The day before Duncan's birth, I spent the evening babysitting for a friend's four month old baby. Mitch and Alisa loved having a baby in the house, and it made us all more anxious to meet our own new baby, who was due in six days. However, since my first two kids were both several days late, none of us were planning on having a baby anytime soon.
It was a Sunday night and Dan was working late, so after the baby left, I got my own kids in bed, and crashed in bed myself, around eleven. About midnight I think, I woke up for a few minutes when Dan got home, then I went back to sleep while he stayed up. It was about one in the morning when I woke up again, thinking I had wet the bed. Or at least wet myself, since there really wasn't enough there to wet the bed. I told Dan what was going on, but since I wasn't sure myself, and since I wasn't having any contractions, I tried to sleep for a while. I figured if my water had broke, at some point, there would be a big gush of water, but there was only a light trickle every now and then. I also thought I would be having contractions if my water broke, and I was not feeling anything. I really thought maybe there was something wrong with my bladder.
I was up and down for a few more hours, and neither Dan nor I slept much. Finally, about five in the morning, with no other symptoms, I called my doctor. Oh my goodness, I hated to wake him up, but I figured I at least had the decency to wait til almost morning. He sleepily told me to head on over to the hospital and they would check to see what was going on. So then we started calling relatives to see if someone could come stay with the kids. Just a few days before, EVERYONE we knew had generously offered to come stay, anytime, day or night, when it was baby time. Just call, they said, and we will be there asap. Well, now that we were actually calling at five o'clock on a Monday morning, somehow, nobody could come. My dad was going to work, my mom had an important meeting, Amy had something else going on, and Linda couldn't come either. We were like, HELLO FAMILY, we are having a baby. It's not like we can postpone this until it's convenient!
Finally, my dad said he could come up and stay with the kids, and when my mom's meeting was over, she would come up too. Waiting in the early morning dark for my dad, with the kids still asleep in their beds, I sat on the couch, waiting for a contraction to come, and hoping and praying that I wasn't inconveniencing everybody for no reason. I really could not believe that a baby of mine would make an appearance ahead of schedule. I was sure that it was going to turn out to be a false alarm.
When my dad got to our house, we took off. It was still dark, but it was unseasonably warm, like 50 degrees. I had always pictured driving off to the hospital for our January baby in a freezing blinding snowstorm, and here it was as balmy as April. I wondered if I was even going to need that sweet little new born sized snow suit I had bought my baby boy.
Mitch and Alisa were both born at LDS Hospital, but with Duncan, we decided to deliver at Holy Cross Hospital, the same hospital that I was born at. Holy Cross was smaller and more personable than LDS, or so I had heard, It was in the process of being renamed Salt Lake Regional Medical Center, and I thought that was the dumbest, most generic name for a hospital that I had ever heard.
But the hospital was beautiful and comfortable and brand spanking new. We got sent right up to labor and delivery, where some random intern, after a brief exam, informed me that I was definitely in labor, and was not leaving the hospital until I had a baby. So we got admitted and waited for things to commence. Before too long, they gave me the best drug I have ever had in my life. It is called Fentanyl, they gave it to me through an IV, and it soon had me in a very happy place. Until they said I could only have it in the early stages of labor. Then between that point and the point where Duncan arrived, things are kind of fuzzy, probably thanks to the Fentanyl. I know I had an epidural at some point, but I don't remember anything about it. I do remember that the epidural was perfect, as far as epidurals go. The pain was very manageable, but I could feel it enough to know when a contraction was coming, and I knew when to push. At 11:42 a.m. Duncan Joseph was born. Right toward the end, he was in a little distress, and he did the whole meconium thing so they called in the respiratory therapist, who remember very clearly, much more clearly than anyone else in the room that day, and she worked him over good for a few minutes before I even got to see him. As soon as he got the okay, they brought him to me, and he was blowing bubbles and looking all around at everything, calm as can be. While this was going on, my doctor and a nurse were having a small panic attack because for a few minutes after Duncan was born, the fetal heart monitor was still picking up a pulse. I saw the doc look at the nurse and the nurse look at the doc, and they both looked at the monitor then back at each other. Nurse very quietly said, "Is there another one?" and the doctor looked nervous, just for a minute. Before I could really register all this, the moment passed, the doctor relaxed and laughed a little bit, and said "For a second there, I thought we were going to get a surprise." Wouldn't THAT have been fun?
I was perfectly happy with my one perfect, beautiful boy. He had his own unique look about him right from the start. He didn't look much like either his brother or his sister, except that he definitely looked like one of our babies. 9lbs. 2 ozs, a little dusting of brown hair, and big blue eyes. I couldn't believed I could be so lucky three times in a row. We waited nearly four years to have our third baby, and boy oh boy, was he ever worth the wait. It felt so good to have another baby in our arms.
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