We weren’t really planning on getting pregnant again “so soon”. But we weren’t exactly trying with any particular gusto not to get pregnant either. So we probably shouldn’t have been terribly surprised. Still, the miracle of growing a human being has never ceased to break upon my conscience as exactly that: a miracle. It boggles my mind even now to think that we get to be a part of such an amazing design. I mean, God could have arranged for us to emerge from giant seed-pods, couldn’t He? He is God, after all. And I think His plan is pretty darn nifty, all things considered.

So after some gleeful hugging of myself and happy dancing around the room, I got busy on the next stage of gestation: barfing. Frequently, and with abandon. I must say I’m quite proficient at the quiet, polite puke at this point. Practice makes perfect, as they say.

My Beloved was working as a bank teller at this point in our journey, and our insurance mandated that we pick an OB from The List. So after careful consideration and concentrated prayer (in other words, I closed my eyes and jabbed my finger in the proper vicinity), we came up with Dr. Kerry D. Neal.

Don’t even ask me how I remember his middle initial. That kind of freaked me out just now as I typed it.

Dr. Kerry D. Neil had extremely large and slightly bulgey blue eyes and an infectious laugh. He was about the same age as Dr. Z, as near as I could tell, but there have never been two physicians with methods more diametrically opposed. I never realized until I began seeing Dr. N that one was allowed, as a patient, to actually know what a particular test was for, or what the results were and more importantly, what they meant.

Dr. N did not hesitate to explain everything he was doing, had done, or was about to do. My office visits lasted at least four times longer than they ever had with Dr. Z. In fact, sometimes it was really difficult to shut the man up. He loved to talk. He did not get offended when we questioned him, because it enabled him to talk some more. And as long as he was talking, we were learning.

The light was beginning to dawn.

One Friday evening, a couple of days past my due date, my sister-in-law, Beth, and her husband came over to wile away some time with us. We were pretty wild-n-crazy party animals back then at the ripe old ages of early-twenties, so we decided to follow our usual plan of Gettin’ Jiggy Wit It. 

That is to say, we decided to rent a movie and eat far too much candy.

While SIL and I were loading up on Skittles and Giant SweetTarts at the local Drug Warehouse, I had my first contraction. Hm. I thought, not unlike my initial thought the previous time around. Mayhap baby is knocking at the door tonight?  SIL was delighted at the notion and we hastily picked out La Bamba and headed for home, lest I commence pushing right then and there, since we all know second babies come falling out with great rapidity.

Ha. Ha.

This is probably an entirely unfair analysis given the circumstances, but La Bamba failed to strike me as entertaining in any way, so I excused myself to take a walk around our apartment complex. It was another balmy Texas evening, this time in mid-May, and as I walked I met a fellow tenant who politely enquired as to when the baby might be arriving.

Tonight! I said gleefully. He responded with a look of nervous alarm and retreated to the safety of his apartment.

I returned to our apartment to find the movie over and the evening of debauchery sugar overdose winding down. Contractions, on the other hand, were picking up. We all decided to head for the hospital since it was a good 40 minutes away, dropping off dear #1 at another SIL’s on the way there.

ed. note: I have quite a few sisters-in-law and I love them all dearly. My own sister, who featured somewhat pivotally in the last story and whom I also love dearly although she is made out of admittedly more, shall we say, matriarchal (which here means bossy) stuff, had moved out of state (My Beloved wept with relief to see her go).

It was close to midnight as we arrived at the hospital. I was pronounced a “two” again, but this time around the nurses only looked upon me pityingly and declared that I was Not In Labor. I could go back home until the real thing kicked in. We were still sufficiently cowed by the authoritative entity that was the Machine That Goes Ping, and so we dutifully left.

Forty minutes later, we were home again. I went to bed to see if I could relax enough to get some sleep. Instead I lay there whimpering and thrashing for about an hour as the “knocking at the door” became all-out pounding, kicking, and jiggling of the doorknob. My Beloved and I both looked at each other and said in unison Screw This! (yes, it was becoming a trend) and headed back to the hospital. Beth and her longsufferingly tolerant husband made the trek with us.

I was terrified of the cervix check. I was convinced there would be no change, that my body was simply playing a collosal joke on me, and that we would be sent home again. When I heard the words “Five centimeters” I said “THANK GOD!”, which the nurse found highly amusing. I was admitted and not shaved, enema-ed, or pitocin-ed. Also, the hospital had undergone an extreme makeover and the archaic push-in-one-room-deliver-in-another scheme had been replaced with birthing suites where you could do it all in one place. Beth was welcome to stay. My Beloved remained in his filthy, bacteria-laden street clothes. The times, they were a-changin’.

Our room was huge and beautifully appointed with artwork and cupboards and a lovely spacious bathroom with a tub, should you desire to soak a while. The only thing that betrayed the fact that you were not at the Hilton was the reality that everything was coated in plastic, including the plush couch and easy chairs. I’m sure that for those shopping around for hospitals in which to deliver, it was hard to beat my present digs. But in the throes of labor, I usually retreat to a Samoan Tiki Hut on a pristine beach located somewhere my grey matter anyway, so I can’t say that I was unduly impressed.

At this point I was remembering the seventeen hours that I had been in labor just 23 months earlier, and it was scaring me. The contractions seemed much stronger at 5 cm than I could bear, Tiki Hut notwithstanding, and, believing that I had ten more hours to go, I took the offer of the epidural that was dangling before my nose like a medicinal carrot. There is a very real truth to the joy of being blissfully ignorant, with regards to labor and delivery. I had done this before. I knew too much.

Looking back, however, I realize that I was progressing much more rapidly than I had the first time around, as would be expected, and therefore I had nowhere near ten hours left. I was probably close to transition by the time the epidural took effect, but I don’t know that it would have made much of a difference to me in my state of mind at the time. If anyone had said “You’re almost there! You can do it without drugs!” I probably would have delivered a swift karate-chop to their larynx.

So I got the epidural and yes, it was heavenly as a matter of fact, thank you for asking.

Dr. N came in at about 4am and declared that I was fully dilated and could begin pushing. I took a deep breath and gave the baby the old heave-ho. Or so I thought. I tried again, but it was admittedly difficult to tell what I was doing when my entire lower half might as well have been on a vacation in the tropics as far as I knew.

This was going to take some time. By the time the epidural wore off enough for me to remember just where my diaphragm was and how to use it, two hours had passed. The whole time, Dr. N had been sitting at the foot of my bed, cracking jokes and keeping our spirits high. He had also been ~ahem~ stretching my perineum so as to avoid an episiotomy, a fact for which I was very grateful, although I don’t think I ever thanked him per se for the service.

Come to think of it, how would you voice such a thing? Perhaps if he Googles his name in the future and comes up with this blog post, I could say it now:

Hey Dr. N, thanks so much for not carving me up like a Thanksgiving turkey! The difference in how quickly I felt like a normal human being post-delivery was nothing short of miraculous. You rock. Hope you’re having a nice life.

Baby emerged at around 6am and we discovered that we had been blessed with the gift of another beautiful daughter. She was a gorgeous pink color quite the opposite of her mother and older sister, so there was no whisking away to the NICU this time. She was placed into my arms and looked up at me in confusion, altogether displeased with the recent turn of events.

We, on the other hand, were quite delighted.

Stats 
Baby: Molly, arrow number 2
Weight: 6lbs, 12oz
Labor: 11 hrs

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