October 3, 2005 – The Tentative Newborn

October 3, 2005 – The Tentative Newborn

When our youngest daughter RD decided to start a family, we were a couple of years into the new millennium. She was influenced by discussions around her workplace—she worked for a homebuilder in Southern California—about a woman’s ticking biological clock: tick tick tick tick…the sound of the 60 minutes stop watch droning on. She was also no doubt influenced by her older sister, ME, having her second baby, an adorable bald baby boy—MJ, with pouting lips and obsidian eyes—they've since become very dark chocolate in color. There is nothing like a newborn baby with its innocence and total dependence to bring out the material instincts in women. Thus, it was no surprise when RD announced she was pregnant and would deliver in late November or early December of 2002. As with all our grandchildren, my wife IM and I attended the ultrasound and acquired our first photo of the newest member of our extended family, a lovely little granddaughter slowly beginning to assert herself as she waited to enter her world.

At that time RD and her husband TF lived in San Clemente off the Camino del Estrella exit from Interstate 5, The San Diego Freeway. She was then driving a white Mustang convertible, ideal for a “dink” (double income, no kids) hardly the appropriate conveyance for a mommy, a fact that IM mentioned whenever we visited—the Mustang became a GM Envoy. In November, plump with her expectant bundle, RD and husband TF hosted the entire clan at their house for Thanksgiving dinner. RD’s place was filled with the sound of ME, her husband GS, and our grand daughter EM and now fully mobile grandson MJ. Also joining the festivities were TF’s daughters from his first marriage, RC and RK. TF was manhandling the turkey and juggling side dishes, filling the house with the smells of dinner preparation. The adults were caught up in conversation. The older girls were watching a video and the younger children were playing with toys. We had taken the kids to a park a short walk from the RD’s place where we played basketball and roughhoused on the expansive lawn, part of a small putting green, next to the park’s basketball court until everyone had grown tired and hungry. They were now waiting for the feast to begin; making it known they were hungry ever so often.

This Thanksgiving was one, which we had someone new to be thankful for, and RD was carrying the guest of honor: a thanksgiving prayer followed by a champagne toast. RD had to toast with the soft drink the kids raised in honor of the occasion. Once dinner began everyone stuffed themselves except poor RD who now, close to her due date—the baby could come at any moment—managed the smallest portions of turkey and side dishes. Everyone kept a watchful eye on her as she had begun to experience early labor pains. When the feast was finished we drove down to Pines Park, which sits atop a cliff on Camino Capistrano after a right turn from westbound Camino del Estrella. The neighborhood around the park is a collection of expensive single- and multi-level homes, a great many on the western side of Camino Capistrano with full ocean views. The park is a little over a block long and about half again as wide stretching from the street to the cliff edge. Below the five- or six-story tall cliff is the Pacific Coast Highway (California 1). Across the PCH are railroad tracks and Doheny Beach beyond. On a sunny day like today, the beach is crowded with beach goers—lots of RVs filling the parking lot, and the grayish sand full of picnickers—the ocean a bit too chilly for swimming. A crowded beach in November is why we all choose to live in California

Arriving at the park we could see the blue Pacific extending all the way to the horizon—the fog held at bay—as the sun, now hanging low in the western sky hurried on its way to Asia. We crawl out of the two cars we had driven down to the park from RD’s place. The kids would work their dinner off on the swings, slides, and stationary riding animals mounted on large springs in the sandlot located in a depression amid the expansive lush green lawn of the park. Meanwhile, we would walk RD up and down the sidewalk around the playground. The old wives tale goes that exercise at the onset of contractions will hasten labor. While the kids played, watched over by the men, ME and IM walked RD around the concrete sidewalk at the park’s border with Camino Capistrano. The sidewalk slopes down and along the front of the sandlot and a spur runs down to the playground and doubles back along the sandlot’s edge, cuts a concrete path in the grass of the park, and returns on itself up the grade: the sidewalk and spur forming a huge “D” when viewed from above.

After over 45 minutes of walking and resting, RD’s pains turned out to be false labor and went away of their own accord. With the kids played out and bored, we all returned to RD’s place for desert. The evening came to an end with ME and her gang and IM and me returning to the Fairfield Inn off the Oso Parkway from Interstate 5 about 12 miles from RD’s place.

ME and her guys—who were planning to stay for the delivery, which we all felt would happen Friday the 29th or Saturday the 30th—spent the next two days visiting GS’s family in Costa Mesa, while IM and I went shopping after checking on RD, who had nothing to report the morning of the 29th or 30th, except that she wanted to begin some real labor—the anticipation was like sitting on pins and needles. IM and I spent Friday evening and the most of Saturday with RD, returning to the Fairfield Inn in the late afternoon. By the end of the day on Saturday, RD’s contractions had begun again as we learned from TF’s phone call from the Irvine Medical Center where RD was resting. Irvine Medical Center is located off Interstate 405 on the right hand side of Sand Canyon Avenue, just beyond the Sand Canyon-Alton Parkway intersection. You can see the multi-story hospital as you make the exit. When IM and I arrived just before sundown, we found RD resting in her room at the hospital and TF walking about her bed.

