Labor: Another Comedy of Errors

I'm writing this story mainly for Kenyon.  Someday he can read this and realize that he has been a handful since before he was ever born.

It is raining outside today, and has been off and on for most of the past week.  Much like the week that he was born.

That lovely week in August was unusually cool and incredibly wet.  I had been experiencing contractions quite a bit during the county fair but nothing sustained..... until the last day, a Monday.  The contractions were quite hard and happened every five minutes or so.  Wesley and I raced north to the hospital where they hooked me up to the monitors and made me hang out in a room I would get to know quite well.  After being hooked up for five hours without any sort of progression the doctor decided to kick me loose.  Bummer.

That Friday night the contractions started up again.  Really forceful contractions.  I had still experienced little contractions all week long.  (Wow, reliving these moments makes me want to never get pregnant again.  I forgot what a special kind of hell those nine months were.  Genius idea, Self.)

So anywhooo, contractions.  Wesley got home late that night.  He'd had an incredibly long week and a pregnant wife to top it all off.  When he got home his eyes were red and watery from working around hay equipment all day in the shop.  I sure didn't want to tell him I was in labor and make him run into town that second, so I let him shower and go to bed while I "relaxed" in the recliner.  Finally, around 1am I couldn't take the pain any longer.  I woke Wesley up and we made the 35 minute drive to the hospital.

I was hooked up to a portable monitor this time and instructed to pace the halls, which I dutifully did for the next four hours while Wesley slept in the recliner next to my hospital bed.  I take that back.  He walked with me for the first hour or so, until he got too tired and could tell that I was not going to act like a little ray of sunshine.  Again, my labor did not progress so we were discharged around seven that morning.  Just in time to grab some breakfast on the way home and start feeding cattle for the day.  Super.

By this time I was becoming incredibly discouraged and I vowed that the next time I went to the hospital, I was not coming home without a baby OUTSIDE my tummy.  No more false alarms.  Seriously, it was becoming quite embarrassing to me that I had so many false alarms.  Wes tried to console me time and again, reasoning with me that this was our first baby; mistakes and false alarms were bound to happen.  I wasn't having it.

The following Monday I went to work, convinced I was going to carry the baby forever.

By nine o'clock, I was feeling a bit of discomfort.

At ten, I needed to walk around a bit.

Around eleven, I needed to sit still and just breath..... in and out..... deep breaths......

Finally, after one particularly deep breath, my friend Pam slammed her hands down on her desk.

"That is it - you are in labor and you are LEAVING!"

I decided that perhaps she might be right and this might be the real deal.  Might.  I started to clean up my desk and wrap things up for the day, all the while not letting myself get my hopes up too much.  Plus, it was really hard to be excited when there was such a horrible pain pulsating through my torso every five minutes.

Pam made me promise to take the dirt roads home and stay off the highway, just in case I had a horrible contraction while driving home and needed to pull over quickly without causing a wreck.  This would have been a wonderful idea, except for the fact that we had received so much rain earlier that week.  Every time I tried to turn off the main dirt road and head towards our house, I would drive a mile and come to a tree in the road or water running over a bridge.  Each time I'd have to backtrack at least a mile and attempt to cross at the next section road.  What should have been a 35 minute trip turned into an hour long jaunt.

Wesley was furious that it took me so long to get home, and then even more furious that I wanted to take some time to finish packing, take a shower and clean up a few things around the house.

During the previous nine months, we had taken several different routes through town to get to the hospital.  We'd timed our treks, counted the number of stoplights and debated about railroad crossings.

Did any of this end up mattering?  No.  Know why?  The bridge was out on the south side of town due to all the rain and all close, convenient roads were closed.  Our choices were to drive an extra 30 minutes to the east or west.  Seriously.  You can't even make up crap like this.  And, by this time I was wishing that everything hadn't taken so long and I was already at the hospital with some make-me-happy medicine.

In the end though, it all turned out alright.  We now have a ten month old boy that is all man.  He likes pickups, trucks, tractors, bulldozers, all animals and being outside.