My Baby, Michael

Michael is turning 17 this Sunday!

In July of 1991 Bruce and I had been married for a year and a few months and we were thinking baby thoughts. (Actually we'd thought about our future children for a long time; we had picked out one boys name and two girls names about four years before we even got married. But after one year of marriage we decided to start "working" ;-) on having a baby.)

That July Bruce and I took our first ever "family vacation" to Arches National Park. (I mean this was our first vacation alone—the previous year we'd gone to Zion Nat'l. Park with my parents.) Let me tell you, July is not the time to visit Arches. We went hiking and sight-seeing during the hot, hot days, but when we got back to camp I noticed that I was unusually hungry—even sick—and the meals we had planned seemed icky, and didn't make me feel much better. I had heard enough about morning sickness from Melanie that I began to be suspicious. So after two days of the hungry/sick-thing we decided to go back home and have a pregnancy test. (This was before home pregnancy tests were very reliable so we actually made an appointment at the hospital, where they did free testing.)

Does this water-jug I'm carrying make me look pregnant?

On the very next Friday we went to the hospital. They had me go pee in a cup, and then I had to go and fill out this form. Just as I was finishing up the paperwork, a nurse came and called us into a private room. She said, "You are . . ." and that's all we heard. We were so excited! We left there grinning and giggling and hugging and went straight to the store to look at baby things.

Your First Pregnancy is an amazing thing. I mean, they are all amazing, but the first one is really amazing! No matter how much your big sister has told you about being pregnant, it is all so very new. I kind of knew about morning sickness, and I was expecting swollen feet and ankles, but the one thing I didn't expect was that I would be so tired all - the - time; I had no idea I would be so tired. I remember one day someone came to visit me at three in the afternoon, and I'd been napping for about two hours. When she came to the door she woke me up, and it was obvious I'd just gotten up from bed. I was so embarrassed, thinking she must really think I'm awfully lazy to be sound asleep in the middle of the afternoon.

Morning sickness is no fun. That's all there is to say about it. You feel sick if you don't eat, and food itself is rather sickening. Dances With Wolves was the big, exciting movie during my morning-sick months. We went to see it in the theater but I hadn't had time to eat before we went. I was miserable through the whole movie, and I was irritated that every time I thought it was about to end it went on . . . and on and on. Consequently, I still don't like that movie, even though I've tried to watch it a couple times since then, when I wasn't sick.

The ultrasound appointment was very exciting. "This is the heart; these are the kidneys," etc. But the fun part was seeing him suck his thumb, seeing his cute little footprint, and getting a good view of the "outdoor plumbing"—a boy! They gave us a due-date of March 4, 1992.

I look like I ate a basketball! (Young and cute, though.)

Of course we took the pre-natal classes, and learned all the breathing techniques, etc. I had pretty much made up my mind to go drug-free—they really used to push that idea. First Pregnancy Moment: "After all, women have been having babies for ages without any pain medication; surely I could live through it too." (I'll tell you right now that if women through the ages had had a choice, they'd have had an epidural!)

The day before Michael came, Bruce and I went shopping with our friends Tim and Jill. All that day whenever I went into the bathroom I would have this heavy, thick, mucousy dishcharge; it was so strange that I even made Bruce come look at it one time. I was "losing my plug," but First Pregnancy Moment: I didn't know it because I expected that to be pinkish—as they'd told us in our class. It was not pink at all; it just seemed very weird. We walked around the mall all that day, looking for baby things to bring Michael home, and shopping for my last-minute stuff as well. I remember stopping in front of one store window where they had three mannequins wearing this cute, cute dress, and I started crying because I would "never be thin enough to wear that cute dress. Never!" (By the way, the crying over being too big for a cute dress is not just a first pregnancy-thing.)

We shopped from about 10:00 until dinner time. Bruce and I went home for dinner and then right back out—to buy tennis balls for massaging my back. (In retrospect, I think I'd slap Bruce if he tried to rub my back with a tennis ball while I was in labor. But what did we know? In our pre-natal class, that was one of the items they'd told us to bring to the hospital—along with a deck of cards. Like a woman in labor, with no pain medication, would want to play cards!) With the tennis balls secured, we went back to Tim and Jill's house to watch Robin Hood starring Kevin Costner. I just didn't feel right—almost sick—and I was so tired and, yes, I took it out on the movie. Another one I never have to see again. (Hmmm. Maybe it's just watching Kevin Costner movies that makes me feel yucky.)

