Birth

I was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota at the University of Minnesota Medical Center.  My father was in the university’s Dental School at the time.  I was child number four of five that my parents ended up with.  My sister was the oldest and then my parents got in a bit of a rut with four straight boys.  I don’t clearly remember the day I was born, but I am told there was some drama involved as I made my appearance into this world.  Let me just start by saying, my poor dear Mother.  Evidently I weighed 10 pounds 11 ounces at the time of my birth.  For much of my life this statistic didn’t have a whole lot of meaning to me.  Dang, 11 pounds is nothing.  Those 10 pound dumbbells that people use for lifting weights are pretty small and easy to lift.  In fact I always have to go to the 15, 20, 25 lbs dumbbells, because the 10’s are too light.  What’s the big deal? 

Maybe my first clue into the difficulties surrounding the childbirth process should have come when reading the story of Adam and Eve as a young lad.  When God says stuff like “I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children…” well, that can’t be good.  In my basketball playing days, on the playground in Middle School, when a guy on the other team would say, “you’re going down”; this did not cause me to shutter and quake.  When I heard my Mom declare the words “Wait till your father gets home”, it caused a bit of anxiety, but was never a huge cause for concern; hearing a girlfriend declare the words “maybe we should see other people” (dang I was thinking that all along anyway) what a great idea; When the school teacher says “Everyone put your books away and get ready for a pop quiz” you worry, do the best you can and move on.  To hear the words from your wife “Does this outfit make me look fat?” well, maybe that particular one is a bad example, because all men fear that question and it makes us shudder to the core.  The point being, none of these types of declarations seem to be a big deal and can be easily handled without too much stress.  But if the One who created all things in the universe uses the words “sorrow” and “bring forth children” in the same sentence, then you’d better worry a bit. 

Ok, getting back to the weight of the baby discussion.  Maybe a fairer comparison for babies would not be how much it weighs, but the volume or surface area of the baby.  Something that men would better understand.  “Wow, that baby was a big one, it displaced 8 cubic feet of water” or “The volume of that baby could hold the equivalent of 5 gallons of milk, she’s a keeper.”  I really have do sympathize with women though.  After all, I have never been asked to pass an object the size of a watermelon from the general region of my stomach and then through any available opening.  When my wife and I were seriously dating, she almost called everything off when she heard how much I weighed at birth.  She turned white as a sheet and remained in a semi-comatose state for the better part of 3 weeks.  I didn’t understand what all the fuss was about, but evidently she had continuous visions and dreams of giving birth to various large objects like a crock pot, an elephant, a couch, a Buick, a snow plow… I think you get the picture. 

So here my poor mother is, looking forward to the birth of her fourth child and having no clue that she is about to be called upon to pass a baby hippo through the birth canal.  This was in the days where they did not let the fathers into the delivery room, so Dad was not on hand to provide any support or be screamed at for putting her in this position.  I think he was out buying toddler clothes to bring me home in.  Anyway, as my mom’s contractions started getting closer and closer, she just had the assistance of a nurse to offer her moral support and tell her things like “Wow, you are really big; how big is that baby anyway?”, or “How many babies did you say are in there?”  As the story goes, as told by my mother, she is on the delivery table in baby delivery position, when the nurse just decides to leave the room.  Nobody really knows for sure, but either the nurse had a sudden craving for hospital cafeteria jello or she went to get some backup, in case she could not carry me by herself.  My mom is now in the delivery room all by herself, with nobody to talk to or to give her comfort.  I couldn’t help, because I couldn’t talk yet, and besides my head was in the process of being squeezed through an opening about the size of a nostril.  So here my mom is, feeling like she was about to deliver a baby into the awaiting arms of nothingness and my first introduction to the world was about to be a three story drop, onto my head, on a hard linoleum floor.  I don’t remember being scared at the time, so maybe it wasn’t as tense as my mom makes things out to be.  As the anxiety in my mom started to rise, she began calling for the nurse, for a doctor, for the janitor, anybody who would listen.  Cries for help permeated that particular floor of the hospital, with various phases like “Hello, is anybody out their?”; “Nurse, I think I am about to have a baby”; “Nurse, if you don’t hurry and get your butt in here you are going to have a heck of a mess to clean up, and don’t expect any help from me”, and then “Dr., if you don’t get in here right now, not only will I see to it that you never deliver another baby as long as you live, but by the time I get done with you, you are not going to be able to father any children either.”  They say things just got nastier from there. 

Finally, about the time my mom was hoarse from all the calls for help, the nurse came back into the room and took one look at the situation and within minutes the entire “Team Baby” was in the room ready for the delivery.  From there it was just a matter of minutes that I was out and being smacked around by the doctor.  They say my first meal was a Big Mac. 

I don’t think my parents talked too much about “Family Planning.”  My mom had 5 children in about 6 year’s time.  The first born, my sister, was born in the month of August and get this, 8 months later, my oldest brother was born.  Granted, my brother was born 6 weeks premature, but dang dad give mom a rest after having a baby.  After my first child was born I was clearly told by my wife’s obstetrician to wait at least 6 weeks after the birth, before resuming any intimate activity.  This declaration was promptly followed with my wife saying “Six weeks? You better make that six months!”  Clearly my dad didn’t receive this same instruction.

When it came to Family Planning, shortly after my wife and I were married and ready to start thinking about having children we were a bit more calculated in our planning.  For much of the time my wife had problems getting pregnant so we had to try various aids like some medications and the rhythm method.  At first I was confused as to how trying to conceive while listening to music would increase the likelihood of a pregnancy, but then it was explained to me by my wife that the rhythm method was a calendar based method of determining when the women’s cycle put her at the peak of her fertility. 

It turned out, not really due to any creative planning on our part, that each of our three children were all born at the end of July, 3 years apart and all having birthdays within 2 days of each other.  In an effort to understand how that happened so precisely people often asked about this exact spacing as if we specifically planned it.  The only thing I can think of to explain this phenomenon is simple mathematics.  Counting back nine months from July is the month of October and at the end of October is my birthday.  This seems to be a plausible explanation.