On This Day My Child Was Born

It was February 13th. I was about 8 ½ months pregnant and I was returning to work after my weekly appointment at my gynecologist.

According to my doctor, everything looked fine. He also thought I may come a little earlier than my due date of February 28. That would be okay with me, I told him. I had had enough of the whole pregnancy thing- the tremendous weight gain, the sharp pain in my abdomen they called “heartburn;” the inability to sit, stand or sleep comfortably. I really did Ache All Over. I was more than ready to have my baby.

The snow was beginning to fall as I headed back to work, but I wasn’t worried. The roads weren’t bad yet, and my workplace was just four miles from my house. Nonetheless, I was pretty happy when I got to work without incident, just in time for lunch with my co-worker and friend Joan.

When I stood up after lunch to return to my work area, I felt an unfamiliar sensation. I realized with a shock that my water was beginning to break. I calmly called the doctor’s office, and they advised me to return to the hospital immediately. I wasn’t able to reach my husband, who was making deliveries for his family’s business in a time before cell phones. I left the message with his mother that I would go home and pack my bag and he could just meet me at the house.

I let my boss and Joan know what was going on and left. I got in the car, turned the key and…the car wouldn’t start. It seems that I had turned the headlights on when I was on my way back to work in the snowstorm and left them on. My car battery was dead.

Okay, so now I was beginning to panic.

I found Paul, my co-worker with jumper cables. Paul was flabbergasted, as he did not think that a woman in labor should be driving herself anywhere especially in the snow. He initially refused to jump my car. I explained that I just planned to drive the few miles to my house, and I probably wasn’t even technically in labor. Paul didn’t care. He offered to drive me anywhere I needed to go. I explained to him that this was my only car, and I could not leave it, dead, in the parking lot at work, especially if I actually had the baby. Paul was adamant. We argued for several minutes. I was getting desperate. I begged. I cajoled. I cannot swear that I didn’t at one point grab Paul by the lapels and yell “Jump the damn car, Paul!” Finally, Joan, who was pretty skilled at the power of persuasion, intervened and Paul grudgingly agreed to jump my car.

I drove home and packed my suitcase but my husband was not yet back from making his deliveries. I called the doctor’s office. “WHAT??!!!,” the nurse said, “You mean you haven’t even LEFT yet?” The last professional I saw get this excited was the whitewater rafting guide after I fell into the Youghigheny River. I decided against sharing the story of the dead car battery. She asked how long it would take me to get to the hospital. It was about 30 minutes when it wasn’t snowing, I told her. “Oh honey,” she said, “You need to get here RIGHT NOW!”

I called my mother-in-law back to tell her that I was leaving for the hospital and to tell my husband to meet me there. She offered to come pick me up, but after my conversation with the nurse, I didn’t think I should wait.

My mother also offered to come to pick me up, which was very sweet but not really feasible. My mother was terrified of driving in the snow, and lived in Swissvale, which was just about an hour away from my home in Washington, PA. I estimated that it would take my Mom 2 hours or more to pick me up and take me to the hospital in the snow, and I was certain that Mom would not want to drive in the snow and deliver her grandchild herself, at least not on the same day.

It was snowing a lot harder when I was driving to the hospital. When I finally arrived, I told the doctor that aside from the fact that my water had broken and I had just driven about 30 miles in the snow, I was feeling fine. He examined me and informed me that I was having contractions and I was “officially” in labor. Perhaps I was in shock as I drove to the hospital in the snow, and therefore numb to the contractions, or perhaps I had instinctively, unknowingly been employing those breathing exercises they taught us in Lamaze class.

Meanwhile my husband had arrived back at the shop, and was so upset at the news, that his parents did not trust him to drive himself to the hospital. His family accompanied him, and his father drove. He burst into the birthing room about an hour after I got there, in quite a state, I might add.

I will not share with you with all the minute details of the labor and delivery, because I hate when women do that. However, I will tell you that I had to have a Caesarian section because the baby was large, and my birth canal was small. I only mention this because I want everyone to know that there is actually a body part of mine that is too small, ironically located inside my body where nobody can see it.

At 10:15 p.m. on February 13, 1985, my beautiful, brown-haired, brown-eyed baby boy was born, 8 pounds and 9 ounces despite coming 15 days early. When they put him into my arms, I was smitten- crazy about the kid from the start. Every bit of the pregnancy and that day had been worth it.

That baby turns 25 today. One word always comes to mind when I think of him- proud. I am so very proud of the fine young man he has grown up to be. Here’s wishing my son a wonderful birthday, and hoping that the weather today is better than on the day he was born.