All the Grisly details

Monday, October 27, 1997 - At least this day started on a happier note than we thought it might. We had a gigantic household crisis over the weekend when we discovered that future "Morbeck Cat Hall of Fame" member Mrs. Kitty was missing. Our landlord had spent Thursday, Friday, and Saturday installing a new "motel style" heater/AC unit up in Brad's room. Unbeknownst to me, she escaped out the front door when Mr. Knappe left at about 6PM Saturday evening. Around bedtime Saturday Sally implored me to "check that Mrs. Kitty wasn't in the hallway." She wasn't. And she wasn't in the livingroom, kitchen, sunroom, den, downstairs bathroom, upstairs bathroom, or either of our bedrooms either. We started to get worried because she has taken a real interest in the outside world lately. I made several sojourns around the block gently calling her, begging her to return. No luck.

I continued to check the back steps for her as I watched Game 6 of the Marlins/Indians World Series and went to bed hoping she was OK. We have a number of feral cats around who hold the deed for our back porch, so I was apprehensive that they wouldn't let her sit on the porch waiting even if she did come back.

I woke up early Sunday morning and made up flyers emblazoned with bold face type stating, "MISSING SIAMESE CAT." Toward the end, I included the only effective motivating factor for this lovely neighborhood, "REWARD!". I went out with my little kit of flyers, stapler, and gaffers' tape ready to make a big splash all around the area. A light, cold drizzle had started and we worried more and more about our erstwhile tabby. I came back and soon after heard a ringing phone which we all pounced at in unison. A foreign woman was on the line saying, "You lose cat? You lose cat?" Sally and I were both so excited that it took about a minute of broken conversation to realize that the most this woman knew about a precious lost kitty was that she had seen one of the flyers nailed to a utility pole. Sadly, the conversation ended with, " I will look for your cat." I thanked her and hung up the phone.

The afternoon dragged on with the drizzle and cold intensifying . We couldn't help but picture our poor Mrs. Kitty huddled somewhere getting progressively wetter and wetter (She has very delicate fur*, she doesn't like the water). We tuned into the Eagles game and around half-time Brad and I ventured out to the vegetable/cold cut/ free-cookie-for-cute-little boys store. When we returned Sally was practically dancing with joy! The guys who live in the front part of the mansion downstairs had called and reported our darling feline was present - warm and cozy and hiding in one of their lower kitchen cabinets. All three of us (our entire family at that time, but that's the ultimate point of this story) journeyed down the stairs and out to the front door to rescue our wayward prima donna. We all celebrated a little by eating popcorn and prepared for the big day.

Monday, October 27, 1997- No really, this time I mean it. Neither of us made it through Game 7 of the Marlins/Indians World Series.

 We wanted to but what with the late start, extra innings, and the alarm clock set for 4:30AM wiser (and sleepier) heads prevailed. Well, it's the big day. We all get dressed and buzz down to the Center City in pre-rush hour traffic bliss - it's the early bird who catches the worm. Sally checks in around 6:15AM as Brad gets a little antsy and tries to insist that he needs to explore every square inch of the main floor of Pennsylvania Hospital, loudly. We have time to kill before we can legitimately stash him over at Wan Tisnower's for the day (I've never seen a kid there before 8:00AM but she'd probably answer the door).

Brad and I decide to go out for a delicious breakfast at "Pete's Famous", the Greek pizza place up on Fairmount Ave.

Being Pennsyltoonyans, we share a side of scrapple while we dine lavishly on a cheese omelet, toast, OJ, and a single egg for the Bearboy. We leisurely discuss the day's events, making sure our subject never strays from a pre-negotiated list of appropriate topics: trains, big trucks, and "Two Babies, Two Babies!" We dawdle at Pete's for a while drinking the proverbial bottomless cup of coffee and then pack our one and only son (but not for long) off to Wan's for the day, having decided that most of the medical professionals we were dealing with had no cause for advice from a 2 year old. PS He has no idea what's coming.

I returned to Pennsylvania Hospital (The Nation's First Hospital!) to find Sally safely ensconced in a room up in the Maternity Ward (Nation's first "lying-in" ward, 1803). Pennsylvania Hospital being what it is (The Nation's First Hospital!), there are some very interesting historical exhibits up on the walls featuring rows of nurses wearing heavily starched uniforms proudly standing next to rows of babies who were coincidentally all Caucasians. Ah, the good old days (just kidding, I lovve Diversity). Did I mention that Pennsylvania Hospital is (The Nation's First Hospital!)? You can barely trip over a bedpan without picking it up and finding (The Nation's First Hospital!) emblazoned somewhere on it. I have to admit, I was impressed when I first heard it. Apparently Ben Franklin and his buddy Thomas Bond opened the old place to try to take some of the loonies off the streets of Fluffia in pre-Revolutionary times. They were later joined by Dr. Benjamin Rush, known in these here parts as, "The Father of modern Psychiatry."

