"Hi, I'm going to pee on the floor here. Can I just pee in the cup and write on it with a Sharpie? Better yet, just look at the records from the past 8 months and the two previous normal pregnancies. Nothing is going on in there that shouldn't. Just write 'ditto'. Trust me. I just need to go. Now."
She took a blank label off of a stack, glaring at the printer out of one eye and me out of the other. I snatched the label out of her hand, as well as the pen, and ran at top speed for a 38-week pregnant woman with one leg. Well, one working leg. I sat down on the toilet, peed in the cup, sealed the jar and for the next five minutes, wrote my entire life history onto a military-issue one-inch by three-inch envelope address label. And then I took another five minutes to finish peeing. I told her I had to go. She was standing there waiting with my label stuck to the edge of her index finger when I got back, almost triumphantly. Whatever.
The appointment went like all appointments did. I peed. They stabbed my arm and wrapped number tapes around my girth. They had no idea when I was due and I had already used my one allowed ultrasound. One week the child was measuring big, the next week they said I had gained too much weight. (Way to go doc, I'm already feeling like a pregnant elephant. Let's play "Make the Hormonal Preggo Lady Cry.") We're all winging it here. Every single one of the doctors who had been assigned to me over the past 8 months had been deployed. I had no idea who was going to deliver this baby. The thought occurred that it might even be me.
We lived 79 miles from the nearest American base with maternity hospital facilities in the United Queendom. That is a two-hour drive on a good day with clear weather and little traffic, meaning NO farm equipment on the roads, and no lorries (tractor trailers) blocking all lanes of traffic going 10 kph to protest the staggering rise in the cost of petrol gasoline. We had used the nearest A&E hospital before, which certainly had a maternity ward and it was a mere 14 miles away. However, since we, and everyone else we knew, left the Accident & Emergency Centre in much worse condition than we arrived, we opted out of the National Health System. We decided that the risks were about equal in delivering a child in the car on the side of the road and delivering a child in a hospital that did not use an autoclave or any other sterilization equipment and had a blood poisoning record that would shock the settlers of this fine country.
So I packed my baby bag. I had the diapers and wipes. I had the gender-neutral homecoming outfits - two of them in fact. I had the freshly laundered baby seat, a new backpack diaper bag, and the receiving blankets that were just for this new little bundle. I packed my overnight bag. I had warm socks, jammies, a stress ball, toiletries, my teddy bear ready at the last instant and sweats for the grueling two-hour ride home. I had my kids go-bags ready. I had some favorite books and toys, a gift for each of them from their new sibling, and a pair of jammies and change of clothes each, in case of a middle-of-the-night or mid-afternoon run. And then I had the delivery bag.
An ER nurse friend of mine helped me assemble what I would need in case of an emergency delivery. I had an ironed sheet, folded and sealed into a zipper bag, likewise a few receiving blankets washed, dried, ironed and zipped up for sterilization. I had a pair of extremely strong scissors that could cut through denim and seatbelts. I had a big silver mixing bowl for fluid capture, washed and placed in a fresh plastic garbage bag. I had an umbilical cord clip for the baby. I had extra blankets and a freshly laundered stock of donated black towels (so they wouldn't stain.) I had flares and a gallon jug of water that had been boiled. I had a book on emergency deliveries with the chapter clearly marked and accessible with a binder clip. All this was carefully packed into a large paper bag and stowed in the trunk, "just in case." On the outside of the paper bag, I had written the on-call OB pager, the American military hospital OB line, and the base police, in case we decided we wanted an escort. I diligently kept my phone charged.
After one exhausting false alarm that began at 3 am in my 38th week, I got sick. Monkey-bad sick. I could not breathe for coughing. I could not cough without peeing. So I basically just walked around wearing wet pads. I kept a change of underwear and pants in the diaper bag, it was that bad. Exactly one week later, I timed the very strong contractions at seven minutes apart when I called the OB ward to tell them we were two hours out. We drove through the fine mist and gathering fog for 2 hours and 20 minutes. I was timing at four minutes by the time we arrived at almost 7 pm and there was a wheelchair waiting for me at the door. I mostly wheezed through my breathing, trying hard not to cough on anyone, but I was surrounded by hospital personnel. I had a temperature of 102 degrees, and I was already exhausted. I don't know what they put into the cocktail flowing into my arm, but the pain started to go away, and my breathing eased for the first time in days. They brought in a nice man with a long name who told me about a fabulous place called "Intrathecal." If I wasn't already married, he'd have been mine.
At 9:50 pm, there was an audible *pop* and the air pressure in the hospital decreased somewhat when I delivered a 9 pound 15 and 3/4 oz baby boy with blond peach fuzz and bright blue eyes. He wanted nothing more than to climb back into that nice warm place away from all the bright lights and cold February fog, and he screamed loud enough to tell the whole base. He was the only blond and by far the biggest baby of the five on the ward, so he quickly earned the nicknames "Hercules" and "Peach Fuzz." He knew my voice from the start. He screamed while they weighed him and I sang his name over the cacophony of instruments and vitals stats being flung about the room. He calmed immediately, but only when he could hear my voice; which prompted me to shush everyone in the room, so I could sing. Hey, I was high. Step off.
My little Hercules is now six and a half, and he is well on his way to success in first grade. He is still blond and his eyes have stayed the same remarkable icy-blue, unlike the other three kids, whose eyes changed before they hit one year. He is still louder than he really needs to be at times. But he is sweet, funny, smelly, handsome, quick to laugh, hard to please, and most of all, he's mine.
inspiration by mommymatter. verbiage by kater.
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1 comment:
You crack me up darlin'!
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