Not that it's all that exciting. For instance, I didn't debate whether to wear panty hose to the hospital like my Mom did. But I do remember feeling nervous. Well, in addition to feeling waves of extreme pain and even worse nausea of course.
I was nervous during the whole pregnancy, actually. Nervous about whether he would be healthy and whether I was doing a good job preparing him in there. For the last trimester I COULDN'T WAIT for him to arrive. And I had a very smooth and easy pregnancy, so it's not that I couldn't wait to stop being pregnant. I just wanted to see what he looked like, what he felt like, how he smelled, and to make sure he was ok. Oh, and mostly, I wanted him to arrive with enough time to get his birth certificate so we could get him into Canada when we moved, which was less than three weeks after his due date! I lost a lot of sleep stressing about that, and about the move in general. Ask Keith.
Since we were a little time-crunched and everything seemed ready to go, my doctor thought it would be fine to induce me on June 5th - the day before my due date. We went to the hospital (Rush, in Chicago) at 6 am morning (it was a Friday), all excited and prepared and playing jazz in the car to relax us. We had a bag of magazines, games and music on the iPod. I blow-dried my hair nice and straight, since I knew there would be photos. Huh, I guess that's akin to my Mom debating the panty hose...
Anyway, the OB resident started me on Pitocin to get the contractions going, but apparently (no offense to residents in general) she/the team there skipped the important first step of giving me a drug to soften the cervix... the step that my doctor had prescribed. So, for that reason, in addition to the fact that it just wasn't time, the induction didn't work. So, after being pumped full of Pitocin for 12 hours, we packed up and went home.
Oh, and my poor parents -- eager for the arrival of their first grandchild-- had been waiting in the Rush lobby all day. They said they had a blast watching the circus that goes on there, but it was surely a long day for them as well.
The next day I felt awful, no doubt because of the beating I'd taken on Friday.
And on Sunday morning, June 7th at 4 am, I woke up to contractions. By 11 am, when they became more frequent and unbearable, I told Keith it was time to go in. No jazz this time. No bag of entertainment. No blow-dried hair. Just us heading to Rush, feeling more certain that this was it.
The same OB resident was there and she seemed to take a little pity on me. She predicted that the baby would be here by 9 pm. It was only noon at that time, and I thought I was dying, so that seemed very unreasonable!
What went on that afternoon was the standard labor torture and lots of slow laps up and down the hall with Keith holding me up. But by 5 pm the epidural was on board and all was fine. I really don't know how people have natural child birth. They are much stronger than I!
In the meantime, my parents were celebrating their 40th wedding anniversary that day. They had brunch, followed by sangria at what had become their favorite place - a tapas bar near our house in Lincoln Park. Having experienced the long and uneventful wait in the waiting room on Friday, we told them Keith would call when it was time. So, what could they do except sip sangria and tell everyone in the bar that their first grand child was on his way. I hear they got lots of congratulations, high fives, and some free desserts.
And back at Rush, the clock ticked away and I was crossing my fingers that the baby would come before midnight. I really wanted to have him on my parents' 40th anniversary. At 8 pm it was time to get started and I got really nervous about the baby making it out ok. There were several tense moments when the baby's hear rate dropped and I felt very helpless watching the doctors' faces and their sense of urgency. Apparently the cord was wrapped around the baby's neck, AND he was grasping it with his hand. Now that makes sense - he has always had a vice-like grip. So, after 20 minutes of pushing (it felt like a long time to me, but I hear that's nothing), at 9:19 pm Central Time, Luke arrived. I just remember Keith jumping up and down, kissing me, and rushing over to watch the nurses check him out. What seems like forever later, they put him on my chest and I saw my baby boy for the first time. After spending all of those months wondering what he'd look like, feeling him kicking and punching from the inside, it was very surreal to see our son.
Since everything started happening quickly at the end, Keith had to squeeze in a call to my parents, telling them it was time. They rushed over and weren't waiting long before Keith went to let them know that their grandson was here. They were able to come into the delivery room to meet Luke shortly after he arrived. My Mom fondly remembers Keith walking into the waiting room smiling, and she has said she'll never forget entering my room and seeing me holding Luke. And my Dad is still amazed that Luke, a mere 40 minutes old, squeezed his finger.
And that was it. He has been making us smile ever since.
I felt like I should get all the details down, since I might not remember everything over time.
But I think I'll have to come up with an abbreviated version to tell Luke every year.
So, that's my story about June 7, 2009.
Oh, I almost forgot. Three days later, as a result of charming a nice woman in the Chicago Vital Records office at City Hall, we managed to get Luke's birth certificate fast-tracked and picked it up a couple of days later. That was 11-15 weeks quicker than other Chicago-born babies receive their certificates :-) So I could FINALLY relax and start packing for Vancouver.
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