Today Is His Birthday

Yet I am the one who is getting older.  :) My oldest son turns 21 today.  I tear up every time I think about it.  My life changed big time when I turned 21 (got married, moved to another country) and I guess I realize that there is no turning back now.  My firstborn is grown up.  Ack!  What if the other three decide to do the same thing?

I was 23, dh and I had been married and living in England for 2 years when ds1 was born.  I was 2 weeks past my due date so we had to travel 2 hours to the nearest military hospital (RAF Lakenheath) so I could be induced.  They hooked me up to the pitocin and adjusted the amounts on and off all day but labor did not come.  The idiot doctor, lazy and not wanting to deal with me on a Friday, sent me home.  I went into labor that night.  We drove back to the hospital but they said to wait until I was dilated more and sent us to the hotel on base (a place where people who were just coming on or leaving base soon stayed.)  Dh and I spent the day counting contractions and waiting.  Finally I could take it no more and I sat myself in that maternity ward.  Again we were dealing with lazy, uncaring people who just didn’t want to do anything on the weekend and they just told me to walk the halls to help labor progress.  The nurse practitioner, an officer, came around, saw what was going on, and let me tell you, she gave those people youknowwhat for what they did.  She yelled about me not being in a hospital gown, the room not prepared…justice was served that afternoon by a woman in Air Force blue.

So now I am in a room and being attended to, but still no progress in the labor.  The officer breaks my water, and it is green.  I didn’t know then but that means there was meconium in there and the baby was at risk.  Finally I felt the urge to push and did so for an hour or so in the room.  Then I was moved to the delivery room where I pushed for another 3 hours…that’s right, 3 hours.  The nurse could not perform a C-section so she tried and tried to get the dr on call to come in.  By now it was Sunday and no dr would answer her plea.  At last, with the help of forceps, ds emerged.  I gave him a quick kiss on the top of his head and they rushed him off to NICU for he did indeed have meconium aspiration.

Dh and I are both exhausted.  Neither of us has slept in days or eaten in hours.  The nurses brought us some food and helped us make the stateside call to my parents to let them know the baby had arrived.  I was so weak and “messed up” down there that I was bed bound.  It was a full day later before they could wheel me down to the NICU to even see ds.  He was a big strapping and otherwise healthy boy so he only stayed 5 days in the ward.  It took me 4 days to recover but they let me stay the 5th as well, when ds could finally come room with me.

While it was a pretty dramatic birth ds had no further problems and was a delightful baby.  Slept good, ate good, wonderful disposition.  Dh and I learned a lot from our experience.  Ds had duel citizenship until he turned 18.  It was neat when we took him to the local government office to register his birth and he got his little health care card (never used it, but it’s in his scrapbook lol.)  And now the baby is a man and I am so very proud of him.  Now to figure out how to keep this from happening to the other three.  ;)