Every story has a beginning. And in honor of my recent birthday I thought I would share the tale of my own beginning. It seems only fair, since every year on my birthday I receive the requisite phone call from my mother where she proceeds to retell this same story to me, just in case I forgot it sometime in the preceding 364 days. It usually starts something like this: "On this day, 34 years ago, I suffered many long hours to bring you into this world..."
My birth story actually begins a month before my actual birthday. You see, my mom comes from a long line of petite, narrow waisted women. Before she ever got pregnant mom was 5'4" and weighed maybe 100 pounds. While my father is one of many sons from hearty Irish stock. Mom had already experienced this first-hand while giving birth to my nine pound older sister, vaginally, using the Lamaze method, nine pounds, through the birth canal, no drugs. Needless to say it took about 4 years for her to overcome that pain and attempt a second pregnancy: me.
But forewarned is forearmed so when she did become pregnant she immediately discussed this issue with her doctor. He warned her that birth weights generally increased with subsequent pregnancies within a family. Not wanting to repeat the traumatic experience of her first labor, she and the doctor sat down and made a plan. After much calculating and figuring they determined that my official due date was February 25th. However, knowing that I was going to be a big baby, they decided to set an appointment to induce labor one week earlier on February 18th. This relieved my mother greatly knowing that she would not only avoid the pain of an over-sized birth, but also have a firm date around which she could plan time off from work, baby showers, baby room preparations, etc. etc. etc.
So the big day arrives. Mom and Dad, with bags all packed and prepared, hop in the car and drive off to see the doctor, get checked into the hospital, and have their second child. But there is a problem. When the doctor examines my mother just before checking her in, he discovers that sometime in the past month I have turned away from the birth canal and am now breeched. Instead of pointing my head straight down at the birth canal in preparation for my arrival, I have instead spun around tucking my head up underneath her right breast to kick back and (as my mother puts it) just "lazing about".
"I'm sorry," the doctor says, "but it's just too dangerous to induce labor on a breech baby. We'll have to wait for the child to turn back around and present head first."
"But surely there's something we can do!" exclaimed my mother. "I've already taken off work, my bags are packed, I'm ready to have this baby, and I don't want to push another 9 pound child out of my uterus!"
"Well, do you own a good stereo system?" the doctor replied to my parents incredulous but desperate ears. They nodded. "Tune your stereo to the loudest, ugliest, most offensive, black radio channel," instructed their white, southern, middle aged (read as: racist) doctor. "Hold the speaker up to the baby's head and it will be so annoyed by the noise that it will scurry away from it and move into the correct position. Do this every day for a week and come back on your actual due date and then we should be able to go ahead and induce you."
So my dutiful parents returned home to follow the doctors prescription. Every afternoon when Dad got home from work, he would tune his stereo to the radio station that was playing the newly budding hip-hop and funk music that emerged in the late 70s. Then he would turn the music up as loud as they both could stand it and faithfully hold the speaker up to my mother's belly in order to scare me into the correct position. And initially it seemed to be working. When that speaker hit her stomach, Mom could feel me jump and wriggle, obviously startled by this auditory invasion.
A week passed and my parents returned to the doctor to see if they could induce labor. After a quick examination the good doctor determined that I had not budged an inch. So again he recommended playing the loud music to get me to move and try coming back next week. While my mother was still worried about having a large baby again, she had only just reached her due date so surely it couldn't be much worse than the first child.
During the next week of music, my parents started to notice a change in the reactions of their young fetus. Now as soon as the music turned on, Mom noticed this sizable bump would lift up in anticipation of this beat-laden deluge. A bump, which was located approximately where my breeched head was nestled. And as soon as the speakers hit her belly, the bump began to raise and lower itself in time with the beat of the music. To this day my parents swear this is the source of my "horrible taste in music."
A second week passed and my parents returned to the doctor to see if my mom could, "have this damn baby already!" But again the doctor examined Mom only to discover that I was indeed still breech and inducing labor would just be too risky. So he sent them packing home again with orders to simply wait and let Mother Nature take her course, "but come back next week and we'll try again."
By this time my mother's belly had continued to grow beyond all conceivable proportion. People would stop her on the street to ask if she was having twins or triplets. Her belly had grown so huge that she could no longer wrap her own arms around it. She was forced to wear bathrobes and muumuus because even the largest sizes of maternity clothes no longer fit. Her poor belly button had popped so far out that it clung precariously to the sheer cliff wall of her stomach. To this day she still blames me for her horrific stretch marks.
Then early one Saturday morning, as they were lying in bed, listening to my four-year-old sister turn on her morning cartoons in the living room, it finally happened. PSSSSSHHHHHH.
"Billy, wake up! Either you wet the bed, or my water just broke." whispered Mom.
And, being a man of action, Dad sprang from the bed, "Oh my God! Oh my God! What do you need? Where's your bag? Who's going to watch Kimberly? Is everything packed? Where are my clothes? Where are your clothes? Oh my God! Are you okay? Are you in pain?"
