It's a landmark: 100 entries. I've stuck with the diary way better than with the gym I joined in July and stopped going to in August, and it's so much better for me, too. I am so proud of me!
I thought I would write some really cool entry to mark the 100, too, but I am characteristically distracted. Here's another landmark: today, my firstborn is 22 years old.
When we told my in-laws that we were expecting, lo those many years ago, my 100% Irish MIL predicted "You'll have a girl on St. Patrick's Day!" And I did, too! But did I really have to go into labor on March 15 to make this happen?
In keeping with the fine family custom, I herewith present the abbreviated version of The Birth of R, subtitle: They Don't Still Use the Salad Tongs, Do They?
I gained 45 pounds and I was as big as a fat pregnant horse. Walking around, not so much anymore. I nested like crazy, never leaving the sewing machine for days, stitching up little quilts and crib bumpers. I had false labor around March 10, so when I felt my first little twinges just before midnight on March 15, I didn't even wake the Hubs. What if he had to go to work again on no sleep, like last time? Anyway, it wasn't so bad, it wasn't even regular.
By morning it was the same, not so bad, not regular, just ongoing. Hubs took me to the doctor, who said it was the real thing, and when it got to some magic number (5 minutes apart? 4?) we should call back and go to the hospital. We spent the whole day Monday timing contractions that never got regular, and went back to his office around nine p.m. No progress, no change.
So the guy gave me a prescription for seconal (I kid you not) and sent us home. I fell asleep, and woke for each contraction, now getting worse; during each one, in a drugged stupor, I would shriek at Hubs: "I'm cold! Get me a blanket! I'm hot! Take the blanket away!" and pound on him, then falling immediately back to sleep. He did not sleep. He was probably afraid I would take demonic possesion of his soul somewhere in the night.
At ten the next morning -- Tuesday -- we went back to the doctor, who said, what the hell, go to the hospital. We were also in touch with all the parents and family throughout all of this, since we could hardly go incommunicado as D-Day approached. Shortly after we checked in, the waiting room was filled with all four of them, plus Sibs.
They broke my water, they gave me pitocin. But no other drugs, not yet. This was in the heyday of natural childbirth and Lamaze. Unless your eyes bulged out and rolled around the floor, you sucked up the pain. If they had to do a c-section, well, okay.
Or, as it turned out, if they had to go for the tongs. Which, after 37 hours of never-regular labor, someone finally thought might be a good idea.
They gave me the spinal, or the epidural or whatever, which terrified me, but damn, it was the first time I felt truly warm and relaxed, probably for months, but certainly for days. I watched, and there she was, pulled out by the forceps, with a little red circle marking each cheek right where they gripped her.
I don't have to tell you how cool this was, because if you've got one of these things, you know. Somehow it felt that I had always known her, had always known it would be this person; I'd just been waiting to meet her. It never stops amazing me that each time this happens, to anyone anywhere, it's a miracle all over again. I know it's a cliche, probably because it's true.
Anyway, I couldn't sit down for about two weeks, immediately followed by a blocked milk duct, what they used to call the dreaded "Milk Fever." Okay, I'll go ahead and say it: yes, it sucked. I had a fever of 105. Hubs gave R a bottle, which was just fine with my delirious head.
My incredible wonderful little girl is 22 years old today. She has hiked up a volcano in Chile. In school, she would stand up for kids who were getting picked on. She is beautiful and healthy and looks like a normal woman and not a super-model. She dresses like she just escaped from a hippie-commune, 1969. She is compassionate and good and honest and strong. She writes short stories and plays and wants to go to graduate school so she can teach creative writing in a college someday and keep writing her own work.
Happy Birthday, baby. Proud2BYrMom.
(As I was writing another entry and reading people's diaries, R looked over at me and said "You're not going to write about my birthday in your blog and put a baby picture of me in it, are you?" I assured her that I was not going to do that. I didn't tell her that it was already done. And I took the picture out.)
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I'm watching waiting for the prez on tv
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Sweet Sorrow - 06.12.2007
So ... - 12.19.2006
Christmastime Is Near - 12.18.2006
Fifteen Years - 12.17.2006
A Message From Our Sponsor - 12.16.2006
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