In The Beginning

In the beginning, there were two of us. My sweetie and me. And it was good.

I went to work each day, trying to corral 22 hyperactive third graders and maybe teach them something while my sweetie stayed home by day and taught a class at the local junior college at night. It was a sweet, almost pastoral existence, minus the sheep. But, last October, after waiting for the maternity benefits to kick in on my insurance, we decided to finally try to conceive.

We'd heard all sorts of stories from people who'd tried for months, years, to have a baby before conceiving. Since we were in our early 30s, we assumed we were in for at least several months of vigorous trying. We couldn't wait.

One day, about 3 weeks after we started trying, my wife called me at school while the kids were lining up to go home. She'd just taken a pregnancy test. It came back positive.

I vaguely remember spending several minutes - after the kids had all gone - skipping up and down the hall.

Fast forward nine months. We're now in Week 39 of her pregnancy. So far, so good. The baby is developing normally, my sweetie's weight gain and health are right where they should be, and the apartment is filling up with all the bits and pieces that signal an impending birth. We were, we told ourselves, ready.

Then, last night, she went into labor.

I'm a calm person. I really am. So when my sweetie came out of the bedroom to the living room around 9:30 and said she was having mild contractions, I just nodded and asked if she was okay. She said yes. For the next hour and a half, we monitored her contractions. I hummed Semper Fidelis while timing them and read the same page in William Cohan's House of Cards over and over for about 90 minutes, jumping - calmly - every time she said, "another one's starting."

Of course, I told myself, I wasn't really a ball of nerves. My asthma hadn't kicked in, after all. My inhaler was still on the office desk, untouched, unneeded. My breaths were nice and deep. Calm.

Around 11:00, we decided to head for the hospital. The nurse at our birthing class said that if we weren't sure if the baby was coming or not to go to the hospital anyway, just in case. So we got dressed and got our stuff together. Weeks earlier, we'd packed a gym bag with clothes, a tote with books, CDs, and snacks, and my camera bag. Along with a nursing pillow and a portable radio/CD player, we had everything we needed to spend a few days in Labor and Delivery.

I carried everything but the pillow down to the car, my sweetie on my heels with the pillow in hand. Everything went into the back of the car. We got into the front seats. I started the ignition, pulled out of the parking lot, and started down the road. A minute later, I checked my pocket.

No inhaler.

I carry that thing with me everywhere - work, home, car, plane, walks. I sleep next to it at night. As Milhouse van Houten once said, I need it to live. And I'd left it at home. For a second, I debated whether or not to go back for it. After all, if you're going to have an asthma attack, a hospital is the best place for it. But my sweetie urged me to turn around and go back for it. So I want back and five minutes later, we were once more on the road. A minute later, I checked my watch.

No watch.

It, too, was at home, sitting on the printer where I'd put it after her last contraction.

"Should I turn around for it?" I asked.

My sweetie gritted her teeth. "No."

Fifteen minutes later, we pulled up to the ER. Since we'd already pre-registered, check-in was simple. Fork over my insurance card - which, thank God, I hadn't forgotten - sign a couple of sheets of paper and off we go to the maternity observation room. Since we had no idea where it was, we asked the admissions clerk.

"Go around to the left and you'll see it on your right."

No problem. We went around to the left, walked a little, and saw on our right... the ER. Okay. We passed a man, woman, and 8-year-old boy huddled together on a stretcher and walked up to the main desk.

"My wife is in labor," I pointed to my sweetie, who smiled, hands on her abdomen. "Is this where we go for maternity observation?"

The nurse frowned. "That's upstairs. Second floor. Go back out the way you came, make a right, and take one of the elevators up."

Upstairs? The clerk had forgotten to tell us that part. But that's okay - I was still calm. We went back the way we came, made a right, and took the elevator up to the second floor, where we found the Labor and Delivery unit. We went to the main desk and repeated what we'd said downstairs.

"Observation?" the nurse said. "You have to go downstairs for that."

"But we were sent up here."

"You were?"

"Yes."

"Maternal observation is downstairs," the nurse said, "on the first floor. If you're standing in the elevator and step out, you go left and it's down the hall on your right. The sign is small but it's there."

My sweetie let out a breath. I was still calm. I swear.

We caught the elevator down to the first floor, turned left down an empty hallway, and started looking for the sign. We saw lots of signs. "Anesthesia." "Surgery." "Maintenance." But no "Maternal Observation."

We went back to the elevator and went down a different hallway. "Benefits." "Administration." "Do Not Enter." But no "Maternal Observation." We tried a third hallway. Again, no "Maternal Observation."

It was like a boring Hitchcock movie.

Back at the elevators, we met some of the hospital's maintenance crew. A very nice woman with a power buffer gave us our first useful direction. Maternal Observation isn't on the first floor, she said. It's on the ground floor. The nurse on L&D had neglected that minor detail.

So we went down one more floor, made the left turn out of the elevator, and finally found it halfway down the hall.

By now, we had no idea where in the hospital we were but it was approaching midnight and we didn't care. A very nice nurse set my sweetie up in a curtained-off bed, hooked up the contraction and fetal heart rate monitors, and checked to see how dilated she was. One centimeter, she said. "We'll keep you here a bit. I'll be back to check on you in about an hour."

We watched the contractions on the monitor, gently sloping up and down. From start to finish, they were, my sweetie said, uncomfortable but not painful. Every 3-4 minutes they came, sloping up, peaking, easing down. The only other sounds were the wet, steady whoosh-whoosh of the baby's heart and the murmured goings-on on the other side of the curtain.

My sweetie drifted off to sleep and dozed for nearly an hour. I spent most that time pacing - calmly - and watching ESPN on the wall-mounted flat-screen television. I sat down for a little bit, watching my sweetie's pulse throb gently in her neck, and resisted the urge to kiss her. She deserved to rest.

After some 90 minutes, the nurse reappeared, checked my sweetie's cervix again, and found that it was still 1 centimeter dilated but "very soft." Still, it seemed that baby wouldn't be arriving any time soon.

She gave us our discharge directions - come back if the contractions get stronger, if my sweetie's water breaks, if there's any bleeding or spotting, or if the baby suddenly stops moving - and unhooked my sweetie from the monitor.

Getting out was a lot easier than coming in. It turned out that from the registration desk we had to go left, and then left again. Details, details.

We drove home, disappointed. But we'd at least figured out what was where in the hospital, what we might forget when we leave home, and how we'd react under pressure.

I, for one, would remain calm.