Happy Birthday!

My wife (at the time) went into labor at a promotional event for the station I was working at at the time. It was Monday night.

The contractions started - and stayed about every 15-25 minutes apart for the next 48 hours.

On Wednesday afternoon, August 7, finally, after a couple of sleepless nights, the contractions picked up speed - down to every two minutes. I raced my later-to-be ex-wife to Ramsey County Hospital, went to the maternity ward...

...where the contractions promptly dropped back to ten minutes. The resident - an exceedingly imperious Hindu woman who was clearly not used to answering questions - was adamant; if the contactions were over five minutes, we had to leave. Never mind that five minutes earlier the contractions had seemed damn-near steady. So home we went.

And the minute we walked in the door, the contractions dropped back down to ninety seconds. I slowly, painfully dragged her back down to the hospital.

The fun was just beginning.

The hardcore labor lasted about nine hours. It was all "back labor", which meant I spent the whole time pushing up under her back with both fists as hard as I could. By 3AM my arms were ready to fall off - I can't imagine what it must have like to be her.

Around three, they gave her a shot of morphine, and found me a chair to sleep in. We both crashed for about two hours, and kicked things off again around 5AM - when it all started over again.

By late morning, I was in a miasma of fatigue, my arms burning, my eyes gritty. So out of it, in fact, that it only dawned on me very slowly that the room was getting crowded. From one nurse, we'd jumped to seven doctors and half a dozen RNs. The baby'd gone into fetal distress; they were rushing to get her out before things got serious.

But out she came - and although her first apgar score was low from all the exertion she'd put into getting born (or, perhaps, not being born quite yet), her second, five minutes later, was perfect. They handed her to her mom, and then to me. She was perfect - a shock of red hair (that disappeared in a couple of days), and a tiny little button nose - and, harbinger of her teen years, she was already sleeping again.

That was fifteen years ago, this coming 12:20PM.

So let's recap:

• Delay
• Nobody can get her moving until she darn well wants to...
• Maximum pain and effort getting going
• Late, late, late
• Dramatic finish.

Yep. Nothing's changed.

Happy Birthday, Bun!

Posted by Mitch at August 8, 2006 05:41 AM | TrackBack