Three years ago today
This morning at breakfast I asked Randy if he realized what we had been doing three years ago today. He rolled his eyes.
Not quite unlike this morning, I was woken by Myles before five a.m. Though today it was because of his continued battle with time-change, then it was his telling us he was ready to be born. By breaking my water. A month earlier than expected.
In retrospect, I'm sure anyone would find the whole scene comical. I know I do. I ran to the bathroom, not quite sure what was happening because I hadn't even been to my childbirth classes yet. We had only moved to Mississippi a month before. I was planning to start them that next week. We didn't even have a car seat or a bed for the baby; we had cleared our schedules for that weekend to go shopping for these things. None of the baby clothes we had had even been washed yet. The new ones still bore tags and the hand-me-downs were still in their garbage bags. So here I was, water broken, standing in my laundry room throwing these things into the wash. Oh yeah, and right as I entered the laundry room, I found a dead lizard. For some reason I thought of the movie Household Saints and how it was bad luck for the pregnant lady to watch the turkey butchering, and I wondered what bad omen a dead lizard would be.
All this time Randy was trying to reach the hospital to see what we were supposed to do. Doesn't this just sound ridiculous to you? You would think a 31-year-old mother to be and her 47-year-old husband might have a clue what to do in this situation. So once they told him to bring me in (which I almost thought they wouldn't yet, because I wasn't contracting at all), we packed the bag and left. For my office.
Yes, I had to go to my office first. I had to change my voice mail to reflect that I would be out indefinitely and instead of leaving a message to direct calls to my coworker Brian. Then I had to check email, answer a few that I could immediately, then change my settings to auto-reply and auto-forward to Brian as well (funny side note: as much as the events of that morning took me by complete suprise, apparently my co-worker Brian was not when I talked to him later. He was supposed to fly down to my Mississippi office from the plant in Kentucky that Monday. When I called him after delivery to tell him to cancel the trip, he told me he didn't even book it yet. Apparently being the father of five children himself gave him ESP, and he said he could tell from my voice over the phone that I was going to go into labor by that weekend.) I checked a few other things, and then we left. Yes, this time for the hospital.
I don't know why I still thought they would do something to me at the hospital to make the labor stop and send me home until my due date. I think it was because I had watched 'way to many episodes of Baby Story and Maternity Ward on Discovery Channel when I was on bed rest early in my pregnancy. However, that is not something they do for a woman 36 weeks pregnant.
Cell phone in hand (which I told them not EVEN to think about taking from me yet), I started making furious calls. To co-workers. No, not my mother or my sisters first. My co-workers, but not to share the great and wonderful news. I needed to give some of them specific instructions on what to do today in my absence, calls to make, emails to send. At one point I said to one of the inside sales ladies that I needed to hurry our conversation because they were about to adminsiter my pitocin, and I understood that might affect my ability to talk. So it was even more urgent that she wrote down every word I said.
So in not too long of order this control freak learned pretty quickly that nothing was ever to be in her control after that.
And they lived happily ever after. The end.
Not quite unlike this morning, I was woken by Myles before five a.m. Though today it was because of his continued battle with time-change, then it was his telling us he was ready to be born. By breaking my water. A month earlier than expected.
In retrospect, I'm sure anyone would find the whole scene comical. I know I do. I ran to the bathroom, not quite sure what was happening because I hadn't even been to my childbirth classes yet. We had only moved to Mississippi a month before. I was planning to start them that next week. We didn't even have a car seat or a bed for the baby; we had cleared our schedules for that weekend to go shopping for these things. None of the baby clothes we had had even been washed yet. The new ones still bore tags and the hand-me-downs were still in their garbage bags. So here I was, water broken, standing in my laundry room throwing these things into the wash. Oh yeah, and right as I entered the laundry room, I found a dead lizard. For some reason I thought of the movie Household Saints and how it was bad luck for the pregnant lady to watch the turkey butchering, and I wondered what bad omen a dead lizard would be.
All this time Randy was trying to reach the hospital to see what we were supposed to do. Doesn't this just sound ridiculous to you? You would think a 31-year-old mother to be and her 47-year-old husband might have a clue what to do in this situation. So once they told him to bring me in (which I almost thought they wouldn't yet, because I wasn't contracting at all), we packed the bag and left. For my office.
Yes, I had to go to my office first. I had to change my voice mail to reflect that I would be out indefinitely and instead of leaving a message to direct calls to my coworker Brian. Then I had to check email, answer a few that I could immediately, then change my settings to auto-reply and auto-forward to Brian as well (funny side note: as much as the events of that morning took me by complete suprise, apparently my co-worker Brian was not when I talked to him later. He was supposed to fly down to my Mississippi office from the plant in Kentucky that Monday. When I called him after delivery to tell him to cancel the trip, he told me he didn't even book it yet. Apparently being the father of five children himself gave him ESP, and he said he could tell from my voice over the phone that I was going to go into labor by that weekend.) I checked a few other things, and then we left. Yes, this time for the hospital.
I don't know why I still thought they would do something to me at the hospital to make the labor stop and send me home until my due date. I think it was because I had watched 'way to many episodes of Baby Story and Maternity Ward on Discovery Channel when I was on bed rest early in my pregnancy. However, that is not something they do for a woman 36 weeks pregnant.
Cell phone in hand (which I told them not EVEN to think about taking from me yet), I started making furious calls. To co-workers. No, not my mother or my sisters first. My co-workers, but not to share the great and wonderful news. I needed to give some of them specific instructions on what to do today in my absence, calls to make, emails to send. At one point I said to one of the inside sales ladies that I needed to hurry our conversation because they were about to adminsiter my pitocin, and I understood that might affect my ability to talk. So it was even more urgent that she wrote down every word I said.
So in not too long of order this control freak learned pretty quickly that nothing was ever to be in her control after that.
And they lived happily ever after. The end.
Comments
Congratulations... it's so wonderful to remember.