Before we get too much further, I should probably explain what brings us to this moment in time. Way back last spring we were sent by our primary care giver (that's family doctor, for those of you who don't speak 90's-ese) to the offices of Vaughn, Ronner, and Zadeleski, obstetricians affiliated with Pennsylvania Hospital (The Nation's First Hospital!) One of the doctors examined Sally and pulled a little wheel out of her smock which magically calculates gestation times and the like. This nifty little circular slide rule is a close cousin to one of the triumphs of 1960's technology, the question & answer wheel for our favorite fun and learning game, "Meet the Presidents!" The one big hurdle which all of us had to jump every time we came close to smelling victory in this noble endeavor was remembering the answer to the bone-chilling question, "Who made the Gadsen Purchase?" (This would be called the "Big Cheese" question in Trivial Pursuit parlance.)

"President Gadsen? No, that's not right! Eventually the would be winner stumbles over the right answer, old "Live Free or Die" Franklin Pierce.

EDITOR'S CONFESSION: FOR THE LAST 30+ YEARS I HAVE BEEN LABORING UNDER THE MISAPPREHENSION THAT THE CORRECT ANSWER TO THE ABOVE QUESTION IS:

JAMES KNOX POLK

Be that as it may, the date they gave us way back when was November 10, but at that time they assumed only a single pregnancy. One thing we didn't know about the having-twins-phenomena was that all orders of multiples have to go through a progressively shorter time period in order to go full term, twins being about two weeks shorter than singletons, triplets even less, etc., etc. So anyway, the whole upshot of this is that she's being induced on October 27 even though her official due date is still two weeks away. The babies have reached the point of not being able to gain any more weight because of the cramped conditions, so the doctors mentioned that "we don't want them to cook in there any longer," whatever that means. Thinking about it, I guess it has something to do with the old expression, "having one (two) in the oven."

Sally has a really nice nurse named Irma who meets up with her in the hospital room when they finally let her upstairs after the usual 8000+ questions down at Admissions. The room is filled with all sorts of little frilly fluffles and wallpaper treatments, competition among providers for patients who want to join in the insurance company milking process being what it is. Apparently her cervix is dilated 2 cm -- The doctors start her on Pitocin at 8:30 AM to try to speed the process along. We get a succession of doctors strolling in and introducing themselves, picking up and reading the chart, and then retreating to who-knows-where. The main thing they have in common is that they are ALL of the female persuasion for about the first 4 hours. I was thrilled when a male doctor finally made an appearance sometime in the early afternoon -- aha, now we're getting somewhere. I mentioned how happy I was to see him and he informed me that, yes, "The Best Doctors in this Hospital are Men!" This brought several scowls from the other attending physicians.

Ah, but I get ahead of the story. They've strapped Sally's midsection up with two separate monitors, one for "Baby A" and one for "Baby B". Around 9AM the Pitocin has started to work and the cervix stretches to 5 cm. Dr. Nina Mohammed is our obstretrician and our new additions seem to be her only patients today. At about 10:30 AM "Baby B" gets a little uppity about how events are unfolding and starts going into a mild case of fetal distress. The fetal monitor entrusted with "Baby B" 's care starts making various shrill whistles and beeping noises, obviously trying to get someone's attention if they had happened to be down the hall smoking a cigarette or something (they weren't). There's an ultrasound machine right near by so one of the doctors takes a look at the fetal positioning and everybody seems to check out OK. Dr. Mohammed stops by and has them back off the Pitocin for a while and the mini-crisis subsides.

We're having a very pleasant day here, despite a tangible sense of foreboding for what the afternoon has in store. Always the restless one ( and hungry--I am a Morbeck, after all), I make a few forays off of the maternity ward floor to go on various expotitions.

I stop by the hot dog cart on the corner for an "EHD", the greatly needed "emergency hot dog" to keep body and soul together. My dream someday is to own one of those industrial sized hot dog grills that spins the doggies back and forth in chrome bliss, like they have at ballparks or some of your better convenience stores. I also once saw mustard and ketchup delivered via a tap system (at Nathan's Famous on Coney Island, circa 1976); Someday my house will have spigots labeled Gulden's and Heinz' right up on the wall next to Hot and Cold. Simple Man, Simple Dreams.

