Kid's corner

It was April 12th, 2007. The night was young and I was up working a bit on my PhD. dissertation. At 01:00 AM I decided to call it a day. Somehow, I felt that if I stayed up till then, the delivery would announce itself soon, as it did when Elias was born (I'm nowhere near supersticious, but I think this comes close). Little did I know how right I was. At about 01:50 AM, I felt a nudge from Veerle. After wrestling open my eyes, I saw a grimace on her face telling me not all was well. Or rather, everything was going great. The first contractions were announcing themselves, in a quite painful way. First task: call my mother so she could come over and look after Elias until we called her to bring him in. Veerle doubted that I should have called that soon. However, I thought we would have substantially less time than when Elias was born to get to the hospital. Soon we would realise how right I was. After all, Elias took only eight hours to make an appearance, and with him we started from two cm womb opening. Now we were at at least four cm.

Veerle crawled to the shower, supported by the ever helpful husband (me). For her, warm water helps reduce the labour pains. Meanwhile I rushed all over the house to get the stuff we needed to the car (the bag was already packed, but we needed some extra supplies), tell my mom once more what she had to do when we called. At 2:30 sharp, we left the house, and tried not to crash into anyone once we were on the road. I tried to stick to the speed limits. After two or three minutes we got to the emergency room, where a helpful nurse guided us to the maternity ward.

A quick check revelead the womb had opened about six cm (two days earlier we had four cm). The midwife decided to start running the bath. After the enema, I fumbled while trying to get my swim shorts, still thinking we had time to spend in the relaxation bath. The midwife smiled and said we probably would not have time for that. Bummer. Two contractions later we were hobbling to the delivery bath. One contraction later Veerle was in the bath. Quick check. Nine centimeters. I quickly SMSsed my mom, telling her to hurry up and get Elias to the hospital as soon as possible. To no avail it would turn out. Ten minutes later, Nathan saw the light of day, or rather, the soothing hospital lights in the delivery room at night.

He stayed cosily in the water for about another ten minutes, while we patiently waited for Elias to arrive. In the end, the midwife decided to take him out and dry him. He was then placed with his mom, while the gynecologist took care of the afterbirth. Right then Elias arrived ... and took a careful peek at his brother. And a second peek. And gave a careful kiss. When the gynecologist decalred everything ok, we moved out to the room, where Veerle breastfed Nathan for the first time. I then took Elias home so he could get some sleep, and returned to the hospital.