today is her birthday

I started the day, of June 26, 1982, already in the hospital. I had sprung a small leak the evening before while waddling back to our table. We had gone out to dinner and a movie, with a plan to go out every day until our due date of July 11th.  I felt a very sharp pain as I walked back to the table from the restroom. Later, health care folks opined that I had had a contraction. Or else the baby had kicked.

We had planned to see "E.T." which opened in our city that day but, as usual, her dad came home late and ET was sold out. So we went to see 'Poltergeist', the only Friday evening movie at our cineplex that sitll had tickets.  When hospital staff speculated that I had a contraction or a baby kick when my water leaked, I silently wondered if it was the movie and its loud noise that had unsettled my baby.

While I had gone to the restroom, my husband had paid our check. So we went to our car and drove home. It was only when I started to get out of the car that I realized I had sprung a leak.

Pregnant women sometimes have a gusher when their water breaks. My water didn't quite 'break'. I really did simply spring a small leak. I knew, however, from reading and from the one lamaze class we had attended (and I had paid attention) that once that water seal was broken, the risk of infection was present. I knew the baby had to come.

My ex, however, did not trust my judgment. He insisted on going into our house, with me in the car sure I needed to go to a hospital for the baby's wellbeing, to call our labor and delivery nurse friend Denise. Denise was the instructor of our one delivery class but she was also the wife of one of my ex's childhood friends.

Denise agreed with me, telling my husband that I had to go to the hospital.

I did not go into labor that Friday night. The L&D staff decided we'd wait for me to go into labor. And my husband went home. The next morning, he went to his office. All the top staff worked on Saturdays and he was more worried about his appearances to his employers than his wife and baby over at the hospital. When he walked into work, he announced his wife was at the hospital and might have the baby that day. All the men he worked with dropped their jaws. They were all husbands and fathers and they couldn't believe he had gone to work instead of staying with me.

He had asked my labor and delivery nurse to give him a call when it looked like the baby was coming soon. Really he did. The men he worked with were so appalled that he had gone to his office that he came to the hospital. He showed up at the hospital with his wife in labor with his child because the guys at work were appalled that he was not with me. He did not show up because of me. Or his baby.

Sometime that day, my L&D nurse actually said to me, in a hush, that I seemed better off without him. She took to sending him on errands all that day to keep him away from me as much as she could. He was upset that I did not go into labor on my own. Huh? Why was he blaming me for nature? He was upset that I had been given a drug to get me into labor.  He was upset that I called for pain relief, as if my doing so was an embarassment to him. This is not a moron. He has an MBA and a JD but he didn't seem to grasp basic things, such as I did not control when I went into labor, when I delivered.

A substitute ob-gyn, for my doc was out of town for his daughter's wedding, came around at 9 a.m. the morning of June 26 and gave me the 'pits', the pitocin to prod my body into labor. 

I spent much of June 26, 1982 waiting to feel labor pains. Once I felt some, I called for drugs. Even my L&D nurse saw that my husband was not a real support so she did not press us to try natural delivery. Induced labor with pitocin generally has more intense labor pains.

Blah blah blah. I got drugs. I got wheeled into delivery. My baby was born.

Later, Mr. Charm told me what he had seen watching our daughter be born, watching all the blood, tissue, etc., that had to be expelled from my body, had been really disgusting. He said "Your body is really disgusting". He was referring to my placenta, her placenta, life process.  A screen was placed so I could not see what my ex referred to as the grossly disgusting bits.  For one moment, I was propped up and given a mirror so I could see beyond the screen to see my body half out of my body. I wanted to watch the whole thing.  I was not put off by the messy stuff. I think that propping me up for a seconds-long glimpse of my baby half in and half out, before we saw her gender, was an odd touch. Was that supposed to help baby and I feel bonded?  It didn't.  I had been as bonded to her as any mother ever has been from the first instants I felt the new being in my body. I felt the presence of another being in my body in the first week or two that she landed in there.

He never patted my hand throughout my labor. He never paid any attention to me at all.  He was such an odd duck.

She was wonderful.  They took her away briefly to clean her up and then brought her back to me. He followed her. In the recovery room, they also took the baby away for a short while. The idea seemed to be that new parents would want to talk to one another alone for a bit. Not my guy. He left me alone in my recovery room and stayed with her.

He loved her. I am sure he still does. So do I.

Say, I am writing this story very differently than past tellings. And I am not keening in grief over losing her as I have. Progress? Or the end of caring?

This is how the day she was born unfolded for me.