The Pine Building at PA Hospital boasts a lot of interesting historical sites (we are, of course, at The Nation's First Hospital!) On the third floor there is the "oldest existing surgical amphitheater." (1804) This is a 30 foot wide circular room with standing room galleries for spectators, lit only by a central skylight. In this room, the legendary Dr. Phillip Syng Physick, commonly acknowledged to be "The Father of Modern Surgery" practiced unsterile operations for the amusement of bored University of Pennsylvania (also founded by BENJAMIN Franklin) medical students. The reason I mention this is because I'm glad that the hospital's anesthesia practices have changed a little. Sally received an epidural with a light dose of some wonder drug. If she had elected to have surgery in Physick's day, she would have been offered the following choices to attempt to deaden the pain:

1) laudanum (opium)

2) liquor (usually rum)

or, my personal favorite

3) "A tap on the head with a Mallet"

A life long fan of the noble sport of Croquet, I'd probably take the mallet. I wander the grounds a little, check out the cornerstone laid by the aforementioned Mssrs. Franklin and Rush, and return to the room.

Being Dr. Mohammed's only patients of the day has turned out to be a very pleasant experience. She's an Ethiopian by birth, and she chats with us for a long time about her own recent motherhood adventures, as she had a little girl last spring. All in all, it really makes for a nice, relaxed, atmosphere.

Dr. Mohammed with the boys at first check up

At 2 o'clock they fire up the Pitocin drip again - the cervix is now dilated to 7 centimeters. This would seem rather wide if it wasn't for our family's propensity for exceedingly large, round heads. Dr. Mohammed returns with a long plastic wand-like device culminating in a nasty little hook at the end. I'm sure this thing has some technical name, but essentially they could market it under the trade name, "The Placenta Breaker." She obviously wants to speed up the process a bit and keep the whole affair within normal business hours. We acquiesce and she goes ahead with the procedure. Meanwhile an operating room is being readied around the corner. Because this is considered a "high risk" pregnancy, it's standard procedure to be in an operating room rather than a normal "birthing suite" (more 90's-ese). I have to put on a surgical gown and booties and the whole green ghost garb, complete with a mask and a hat that looks like I should be flipping burgers somewhere. They wheel Sally in and start getting her ready- her contractions are starting to get closer and closer together and we can tell that it's almost time.

Earlier in the day an anesthesiologist had inserted a needle into Sally's back which they could use to administer a veritable smorgasbord of pain killers if needed . When we get to the OR we're met by an incredible contingent of medical professionals. When we went to childbirth classes when we had Brad a few years ago the teacher did a demonstration to show us how many people would be accompanying us on this strange journey. And this time it was all Times Two! I can't really begin to count how many people were there, but Sally had her own team and each baby had a few assigned to each of them. I feel a bit left out because I am the only one there who doesn't really know what he (she) is doing. For everyone else, it seemed to be pretty much "business as usual."

Things are really starting to speed up now. We enter the OR at approximately 3:45PM and they spend the first 15 minutes or so getting all of the necessary stuff together. There seems to be some sort of dispute as to exactly how the stirrups on the delivery room table are supposed to work but one of the nurses steps in and takes charge. Sally keeps slipping down the table and we keep pulling her back up. I'm in charge of giving her water and ice and her contractions are getting closer and closer together. One of the nurses is a guy named Brian and when he did something to make Sally more comfortable he told her, " Remember, my name is Brian;'Brian' made you feel better. Obviously he was using the power of suggestion on us , hoping that we'd name one of the babies in his honor. Guess what? It didn't work.

Through the magical eyes of the ultrasound they've determined that "Baby A" is positioned Vertex (Large Round Head down) and "Baby B" is Transverse (Large Round Head off to one side). Throughout this entire pregnancy it seems that all of the ultrasound people seem fascinated by the sizes of our babies' "in utero" heads. They continually measure them by various snazzy electronic means and I'm really expecting two handsome "fitted" caps to arrive at any minute. Alas, I think they're going to be too late. "Baby A" is definitely ready to make his escape. After only about 10 or 15 big contractions Gabriel Shaw Morbeck arrives with a nice healthy yell at 4:21 PM.

