Ten Fingers and Ten Toes and He’ll be Right.
Judy and I had our only child when we were in our early 40s, she was 41 and I was 42. We were in that 5 percentile that achieve a pregnancy at that age. The doctors made sure to tell us all the things that could go wrong with an ‘older pregnancy’ to the point where it was making Judy nervous. At one point, I told the doctors to just stop it — no more doom and gloom — come what may, this was our baby. If there were problems, we would deal with them. When I told my proper Kiwi mother-in-law what I said to the Doctors, she was very supportive, “Oh yes, there’s no need to worry the mother. Ten fingers and ten toes and he’ll be right.”
But Jackson’s birth did not go right…
Katherine (my wife’s sister) and I were standing along Judy’s right side in a birthing room at the Hilo Hospital on the Big Island of Hawai’i. The Doctor was in the ‘catch’ position urging Judy to push, push, push, but she was hitting the wall. Her contractions started late Sunday afternoon and it was now dawn on a Tuesday morning. Two days and nights of labor had exhausted her. She had nothing left in the tank. The baby was in the birth canal but Judy was fading fast.
Judy looked over at her sister and pleaded, “I can’t do it anymore. I want to go home.”
Judy was delirious with pain and exhaustion. Me, I was just confused. The miracle of childbirth was turning into a nightmare.
Katherine laughed at her little sister and said, “You can’t go home now, Judy, you’re having a baby!”
The Doctor asked her to push again, and she made an valiant attempt before collapsing. Something wasn’t right. Across from me, the delivery nurse whipped the stopwatch off of her neck and started it.
“The clock is running, Doctor.”
My dull mind whispered, ‘The clock is running? It’s a countdown. Why is there a countdown?’
The Doctor kept urging Judy to push then quickly said to the nurse, “We’re OK. The baby is coming. We’re fine.”
But I could feel a twinge of nerves in his voice. We weren’t fine and he knew it. I grew up in an alcoholic household and I can sniff out a lie from a thousand yards away.
The Nurse didn’t look up from the stopwatch. Her tone was direct and not without a little weight behind it, “Doctor, the clock is running.”
This Nurse was all business now and she was dictating to the Doctor. That stopwatch was everything. The ticking seconds were crucial and I was starting to panic. Something had gone terribly wrong. The Doctor kept asking Judy to rally for one final big push, but Judy had gone away.
“DOCTOR! THAT BABY HAS TO COME OUT RIGHT NOW!”
The stopwatch. The ticking, ticking, ticking. Time was passing, or was it slipping away? The Nurse was definitely freaking me out with her eyes glued to that damn stopwatch. Tick. Tick. Tick. Not good, not good at all. Dammit, what the hell was going on here?
The Doctor turned to me.
“Mr. Roberts. The baby is stuck in the birth canal and it’s imperative that we get him out now. This will require an extraction procedure. I can do this either with forceps or a suction device. I need you to make a decision as to your preference.”
“MY PREFERENCE? Are you kidding me?”
I hadn’t been in labor for 48 hours like Judy, but I wasn’t in my right mind either. I was sleep deprived and now I’m seriously rattled by this last-minute escalation into whatever ring of hell we’d just entered. Was this man really asking me to make a life or death medical decision?
“Doctor, I don’t know anything about this. Why are you asking me?”
“The procedure has an element of risk and I need your approval.”
It hit me like an avalanche. Judy is in trouble. The baby is in trouble. That stopwatch is counting down to his death and this man is asking me for a decision on how to save our son’s life.
“Mr. Roberts. The procedure-“
“What are you better at? The forceps or the suction? What’s YOUR preference?”
“I prefer the suction device, but some people shy away from it because-“
“Do it. Whatever you’re best at, just do it.”
The Nurse handed over a cross between a ray gun and a toilet plunger. The plunger end went inside Judy; the Doctor made adjustments and started to pull. I could see his arm tremble from the exertion and the sweat break out across his brow. He was pulling with all his might but the baby wasn’t coming out.
The Nurse was back on her stopwatch. Her voice was hard and stern.
“DOCTOR! THIS BABY HAS TO-“
And then Baby Jackson slid out like an allstar ballplayer who’d just stolen home to win the big game. Our baby boy. The greatest joy of our lives had arrived and just in time with ten little fingers and ten little toes.
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