An Addition

Our conversation with our small son began with, "You're going to have a baby sister!" His quick response: "Can I get a monkey?"

This was an easy pregnancy. There were those, close enough to us to know something of the story of my first pregnancy and delivery, who wondered if I would do this again. At 26, and no longer traveling internationally on a shoe-string budget, sleeping on sandy beaches and overnight train coaches, my physical health was good. I had actively worked to rid myself of flab and actually weighed what was printed on my driver's license beginning this second pregnancy. This was a BIG boost to my emotional well-being. And unlike the first time when nausea ruled, there was none of that at all. Starting out, I did have severe and debilitating head pain. A neurologist could pinpoint no specific cause nor give me options for relief so I spent lots of time that first trimester on the living room couch holding cold compresses in place, opening my eyes or moving my head only when absolutely necessary, while keeping track of a VERY active and curious three-year-old.  In three or four months, the headaches stopped as abruptly as they'd begun. 

It was lovely weather. July 4th was on Sunday that year. We had taken a ride up one of the local canyons. Coming back down a twisty, rough and rocky road, Frank drove carefully. Our goal was to avoid an onset of labor prior to the scheduled date to induce, set by my new OB. My young nephew, Kirk, had agreed to tend Todd for that day. 

Jennifer was born on Wednesday, July 7th, 1971, fast, three hours tops, start to finish! Despite his carefully planned schedule, my doctor barely made it in time, the delivery so fast that plans to administer an epidural block fell short. With only one side numbed a bit by injection, this became a half-totally-natural birth! Labor rooms at that small, casual and friendly Ogden hospital were filled beyond capacity that day. Women in labor lined the halls. It was so busy, there was no nurse available to assist so the doctor invited Frank to the end of the table and put him to work! It was just the three of us there in the delivery room. Hear that? A sweet, little cry? And then there were four of us.

A beautiful new-born, fair skinned and pink, not wrinkled or squished, Jenn arrived looking like a real "Gerber" baby. An attending from the nursery was so taken by this little sweetheart that she pasted a pink bow to the baby's perfectly formed, bald head and carried her from room to room and down the hallways, showing her off as if this was a "First" or only baby delivered that day. Actually, there had been more than a dozen deliveries so far but Jenn was the one and only girl!

In a couple of hours, I felt great and wanted to be up. Oops, just one problem. One leg and foot was totally dead from that epidural injection gone astray. As I stepped down off my bed, the nurse standing beside me, in trying to steady me for this first time up after giving birth, kicked the ankle of the dead foot. Since I could not feel the foot or the kick, I stepped down but with my foot bent under at the ankle. Everything began to swell! Everyone got excited! And I was taken for my wildest ride ever, in a wheel chair, down long hallways, bouncing and bumping over fire wall tracts in the floor, cutting close corners, darting in and out of elevators on the way to the lab for X-rays. Nothing broken. No law suite on that day. Not from me.

As I was saying, I was up. I felt great! Baby was doing great! And then I got a call from Kirk, at our apartment. He had LOST Todd! Somehow, I wasn't really surprised by this. I lost Todd, regularly, myself! From his birth, I had the notion that the Lord thought I needed a challenge when he sent Todd to me. As I became acquainted with my new baby's temperament, it seemed possible that the Lord, seeing I was not up to the task of the first challenge, had sent a little calmer spirit the second time.

During those few days following her birth, we did have a scare when intervention would have been necessary had the new baby's billirubin blood count climbed another point. Todd had been a very jaundiced baby, as well, but he had been born at a time and place when routine testing of billirubin rates was not being administered to newborns. We were unaware at that time, of any problem. Now, with Jennifer's birth, the findings of testing meant a few days of return trips to the hospital following our release, sometimes more than once in a day, to have her tiny heels poked and pricked for blood testing.

There was a definite contrast between these two, as newborns. I don't think Todd slept through a night until he was three years old. He gave up regular naps before his first birthday! Jenn, on the other hand, slept through the night by the time she was a week old and when she was tired, she would lay herself down and go to sleep, anywhere. A patient baby, she would coo to let me know that she was awake or hungry or in need of something and wait, without fussing, for a response. She was alert but calm, responses I attributed in part to the fact that she did not struggle with allergies as a new baby, as her brother had. From the beginning, Todd was a busy boy with no time for cuddles and hugs. Jenn was a real snuggler. Her daddy called her, "Snugglesquirt," and "Snugglesnurt" long after those baby days were past.

Blessed by the experience of giving birth twice is a part of who I am.