Note: This is a repost from a year ago.
Six years ago today
Six years ago today my life changed…
I woke up at around 6:30 after I had been having cramp-like pains for a few hours. I wasn’t sure if it was IT but I had a pretty good feeling. Our parents had taken us to the Brasserie the night before to celebrate our anniversary and we treated ourselves to peach flavored Slurpees at 7-11 following dinner. At first I had thought the pains were resulting from the food. I waited until they became regular. They finally did- around every 5 minutes.
It wasn’t a big surprise that it happened on Memorial Day. Everything in my family happens on Memorial Day. Good and bad. My sister was born, We got married, My great uncle died in his twenties after a fluke blood clot from surgery, my grandfather passed away, my father and my uncle had a pretty bad business-related occurrence on Memorial Day, and a few other things that I can’t remember offhand. When I found out my due date (May 30) my mother predicted without a doubt that I would be one day late and it would happen on Memorial Day. I mustered up enough attitude throughout my pregnancy to tell my mother that I was sure she’d be wrong. I hated it that she wasn’t.
Greg was in shul when I decided that this was IT. We didn’t have a cell phone at the time but we had gotten a beeper in case anything like this happened. I beeped him and he came home. I called the doctor’s answering service and they told me the nurse midwife was on call and she’d be returning my call. She called me back and told me to go to the hospital-she’d meet me there. Not if I had anything to do with that. I had been seeing the one doctor in my practice who actually delivered babies and I wanted him to be there that day. Luckily, Greg had seen him in shul that morning and we knew him well enough to call him at home and ask him to please be there with us. He agreed.
We took our requisite pre-baby pictures and we headed over to Sinai Hospital at 8:30 in the morning. We had originally decided that we would call our parents only when it was all over. Ha! We called them before we left home. Greg’s mother (who originally said she would come to the hospital only when we called her with the good news) announced that she and Greg’s father would be there sometime by early afternoon. My parents agreed.
We got checked in and even though I was only 1 or 2 centimeters dilated, they told me to walk around and they admitted me to the hospital. Besides being hungry and jealous of Greg and the party mix he was eating, I was feeling pretty fine. At around 12:30 when the pain started getting pretty bad, I started thinking of the drugs. My doctor and the nurses were being great cheerleaders and were pumping up my ego and telling me that I didn’t need any drugs and I was doing fine on my own. I was torn. I felt pain, but it wasn’t terrible yet- but I didn’t want it to feel terrible either. Like any mature adult in the middle of labor, I could only do one thing. I called my mother and asked her what she thought I should do. My mother who hasn’t completely cut the proverbial umbilical cord from either of her daughters was surprisingly curt with me. “Peninah,” She said, “You are an adult. You are having your first child; don’t you think you should make this decision on your own?” I guess she was right. I decided to go for the drugs. NICE….
I didn’t feel much once the epidural was put in. Before I knew it, it was a few hours later and I was ready to push. Only problem was that the wonderful drugs they gave me didn’t allow me to feel what I was actually doing. They had to make the drugs wear off and the pushing became quite painful as well as uncomfortable. I alternated being hot and freezing. I was starving beyond belief and all I wanted was a doughnut (to quote one of the nurses, “When this is all over Penny, you can have all the doughnuts you want!” Liar- they never gave me a doughnut!). The blood pressure cuff that squeezed my arm every few minutes was driving me crazy. Greg was being positively wonderful, yet I knew he was an emotional wreck- so that was making me upset. Some random nurses who had never seen a delivery came in and out as well as what seemed like the rest of the hospital. So much for modesty.
After around an hour and a half of pushing and after a few pleas from me to the doctor (“I can’t do this anymore, I have to stop!”) as well as some threats from the doctor to me (“You can’t stop, this baby needs to come out- it will start losing oxygen!”), the best feeling in the entire world happened. My son, Ezra, was born at 4:34 pm. He weighed 6 lbs exactly and he was beautiful. My doctor finished up and ran to his Memorial Day barbeque that we had taken him away from. In the waiting room, he saw both of our parents and said, “Mazel Tov, it’s a baby.” He let them find out for themselves that they had a new grandson. My father-in-law gave him a baseball while he was still in the warmer. My parents were thrilled to welcome their 3rd grandchild. My mother-in-law was happy to become a “Bubby.”
Greg’s and My life changed that day, six years ago. There are some days that we look back wistfully at the time before our children were born. We weren’t quite as tired. Our house was somewhat neater. We didn’t have to break up fights about who got to get the pancake syrup first. We got to go out more often. We had more freedom.
But, we didn’t get to have little kids come into our room in the morning and kiss us on the lips while we’re still sleeping. We didn’t get to fall asleep with a tiny child on our chests. We didn’t get to learn all the words to every Barney and Dora song, or the rules of Pokemon. We didn’t get to think of ourselves 4th and 5th after the 3 most important people in our lives. We didn’t get to appreciate them every day and marvel that they are healthy and happy and worry continuously that they may not always be. We didn’t get to look at three little faces and see our past, present, and future in their eyes.
Six years ago today my life changed…and I wouldn’t change a thing.
I had a sad epiphany today while driving carpool. Ezra and his friends were talking about H@rry Potter. They were assigning characters to each other and the conversation went something like this:
"I'm Sirius Black, so I am a dog."
"Well I am a warewolf so I am professor Lupin"
"You can be Peter Pettigrew"
"Yeah well, he is scabbers and he cut off his toe."
"Well, James Potter, Harry's dad is a stag."
Basically the conversation was one giant spoiler for Book 3: "The Prisoner of Azkaban."
The only problem is that these boys are all in kindergarten and first grade. None of them have read this book (Ezra and Greg are in the middle of book 2 if I am not mistaken). They all know the story from the movies. The H@rry Potter books brought a generation back to reading. The problem is that the next generation didn't have to read the books, they all saw the movies.
I feel sad for my son that he won't experience the joy of sitting and reading book three and finally getting to the end and finding out that the Sirius is the big black dog Harry mistook for a grim, and is in fact his godfather. I don't know if he will even want to read the book or the following books because he knows the whole story already.
JK Rowling did so much for children's literacy. She then took it all away, when she signed away the rights of her book to be made into movies. I am not sure if I will ever forgive her.