whole time. She wanted to do this naturally, but even when she did take some stuff for pain all it did was make her unable to keep track of what was going on. The contractions kept coming closer and closer together and with greater intensity. There was a little graph there to let me know just how intense they were and you just wish you could take it away. I didn't go to the washroom for about 10 hours because was terrified of leaving her alone with this. In addition to this she was having chills and throwing up from what we mistakenly thought was the flu. Even in the midst of all this Ami was giving me advice. When I was eating my meal she reminded me to wash my hands etc.

After fifteen hours though, the doctors and nurses came to the conclusion that the baby wasn't going to fit through. They were trying to make the choice whether to do an epidural to allow Ami to relax so the baby could come through or go straight to a C-section. Unfortunately for both of these procedures a person needs an anesthesiologist and in the wonderful world of Canadian medicine they have declared that after 5 in the evening there is to be only of those on call. That guy was already in the midst of another surgery, so they told us that Ami had the privilege of going through an hour of useless contractions until he came. In the meantime, unbeknown to me, that little electronic chart that was graphing the contractions was turned off at the exact moment that Ami was going through a contraction, leaving me with impression that she was in a state of constant contraction and I was silently freaking out. He came earlier than an hour, but by the time the anesthesiologist came the baby's heart rate was occasionally dipping, so a C-section was the only option. Both Ami and I were a wreck by this point, having not slept for about 30-35 hours, but Ami came through the surgery well, and after a little recovery time, we were presented with our beautiful baby boy.

Unfortunately, that's not the end of the story. After two or three days of recovery from the surgery the doctor felt Ami was okay to go home and took her off the antibiotics she had been on for her "flu." A few hours before we were due to check out Ami got seriously sick, prompting the doctors to do a few more checks. It turned out that what she had was not the flu, but a uterus infection. So as result we had to stay in the hospital five more days while the doctors tried different kinds of antibiotics to battle her infection. We were finally able to come home Friday afternoon.

In the midst of all this Ami and the Joseph were awesome. Ami was very strong emotionally after the C-section and Joseph was as perfect and healthy a little baby as we could ever wish for. He recovered amazingly well, given he had gone though such a traumatic experience. We were also able to take advantage of being in the hospital that long, pestering the nurses with questions about what to do in this or that situation and, I'm sure, making the nurses very happy to see the back of us. Ami actually said she was happy to finally get her money's worth from the all the money she's been putting into the BC Medical system in the form of insurance premiums. :) I can't speak for Ami, but for me that was an intensive training course in learning to both take responsibility for my family and also trust God for their ultimate welfare. Both were extremely valuable lessons for me and I pray I learned them well.