"Billy, calm down, we have plenty of time. I'm going to take a quick shower while you get Kimberly dressed. We'll drop her off at your mother's on the way to the hospital." my mother soothed.
So Mom got out of bed and grabbed a towel to hold between her legs to keep from dripping everywhere. Now my parents were a fairly progressive couple who took great pride in educating their children on the facts of life. And with a new baby on the way, my sister had gotten a full lesson on where baby's come from and how they get out of her mother's tummy. It was at that glorious moment when my mother stood straddling a towel with one arm before her and one arm behind her, that my sister wandered into the bedroom to find out what commotion was drowning out her Saturday morning cartoons.
She took one look at my mom holding that towel between her legs and said, "Mom! That baby is NEVER gonna come out if you keep holding it in with that towel, ugh" in that frank matter-of-fact logic that only four-year-olds can perfect.
A short time later my parents arrived safely at the hospital and reported to their doctor that Mom's water had broken. She got a bed in the maternity ward and proceeded to wait for the contractions to begin. Now, as I mentioned before, Mom's stomach had grown to epic proportions while waiting for her unborn child to "de-breech" itself. And this growth had stretched not only her skin out of shape, but also the muscles beneath the skin that wrapped around her uterus. As a result, every time she had a "contraction" these poor, taut, beleaguered muscles would strain as much as they could against this mammoth watermelon-sized baby stuffed inside her resulting in a mild cramp that "felt like just a bit of gas." Every time Mom would get up to walk around (out of sheer boredom), the muscles would give up completely and the contractions would cease all together.
After about four hours of this, both Mom and the doctor agreed that this baby was simply not coming out on its own and they began to prep her for a Cesarean section. The anesthetist performed the epidural and Mom was whisked into the operating room to deliver her child.
When they laid her on the operating table, a sheet was placed just above her stomach to prevent her from seeing too much of the gory details as they sliced her open. A considerate gesture Mom would have appreciated more had this not been a labor and delivery operating room with a giant mirror placed strategically over the doctor's head providing a detailed and magnified view of the entire bloody operation. Mom kept trying to close her eyes or turn her head away to avoid the inevitable nausea that rose while watching the gruesome affair unfolding beneath her waist.
Unfortunately because of the high-risk nature of her pregnancy there was an anesthetist stationed right beside her head monitoring her vitals and making sure that the epidural remained effective. It was also his responsibility to administer oxygen in case she began to pass out from the loss of blood. He was a hyper little man who had evidently recently emigrated from some Asian country as he had quite a thick accent. Every time she tried to turn her head away from the ghastly mirror he would forcibly turn her head back yelling, "No! No! Ossagen, Ossagen!" making sure her face was close enough to the oxygen mask he was dutifully holding. If she closed her eyes, he would panic and begin yelling at her in his broken English to make sure she hadn't passed out. So Mom finally relented and stared headlong into the mirror as the doctor rummaged around in her guts extracting her baby.
Finally I emerged relatively unscathed from the tumultuous affair; a healthy and happy 11 pound, 3 ounce bouncing baby girl. A figure that made my mother doubly thankful for the C-section when she heard it.
My father however, had spent this entire time pacing impatiently in the waiting room because "civilians" weren't allowed in to the operating room for a C-section. Now, for whatever reason, my parents had decided to wait to find out the sex of their second child. They already had a daughter so Dad was hopeful that his second child would provide him a son. When they wheeled me in to the waiting room to meet my father I was laying on the baby gurney with my 11 pound, 3 ounce rump sticking high in the air. His first thought upon seeing me was, "it's a giant country ham!" But being the devoted father he merely exclaimed, "It's a boy! It's a boy!" The nurse patted his arm and said, "No, no, Mr. Foster let me turn her over for you." Whereupon they laid me on my back so he could see better and after a cursory examination he cried, "It's a boy! It's a boy!" Again the nurse patted his arm and replied, "here, let me move these fat rolls and open her legs for you." Finally seeing his daughter was whole and healthy he cheered with an enthusiasm equal to the first two outbursts, "It's a girl! It's a girl!"
The next day, my mother and I were both given a clean bill of health and sent home to recuperate from the whole ordeal. When we arrived home I was sleeping, so my parents laid me in the rocking bassinet in the living room, while they retired to the den for some much deserved rest. My sister, who had been warned of my arrival, was anxiously waiting to meet her new sister and very disappointed that she couldn't immediately see me because I was sleeping. So as my parents drifted off to their own nap, she snuck back into the living room steal a glimpse of me.
Then suddenly, WHUMP! wuuuaaaaaAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!
Both of my parents leapt up from a dead sleep and rushed into the living room to see what had happened. Evidently the bassinet was just a little bit too high for Kimberly to see over the edge. So she had gently grabbed the rocking basket and slowly tilted it down enough to see inside when suddenly the whole contraption lost balance and her new baby sister came rolling out of the basket. When our parents arrived on the scene Kimberly was still there with the bassinet dumped over on its side while she desperately tried to roll me back into the basket and set it all back up the way she found it.
And that is the exciting story of my birth. I hope you enjoyed it! Feedback, comments, corrections, and embellishments are all welcome.
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