Sunday, December 26, 2004

DECEMBER 29, 1977

DECEMBER 29, 1977

The twenty-four hours culminating in Jonathan’s birth are surely the most memorable in my life, probably because I’ve replayed many parts of those hours so many times in my mind. The few weeks just prior to that, however, are an almost total blank. Since Jonathan was born on Friday, December 29, 1977, that means Christmas was on the previous Monday. I don’t remember Christmas at all. Anyhow, on Tuesday the 26th I went to see Dr. Duckett for a check-up, who announced that there were no signs of impending birth (Jonathan’s “due date” was January 7th), so he was going hunting for several days. On Wednesday the 27th, Larry and I went to our last Lamaze class, which included a tour of the labor and delivery suites at Forsyth Memorial Hospital where I would unexpectedly return very early Friday morning.

On Thursday night I went to bed early, as usual, probably around 9:00, and by midnight or a little later I was up, as usual, going to the bathroom. But when I came back to bed, fluid continued to leak, and when I got up to check on it, the fluid was clear. Amniotic fluid. My “waters” had broken. I guess Larry was asleep, but I remember telling him what was going on, and he raced around, calling Charlie Duckett on the phone. I got back in bed with a towel between my legs. I was not ready to go to any hospital. The next day was supposed to have been my last day at work for awhile, my colleagues were planning to take me to lunch, and then I’d have 2 weeks to “nest”—buy diapers, baby powder, etc, and get the house all ready for the new baby boy, Jonathan Hunter Camp. We had known his gender since the 17th week of pregnancy when I had amniocentecis done to rule out several known birth defects that sometimes hit “older mothers.” We even had made copies of the lab report showing his chromosomes, including that all-important Y chromosome to send to the relatives. We’d already picked out his name. I knew his name wasn’t going to start with a “D”—like Donna, David Sr., David Jr., and D’Laine. And I had declined Larry’s father’s request that we name him William Lewis Camp, after his father. He’d had 3 boys of his own and none of them were named William Lewis. Jonathan was the name of a fifth grade boy whom I had taught and had just adored. And Hunter was my mother’s maiden name, and my Grandmother Hunter was dying. It would be a tribute to her and to my mother. Larry was agreeable. I don’t think he was used to picking the names of his kids.

Larry got off the phone with Carolyn Duckett. Charles was still away on his hunting trip, but she advised that we go ahead to the hospital as there would be concern for infection once the amniotic sac sprung a leak. She would call Dr. Tom Littlejohn, the back-up physician. I reluctantly got up, got dressed in the only maternity outfit I could still squeeze into and slowly put some things into a little suitcase, including a washcloth to suck on and wet my lips during labor, because we’d been told that they wouldn’t let me have any water, and also including my “focal point”—a stuffed felt kitty-cat Christmas ornament that Jessie Wendel had made and given me for Christmas—to be taped to the wall by my bed in the labor room as a “focus” when contractions came.

Of course it was the coldest night of the year. We got in the metallic blue ’74 Accord, Larry stamping and swearing at the cold and he drove the couple of miles to the hospital, where the temperature on the big marquee on the corner read –2F. Larry wanted to drop me off at the emergency room door, but no, I wasn’t going in without him. So he drove around the parking lot, swearing, and finally found a spot in a far corner. We got out and leaded toward the emergency room, whose lighted doorway was visible in the distance. I, with my suede coat with fox collar clutched together, just barely, in the front, and a towel clutched between my thighs, took short little baby steps. Larry, swearing, skipped ahead, trying to hold back to show respect for the blimp, but dying to run ahead to the warm ER. Finally, we arrived in the ER and, as it was pretty obvious what my “problem” was, and as I was clearly ambulatory, having survived the walk in from the parking lot, they just waved us on toward the labor/delivery suite. There we settled in for the long haul.

By now I was beginning to have tiny little labor contractions. There was no such thing as a “birthing room” at FMH—that was to come a few years later—but we did have a private room and adjoining bathroom, which was a good thing, because I was already beginning to off-load the many, many pounds and liters of water I had accumulated during the nine months of fluid retention.

Naturally, I was expected by the nurses to get into bed. So I undressed and put on the largest hospital gown they make. Within a short time, contractions were beginning to be noticeable, and a nurse rigged me up with a heart monitor—not for me, but for the baby. Also it monitored the strength of my contractions. By this time the baby was “in position”—presenting the crown of his head to those who cared to look. Being hooked up to the monitor had its good points. I could see by the tracing when a contraction was beginning before I even felt it, and could begin my Lamaze breathing to manage the discomfort—soon to turn into pain, real pain. The down side of the monitor was that I had to be unhooked every time I headed to the bathroom, which seemed like every 15 minutes, when yet another pound (a pint’s a pound the world around) would get flushed away.

We had arrived at the hospital about 1:30 AM. By 5:00 AM, Larry was dying for coffee, cigarettes, breakfast, and a shower. He left for about an hour, and by the time he got back, the contractions were getting serious and I was getting surly. But we still had 12 hours to go. Amazingly, to me it doesn’t seem so long. I got into a rhythm of contraction, Lamaze breathing, relax, get up to pee, get settled, maybe doze off, listen to Anesthesia residents trying to sell me candy (mostly epidurals) which I kept refusing, contraction, etc. Larry was not so easily amused. He’d had no sleep, every time he went out it was freezing cold, his wife was insisting on having the bed cranked up at just the right angle. I’d ask, maybe demand that he move the bed to a little higher position. He’d give the handle about a three-quarter turn and I’d yell that it was too high. He’s slowly back it off about three-quarters of a turn, whereupon I’d declare it was now just right—for the moment. No, he was not amused.

