The time in the title is not an exaggeration. For my wife, the elapsed time between noticing blood while showering and holding our daughter in her arms was five hours fifteen minutes. I'm not entirely sure what's up but I think she may be cheating at childbirth somehow.

Everything was pretty normal with my wife's pregnancy up until 33 weeks 2 days. That was the day she noticed some blood while in the shower, and so called the hospital - who told her to come by when they opened 30 minutes later. She showed up and the doctor started an examination, only to stop after 30 seconds in order to declare that since my wife was 3cm dilated already she was heading over to labor & delivery right now.

My wife then texted me to let me know she didn't want me to worry, but that she saw some blood and was at the hospital. And that the doctor said I should probably come by but there was no rush. When asked for clarifcation, she quoted the doctor as saying "he should probably come now, but don't break any traffic laws."

When I got there fifteen minutes later, she'd already felt her first real contraction. As this was pretty significantly premature, they determined that they'd start her on magnesium sulfate immediately to relax her and hopefully stop contractions, and that they'd be giving her a steroid shot as a precautionary measure for the baby's lungs. Things kind of accelerated from there, as the magnesium sulfate seemed to look like pitocin to her body, and by 11 AM we were wheeled into a delivery room because she was clearly in active labor and wasn't stopping.

Contractions were significantly more rapid and constant than she'd anticipated them being, but she was strong and powered through them as long as she could. The fact that the baby was showing up so early threw her for a bit of a loop, as she thought she'd have time to experience Braxton-Hicks and get used to the sensations. The accelerated schedule was knocking that plan away, however, so she had no idea whether what she was feeling was the most significant version possible or not.

Her plan from the beginning was to experience childbirth completely unmedicated if at all possible, as she was leery of being off her feet for a significant amount of time after the birth, she was hoping to try multiple birthing positions if she could, and she was concerned about the epidural's tendency to extend labor. Three hours of nearly incessant (1 minute start to start, 30-45 seconds long) contractions took their toll, however, and by 1 PM she'd decided that an epidural would be lovely right now thank you very much. Additionally, since the baby was so early that she was prohibited from moving into different positions, and the labor was going so rapidly she didn't have to worry about it being extended.

Shortly after 1:15 they decided to catheterize her (I forget the reason why), and as this was being done the baby's heart rate dropped pretty significantly. This was really the only tense/upsetting part of the experience for me, as the room suddenly exploded with people and their demeanor went from high-pitched soft voices saying "everything is great you're doing great" to regular people speaking very professionally. Within around 30 seconds of the reduction in heart rate they had gotten another monitor on the baby, determined it was not a false reading from mom, and started wheeling my wife's bed toward the OR to prep for an emergency C-section.

After the decision was made, my panic subsided significantly as I was at this point certain that it was totally handled by the professionals and that everything would be fine. I started prepping to be present in the OR. It took them close to five minutes to get scrubs in my size (XL - surprising they didn't have any), and I hurriedly followed the nurse who had brought them to me as, according to her, things were going very fast.

I walked into the OR to see my wife pushing. As soon as they'd gotten her in there, the baby's heart rate had stabilized and they decided that, though the C-section was no longer necessary, the baby did need to come out right now. She was crowning when I walked up, and three good pushes later, at 1:59 PM, our daughter was in my wife's arms.

I accompanied our daughter to the NICU with the nurse, and he started the process of teaching me about the department and how they would be handling our daughter's care. I watched as they attached some monitors, gave her an IV, and ran some standard tests. It was an odd situation. I wasn't entirely impassive to her discomfort, but also I didn't feel an overwhelming compulsion to stop the people who were "hurting" her. I've thought a bit about the whole "dads don't bond as quickly" thing, and whether it's more that or the part where I am more concerned about her well-being than I am empathetic about minor injuries inflicted by people whose job it is to do so. Or perhaps I'm just a dick who doesn't care about his daughter. I hope not.

During all of this, my wife was recovering in her original delivery room. Two hours after delivery the epidural had worn off and she was able to walk on her own. Once that happened they wheeled my wife to the NICU and we were able to take our first picture as a family. After picture time, she went to her overnight room to get some well-deserved rest. Of course it was only 5 PM at this point and she wasn't actually able to sleep until after she sent me home at 1 AM, but rest was the theory.

Total time from first signs to birth was around 5 hours, 15 minutes. I can only conclude from this that my wife is a magical baby-making wizard. It shouldn't have come as a surprise, really, because she was born during the 20 minutes that her father was out getting coffee, and her sister was born in the car on the way to the hospital, but it was still not something I expected given that I'm a good foot taller than she is and thought our child would be massive as well.

In the aftermath, we learned that two things had happened that likely explained both the early delivery and the heart rate drop. The delivery was seemingly precipitated by a placental abruption. The heart rate drop was then probably caused by labor reducing the amount of physical space she had to move around in the uterus and constricting the knot that she'd managed to tie in her umbilical cord. All in all, it was very fortunate that my wife had called in and gotten herself to the hospital as quickly as she did, because she'd probably have been unable to safely drive the six miles on her own only 90 minutes later.

Happily, our daughter has been breathing entirely on her own since she was born, she's regulating her temperature and oxygen levels without issue. She is also making very good progress eating on her own, which is good because she has to stay in the NICU until she proves she can do so. Their estimate is that it will be no earlier than a week from today. Though it's not nice having our daughter live at the hospital instead of home, we try to look at the positive side of having highly-skilled professionals looking after her round the clock and teaching us how to do things properly for our first child.

Last night I finally convinced my wife to stay at home and rest a little longer, and so got to spend a couple hours alone with our little girl (and four nurses) and feed her myself for the first time. It was pretty sweet.