The Birthing Story

Last Sunday arrived without any birthing activity and we decided to reach for the Castor Oil which is kind of like Napalm for midwives. The idea is to create more room for the baby by blasting out the alimentary canal. This process also produces prostoglandin which helps to "ripen" the cervix. If there are still any Viet Cong in the delta after that, they usually try carpet bombing; maybe burn a few villages. I swirled the 2 oz dose into a chocolate milkshake and handed the oily potion to Laura. Two sips sent Laura to the toilet wretching and me to the CVS for another bottle. After another try and similar results, we gave up resigned to another day without a bouncy baby. Napalm didn't help in Viet Nam either. I went off to the gym and Laura began to practice Chopin's "Marche Funebre" Sonata.
At around 5 PM, Laura was reworking the development of the 1st movement, when a severe contraction caused her to play some appoggiaturas not included in the Paderewski edition. I was browsing office supplies at Staples, weighing the merits of "Day-at-a-Glance 2006" vs "Week-at-a-Glance 2006" and gently musing on my "Decade-at-a-Glance" life when my cell phone rang with a special urgency. If I didn't have caller ID, I wouldn't have known that screaming banshee on the other end was my darling Laura. I rushed home to find Laura writhing on the bed with the portable phone clutched in her hand. I extracted the phone and heard the voice of Julia, our midwife. "Could you start timing the contractions and call me back?" Instead of the required 1 minute contractions every 4 minutes, we were getting 2 minute contractions every 1 minute. "Oo, that was a doosie," said Julia when I had her back on the line.
Shortly before 6 PM Laura's water broke and Julia said to bring her in to the Birthing Center. Laura was encouraging me to use poor driving techniques as we barreled down Lacaster Ave. "Get in the right lane! Pass him, pass him!!" she screamed, or "It's yellow! Go, GO!!" Several times she reached over to honk the horn at pedestrians and slow moving vehicles. We arrived at 6:45, Laura started pushing at 7:20 and the baby was born at 7:30--some kind of Birthing Center record, especially for a first time mom....
Ok, that's the basic story. Check back for a report on the actual birth and what we've been doing since. -- Joe