» Birthday For My Baby Yellow Jeep Blonde: What do you do AFTER the kids grow up? I COOK!

Some things in life you never forget. . . your first bicycle, your first boyfriend, your first car, your first apartment, your first baby, your second baby. . . you get my drift. Well, twenty-three years ago today, my second baby was born, and for sure, it would be a day like none other not ever to be forgotten.

Of all the stories of births I’d heard, my second baby’s birth was not like any of them. No – my baby chose Door Number Three apparently. . . the door that opens at 3:00am with literally a FLOOD of non-stop excitement for the next 23 years.

We were living in Japan in 1986 in a little Japanese apartment off base. With ex in the Navy and out to sea and my due date drawing near, I chose to stay with another wife on base. Our husbands were in the same squadron. We both had a little boy about the same age. And SHE had an apartment ON base. . . closer to the clinic.

Twenty three years ago, I was sleeping on a futon on the floor when I was awakened at 3:00am to a wet bed. I thought, “I pee’d the bed? What in the world is wrong with me?” I was sitting there embarrassed and disgusted at myself trying to figure out WHY I would have pee’d in the bed when a swoosh of water came out again. I IMMEDIATELY thought, “I didn’t do THAT! That’s my water breaking! Yikes!”

I got up and ran down the hallway to the bathroom dribbling the entire way. I glared at the evidence on her shiny wood floor thinking, “Wow! I’ve got a mess to clean up” and I set about trying to stop this leak. In my head, there HAD to be a way to put a plug in this thing. On TV, they make it look like a gush of water comes out and that’s it. That WASN’T IT!

Hurriedly, I grabbed a “feminine pad”, then two, then three and learned very quickly that THAT was NOT my answer. I didn’t know WHAT to do! I was rummaging through my friend’s bathroom like I’d been stranded without toilet paper, only I was trying to stop a leak. A MAJOR leak! Nothing. I could find NOTHING to stop this leak. It just kept pouring out. So I threw on a dress and dribbled down the stairs where I was met by my friend who was wondering what all the commotion was. I said, “I need towels! Lots of towels! I’ve made this huge ass mess! And it won’t stop!”

She, being much smarter and less concerned for her floors than I, swung into action as if we’d practiced this in a fire drill or something. I’m standing there literally spinning on my heels in an ever growing puddle thinking “What to do? What to do?” I wasn’t necessarily panic-striken. I just seriously didn’t know how I was going to clean up that mess if the leak wouldn’t freakin’ STOP. Oh how naive I was.

My girlfriend in fire drill mode had called another girlfriend to come get me and take me to the clinic while she stayed home with the boys. Second girlfriend comes and I hesitate getting in her car because I was like a busted water pipe at this point and I didn’t want to trash her car. First girlfriend handed me about six towels and I padded her front seat with that and off we went.

The clinic is closed at 3:30 in the morning, but there are people there. . . sleeping. . . in case of an emergency. Apparently they get awakened pretty often by people who don’t know the definition of a true emergency, so they answered the door a little groggy sporting a slightly bad attitude asking what exactly was the state of my emergency. I pointed toward my crotch and said, “My water broke!”

Again, these people, too, sprang to life and into action like my girlfriend in fire drill mode did. “Get her in Room 1. Blah blah blah blah medical jargon blah blah.” It may as well have been Charlie Brown’s teacher talking for all I understood. People were swishing all around me hooking me up to this and that. It all was happening so fast! The next thing I know is that they’re wheeling me on a stretcher out to a helicopter where they were flying me to the nearest hospital that was about 15 minutes by air. I felt like I was on M*A*S*H with the whirling of the helicopters in the night.

Helicopters don’t really rate high in the smooth and comfortable category. In the fifteen minutes that I was in the air, my contractions went from 10 minutes apart to 4 minutes apart. This thing was moving along a whole lot quicker than my first baby. (That’s a whole different story) We got to the hospital and again I felt like I was in Dorothy’s house in that Kansas tornado in The Wizard of Oz with the flurry of activity going on all around me. . . that concerned ME.

The doctor comes in. He wasn’t MY doctor. Where was MY doctor? I didn’t know this guy. And I didn’t like him very much. He was Dr. Something-ski, something Polish. . . and he was not nice. He started examining me to see how far along I was, but he went so far up in there that I thought his hand was going to come out of my throat. He then snapped at me like it was MY fault, “I CLEARLY feel a foot!” This apparently didn’t make him happy as he began barking orders here and there. Then I started to cry.

I didn’t know what was going on. I was all alone. The husband was a jillion miles away on a boat. And this doctor had hurt my feelings. He was rude and had the bedside manner of an angry Pitbull. I just layed there and whimpered as they wheeled me into the operating room for surgery.

They started prepping me for my c-section. They gave me an epidural (which they really don’t like to hand out in military hospitals) and then started poking me with something sharp asking if I could feel it. Not only could I feel it, I could dance on my legs. I started waving them around. The epidural was not WORKING! So they gave me another one. Same results. Then they gave me a Spinal. (I don’t know the difference. It’s just what I remember them saying.) Again – nothing – still waving my legs around. But the odd thing WAS. . . I couldn’t feel my stomach.

They felt like I was about as numb as I was going to get, so they started the operation anyway. They told me that if I started feeling anything to let them know. I was thinking, “Yeah! YOU’RE GOING TO KNOW ALRIGHT!”

Well, I didn’t feel anything until they were pulling him out. The next few minutes happened in slow motion. They said, “It’s a boy!” I thought, “Hubby got another boy”. They raised him up for me to see. Without my glasses on, I couldn’t see much, but I did see the ears. I thought, “Aawwh! He got my ears. Poor baby.”

THEN whatever they put in my IV kicked in and I immediately couldn’t feel anything, but I was wide awake. I couldn’t feel my chest to breathe. I could feel the air on my lips as I breathed in, but couldn’t feel the air coming INTO my body. I started freaking out. The man behind my head, the anesthesiologist, kept telling me that I WAS breathing . . . that I just couldn’t feel it and that I needed to relax. That’s when I started throwing up. I could tell I was throwing up, but I was paralized and I couldn’t spit it out. I was certain I was going to die at that point. Then I heard it being sucked out and the man behind my head reassured me again that he taking good care of me and that I was going to be alright.

The next thing I remember was waking up in the recovery room with a nurse standing over me and she kept repeating herself telling me “You’re in the hospital and you just had a baby boy.” I kept thinking, “Why does she keep telling me that?” This went on for a few minutes while I gathered myself and woke up completely. I then asked her why she kept telling me that over and over and she said, “You kept asking me?” Weeiirrdd. **insert music from The Twilight Zone**

They wheeled me into my room and then wheeled in the baby’s little bed and parked it next to mine. My baby. It was the first time I got a good look at him. He was so sweet and so tiny.

My oldest boy was only 17 months old and I considered him a baby, but he was gargantuon compared to this tiny little boy. He took very good care of his little baby brother.