History of the J Man

I want to get this down before I’m 50 years old have no memories left except those of the the Cubs winning the Series back in ‘08.

The Day That Would Become the J Man’s Birthday actually started on The Day Before the Day That Would Become the J Man’s Birthday. I know, because both Julie and I had both come home from a full day’s work that fateful Friday, June 8, 2007. We were sitting around thinking about ordering in, when Julie began to feel some twinges in her general stomach area. This was around 6:30 p.m.

At first, she wondered if it was just indigestion, but it quickly became apparent that the gig was up — the kid was knocking.

For those of you who don’t have kids, you may think that having a baby is similar to what you see in the movies, with people rushing around and a frenzied ambulance ride, but our birth class’s recommendation for when labor pains started was to take a nap. So we tried a few of the methods we had learned in said birth class and things were going OK, but since we had signed up for a doula, we decided to give her a ring. Carrie (the doula) lived (and may still live) in Bolingbrook, Illinois, which you can see is not close. I figured a) it could take a couple of hours for her to arrive and b) I wasn’t sure if I knew precisely what I was doing. Needless to say, we made the call.

The next several hours, nothing much happened. At least for me. I can’t remember if we ever ordered anything, but I also don’t remember being very hungry, what with the birth happening and all. I do recall Julie’s pain building slowly and also trying to time the contractions which were anywhere from 30 seconds to 15 minutes apart. Once Carrie arrived, she pulled out her bag o’ tricks and went to town massaging, rubbing and generally helping Julie manage the pain. I thought about asking for a massage as well, but thought that it might be best to ask later.

At any rate, at around 3:00 a.m. early Saturday morning, the pain was starting to become a bit on the unbearable side and the contractions were about three minutes apart. We called our midwife (at least the one on call) and asked what to do, and after talking to her for a couple of minutes, decided to head over.

I had visions of speeding through red lights and dodging drunken fraternity boys on our way to Illinois Masonic, but we arrived without incident. Because we knew that we’d be there for awhile, we had a ton of stuff. The security guard on duty actually had to get us a wheelchair which we used as a makeshift luggage cart to haul everything over to triage.So we get to triage and the midwife comes in. She checks Julie’s dilation and we’re sure she’s about to say she’s due to burst any second, but she says she’s only at about 4cm, which is what she’d been at for the last 4 weeks. Quite disappointing. Not only that, but the contractions seem to have slowed down. Luckily, the midwife give us the choice to stay, instead of sending us back home.

Smartly, we decide to take the room and wait things out. It’s at this point that I should mention that our plan was to do a natural childbirth. We had chosen the hospital specifically because they had an alternative birthing center (ABC) that we would use. However, we were told by our midwife that there was no one on staff to man the ABC, so would we like one of the freshman-dorm-sized other rooms? For the simple reason that there is nowhere else to go, we take the room.

Before you go on to read Part II, please allow me a moment. How can you tell a woman giving birth that the primary reason she chose the hospital in the first place is thrown out the window because you don’t have staff?! It’s not like people only have babies from nine to five. If this was Prentice or somewhere equally regimented, where mothers walk in with scheduled C-sections, maybe I can buy it, but this is an alternative birth center. Couldn’t you at least have someone on call? Now I don’t feel bad about stealing those Vicodine tablets.

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