Remembering the day that I met Marlon

It's April 16th 1998 about midday. I'm 39 weeks preggos, chilling at the house with my 2 year old and I start to have some cramping. Cramping, hmmm should I be concerned?  I am 39 weeks pregnant. This is baby number two and these pains do not feel like the pains with baby number one. Is this labor? It feels more like pressure than pain. I am confused. I call my friend she is the one who is planned to take my two year old when this labor thing goes down. But I tell her I am not sure if I'm in labor or not. I just feel odd I say. We hang up and decide I will take a "wait and see" approach. About 10 minutes pass and the worse freaking back pain in the world hits me. Now I get that it this is not good so I call the friend again she is on the way. Until she gets there I am crying on the floor trying to not panic my precious two year old. We are alone. Help is on the way but I am worried because this shit hurts. Help arrives we load everyone up. I kiss my baby boy goodbye. This is extremely hard because at this point he had not spent a second away from me, and never overnight. The anxiety from that is adding to this pain. My sister heads me off to the hospital and my husband is in route as well. On the drive over I am screaming in pain. I put on like a horror movie. Every bump in the road sends excruciating pain through me. When we arrived at the hospital I could not even get out of the car. I swore there was a baby hanging out of my vagina. The hospital staff came and got me with a wheelchair and of course I wailed all through the lobby all in the elevator up into my room, making quite the spectacle of myself. where my husband stood there in shock. See This was baby number two and baby number one's birth was calm and long and just as it should be. This was not cool. What was I birthing? Rosemary's baby?
In the room I begged for something for the pain. "No time" I was told. No time what the hell did that mean? Baby number one took 9 hours! It meant baby is on the way out. I know if you read my birthing post about Mason some of this sounds familiar but this baby was years before Mason so this was my first time in this chaos. Just to put in in perspective here are two photos that compare birthing baby number 1 to baby number 2.

Baby #2-   What the ?!@!!@?

Baby #1-     Ahh this ain't so bad. 

      








I was scared as hell. They put me in the bed and all natural, no pain meds no time to breathe no nothing. "Just push!" they screamed at me. I could barley breathe with the pain let alone push so the labor went on with them screaming at me to get the baby out and me screaming at them 
"I can't!" Eventually out he came. Cute as button, minus the slime and blood he was covered in.
The birth was fast, furious, painful scary and quite honestly the staff was not very nice. This was opposite of my first experience but we made it. And after going through that I could go through anything because that shit HURT!
Let me say here that the Rex Hospital staff sucked. They wiped the baby barely and tossed him (literally) onto me. No blankie, no stocking cap, no nothing. He was so cute and still is. He did not cry he just looked at me sweetly. I should've know then that this boy would be something else. They left the baby and me. I was shaking in shock because this happened at record speed. My brain was still in the car driving over and my body was here birthing humans. The baby shivered constantly as did I. I shivered because my body had been traumatized, and I was in pain, the baby shook because he was freezing. I asked for a blanket to cover him and they said he did not need one. They busied themselves with cleaning the room. I eventually had my husband get a blankie out of our suitcase and I wrapped him myself. The staff  did not appreciate that. But I did not care. We named him Marlon Kyle. I will tell you all about him in a post tomorrow, for he is a very interesting child.  After all I have to share my readers time with other bloggers so that is the birthing story of baby number two...Marlon. 

Birthing In Raquel's World

In preparation for my youngest son's birthday post coming on the 25th. I decided to share the story of his birth. 
I'm at home. Just finished up a heated session if you know what I mean. I stand to go wash up and pee. I pee but continue to pee then I get that my water has broken. Yahoo! "Time to go" I say. See I'm a pro at this. I have done it two times prior and one of those times was a complete disaster so this could only be a piece of cake. I tell David "baby's on the way" and hop into the shower. I shower up quickly grab my bags and call my hospital to let them know I'm on the way. We drive 25 minutes to the hospital. I have no pain but I do have contractions?  Smiling I think no pain, I got this in the bag baby!
When we arrive at triage they check me in and do an initial exam. Still contracting, still no pain. Still smiling. I have an exam and here is some excerpts from the conversation that followed
Nurse 1
Nurse 2
Me
 Umm you're not gonna push are you?
Hadn't planned on it. Still smiling.
Oh because you are dilated and ready to go.
"Good" I say, ready to get on with things
No not good. There is no one to deliver your baby
Umm silly nurse calm down we are in a hospital
It's my first week and we have had tons of women go into labor early! There are no doctors! They are all delivering!
A lil put off, but not worried yet. That's cool you can deliver my lil pumpkin
No I really cannot. She starts to panic.I hear her go into the hallway and discuss with another nurse that OMG this lady is in labor and there is no one to deliver
Where is Dr. Sanders?
Delivering in room 204 and 2081!!!
Dr Angles? 
C section!
Dr Martin?
Emergency C section!!!
How about the assisting Dr Socket?
Well a lady went into labor in the elevator, he's helping her
You will just have to do it then
No I can't
We'll help. Let me check the patient
Nurse #2 comes in, introduces herself and smiles nicely as if I had heard nothing. She lifts the cloth and takes a peep at my nether regions.
OMG she's ready! Get her in a room.
There are no rooms!
No rooms?
They are all full!
What about the overflow rooms?
Full
Well we'll do it here then
I'm still not hurting, but no longer smiling.
Actually crying now "umm can I get an epidural?"
No your too far along
How about some Demerol?
No nothing it's time to push
Time to push? WTF? I just got here! Don't I need an IV, a bed, some ice chips, some pain? Something!!?
No time. She's putting me up in the stirrups
I'm frantically crying now. Yelling at David They have no clue what they are doing!
Where's the cart with all the medical supplies? The big light to shine on my vagina?
We don't have time for all that. Now Push!
I did and and did, did and did and it hurt like hell. But he came out bright-eyed and bushy tailed and healthy. 
It was fast and furious.
Scary and painful.
In spite of their less than desirable delivery tactics we made it. 

His name is Mason. He will be 10 on Friday.