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Dominic “Dom” James Derecola was born at 11:32 am on September 4th in First Hill, Seattle. He weighed 7 lbs. 9.23 oz. and was 19.5″ in length.

I mistakenly posted he was 7|15 on Facebook because I misunderstood what the nurses told me. We were pretty beat… so, yeah. We’ve been home just over a week, after a brief stint in the NICU. I was originally going to post everything in significant detail, but a lot of it has faded to leave only the parts I’ll remember for the rest of my life. Included below is our five day experience; posted for posterity. What I will say is I have a newfound respect for nurses – especially birth nurses. There were a few hiccups and less-than-great parts of our time with Swedish First Hill, but overall it was a fantastic experience.

A boy! I managed to keep the secret for the six months I knew. I did let a few pronouns slip here or there; sometimes accidentally using the wrong one but unable to correct myself. In the end, I think a handful of people had a good idea but Melissa and I never talked about it. She thought she was having a boy, so she wasn’t that surprised. Some people even had a good idea on a boy’s name, if we had one, because I talked about it like 20 years ago.

Dominic Derecola was my great grandfather; he came from Italy near the turn of the 20th century. Fun Fact: Everyone with my last name is a descendant of, or married into, his family tree. We know because there is no record of Derecola in Italy – it’s believed changed by an immigration officer when he arrived. It was also my grandfather’s middle name. Speaking of middle names, James is Melissa’s dad’s first name. Suffice to say, we invested heavily in family names.

The Labor

It was Friday, September 2nd. Melissa and I had tickets to see a band we like at the great blues club in the city. Melissa felt off much of the afternoon, so she made the decision an hour or two before showtime that she’d stay home. I asked a few people if they wanted to go, but ultimately bailed too. It was good neither of us went – Melissa’s water broke just an hour after the show would have started. The thing they tell you about it not actually happening like it does in movies? Yeah, that didn’t apply to us. We made a few calls, freaked out for a few minutes, and then tried to go to bed like we were instructed. We never really slept; the contractions started two hours later around 11 pm.

Melissa would spend the next three-plus hours trying to find a comfortable position. I was in charge of timing contractions, which is a lot harder than it seems at 1 am when the pregnant lady wasn’t really sure what a contraction felt like. No position worked and contractions progressed much quicker than anticipated, so we were at the hospital by 3 am Saturday. We avoided traffic, as we’d been discussing, but missed out on my fantasy of a screaming police escort through a bunch of red lights. We found our way to birthing triage, where we would sit/stand/walk for the better part of four hours. The triage nurse told us there was an usually high number of women in labor at that moment; a fact corroborated by other birthing centers. Melissa couldn’t find a comfortable spot and I was sitting in a folding chair, so we spent some time walking around the floor.

Around 6:30 am, we moved to a birthing suite. These things are like hotel rooms with all the medical stuff and a nurse who is only assigned to you for their 12 hour shift. When went through a nurse shift change around 7:30 am and met Kate, who would actually be the shift nurse when Melissa delivered 28 hours later. Melissa was still only at 1 cm dilation, so we spent the next I-can’t-remember-how-many-hours working to make Melissa as comfortable as possible. Some stretches and a long soak in the tub later, her doctor’s first act (as she was coming on for a 24 hour on-call shift) was to tell Melissa she was at 4 cm.

Then, we waited. And waited. And waited. The contractions continued, with Melissa in obvious pain, but there was no additional dilation for hours. We were given the option of using pitocin to induce dilation, but declined. At some point… we think roughly 12 hours in… Melissa opted for the epidural. She didn’t want to immediately jump to that and gave it her all, but there was no sign things were going to end anytime soon. It wasn’t 100% effective, so we had a few visits from an anesthesiologist over the next few hours to make Melissa as comfortable as possible. Hours after that, Melissa’s doctor made a medical decision to begin a pitocin drip. The baby was not yet in distress, but it would be if Melissa didn’t dilate faster. A c-section was last resort.

Oh, but things didn’t end there. Melissa would labor for another 18 hours.

This is the long haul of our story. At some point in the night, Melissa progressed to 5 cm, stopped for awhile, and then went in small increments to 9 cm… where it stopped again for a few hours. Melissa’s doctor, ending her 24 hour shift at 8 am Sunday, was somewhat confounded by the stop at 9 cm (9.5 by some measurements), and resigned to relinquishing the birth to the next on-call from her practice. Around then, we also got Kate back as our birth nurse. She had been relieved by Jalene for the Saturday night shift and rotated back on after heading home for dinner and a night’s sleep. She said she doesn’t typically request patients at the start of her shift, but had to upon learning Melissa was still in labor. Kate had already spent 12 hours with us, so it was nice to have her back. Over the course of the birth, we’d have three nurse shift changes (12 hours each) and two doctor shift changes (24 hours each).

Around 9:30 am Sunday, Melissa woke up from a nap and said she wanted to push.

The Birth

Upon hearing this statement, Kate leapt into action. I think I remember hearing the words “okay, push” as she, well, did a whole lotta stuff that I couldn’t even follow. The doula (more of this later) and I jumped to Melissa’s bedside and started actively coaching/comforting her. At this point, time accelerates and an hour goes by in what feels like five minutes. Kate told us the pushing bit would probably take about two hours; Melissa made it through the first 90 minutes in the blink of an eye. The last 30 minutes were a sensory assault of people, sights, and smells – Kate all the while tending to Melissa’s medical needs and the doc working to help our baby enter the world.