At about 5:00 the following morning (Sunday, March 1) I went to the bathroom for about the tenth time that night. As soon as I laid back down in my bed I had a terrible contraction (I'd been having very strong, but not painful, contractions for a couple of months. Braxton Hicks, I figured). And then something very embarrassing happened: I peed the bed. Or did my water break? I woke Bruce up and First Pregnancy Moment: we discussed it for about five minutes, until I had another huge contraction. So I headed for the shower while Bruce called my doctor. On the phone, the doctor asked what color the fluid was—was it green or was it clear? First Pregnancy Moment: It might have been greenish, but not like neon-green or grass-green, or even a bad head-cold. It was clearish—not like milk or Pepto-Bismol or snot; so we said clear. "How far apart were the contractions?" About five minutes; they said to get up to the hospital as soon as we could. After I had a quick and rather painful shower (another First Pregnancy Moment), we grabbed my bag and we were off.

Remember what I said about the First Pregnancy? Who knew labor would feel so awful? There was NO traffic on the roads at 6:00 on a Sunday morning, but we hit all the lights red. I kept telling Bruce, "There's nobody coming—just run the light!" But he wouldn't do it. At last we arrived; I could barely step out of the car and I was walking nearly doubled over. A doctor was entering the hospital at the same time we were and he asked if I needed a wheelchair. First Pregnancy Moment: I was very embarrassed and declined—I mean, normal women who are in labor don't have to enter the hospital in a wheelchair, do they? It took f-o-r-e-v-e-r to go up the elevator and get checked in and have the nurses check my progress. They only had to ask once if I wanted an epidural; it turns out that the doctor who offered the wheelchair was my anesthesiologist.

After the epidural, everything was lovely.

After the epidural, everything was lovely. We chatted, we watched TV, we called our families on the phone; my parents and Melanie came, and I visited with them. I could see the contractions peaking on the monitor, but they didn't hurt any more. The worst thing now was that I didn't get to eat anything, or even drink some water. Every now and then someone would come in to check my progress, and at about noon they said I could start pushing. Cool.

Grandpa Johnson, in the waiting room.

But then, around 1:00 or so, everyone came in—the doctor, a few nurses, a medical student. The monitors showed that the baby was stressed, and he had to come NOW. They had to use forceps to deliver Michael; he was born at 1:40 p.m. First Pregnancy Moment: This was all so new and so amazing, I didn't realize that Michael hadn't cried when he was born. Instead of wrapping him up and handing him to me, they just kind of flopped him over my right thigh. I kept trying to get him, or at least put him in a different position, but they kept him just out of my reach. When the cord was cut a bunch of people grabbed Michael and ran out of the room with him; Bruce asked if I was OK, I said "yes" and he ran out after them. So then it was just me and my doctor and the med student. The doctor was stitching me up and asking the student, "And what is this layer; and this layer?" and the student would answer him. They finished up and then they left me too.

It turns out that Michael had had his first bowel movement in utero. We had been warned about this in our pre-natal class, and how dangerous that was for the baby, because he would then "breathe in" fluid with meconium (fetus-poo) in it. (Thinking back, I now believe that he probably had that BM on Friday night, judging from the color of the mucousy goo from Saturday. I bet if we'd gone to the hospital on Saturday they would have induced me, and Michael's birthday would have been February 29.) The team who took off with Michael ran to another room where they suctioned fluid out of his lungs. Melanie says they worked on him for much longer than five minutes before he finally breathed in and cried. And when Michael finally cried, Bruce did too.

Ten minutes with my new family

In the meantime, I was in my room alone and wondering what was going on with my baby, and where everyone had gone. I remember The Scarlet Pimpernel was on the TV. After a while Bruce came in and told me what had been going on with Michael, and that he was fine; and a little while later he was able to bring Michael to me. I held my baby for about ten minutes before the medical staff wanted him back for testing and monitoring.

Michael, holding his daddy's hand

Bruce stayed with me a little while longer, but then he went out again because he got to bathe Michael. I stayed in the delivery room, pretty much by myself, for the next few hours. A nurse had given me some juice, but I was starving, and I didn't know what was going on, and I felt very sorry for myself. Finally, around 5:00, Bruce's family came up to the hospital. I guess when they showed up the staff decided maybe they should take me to my own room. And then I got to visit with people and have the baby in my room and eat something. It all felt better after that.


Hmmmm. This post about Michael has turned into a big, long story just about having Michael. So I'll have to continue tomorrow. ;-)