Stories from the Delivery Room, Part 2

(Once again, “Fire Hubby” is guest-writing this week’s blog entry while I am posting over on his site, Switch 2 Plan B. ...click here and read the conclusion to his "Perfect Proposal".)

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I wonder if it ever galled my wife that her pregnancy was so…well…typical.

First comes love…

Then comes…cravings!

In Julie’s case, it started with oranges. Had to have oranges. Big, fat, juicy ones with the NAVEL proudly pointing inside out—just like her beautiful, round, smooth belly. Then it was burritos. But not just any kind—Taco Bell green bean burritos. Had to have that green sauce. Not plain, red sauce—green. Nothing else would do. “Get in the car and get me one…Now!”

So one evening deep into the first trimester, we took a “Run to the Border” trying to placate that voracious, insatiable god-of-cravings. But as we drove away from the Taco Bell drive-up window, she opened the bag to discover they had instead given her a bean burrito with RED sauce.

She started crying.

Is it any wonder men are mystified by women?

Clueless, one might even say.

But maybe it was Mexican food (the Fiesta Platter perhaps) that helped induce labor many months later. About 1 a.m. my now-huge and restless wife woke me out of my last-ever restful night’s sleep. The contractions were still far apart but unmistakable. She took a long, hot bath, perhaps contemplating the many ways her life was about to change, while I lay in the dark, visions of little denim jackets dancing in my head—much like the Heffalumps and Woozles sequence from “Winnie the Pooh.” By six a.m. she was dressed and ready, but on all fours in the living room softly moaning, “oooh.” I felt completely helpless.

Yet an hour later, when we arrived at the hospital (the same facility where she works as an L&D nurse), Jules had her game face on. After colleagues and co-workers cheerfully greeted her, each chortling “Hi, Julie!” she saw herself to a hospital room, put on a gown, and hooked herself up to the fetal monitoring unit, adjusting the straps and sensors and examining the strip until she was satisfied the baby’s signs were suitably strong and steady. Later, following her epidural, when she felt somewhat hypovolemic she reached up and expertly adjusted her own IV hanging by the bedside, over my sputtering objections.

But there was no shortage of attention, medical and otherwise, as well-wishers in scrubs dropped by. Julie had hand-picked her doctor and anesthesiologist (for the much-needed epidural) well in advance, and her best friend even served as her nurse for the day—a day that wore on as her labor stalled out.

Sometime around six p.m. she was ready to push. More than ready, in fact. After long hours of excruciating labor, the pain breaking through whatever meds were onboard, my exhausted wife could take no more. As her doctor and nurse sat poised at the foot of her bed, my beet-red wife yelled...

“Get it out of me!”

But moments later…

…our little Scout appeared…

and slid gently into my gloved and waiting hands.

My wife has helped ease many little miracles into this world, gripped the hands of young moms struggling through labor, stroked the hands of those grieving a lost newborn, and like God’s gentle emissary, shared in the joy or sorrow of each. She is this firefighter’s hero.

And at that moment there in the hospital room, her faithfulness had been rewarded.

A moment of immeasurable joy
and perfect love
safely far away
from the full catastrophe of life.