3 years ago today, this is how my journey into fatherhood began.
I pulled these out of the archive today… because I can. Feel free to grab a drink, kick back and read all of them… if you have the time to do so.
I have always been verbose in my writing… becoming a father, and subsequently becoming a cranio dad has only amplified this. As I read back over all of these, there are tears, there are sighs, and there are smiles. I am so honored and humbled to be the dad of such an amazing little girl, and boy. Zoey is awesome, and I am still wrapping my mind around the fact that she is three.
Happy Birthday Zoey!
I AM A CRANIO DAD, I am scared out of my mind, but today I push aside my fears and celebrate this beautiful little girl that I am honored to be called “dada” by.
The Long Update, part 1, birth story
So, let me start by stating that this message is going to be full of a lot of information. We encourage all of you to read this, walk away and come back to read it again. That being stated, let us begin in the beginning.
On Monday night Kati informed me that she was a little worried because she had not felt anything from the baby in awhile. So we consulted the on-call midwife at the hospital. She informed us to have Kati drink some juice, eat something, and lay on her side. After an hour she still had not felt any real movement. So, at midnight the morning of April 10th we arrived to labor and delivery at MCV . It took them no time at all to get us back to a room and to have Kati hooked up to some monitors. We instantly could hear our little one’s heart beat; strong and steady as ever. Our fears were quickly put to rest. On a whim, I asked the midwife if she could check and see if Kati had become more dilated since our appointment on Wednesday when she was 2cm and 40% effaced. She gladly obliged, and upon checking, her expression quickly changed… in a good way. With a smile she told us that Kati was 5 almost 6 cm dilated, 90% effaced, there was a bulging membrane bag with a little bloody show, so we were not going anywhere. Kati was not feeling any contractions at all, so they advised us to relax and give it a few hours. They were certain that we would be having our little one that day. They came in to reassess Kati around 3am and there was no major change. So we discussed our options. Initially, we decided that we would wait and see if there was any change by 6am. All along Kati had wanted a natural birth, and as there was no danger we felt that reassessing at 6am was a sound decision. We also decided that the next step would be to have them break Kati’s sac for her manually. Well, 6 am came, Kati was still not feeling any contractions, but she was rather uncomfortable. She had tried to sleep in vain. They checked her again, and there was little to no change. She had dilated to 6cm, and much to our surprise, she was actually having contractions every three minutes! We decided to have them break her water for her, and so it began. Instantly Kati experienced her first felt contraction. From there, they never really stopped. I must say that I am in awe of all that my wife did and went through to bring out our little bundle of joy into this world. She never gave up. Sure, there were a couple of walls that she had to work her way through, but at 8:24am on April 10th, after 2 hours and 24 minutes of intense labor, she reached down and pulled our beautiful daughter out and up to her chest. Hearing that little cry melted me through and through. It was at that very moment that I became a father, Kati became a mother, and we welcomed Zoey Kathryn Von Bank into the world. She was 6lbs 6 oz and 17.9 inches long with blond hair and dark blue eyes.
This is where the story starts to get difficult.