Tom Littlejohn, my substitute physician, was great. His wife had had a baby using Lamaze techniques the year before and he was both knowledgeable and supportive of “natural childbirth.” Unfortunately, he was the only one in the whole hospital with that viewpoint. Also, he was so good-looking that every time he came around to check on me, the nurses all went ga-ga and turned stupid and ignored me completely. And much as I wanted to be left alone and not bothered, I also did not want to be ignored.

Things got serious in late afternoon. The pain during contractions was the worst pain I had ever experienced, even though with Lamaze it was as if I was watching myself have this pain. The saving grace was that the contractions only lasted for a little while and then there would be a couple of minutes with no pain at all, and I literally would sort of forget how it had been. I think sleep deprivation was working on me, too.

Finally Dr. Littlejohn and the nurses announced that it was time to “push.” In the excitement, I forgot what I had been taught about “pushing” and had to be reminded. After two pushes they decided it was time to go to the delivery room, so here came the ogres—the delivery room nurses—to fetch me. “Get up on this gurney, honey,” one of them growled at me. “And QUIT PUSHING!” Right, like I had any control at all over anything my body was doing. But like an obedient child, but threatening to kill her under my breath, I rolled off the labor room bed, which I did pretty well, considering that I had done that maneuver seventy-seven hundred times in order to go to the bathroom. I tried to haul my bottom onto the delivery room gurney, but I was about 2 inches too short and so I just stood there, defiant, until one grabbed my ankles and one grabbed me under the arms and they slung me up on the gurney like a side of beef. Now the fun began.

First they tried to tie my arms down because I “might injure myself.” I gave one look at Larry and he promised I would behave. Being restrained really would have made me crazy. They wheeled me through the corridor insisting “DON’T PUSH! DON’T PUSH!. Haven’t any of these people ever had a baby before? Meanwhile, instead of screaming, I’m making a noise like gears stripping in a car—probably my vocal cords clamped almost shut and the sound just squeezing by. “You’d better quit that noise,” Nurse Rachet said. “You’re going to the sorry tomorrow when you can’t speak.”

Thank God we made it to the delivery room, which seemed to have an awful lot of people in it. (I found out later, when I was a bit more rational, that several of Larry’s colleagues, Family Medicine physicians, had come in to join the party. I don’t remember issuing any invitations or giving permission, but be that as it may.)

Now Dr. Littlejohn was in charge again and things went a lot smoother. Once everything was quickly “situated”, whatever that meant (I found out later it meant I’d been given an episiotomy without any “numbing.” But I never felt a thing. Other than the baby coming, of course) Dr. Littlejohn said “OK, push.” Just the word I was waiting for. I bore down hard once. “Harder,” he said. I pushed with all my might and THOP!—Jonathan squeezed out of my body as if a grape were sliding out of its skin. In fact, that’s the exact thought that crossed my mind at the time—that I had just given birth to a gigantic grape.

But within a couple of minutes Jonathan was lying right next to my face, and I could see his perfect little oval fingernails and his beautiful mouth shaped like his Grandma Camp’s, and his lovely grey-blue eyes, which he still has today.

My Mother button had been pushed. My son, my precious son.


Sunday, December 19, 2004

HURRICANE DAMAGE

HURRICANE DAMAGE

When my sister emailed me that Mama and Daddy’s house was totally gone except for the concrete front steps and front porch floor, something ran through my body. A shudder, or maybe a tightening. It shouldn’t have been a surprise. Theirs was an old double-wide manufactured home in a residential park full of similar homes. And they haven’t been alive to live in it in years—5 years for Daddy and 13 for Mama. So really, it was someone else’s home now, one that must have been damaged beyond repair by one of the two recent hurricanes that crossed directly over my hometown of Fort Pierce, Florida. And I had even wondered how much damage the house has sustained.

But gone. Probably carted off in pieces in giant dump trucks along with half of its neighbors on that block and every block in the immediate area. Mary said she was so glad Mama and Daddy aren’t here to see the devastation, and I’m glad, too. Daddy had been predicting just such a disaster all his life, having both seen and heard stories of killer hurricanes, and seen inlets through the barrier islands come and go as a consequence of hurricane action.

But gone. The only house Jonathan remembers them ever living in. The house where Mama died in her own bed. The house in which Daddy dropped dead, literally, during the night of the anniversary of his mother’s death. Where Jonathan crawled from the living room to the laundry room and took a bite out of the avocados Mama had ripening in a box on the floor, and which gave Daddy a story to repeat over and over at family gatherings.

“I can just see that boy now,” he’d say, “crawling with one knee and the other foot, the funny way he did. And I knew just where he was headed.” (Here he’d pause for a big laugh.) “He was leaded for those avocados Min-Lou had stored in the laundry room. No matter where you put him down, he’d head straight for those avocados.”

Now there’s no Daddy to repeat the story, and no laundry room to trigger memories. Only a photograph of a boy in a diaper, grinning to show his two front teeth, and holding a big avocado with teeth marks in it.

Gone. Along with so much else. It was just a house, and not a very fancy house at that. But for twenty years it was home, because it was where Mama and Daddy were, either in the flesh or in spirit. Now it’s gone.

Why does it seem like such a big deal?