This is the "Everything's Alright" Alarm

It was time for the epidural. The nurses' shift had changed. It was getting late. "Runaway Jury" was coming to an end. And no matter what or when things happen next, Aliyah needed some sleep. And that wasn't going to happen without medication.

About this time it became clear to Aliyah that she was going to have to give up the dream of giving birth a nightgown chosen from from that would be slightly nicer than a hospital nightgown but not so nice it couldn't be thrown away after becoming saturated in umbilical cord juice. But after the nurse (#4) explained where all the wires and tubes go and that little part of her vision for a perfect delivery died and the floral-print, previously-worn-by-sick-people, cotton hospital gown won out.

During the epidural procedure, two things happened. (1) Aliyah once again performed that magic trick in which she 'accidentally' finds out that everyone in the room besides me was in some way from Midwood Brooklyn and (2) it officially became Monday.

Once it was over Aliyah was tucked in, the TV turned off, lights out
and time to get some sleep. Then... about two minutes later an alarm on the I.V. drip machine goes off. The bag of neutral liquid has emptied. About five minutes later, that's fixed and it is again time for sleeping. I don't think I'm exaggerating that about 2 minutes later a different machine starts making an alarm noise. However in this machine's defense, it was a very soothing alarm. It was a gentle, two-toned alarm that sounded a glockenschpeel played with felt mallets. Unlike the I.V. machine which clearly displayed a message as to what was wrong, this machine appeared to be working exactly as it had for the last 13 hours Aliyah had been hooked up to it. We decided that this relatively friendly alarm could only mean one of three things: (1) It was the "Time for Sleep Alarm," warning the patient that he or she is tired and needs to go to sleep (2) It was the "Your Sushi is No Longer Edible Alarm," warning the patient's husband that even very large amounts of wasabi will not kill all of the bacteria on sushi kept at room temperature for 6 hours; even if said sushi is tuna wasabi roll (3) This was the "Everything's Alright Alarm" indicating that everything is alright and that as long as this alarm was going off there is no need to worry. We were pretty sure it was an "Everything's Alright Alarm" but also that it was broken because Aliyah clearly needed sleep and by virtue of the fact that the alarm going off right next to her bed and keeping her awake, everything was not actually alright. [A side note to any engineers designing medical equipment: alarms should go off at a nurse's station or a doctor's cell phone; there's not much a patient or a patient's spouse can do.] Eventually a nice doctor from Framingham, MA thought our laughter might wake up other patients and turned it off.

Then I.V. machine went off again half an hour after that. I'm not kidding, and by that time it wasn't funny anymore.

Aliyah's still barely dialated, but the epidural has let her sleep through some very big contractions. The monitor shows there are some fairly small ones coming right now about two-and-a-half minutes apart. It's about 5:30 AM on the East Coast right now, so I'm going to post this so my mother can read it with her morning tea.