Becoming a parent

It does not sink in that you are going to be a parent until someone actually hands you a screaming kid. I went through all of Ali's gestation just thinking that I would deal with the responcibility of parenthood when things were a little more "at hand". Well things are certainly at hand when the doc hands you a kid.
Ali's water broke on the night of Feb. 1st but was not having heavy contractions, so we just went to bed. In the morning she still was not having heavy contractions, but we headed to the hospital anyway. In our Bradley Childbirth class we covered alot of the various scenarios that happen during birth, but no class covers all the things that can happen. Ali was still not having serious contractions after several hours so they had her start potosin to increase the intensity and frequency of her contractions. After a while they would decrease the potosin dose, and her contraction intensity would decrease, which is not really conducive to a expeditious labor. The mid wife then put Ali on oxygen to see if that would make the baby a little more responsive in the laboring process. Over the period of the rest of the day they proceeded to dose with potosin to increase the intensity of contractions two more times. But whenever they stopped the potosin, Ali's contractions would drop off in intensity. This coupled with the fact that almost 24 hours had elapsed since Ali's water had broken, meant that she was at a increased risk of infection. By about 6 pm the midwife brought in the OB doc to talk with Ali about the realistic possibility that we might have to resort to a caesarian section. Jasper was not tolerating labor and his HR was decreasing.
This was really tough for Ali.
When you go through classes like Bradley you go over all this preparation for what you might encounter in natural childbirth, but it does little to prepare you for the fact that you may have to actually get a C-section.
Anyway, Ali and I had a conversation about how things were playing out, we concluded that given the way that things had played out and based on the input of the midwife, we signed the paper work for a C-section. Then things really started to happen.
Two nurses walked in and stared prepping Ali, and handed me some scrubs. It was go time.
Once we hit the OR it was less than 20 minutes later I was looking at a man child. It took them a while after delivery to get Ali closed up, as the docs had found that Ali had a uterine infection. This infection, previously undetected, explained part of why contractions were not happening on their own, to the extent that dilation would allow for a normal birth.

Ali asked me to put some of my thoughts into writing regarding the birth of our son, so I figured I might as well write it here. To me, it does not matter how kids are born. All that matters is that we are all healthy and together.