My son, my baby boy, is turning 10 tomorrow. Hitting the double digits. It’s a big milestone and not just because this means puberty is lurking dangerously on the horizon, ready to attack and destroy our lives as we know it. Time, that mean ‘ol fickle thing, is moving much too fast.
It’s enough to make one nostalgic. To think back on how this all started, on how he came into this world.
It was just like you see in the movies…
****flashback wavy lines flashback wavy lines flashback wavy lines****
It was the middle of the night. I burst through the bedroom door suddenly, breathing hard.
“Honey! It’s time!” I yelled.
My husband woke up in a panic before glancing at the time, groaning, and rolling back over.
“Calm down,” came his muffled reply from underneath the blankets. “You aren’t set to be induced for another five hours.”
“This baby is a week late. Get up so we can get this little bastard out of me.”
“Technically he’s not a bastard.”
“I will eat you,” I growled. “Now, get the hell up and let’s go.”
He drove like a madman. All the way out of the driveway and around the corner before we immediately hit Greater Boston traffic. As we sped along at 5mph, I winced and let out a little groan. He grabbed my hand.
“Are you ok?” he asked, concerned.
“Yeah, I just really have to fart.”
“Again?” he asked, now extremely concerned.
“Yup.”
He frantically rolled down the window.
An aromatic 30 minutes later, we finally arrived at the hospital. While my husband fell out of the car, gasping for air, I promptly walked up to the front desk, asking for my wheelchair.
“Do you need a wheelchair, ma’am?” asked the very confused receptionist.
“I mean, I thought it was included with the whole deal,” I said, gesturing to the planet I had under my shirt. “Gratis-like.”
“We don’t really do that anymore.”
Soon after WALKING to my hospital room and settling in, my doctor arrived and examined me. After soaking her hands in dry ice, of course, as is custom.
“Still not dilated, I see. We’ll get you started on the pitocin,” she told me before rushing off to give some other poor woman freezer burn in her nethers.
A few hours later, I felt my first tiny pang of a contraction.
“GIMME THE DRUGS!” I roared, grabbing my husband by his lapels.
“Is the pain bad already?” he asked, staring deeply into my eyes and brushing an errant hair gently off my forehead.
“Oh no. But I’m doing this for all the women who had to give birth before epidurals were invented. I want to feel zero pain. For them. They would want it this way.”
A brusque man came in, followed by a pixie I was informed was a nurse. She was so slight I had a fairly legitimate concern she would get pulled into my rotund stomach’s gravitational pull, unable to escape. As he prepared the world’s largest needle, she told me to “lean your head into my chest and squeeze my hands when the pain hits.” I laughed and laughed and replied “I will break you,” in my best Dolph Lundgren voice.
But then the pain hit. I gasped and squeezed as a needle penetrated where no needle had ever dared penetrate before. And suddenly Nurse Itty McLittle turned into pure steel. A tiny mountain made of diamond and graphene. She was like if Henry Cavill’s abs were a person.
What followed next was a blur. Watching movies on my laptop. Complaining about being bored. Complaining about being hungry. Complaining about the movies I personally had picked out to watch.
Thirty-three hours later, I was still barely dilated. After wrestling away a plastic knife from me, the doctor, in her infinite wisdom, decided a cesarean might be in order. I emphatically agreed. As did my husband. As did the orderly I stabbed.
I couldn’t see what happened during the actual procedure, courtesy of a lovely blue tarp placed directly against my chin. Which was for the best. Because while I did not feel any pain thanks to drugs I’m assuming were made out of unicorns and the souls of teacup piglets, I did feel a bunch of tugging and pulling and generally horrific rootin’ around.
And then suddenly there he was. A raging red-haired angry ball of perfection.
A few days later, I walked out of the hospital (casting a long, lingering glance at all the unused wheelchairs) and the three of us drove away. Slowly. And not just because of traffic this time (although also because of traffic this time).
We got him home. Set him down. I looked lovingly down into his face and he immediately started crying. I turned to the newly minted daddy beside me with panicked eyes and asked “now what?”
Now what indeed. A decade later I can confidently say I still ask that same question every day. In various tones and with a fun assortment of punctuation.
And the answer has always been an adventure I can’t wait to continue (looming puberty notwithstanding).
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