Something  I was watching made me think of this story,  and it usually gets a pretty good laugh so I thought I’d tell it.  I’m writing on my nook, which is new,  so bear with me. When I was 19, I had my first child. Yes, I was married. No, I wasn’t  pregnant before getting married, just stupid. Anyhow, I had, unbeknownst to myself or my gynecologist, toxemia (or preeclampsia). It’s a condition that causes the body to reject the baby as a foreign object. It causes high blood pressure and can kill the mother (in rare cases, the child). Treatment is immediate delivery of the baby.
Now, I’m a firm believer that if my children were not forcibly removed from my womb, there they would have remained. An upsetting thought to a woman who hates being pregnant as much as I do. I had NO symptoms, except extreme weight gain, but hello I was pregnant. To note, I gained less than 15 lbs the first 30 weeks , but 60 lbs the last 10 weeks, so I mean extreme. My last Dr. visit my BP went up to 180/250. VERY HIGH. Dr. Lyle, wheeled me directly to the hospital, his office was behind it, and said she’s not even allowed to get up to pee.
Great. I’m in pain and I’m not allowed to move. So, they put me on medicine to induce labor and we waited and waited and waited. And the kid would not come out nor would I go into labor. For someone that wanted that kid out so badly, no one else seemed to care to get with the program. It was April, I guess Mother Nature was busy.
Well that night the doctor had a bar mitzvah party, out of town, and since the kid obviously had no plans of changing accommodations, he went.
Natch,  around 5:30 am, I went into labor,  hard! About an hour and half later, as the doctor sped back from wherever, I said surely it’s time I can get an epidural right boss…..and make it snappy (maybe that part I just screamed in my head) To which she said let me check and to my surprise  (Dismay? Disbelief?   I’m not sure any word conveys the feeling) said,  it’s much to late, sorry! Exqueeze  me? I’m pushing out a human and it’s too late. She follows this up with this: don’t sneeze or cough. He’s about to come out  and I need to see if the doctor made it back yet. Seriously?  Seems like info  we should know by now….but what do I know?  I’m gonna be hanging out and holding in a person here. You find the doc sugar plum.
The doctor comes in (hallajewjah) and baby comes out fast and furious (kinda how he is now hmmm) and I start bleeding out. In medical terms this means I’m losing more blood than they can get into me. I get knocked out. I remember there being a LOT of chaos and thinking wow this must be bad. My mother (who it is worth saying is a pretty classic Jewish mom) was sending in ESL students of hers who were in residency in to check on me. I didn’t get to see my baby for five hours. It was pretty scary. It’s easy to laugh about now, but it was pretty intense for everyone back then.
The moral?  I dunno if there is one, but I asked for an epidural the second I walked in the hospital with baby #2! Lol Momma didn’t raise no fools !