Sometime early in 1997, My mom found plane tickets to England from Boston for $300, and so I rushed to get a new passport to go with her since we were living in Newport, Rhode Island, at the time. We had been married about 7 months at the time, but I was a little lonely for my mom and sister, who lived so far away. I checked with my doctor first, who gave me permission since I would be only 34 weeks at the time. We had a wonderful week meandering the English countryside, visiting Olde Rectories, eating scones and clotted cream, and spending a day in London.
The day after I returned to the states, my husband's best friend from college came to visit for the weekend, we drove back up to Boston with him to see my husband's brother and the city. I remember having excruciating pain in my back during the drive up, but thought I just had to go to the bathroom. We spent the day touring historical sites in Boston and then I went to bed early while the boys went out. (We were 23 at the time.) My husband came home thinking I was mad at him because I was grumpy when he woke me up. The next day we showed up at Mass where we were going to meet other friends, and no sooner had we sat down, than I knew something was wrong. I either wet my pants or my water broke. I rushed into the bathroom scared to death because I was only 35 weeks along and hid in a stall trying to think straight until my husband sent a random stranger in to find me. She calmed me down and told me we had plenty of time to get to the hospital. All I knew about water breaking was the "Get to the doctor right away!" We called our parents from a pay phone, and then my husband drove like a maniac, speeding the 90 miles between Boston and Newport, praying he would get pulled over by a cop so he could say, "My wife is having a baby!" No luck. He did stop at Burger King, and as soon as we got checked in he started to eat the cheeses that were stocking the little fridge in room. The Newport hospital had a birthing center with all sorts of comforts for the father, like a mini-fridge, a pull-out couch, and a jacuzzi, which he also took advantage of. I have memories of him eating through labor, but he'll tell me that's revisionist history. His brother and friend also showed up with donuts a couple hours later.
Meanwhile, my parents literally raced to a plane - my mom even forgot her ID - and arrived 6 or 7 hours later, but by that time our little boy had been born. He presented posterior - hence the back pain - with his little fist clenched up by his face, so needless to say, I had to have some stitches. In some of the photos of his first hours, you can see blood splashed up by my pillow, which is part of the reason I never have felt strongly inclined to have a home birth. Although early, he was still six pounds, 11 ounces, but he hardly had any eyebrows, and he turned quite orange in the next couple of days. My husband had to buy a carseat before we could leave the hospital, and he and his brother had to put together the crib we rarely used. Our bedroom in the half of a house we rented in Newport was so small that you had to kneel on the foot of our double bed to put him in his crib, and to open a dresser drawer, you had to sit on the side of the bed. We should have just used a drawer for a crib. Ah, the good old days!
As an inexperienced mother without close relatives living nearby, I didn't recognize the early signs of labor, nor did I realize how fussy this little guy was as an infant until I had other babies who didn't cry all the time that they weren't sucking on something. But I was happy to nurse him all the time, or pop my little finger in his mouth, until he finally grew out of it. And he never has been a fussy kid since. For his seventeenth birthday, he didn't even have any requests for his birthday except a cake with a lot of frosting and knepp, the dumplings sauteed in butter that my mother-in-law makes. So we had lots of both for dinner last night, along with steak and lobster that my brother-in-law, the same one who used to live in Boston, caught two nights before. It reminded us of the lobster dinner the hospital fed us after Joseph's birth, but much tastier. Forget diabetes and Lenten fasting for a meal to celebrate life!
Photos of then and now:
 |
| March 1997 |
 |
| March 2014 |
 |
| and one more of his baby sister at 36 weeks. You can already see that she has the familial dimple chin. |
