The Birth Story

I always wait impatiently to hear the prized birth story from friends, so I thought I had better hold up my end...abandon this post immediately if you prefer to continue with the stork theory instead. It's much nicer to listen to and works better on greeting cards. Anyway...

After charging up the large cement incline to daycare three days in a row with no luck, I went to bed Friday night (already one day overdue) carefully positioned on the shower curtain on our bed - oh, Eric invented the phrase "an ounce of prevention..."

I woke up at 1:00 a.m. feeling icky, but the shower curtain was dry. I started pacing up and down our creaky hardwood hallway, breathing in and out and feeling my heart racing because I was pretty sure it was the real thing and that meant we'd meet our new baby THAT DAY (two days overdue, for the record). So I paced about twenty minutes and went through two contractions.

I showered, did my makeup and hair, and checked the clock. 2:00 a.m. Time to wake up Er. I lifted the covers off his face and said in my best movie star voice, "It's time!" He mumbled something about Fargo that made me giggle because it made no sense. I dropped the covers back lightly on his face and went to get my suitcase.

Nana arrived fifteen minutes later to stay with our Abby Bear, and we hit the road for Jamestown. I leaned my seat back and waited for more contractions. Nothing, really. I started to doubt myself, but then one would hit and I'd be sure; then it would go away and I'd doubt again.

Eric parked about a quarter mile from the emergency entrance by accident, so I hobbled my way across the parking lot like a windup toy that had to stop every few steps, bend from the waist, and recharge. I got the giggles again. For some reason he didn't think it was funny that I thought his parking job was funny.

We finally made it to the entrance and I pridefully refused the wheelchair. I liked my windup toy routine just fine, thanks.

I got the last bed in Jamestown; I found out afterward that, had it been full, regulations would have sent me to Fargo whether I liked it or not. I was one centimeter, if even that. I felt silly. The nurse let me recline on the bed for 45 minutes or so, came back, and I was between three and four. I felt justified then, especially when my contractions started printing out on that paper and I could point out my pain to anyone who would listen. She left again to admit me as a patient and I started whimpering, "I want my epidural now" while Eric followed the recorded buck chases on TV at 3:30 in the morning. Every once in awhile I demanded his hand so I could squeeze it with a fraction of the squeezing my uterus had in store for me.

Finally the anesthesiologist arrived. If you've had an epidural, you know what I mean when I say it takes them forever to talk to you about the risks, get all of their equipment ready, and do heaven knows what while you're scrunched up and pummeled by contractions, wondering how many more you'll have to scale. At this point I started throwing up from the pain - for some reason my left side was killing me more than the contractions were. Finally, the magic drip started. It was not yet 6:00 a.m. and I was a little past five centimeters.

This is the part of birth I love. You can look over, watch the contractions print out, and stick your tongue out gleefully at them. My water broke at this point, too, just to spite the shower curtain at home.

I was ready to push by 8:45, and I remembered being yelled at in Grand Forks for doing a crummy job of pushing, so I felt a nagging performance anxiety. But, by some miracle, I only had to push a few times and Adam was ready to come out; in fact, the nurse told me to stop and put her hand on his head to keep him inside because the doctor was not even around yet. I basked in what a good pusher I had become while Eric shuffled around and kept asking if he should go and look for the doctor.

The doctor arrived in regular person clothes, asked if he had time to change, was told to hurry up (by the nurse), and then helped to extract our beautiful little 7 pound 12 ounce boy at 9:19 a.m.

The End