This time 37 years ago...

I was in the only private room in our small town hospital. I had been there a few days, the first patient my doctor had with severe pre-eclampsia. With blood pressure off the charts, I was on 40 milligrams of valium a day. I'm sure I was quite the comedian as in my drunken state, I told one of the nurses that I couldn't focus on the t.v. Just turned 18, I was oblivious to the danger of the situation..which is just as well. My husband was in the Army and away at training. The day the doctor said I had to go into the hospital until the birth, I cried, but I can't remember being hysterical or fearful. As I said, oh, the innocence of youth. I packed my bag and went to the hospital for what turned out to be a ten day stay before the baby was born. Now there was no ultrasound back then in the stone ages, I think the wheel has just been invented...so two ob doctors came in, felt my belly and scratched their heads, then said they thought he (oh, that's another we didn't know back then, the sex of the baby) weighed 5 lbs. They planned to induce labor the next day.



In the wee hours of the morning, I began to have a really bad stomach ache, and don't laugh I called the nurse and asked for some pepto bismol......I kid you not! Good old pink, soothing pepto bismol. The nurse, trying not to laugh hysterically, examined me and said, you are having a baby...and I said "NOT NOW", because it wasn't "in the morning" yet. But against my personal wishes, she rolled me down to the delivery area. Back in the day, birthing babies was MUCH different than now...of course for me, I was already three sheets in the wind from the valium and had no idea that I could start having convulsions at any time. I wanted my mama! My family had been out of town and she made it to the hospital right before Paul was born. That little bundle weighed 3 lbs. 11 ozs. I didn't see him for two days because I wasn't awake during that time. They had given me a big dose of what they then called twilight medicine. I remember nothing of the delivery and nothing of the two days following. Later I was told that when the nurse came out carrying my baby, she was crying. The doctor came out and said, "we need to get this daddy home". He was afraid that one of us might not live. We fooled him! Of course there was no NICU so he was in the regular nursery in an incubator. Miraculously he not only survived, but came home in 28 days.

Today, on his birthday, I pray he remembers the little boy he was. I pray that this is the year God breaks the bonds that hold him and sets him free. I love you, Paul.

"Our Savior Kneels down and gazes upon the darkest acts of our lives.
But rather than recoil in horror,
He reaches out in kindness and says,
"I can clean that if you want." Max Lucado