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.