TF said he had called the doctor when RD had begun to experience painful contractions. IM and I each gave her a kiss, looking into her expectant mother’s eyes to make sure she was all right. Shortly after we arrived a nurse came in to check on the progress of the contractions with an instrument that measures the intensity of contractions and to examine her to determine how far along RD’s labor had progressed. We left the room to allow the nurse to do her job and found the hospital waiting room on the second floor not far from RD’s room. Here we waited for close to an hour. During that time IM sat quietly watching the evening news—we were the only ones waiting—and I paced nervously about unable to sit still. If I had a cup of coffee and a cigarette, I would look like the prototypical 1950’s father.

Irvine Medical Center sits on a piece of what was once the Irvine Ranch, a vast open stretch of ranch land that once rushed unobstructed toward the Pacific, its way being block by the coast mountain range just before reaching Laguna Beach on the other side. The hospital sits between Interstate 405 on the west and Interstate 5 on the east—the two freeways rushing toward a confluence, the natives simply call the “Y.” Beyond the Y Interstate 5 alone carries traffic south to San Diego. From the window outside the waiting room, I could see the mountains hiding the Pacific just beyond. I could see the neat squares of multifamily housing developments that surround the hospital and encroach on the nearby 405 Freeway. At the foot of the mountains I could see a new development of multifamily homes under construction. The company RD worked for was one of several builders colonizing the mountain base, covering over James Irvine’s fertile soil with concrete, asphalt, and housing-association-maintained manicured greenbelts.

When we returned to RD’s room, we found her dressed and ready to leave. Her doctor’s examination and the result of the nurse’s testing had determined that the baby was nowhere near ready to be born and RD was sent home for the evening. We telephone ME and let her know the baby wasn’t coming tonight. She and her gang had to leave on Sunday to return home up north to prepare for work on Monday. I had taken Monday and Tuesday off. Sunday morning we said goodbye to ME and her guys. We spent all of Sunday with RD. That morning TF drove his two daughters back. It was one of those days when we described all we could remember of ME’s and RD’s birth to reassure our expectant mother everything was proceeding according to plan. The other family member making input by phone was my sister DD, a nurse working in a suburb of Boston for a Russian doctor offering holistic alternatives as well as conventional medicine to his patients. DD is into holistic healing, but was once a delivery room nurse with countless numbers of deliveries to her name. It’s safe to say, she’s seen nearly every conceivable way a newborn can make its way into the world. When something was a concern, RD would call her aunt for reassurance, which was always forthcoming. DD was the long distance coach for both ME and RD.

As the day progressed, the contractions picked up in frequency reaching a point and a pain threshold—one or two reaching a pain threshold that pushed RD to the limit—that suggested the onset of labor. But as soon as the contractions reached an almost unbearable threshold, they would subside away to the discomforting false labor of before. This building up and letting down continued throughout the day. By early evening after TF returned the contractions were coming steady and gaining in intensity and we decided it was time to return to the hospital. This time the baby was on its way. Once RD was back in the same room and bed she had occupied the day before, the nurse came in and attached the monitor to record her contractions on a roll of continuous fed, red graph plotter paper. As we stood by her bedside, IM and I could see in the grimace that would sweep across RD’s face at the peak of a contraction. Now, there was no let up, the wave were consistent and growing in intensity. A while later the nurse returned and said she was going to examine RD and we went to the waiting room. The nurse came out to tell us that RD was still in the early stages of labor and it would be some time before she was ready to deliver. She suggested we go home and get some rest and return later that night.

After returning to RD’s room to check on her progress, IM and I did leave the hospital and headed to RD’s house where we were planning to spend the night after having checked out of the Fairfield Inn earlier in the day. No sooner had we arrived than my cell phone rang. It was TF saying that RD’s doctor had ordered an ultrasound to ensure the baby was in the classic head down position. The ultrasound showed that baby AF had somehow managed to flip into a heads up position and now RD was being prepared for a caesarian section. I said we were on our way. Before he hung up, he asked IM if she could find his cross and bring it to the hospital. IM located it and we were on our way back to the hospital. As we neared the Sand Canyon Road exit, the new Russell Watson CD I had brought IM before Thanksgiving began playing on the car radio. The lyrics of the song he was singing “Va' pensiero” were particularly meaningful to the two of us as we were expectantly rushing to meet the newest addition to our extended family for the first time.

When we arrived TF and RD were both in the delivery room. A short time later, the doctor came into the waiting room to tell us the C-section was complete and that the baby and mom were fine. RD was being sewn back up and our new grand daughter AF was in the nursery being probed and prodded far more than she wished. Shortly after the doctor spoke with us, TF came out to say AF and RD were both in the recovery room and we could come in to see our new grandbaby. We followed him back and found an exhausted new mother, fighting off the effects of the drugs she’d received during surgery, her long thin fingers shaking slightly. She was smiling and watching as the nurse finished her work on baby AF, who was not crying but had a look on her face that suggested she was not amused by these goings on. A half hour later, the nurse finally handed AF to her mom and we watched as the two got to know one another. Eventually, IM and I got to cuddle the little swaddled newborn with her pink knit hat atop her head to keep her warm. Holding a new life just come into the world makes you aware that a part of us will carry on—the gene pool preserved for another generation; your line and by proxy you carrying on.