There were some complications with Dom’s position, but there was never any medical intervention. The team warned us that his head would be very elongated when he was born because of it and asked us not to freak out because it would correct itself. Some hefty pushing later and he was finally here. The women in the room made me announce the gender to Melissa; that was a lot of pressure. Then Dom was placed on Melissa’s chest and I cut the cord – an act I had previously been fairly indifferent about. A diaper, several measurements, and a few medical checks later, he was back on her chest for some sleepy time.

All in, Melissa labored for 36 hours… and she did a fantastic job. No, seriously.

The Doula

Never heard of a doula before? Me either, before living in Seattle. I would describe them as a lady’s maid who is trained in birthing procedures. We decided early on that we wanted the birth to be just the two of us, but also wanted non-medical support after birth. Actually, Melissa wanted to have a doula after birth and was indifferent about a birth doula; I decided we should have one after we toured the birthing facility. There are a lot of different personalities and styles of doulas, so we zeroed in on one that was down with our “we have no plan… whatever happens, happens” attitude.

In hindsight, it was one of the best decisions we’ve made during this journey. We ended up with a backup doula because our original doula was supporting her other client during a 40-hour ordeal, but Ana was fantastic. She was quick to jump to Melissa’s bedside and was very supportive of her search to find comfort. Having her there allowed me to relax enough to go for a few walks and sleep for a bit Saturday night. She actually slept on the floor next to Melissa’s bed… which, I felt terribly guilty about despite it being the only way she could get some rest and remain present.

The NICU

After a few hours, Melissa and Dom were moved from a birthing suite to a private room. It wasn’t particularly special, but I am not going to complain about a private room with a cot for me to sleep on. That night the three of us slept in the room together; the first as our new family. We spent the next 18 hours feeding us, feeding Dom, and trying to get some rest. Then, we got a visitor. It was Labor Day morning and a pediatrician came to tell us the NICU needed to take Dom. She was the nicest person and did her best to let us absorb it. The tears you shed when your baby is born are very different than the ones you shed when they take him away less than a day later. Melissa grieved publicly; me, as private as a public street can be.

We spent the next day and a half wheeling Melissa up a few flights to visit Dom in the NICU. She tried to feed him every time we visited, but much of his first days were spent on formula. There isn’t a whole lot to say about a stint in the NICU – it’s pretty much what you think it is. Dom had an IV and was on a warmer for a bit, but he appeared to be the least in distress of all the babies. That fact was absolutely not lost on us; we experienced discussions about a methadone baby and another baby coding and having to be resuscitated. The prospect of him being there for a week’s worth of antibiotics didn’t seem nearly as terrible as it did when they told us. We did our best to focus on the positive, like getting a few more days of nurses teaching us how to care for him. There was a Downton Abbey marathon over Labor Day weekend, so at least we had something to watch.

Tuesday afternoon, Melissa was formally discharged.

The hospital was on the other side of the city from our house, but not more than 20 minutes when it’s not rush hour. That said, 20 minutes is an eternity if you’re driving back and forth to see, and possibly feed, your baby. The good news is our hospital of choice has six NICU “parent sleep rooms” available to… you guessed it… parents of babies in the NICU. We moved our things a few flights up; our third room in four nights. Not having to leave the hospital, in what would we considered a 2.5 star hotel room, was unexpected and welcomed. I ran home to get some supplies, like pregnancy pillows, and we made the best of it by ordering Vietnamese delivery. I think we both slept okay, but Melissa made more trips up during the night to see Dom than I did.

The doctors told us Dom would likely need to stay in the NICU for a week. We were afforded the opportunity to use a parent sleep room for three nights, which we planned to use to get us to Friday. After that, we’d figure something out. At some point during one of our visits Wednesday, a nurse hinted Dom may be able to go home that afternoon. He was in the NICU for an apparent blood infection; one Melissa contracted due to the lengthy time that passed between when her water broke and when she delivered. His blood cultures were encouraging on Tuesday, but we didn’t want to get too far ahead of ourselves. The doctors eventually ruled that Dom was free of infection and the original positive result may have been from cross-contamination with the umbilical cord. A whirlwind of an afternoon later, Dom was strapped in his in car seat and we were loading all our bags into the car.

Five days after her water broke, Melissa walked out of the hospital a mother.

The First Week

Our first week at home was probably like most peoples’ first week at home. We struggled to understand the crying, worked to get rest when we could, and internally questioned our own individual decision to become a parent. Dom spent a lot of the first couple days on formula from a bottle, mostly because the days not feeding early on had Melissa off to a slow start. He’s now exclusively breastfeeding and Melissa has been diligently waking up to feed him in the night. I’ve spent my time obsessively organizing all the gifts and baby gear that’s arrived at the house and making sure Melissa has everything she needs at her fingertips. We hadn’t quite finished readying the house, so I’ve also been completing odd jobs in-between doing laundry, cooking, and helping her care for our boy. I feel like we learn something new every day and making some good steps towards a more manageable routine. We’ve even been out of the house a few times for doctor appointments and walks around the neighborhood. Oh, Dom got his first piece of mail addressed to him – an Amazon package!

At this point, I feel like I’ve always been a dad – it’s odd how a week can color 30 years of memories.

Want to send Dom and email that he’ll read, well, when he’s literate? You can email him at dom.derecola@gmail.com. I also regret to inform you that all entry fees for Dom’s baby pool will go into his very first bank account. I’m pretty sure he was hustling you all along. That’s my boy!