Five years ago!

I am thirty-seven years old! As I type this, my super-cat, Tiki, keeps trying to "nose" my fingers, and purr me. He's a great cat! Griffen has finally given up trying to get onto my lap. Lexie is in bed..., but eating french toast sticks (with syrup) and cheesey eggs. My iPod just downloaded all the books I'll want for the rest of the year.

Five years ago, yesterday, at midnight-ish I sat up in bed, awake, with small cramps. I went and looked at myself in the hall mirror and asked myself if "this was it." I paced around, smiling, remembering that I had talked to Tracy on the phone that night about watching "Nine and a half weeks" the night of childbirth. Cramps became more uncomfortable. I woke up Lexie's dad and told him I thought this might be the real deal. Mom was asleep in the RV camper outside. I tried to write down the time of my last "contraction?" Then another one came. I wrote down the time again on the notepad. Five or six later someone, I think it was me, pushed the button on the intercom, so recently installed, between house and RV. Mom came in, and the only other thing I remember before the hospital is the ride in the car on TV highway. Strangest thing, I thought it all looked so sharp, but at the same time, I actually remembered the same trip in the back of a police car after being arrested for getting into a fight with Lexie's dad. Weird. After the TV highway memory, the next is being in a room, undressing with the promise the someone would be checking my cervix dialation to tell me whether or not to go home. Oh God! How I prayed that they wouldn't send me home! The room was small, almost office like except for the exam bed. I got into my "gown" and waited, too long for someone as freaked out as an expectant mom in pain. Next thing, funny, I don't remember anything until I was cursing like a sailor at the top of my lungs. I remember that room, I know the clock was on the north wall, to the left of the bed, right of the door. I had told them I wanted an epidural, and apparantly, wasn't going to get one until Starbucks opened. I can't hear the words, I know they were foul. I remember screaming cuss words, at nothing in particular, but pain. What a whimp I felt I was. I was hugging the bottom right corner of the hospital bed, while Mom, Dad, and Lexie's dad were watching me embarass myself, as I thought I was doing at the time. At some point before, I was able to call best friend Tracy and she was ecstatic to come watch the "scene". Geese, It felt like hours before the anesthesiologist arrived. I remember she was female, at the time I swore, I would remember her name forever, name my second child for her. Too late. She showed up just when I should have been pushing Lex out. Lex's dad had to hold me still on the bed crosswise, while she stuck the ginormous needle full of drugs into my spinal column. I even asked if it was OK that I felt I had to push, without the pain, suddenly. OK she said! Pain gone! Ooops! Desire to push gone too! Eeeks. Now I fall asleep for a while. Wake up! Doctor finally here. He coaches me for a while, I'm pissed and tired, can't feel anything "down below", but a mild pain. Even my effort of pushing felt wasted now. My God, how time did stretch now. I look at the clock, almost Noon. I remember earlier, Tracy brushing my hair, a lollipop that I didn't really like, Lexie's dad's mom come in and piss me off so MUCH, that it might have been the catalyst to bear down, minus the epidural. I loved having Mom, Chris, and Tracy there! I remember the doctor having curt words with his "assistant" (nurse?) for letting go...of the VACUUM, just before Lex made her debut. Next scene... I'm wasted, watching Mom, Dad and Frank monitor a nurse cleaning lex, I don't even remember the cord cutting. Then, Doc is stitching, and stitching , and stiching...Yikes. One or two reels of fishing line? I get to hold tiny Lex, really hold her. Have no problem nursing her. Wake up, look at the clock, it's three in the morning, Lex is swaddled in a hospital crib next to my bed. I can barely beleive it. Sigh! Sleep.