When I was pregnant with Maggie I worked at the bank. As was the custom there, a pool was started to determine the sex and weight of my soon-to-be-baby along with the birth date. I was an incubating bystander in this game of chance, with no opportunity to collect on the pot that was growing with me.
About ten days prior to my anticipated due date I had a doctor’s appointment. When I got back I told my work friends that I was dilated to three. This caused a frenzy of activity within the baby pool for those who had been waiting to make their wager. I didn’t know that being dilated before labor was a good thing until a coworker looked at me like I was some kind of idiot. “Don’t you know that most women would love to be dilated to that before they go to the hospital?”
I didn’t. I knew nothing.
I did know that when my water broke in the bathroom at work when I was washing my hands that I should probably go home and call my doctor’s office.
Mark came home from work and we got to the hospital around 3:30. After I was admitted, we walked the maternity ward over and over to get things moving, stopping by the waiting room each time to catch the score of the Cubs game.
After lots of pushing until my tailbone broke, Maggie Erin came out. My labor lasted four hours. I didn’t know that was good for a first-timer.
She was born on a Wednesday night. I got discharged on a Saturday morning. Those were the good old days of baby delivering when you actually got to recover a bit before they sent you home.
The following day there was an air show at the little, local airfield that Mark wanted to go to. I thought I should stay home with this brand new baby, but he said, “Heck, we gotta get her out sometime so why not today at the air show?” Well, yeah, I guess that does make sense………..
……….to half-wit morons.
It was a HOT day and Maggie and I spent our time sitting in the shade under the wing of an airplane while Mark and his friend checked out all the planes. The weather report on that night’s news said that the temperature on the tarmac at the airport reached 120 degrees.
I looked at this five day old baby and thought we’d cooked her………….and how was I going to explain this to the grandparents who hadn’t even met her yet?
A few days later when I took our little bambino in for her first check-up, I asked the pediatrician about taking her out in the heat wave that hadn’t let up. “It’s okay if it’s not for very long,” she said. “I mean not like Sunday’s heat. That was terrible, but I’m sure you’re smart enough not to do something like that.”
I wouldn’t be so sure, lady.
Happy birthday Maggiekins.
You’d have had a better start in life with a pack of wolves in the woods than with me and your dad.
Aw, now see, she turned out just fine. And so did you. Lovely, lovely picture, too. xo
Great Picture Kathy !
Loved the story. You and Mark did just fine .
The proof is in the pudding ! ! !
This made me laugh and remember all the things I didn't know with that first one! Fifty-four years ago I got to stay "in hospital" from Friday to the next Wednesday!
Two years later, only from Sunday to Wednesday. It's amazing any of those firstborns survived!
OMG, what an adorable photo! We were idiot parents, too. With Megan, we stopped at the grocery store on the way home from the hospital to grab a few items. An older lady admired her in her baby carrier, then proceeded to chew us out for exposing her to germs and cans of food (they could fall on her head, she said). "You don't take a newborn to the grocery store! Your mother didn't tell you that?" Being a hormonal mess, I bawled and blubbered all the way home and the rest of the day, thinking I'd done great harm to my new baby. (Not a single falling can hit her head, BTW.) We got smart and Trevor, two years later, got all of the paranoia & none of the guilt! By the time Ryan came on the scene nine years later, we had given up on babying our baby. He was only 3 days old when we packed up the crew and went to the Plaza Art Fair–packed with people on a gorgeous September day; then 4 days old when he attended his first sibling soccer game. Amazingly, he survived.
so who won the Pool?