It’s Just A Life.15

Hurry Up And Wait

The last few weeks of having a baby is like the worst Christmas ever. Every morning you wake up and expect the presents, and oops! Sorry, Christmas isn’t today, we were wrong, maybe tomorrow. That can go on for two weeks, or more. It’s exhausting. But when that long, long day ends you have the most amazing present you will ever receive.

William was exactly two weeks late. Laurie and I had an appointment with the doctor a few days after the due date, and while we were there we expressed our concern about his being past due. Laurie had been having Braxton Hicks contractions for days, and our nerves were getting raw. Braxton Hicks contractions are just a disconcerting, but harmless part of pre-term labour. It’s one of the body’s ways of getting the mother ready for the true delivery, but they can be painful and hard to distinguish from real labor at times. We also worried, ironically, that Laurie wouldn’t go into real labor at all. Her mother had to be induced with both of her pregnancies. We were worried it could be hereditary. Nervous parents-to-be that we were, our doctor, to humor us I’m sure, scheduled an appointment to induce exactly two weeks after the due date. He said as we were leaving that in his experience his patients often went into labor the day before, or of, the appointment. For us it was the day of.

Laurie started labor sometime in the late evening on March 31, 1989, exactly one day short of two weeks. She was awake off and on the whole night. She didn’t wake me much. Afterwards all, what could I do? She can’t have slept more than a few hours. The next morning, since we were scheduled to induce, we figured we might as well just go to the 8 AM appointment at the delivery ward.

The drive to the hospital was like something out of a sitcom. To me, mind you, not Laurie. She was very uncomfortable with the contractions coming a bit sooner and harder. She swore I was hitting the cracks in the road harder than I normally did and I should please f-ing knock it off. I may have snapped something back, but quite honestly, since I didn’t have to be in labor, I hope I wisely kept my mouth shut.

When we arrived at the hospital we were greeted by a nice nurse. Laurie wasn’t in really active labor yet so they didn’t rush with admitting us. Luckily, since we were at a Kaiser hospital, there wasn’t really any paperwork, so we were escorted to a room reasonably quickly, and pretty much left on our own just as we would have been at home. And so we waited.

Occasionally, but with increasing intensity, she’d have a contraction. I could see them coming on a monitor, so I would have a chance to start preparing Laurie with relaxation and breathing techniques. She’s the type who shuts down and stiffens to fight pain, and the one thing I learned in those disturbingly frank Lamaze classes, was relaxation was the only thing I had to bring to the party. And so it went for a little over 9 hours.

I didn’t force her to get out of bed and move around as much as I should have. Things might have gone quicker if I had. At one point Laurie agreed to a drug to ease her discomfort, but it slowed the contractions down. With her mother’s help I persuaded her to go without. She’s strong, and has endured a lot of physical and mental pain in her life, so I know what she can handle. She didn’t need drugs at that time. There are plenty of things I wish I had done better, but overall, I like to think Laurie and I made a spectacular team from the moment we discovered we were expecting, to the moment we left him at college. This was one of our best moments.

William was born around 5 in the evening April 1, 1989. Healthy, 8 lb., 21 inches, and perfect. The best April fools joke ever. We both agreed he looked like an alien when we first held him, and we actually got scolded for calling him “it” several times. We found it funny because to us, since we didn’t want to know the babies sex, he was “it”. We loved him as it, but how could she know?

He was the first of his generation in both of our families. My middle sister had been trying for a few years, and I didn’t know it at the time, but my older sister was pregnant as well, but it was weird being the youngest and first. Every member of both our families showed up around 9 or 10 AM and waited. They waited the whole day to be there when he was born. What child could have a better welcome. My brother-in-law Tim took his very first baby picture. Laurie is radiant holding him as only a beaten and exhausted proud new mother can be. I don’t think she was awake too long after greeting everybody in the receiving room, but she and I both remember my mother saying how William was the best birthday present she ever got. Laurie and I were so self-involved with the pregnancy that neither of us had even realized that it was her birthday. I thought it was an awesome bonus, a special bond the two would, and actually do have. My father (divorced from my mother since I was 5), turned to Laurie and me and said, very distinctly, “You couldn’t wait one more day?”