The doctors jump in , cut the umbilical cord, and clean him up to make him look a little bit more presentable. They show him to his proud parents and rush him over to his own set of pediatricians who put him under an incubator while they started administering an Apgar test on him. Poor guy, he's alive less than a minute and already he has to cram for a test. He's a formidable entity, weighing in at 6 pounds, 15 ounces -- not as big as brother Brad was, of course, but still pretty big for a multiple. Dr. Mohammed and her team turn their attention away from Gabriel and immediately start studying the ultrasound image to see how "Baby B" has responded to the whole trauma of having his older brother leave the roost.

"Baby B" is still lying transverse but the joint seems to be a lot more comfortable now that Gabriel is out there breathing Philadelphia-style fresh air. Dr Mohammed decides to try to "turn" the B boy head down by gently massaging Sally's midsection. Our real fear is that Sally will get both birthing experiences in one shot - A vaginal birth followed by a Cesarean. Dr. Mohammed is pretty sure she can coax this second guy out without going to the scalpel, however. The tension mounts as this guy tries to send his arm down the birth canal first, ahead of his large, round head. Through various sleights-of-hand Dr. Mohammed shoves it back in and "Baby B" is on his way out. This time it's even quicker, as Benjamin Lyter Morbeck arrives at 4:37 PM.

He's a little bit smaller ( 6 pounds, 9 ounces) than Gabriel, but he generally seems in good shape. He sticks around the OR long enough to say hello and take his Apgar test, and then is whisked up to the pediatric ICU (Intensive Care Unit, for those of us who watch the Phillies rather than "ER). One of the pediatricians comes up and tells us that his coloring is a bit off, probably due to his umbilical cord being wrapped up around his neck area. Apparently this is what was causing the fetal distress earlier in the day. It doesn't sound too serious, so we don't worry too much. In fact, when I went up to visit him about 15 minutes later in the ICU I noticed that they seemed to be leaving him completely alone - Either they're all incompetent or there's no cause for alarm. I prefer to think it's the latter. They wheel Sally back to a conventional hospital room to recover and it's beginning to sink in that we're now a family of five.

And now it's time for the totals and the highlights.

"GABRIEL" is derived from the Hebrew "gabhriel" which means, literally, "God is (my) Strength. Gabriel was also an archangel, of course--the herald of good news.

"BENJAMIN" is derived from the Hebrew "binyamin" which means, literally, "the son of the right hand", hence the favorite son. He's going to have to settle for "favorite son his size."

The great part of having twins is that you can manage to include both sides of the family without much difficulty. Gabriel "Shaw" is named for my mother's family (that's her maiden name, as some of my creditors have occasion to ask) . Benjamin "Lyter" uses the same formula on Sally's side of the family as her mother is a Lyter. We're pleased with being able to butter both sides of the bread at once (whatever that means; I prefer toast.)

October 27, 1997: A Bad Day for Bulls, Bears, and Indians

Gabriel and Benjamin arrived on Monday, October 27, 1997. Game 7 of the World Series (Sunday night's game) ended somewhere past midnight when the Florida Marlins outlasted the Cleveland Indians in 11 innings, 3-2 (Edgar Renteria drove in the game winning run with a single). Also on Monday, the Stock Market dropped precipitously (Dow Jones avg plummeted 554 pts, 7.2%), in crash-like proportions reminiscent of the Great Crashes of October 1929 and October 1987. This would have greatly upset their Grandfather Morbeck, who followed such things closely in his lifetime.

Our first official communiques from the babies' friends at the Federal Government were two official-looking envelopes from the Social Security Administration. Hooray! Our Social Security numbers are here, our Social Security numbers are here! We're one with the struggle of our nation's entitlement programs! All is not perfect in this shining city on the hill, however. Printed plainly on the card is the admonishment to, "SIGN IMMEDIATELY IN INK."

    As of this writing, there has been absolutely no evidence of compliance by either one of them. In one of our favorite "Thomas the Tank Engine" episodes, the new policeman on the beat writes Thomas up for not having cow catchers. Thomas replies , "I've never had cow catchers!" and the cop (or is it a "bobbie"?) writes, "REGULAR LAW BREAKER" on his pad.

It was suggested to us late in Sally's pregnancy by a friend of ours that maybe we could convince the second twin (in this case, Ben) to hold on to the first twin's (Gabriel) ankles for the journey down the old birth canal. Great idea but already done, unfortunately. Twins first appear in the Old Testament in Genesis with the story of Jacob and Esau.

Genesis 25:24

When the time came for her to give birth, there were twin boys in her womb. The first to come out was red, and his whole body was like a hairy garment; so they named him Esau. After this, his brother came out, with his hand grasping Esau's heel; so he was named Jacob.

Hopefully our boys will get along better than these guys did.