3.04.2006


Delivering daughters is exhausting business. (Popeye is protecting her, though he looks menacing.)

Spun by Abigail on Saturday, March 04, 2006

6 comments :

Anonymous said...

I'm still trying to get Mom to tell the story of how Dad was the only one present when Owen was born.

3/04/2006 5:25 PM
Kathy said...

All right, all right. I thought no one but the old general himself wants to hear the war stories, but since you insist. . .
March 30, 1997 just happened to be Easter Sunday. Very early that morning, sometime after midnight, I started to get mild contractions, the kind that you are not even sure are the real thing. I tried to get as comfortable as possible, because I have often had false labor for an hour or more, and falling asleep was the best test. If the contractions got bad enough to wake me up, I could be fairly confident it was time to go to the hospital.

But sleep was eluding me, and I finally decided to go downstairs to the bathroom. Well, something happened on the way to the potty. Or maybe it was climbing the stairs going back. At any rate, by the time I made it back to the bedroom, I concluded it was time to wake up my husband. He rapidly concluded, based on his observations of me and his past experience in these matters (we're talking about birth #10, after all), that it was past time to go.

I thought he was over-reacting, and I wanted to take it easy. I remember trying to get my feet into slippers in the kitchen, and he basically hustled me out to the car and tossed the slippers in after me. It was a very nice, balmy, extremely early morning, and I do believe he shaved several minutes off the usual 25 minute drive. Deserted streets are such a temptation.

I neglected to call the doctor before we left the house. It had never been necessary before, and I hadn't realized that you can skip the usual triage interview if your doctor calls the hospital on your behalf.

We arrive at the hospital, and my DH pulls up to the emergency room drop-off. He dashes into the ER, grabs the first wheelchair he sees, and dashes back out for me. This, of course, arouses the interest of security, and they saunter out to see this obviously panic-stricken man helping his obviously very pregnant wife into the wheelchair.

Instant patronization. "Now, now, sir. Don't you worry. You've got plenty of time."

"I do not!!" he snapped back. They let us in, and escorted us to the night clerk. Mr. Night Clerk has seen all this before, and he is not about to hurry. Why pre-registering failed to spare me this interrogation I do not know.

Meantime, my husband is suggesting that they get me into a room first and ask questions later, and Mr. Night Clerk is having none of it. Finally, we are done answering questions and signing forms, which took quite a bit longer than it would have if I hadn't needed to stop every five minutes or so for some pretty strong contractions, and then we had to talk to the triage nurse!

At least she had some sense. She heard the barest facts--tenth pregnancy, 5 minutes apart--and she was like, get her in room 3, stat! and call up to Labor and Delivery for some help.

But we had been dished out so much patronizing "now, now" and "just relax" and "it takes babies a while to come out, you know" that I was getting pretty steamed. There's something about having your middle squeezed like toothpaste by the hand of God that brings out both the best and worst in me.

And they didn't know what they were doing, the lot of them. The doctor on call showed up, and I managed to persuade him that he should check my dilation between contractions, not during one. You could just see his eyes getting this "what-did-the-textbook-say-about-childbirth" look on his face, as he tried to remember what was step 1 and then what was step 2. His questions to the nurse about when was Labor and Delivery getting here were less than discreet, shall we say.

And then, the nurse needed a supply kit and the doctor had to get paperwork and they both left. And I got my first bearing down contraction, and all I could think was, "I'll show them. I'll have that baby's head crowning in no time." And I just gave it all I got. I bore down like nobody's business and POP! his head did more than crown, he got borned! Oh! I shrieked. "He's here! He's here!" My DH lifted up the sheeting draped across my legs to make sure the baby was okay, and far more people than necessary poured into the room. My husband and I both think they did some funny business with the time of birth to cover their butts.

They left me in there with the placenta undelivered until my o.b. showed up, and the nurses from upstairs helped mop up. The Labor nurses were quite disdainful of ER. They're scared of delivering babies. They get more practice with gunshot wounds. Almost all the mothers make it upstairs. It being Easter, I half remember some bad jokes about naming the baby Peter and hopping right out, etc.

Then I watched it snow from my hospital room. It was a big storm, must have been over a foot of snow. My husband postponed one visit to me because he was so shook up from spinning out and slamming into a snow bank. My mother, driving up from NJ, had to spend the night on a church pew because they had shut down the main expressway through the Poconos.The snow was gone within days.

There are probably details that I'm forgetting that my children will pipe up and provide, but that's the general gist of how Owen Teague Purdy was born. Oh, yeah, he was 10lbs. 14oz at birth, and 21 1/2" long.

Are you happy now, Rundy?

3/05/2006 9:07 PM
Anonymous said...

I don't know about Rundy, but I still get the giggles every time you tell the story.

But I would have to point out that Owen wasn't quite all right. He banged his nose on the table, and it was quite red. In fact, for all of his toddlerhood, he kept banging his nose, so his nose was in a perpetual state of redness (or old scab colored) for at least the first two years of his life.

3/05/2006 9:53 PM
Anonymous said...

It's got to be one of the fastest dilveries ever.

I also must laugh every time I hear this story. I dunno, but sometimes I think the funniest part is imagining Dad running around in a panic:

Zoom! For the wheelchair. Zoom! Back to Mom.

People, this is number ten he's dealing with. Maybe he has a good idea what the situation is?

3/06/2006 12:32 PM
Abigail said...

That's my favorite part to imagine, too! From my memories of Mister Purdy, it's hard to imagine him ZOOMING in panic. I would have paid to see the faces of the security guards as he rushed in and, without further ado, snatched a wheelchair.

"Stop, thief!"
"Oh, wait...it's just that crazy lady who's insisting she's about to give birth."

3/09/2006 2:56 PM
Anonymous said...

Yeah, exactly. You got it.

As Mom said, security had to come out and see what was going on . . .

3/09/2006 3:57 PM

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