Alex Arrives
After the very surprise labor last night, this morning I dropped CZ off at the hospital (no one under 15 allowed in the hospital so I needed to drop ZZ off). She had been up all night with contractions which were very painful but not frequent or long lasting enough to merit a trip to the hospital in the middle of the night. I drove like a madman to St Egreve to drop ZZN off with the nanny, then back again to La Tronche, where there is NO GODDAM PARKING. Seriously, a hospital without a parking structure next to the baby building? I had to park 20 minutes away on foot. There did not turn out to be a huge hurry, since we were in for a long wait. After some initial questions, they escorted us to the birthing room, which was really nice-- Chartreuse views! I had to wear little booties, a gown and a hair net the whole time, but hey, at least I wasn't giving birth, right? We requested the epidural immediately, and they examined chloe who was now at 5 cm. 
Chloe and I exchanged nervous glances, since that was how things started out with Zoe, and that was a loooong and painful story. A little later, after getting pumped full of epidural drugs, chloe was feeling better, but still at 5 cm. This was not looking good. Then the epidural stopped working, and the anesthesiologist very begrudgingly gave CZ another dose, to no avail. She even checked Chloe's drug port to make sure it was going in and not just running out over her back. I'm not sure if they thought chloe's screams of pain were a show for us, or perhaps she was a junkie in search of a fix or what, but it took a long time before they switched drugs. The problem with no working drugs was that Chloe was pushing before she was supposed to (because of the pain). The baby hadn't descended enough, so that was not a good thing. The good news was that she was at 10 cm now. After switching drugs, the baby's heart rate started slowing a bit, so all of a sudden I found myself in a very familiar situation: wife wheeled out of the birthing room, with me told to "restez la, monsieur" in an empty room hoping someone would remember to come get me. In a few minutes a nurse returned with scrubs for me to don (those things are comfy! I want to wear them all the time), and summoned me to the C-section room. "C-section room -- uh oh!!" Thankfully, drug #2 had kicked in and chloe was by now feeling pretty happy. It was 6 pm and they were going to give the baby another 40 minutes to descend. However, 20 minutes into the wait, the heart rate was not looking fantastic and they decided to try a vacuum extraction. I won't go into the details of this, but it was a pretty incredible thing to watch. They attach a vacuum cap to the head of the baby, and then pull like crazy while Chloe pushes. This is not a delicate maneuver -- the doctor looked like he was starting a two stroke engine. After four cycles of this and a little cutting (agh!), Alex was out and very cone headed. Chloe had been pushing like a champ and looked like she was about to pass out, but assured me that she was in no pain: her 8.5 month plan to get a drug fix had succeeded! They cleaned the baby off while chloe had to push the placenta out. The placenta is kind of disgusting looking and gigantic, to be perfectly honest. I have a nice picture of it for those of you that think that eating them is a cool custom. Next came 40 minutes of holding chloe's hand while they sewed her back up. 
Hooray for Chloe! Alex was a little upset at being prodded, but otherwise quite happy.
Big thanks to Franck for offering to pick up ZZ, and for Lolo and Vero for picking her up and bringing her to their place. I didn't make it to St Egreve until 10 pm or so and they even put me up for the night so I didn't have to drive all the way across town.
