My Little Guy is 9 Today!
Today is my son’s 9th birthday. Since I am busy making his requested birthday breakfast (Cream of Wheat, eggs, bacon), and dipping strawberries into chocolate for the class celebration of his special day, I am posting this story I wrote a while back about going into labor with him. I can’t believe he is nine. I would give anything to hold my 9 year old boy as a baby again. Instead, I’ll be dropping him off at school in a little while, hoping he kisses me in front of his friends. I’ll do all of the requested and required things on this birthday for him, but all I really want to do is kiss his head and hope it still has the faint, residual scent of Baby Magic and newness.
I can’t believe he is nine.
Friday, April 30, 1999
2:12 a.m.
“Honey, I think I just had a contraction.”
“It’s false labor. Go back to sleep.”
2:22 a.m.
“Honey, I just had another one. It ******* hurts.”
“It’ll go away. Let me go back to sleep.”
2:30 a.m.
“IF I CAN’T SLEEP WHAT THE HELL MAKES YOU THINK YOU SHOULD???!!!”
“Okay, let’s go to the hospital.” Finally, the delicate response I was seeking.
3:10 a.m.
We’re sitting in the driveway and the world is illuminated – a full moon shining. It made it easier to put one foot in front of the other, even though I couldn’t see my feet. Our blue Jetta GL was still newish, and my husband treated it like the baby while he could. We pay for everything on our own by now, adults that we are. About to welcome our first child, after all.
I grab the handle next to the window, close my eyes and begin to do deep breathing…in through the nose, out through the mouth. Sitting in the passenger seat, I hope to see us halfway to the hospital when I open my eyes. But when I open them to gauge our ETA, I discover we are still in the driveway.
My husband Pete, yawning, eyes barely open under his Astros baseball hat, sits and looks at me from the driver’s seat. When his long, indulgent yawn ends, he gives me an unassuming smile, a “Hi honey, how ya doin’?” smile.
I am panting at this point. Rather than inhaling air through my nose, I am exuding flames from my nostrils, a mideival dragon in labor, if you will.
Yet I speak at pleasant decibels when I say “What are you doing?”
“I’m letting the car warm up.”
He’s letting the car warm up.
“ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR ****** MIND ?”
With that, Pete releases the parking break and speeds merrily down the street.
It takes two minutes to get through six stoplights and onto the freeway that would take us to the hospital. That is the good thing about going into labor in the wee hours – no traffic. Unfortunately, that is also the time that highway and transportation workers re-pave, re-paint, or make attempts to improve infrastructure in large cities.
When we get to the freeway merge that leads us to the hospital, the merge is closed for repair.
“It’s closed, honey” says Pete, calmly, as if he’s making a last dying request of a captor.
“I CAN SEE THAT IT’S CLOSED. GO THROUGH IT!”
“Babe, there could be a big gaping hole in the merge and then we’d die.”
“You’ll die anyway unless you get me to the hospital soon. I don’t care how you do it, just get me there.”
I close my eyes, breathe like I am supposed to, and by the time I count to 100, we’re there. I don’t know how my husband did it. Warm car? Frightened man? Whatever works.
He parks. I hobble out of the car and into a wheelchair.
“You going to L & D, hun?” asks a sweet nurse with puffy cheeks and a southern drawl.
“Yes please,” I respond, about to cry, feeling a little like a child who asks her boo boo to be kissed. I just love that someone wants to dote over me in this condition – keep it coming.
She wheels me into the elevator, we go up two floors, but the let down of the last floor makes me nauseated. This is a bad idea. Can I change my mind about having a child?
“This one is a first-timer,” my southern nurse says to the suspicious intake nurse on the third floor. How did she know that? I didn’t tell her. Am I that obvious? The intake nurse wears thick glasses, is way too skinny and not smiling (I’d be smiling if I were that skinny) and scans me up and down in my desperate state. She has way too much power. And I need to appease her because she is the guardian of the labor and delivery rooms that hold the epidurals and house the anesthesiologists that I must make acquaintance with NOW.
“Let’s get you into a room.”
Yes.
Another nurse enters my room. I’m already in the gown that doesn’t cover me. This is a Catholic hospital – Jesus, can you hear me? Can you send the anesthesiologist in here immediately?
The nurse checks me. She takes off her glove and glares at me. Her expression doesn’t change, she doesn’t flinch, her voice stays level and she’s unimpressed by my condition, although I am certain I am dying in a Civil War infirmary.
“You’re only dilated a centimeter and a half. We can’t check you in. Come back later.”
Later, when the roads are open again.
“Get the car warm, honey.”
~ Happy Birthday, Champ…Love, Momma (Samantha Gianulis)
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