Belated birthday celebrations

I wrote this yesteday but I hada migraine last night and I didn't make it up to post this out here. So here it is, just a day late.

Today is Son #1's birthday. April 26, 2002. He's 4 years old today. I'll tell you the story of his birth.

My wife and I were eagerly anticipating the birth of our first child, in about a month, when my wife called me at home. (I worked out of a home office in those days) Her water broke. OOO-kay. (Now what?? It was more like "Holy S&%t what the hell do I do now????) So I drove over to the office to get her. We weren't sure what to do. He's not supposed to come this early. We aren't ready. We hadn't even toured the hospital or anything. So we went to the Drs. office. It was about 5:15 or so and of course no one was there, except for a janitor. He was talking to us through the front door. It went something like:

Janitor: We're closed.
Us: Her water broke. She isn't having labor pains though. We thought she should get checked out and then we could go home or something.
Janitor: Hold on. (takes off running to find someone. Comes back with a nurse)
Nurse: Her water broke? (Still through the glass door mind you)
Us: Yes.
Nurse: If her water broke there's no going back. You have to go to the hospital. That baby's coming soon.
Us: Oh. Okay.

Now what? We knew what hospital and where it was since we had some very good (not) prenatal classes there (the typical thing for type-A people to do with a 1st child. Learn how to do something that nature will do for you, but whatever)

We pulled up into the ER still not sure where to go. And I alerted the front desk person that my wife's water broke and we weren't really sure where to go since we hadn't toured the hospital yet because he was coming early. (Important to say that so they don't think I'm a bad prospective Dad and failed to prepare for the day of the stork's arrival. Wouldn't want them to take away my prospective Dad card or something) It took about 3 seconds for someone to show up with a wheelchair and whisk us off to another part of the hospital. (I doubt if I could find my way today)

Then we waited. During this waiting phase we started calling family members to let them know what was up and I decided to return home to get her a bag of stuff. Since the birth was still a month away we hadn't even packed the hospital bag yet. Doh! So I ran home to do that and while I was gone my wife progressed very quickly (I was getting continuous updates from my in-laws on the phone after they talked to her on the phone. Yeah, I know, it's strange) into the "this baby is coming damn fast and you better get the Dr. here and give me the damn epidural before I jump off this bed and strangle you" phase. (I'm glad I missed a lot of this.) I returned in time to calm her down a little and watch the epidural procedure. I proceeded to almost faint and had to lay down for a while. (Yeah, I'm the strong, silent type) At this point I'm proceeding to breathe in short shallow breaths and staring at the ceiling to not look at the epidural thing going on.

Then the next thing we knew the Dr showed up, she pushed a few times and a baby came out. It was all pretty quick. About 5 hours from water breakage to baby's appearance. (Eat your heart out ladies) There was a team of about 100 people in there because they were concerned he might need some neo-natal care (and actually this hospital had the best neo-natal care in the city which is why we choose it, just in case. Strange how that worked out) but he was totally fine. He couldn't regulate his body temp very well (still can't) and they put him up a little cooker that helped keep him warm. But other than that they couldn't find anything wrong with him.

The next few days are a blur (frankly, most of the following years have been) but things went fine and we are all still together today. Sometimes I want to return him to the hospital, but that mostly temporary. :-)

FGLB