Happy Birthday

Twenty-seven years ago today an event took place that changed my life forever. On April 2, 1978 my daughter was born at Children’s Hospital in San Francisco. It was a Sunday and she burst forth upon the world in the late afternoon. We had been married almost four years and had plenty of opportunity to lead the footloose and fancy-free life for quite some time. This was especially true when we moved to San Francisco and acquainted ourselves with the city by visiting different restaurants several evenings each week.

Occasionally we would have a heart to heart talk to discuss if we were ready to start a family. The answer was always the same; nope, not yet. As time passed I realized this would probably never change until one of us decided to take the situation in hand, so to speak. I did just that and in an amazingly short time discovered I was pregnant. Pregnancy was not at all what I expected. My mother had four children, my older sister had two and my sister-in-law had one at the time of my pregnancy and not one of them had suffered through a single episode of morning sickness. It never occurred to me for even a second that I would be afflicted by this miserable side-effect of early pregnancy. My experience made up for all that these ladies had escaped.

Morning sickness? How about morning, noon and night sickness? It was constant in its presence and for the first time since I’d moved there, San Francisco stank. I had a job in the financial district and passing bars on route to the bus with doors wide open emitting smells of stale cigarette smoke and alcohol was a personal assault to my stomach on a daily basis. As time passed, riding the bus to and from work became more and more difficult because I had to keep getting off to get sick and wait for the next bus to continue my journey. I ended up walking more and more. This continued for about the first four months and one day I woke up and all the nausea was gone. It was over and I felt fantastic, better than I’d ever felt in my life. I loved being pregnant and continued to feel this way until the last month rolled around. Anyone who’s had a baby can attest to the fact that the last month of pregnancy seems as long as the first eight.

My due date was March 13th and I remember thinking it would be grand to have our first child on or around St. Patrick’s Day. Since I knew exactly when this child was conceived, I knew my dates were correct. We attended a complete course of Lamaze classes, practiced breathing techniques faithfully and I had my focal point to concentrate on when the going got rough. Ha! The going got rough alright. After several false alarms and three weeks past my due date, this baby finally decided it was time to make an appearance. Everything was grand and moving ahead like clockwork. This was great; this was going to be a walk in the park. Suddenly all progression on my baby’s part came to a screaming halt. Labor pains continued to intensify, contractions being recorded on a monitor next to me and transcribed onto a continually rolling piece of graph paper were off the page. This child had ceased to move downward and I wasn’t enjoying this any more.

After what seemed like an eternity had passed, my doctor decided to switch gears and our child’s carefully planned, fashionable Lamaze birth with both parents in joyful attendance turned into an emergency caesarean section operation. Within minutes my world turned upside down. I was given something to empty my stomach completely in preparation for anesthesia. People with razors and antiseptic solution appeared out of nowhere to shave my belly. Someone shoved a clipboard with a consent to operate form in my face while another held an emesis basin next to my mouth into which I hurled the contents of my gut. The presence of fathers in the operating room for C-section births was not popular at this time and my poor darling husband stood by, unable to do much of anything to help with any of this. I was then transferred onto a guerney and wheeled away to the operating room. No nice, user-friendly birthing room for me; off to the cold, sterile, forbidding operating room. I recall feeling something akin to what you might imagine a wounded animal might feel being led to its slaughter.

Now perhaps it wasn’t quite this terrible but this is how the memory of my daughter’s birth is forever etched into my memory. I had no desire to remain awake for this ordeal. I just wanted someone to do something, anything and get me off this merry-go-round of pain and as soon as humanly possible. I had been in labor since about 11 pm the night before and was at the point where I felt sure I was never going to survive through this.

Slowly, my consciousness rose to the surface and I found myself in the recovery room. I heard voices and the voices were telling me, "Congratulations! You have a beautiful little girl". I kept hearing this over and over and knew they couldn’t possibly be talking to me. There were very few girls in my husband’s family and one of the first things he told me early in our courtship was that his family didn’t make little girls. Because of this, I thought of the child growing within me as a male throughout my entire pregnancy but I would’ve been thrilled to have a girl. I began to feel quite perturbed and annoyed that these voices continued to tell me something that couldn’t possibly be true. My condition eventually stabilized and I was discharged from the recovery room to my hospital room. En route, I was taken past the nursery. We stopped briefly at the window and a nurse held up a beautiful squalling child, a nice armful. I was shown the accompanying announcement card and there was my name and the baby’s sex noted as female. I was enchanted and felt I had accomplished something even more extraordinary than the miracle of having a baby. Long before I met my husband I came across a beautiful, different name in a book. I thought I would love to give my daughter this name if ever the time came that I had one. Now I did and I still loved that name as much as I did then and so I did. It suits her to a T.

My dear daughter has grown into a wonderful woman. In her short life she has lived through more experiences (some of them very difficult) than I have in almost 52 years. I am impressed with her tenacity and determination, her supreme self-confidence and ability to make the things she wants out of life come to fruition. I look at this social, outgoing young woman and am constantly amazed that I had a part in her creation. She has become a friend as well as a daughter. If I had to go through this all over again and knew beforehand what lay ahead of me, would I do it? You bet I would; in a heartbeat. Happy Birthday, M. I love you.

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