Rachel

July xx, 1993 arrived with me growing increasingly impatient to give birth. I was only 5 days overdue, but everyone kept asking me, "What? no baby yet?"; I had been home from work 2 weeks and was finally done everything that I needed to do to be ready (washing baby clothes, cleaning her room, etc). Plus it had been a hot summer and we had no air conditioning - you understand.

I had read somewhere that eating spicy food could induce labor - the night before we went out with some friends and I ate all the hot salsa that I could bear. The next day I had some spotting, and the baby seemed more active. I called the doctor's office, and they told me to come in that afternoon. When I went in, the baby was very low. In fact, my doctor thought that I should be really uncomfortable, and maybe I was highly pain tolerant (ha! I showed him!) and that I could end up delivering quickly, like, anywhere, anytime. He sent me to the hospital for a non-stress test and said he wanted to induce me that evening.

I went to the hospital, did the test, and everything was okay. I started to feel a little poorly and wished I was going to see a movie rather than being in the hospital. Lots of babies were being born that evening, there were no private rooms at the time, and the nurses did not want me to stay. My doctor told me to come back at 10. I think I actually started going into labor at about that time - 6:30pm. Nothing like a deadline - I didn't want to be induced!

My husband - who had come from work - showed up, and we went out for supper. I had a bit of soup and sandwich, but didn't feel like eating. I was starting to notice the contractions. We walked around the town (Los Gatos - it's near the hospital, and we didn't want to go home since our house is about 20 min drive). We went into a bookstore to get reading materials for labor (didn't need them). By the way, my husband had brought along a lot of things to entertain us during a long labor - books on tape, music, his banjo, food,... we didn't need them either). I was looking pained by this time and people were starting to notice. We walked to a park - I remember sitting on the ground, hugging a lamp post and saying I don't want to deliver a baby, I don't want to go through with this, let me outta here! We walked more, and my husband called the hospital. They said not to come in unless I couldn't talk when I was having a contraction.

About a half hour later (about 9:15pm) we drove over there. I was having a hard time getting through contractions by then, and felt kind of panicky. We got to the hospital, and the nurses told the admitting people that we shouldn't be there yet (we paid for this treatment?). Anyway, we went up to l+d, they put me in a room, called my doctor who said he'd be right over. I'm feeling worse, asking for drugs, doctor finally shows up at 10:10. He examines me, finds out I'm 8cm.

Everyone's surprised, my doctor breaks my water, orders an IV with some narcotics (maybe Staidol?), runs off to get his gown on, it's good news, they tell me, but I don't believe it. They give me a half dose of the drugs - I'm yelling, "More Drugs!", and they give me more, if only to keep me quiet. I don't find out until then that the drugs only help between contractions. How does that help - I'm not feeling pain between contractions! I start to get all weird with the drugs - but at some point I recognize a name tag on a nurse - she helped a friend of mine with her delivery earlier in the year. I tell my husband and her about this - my husband says this is one of my few lucid moments. They make me push - it doesn't take long, but I am really out of it.

Finally, baby is born at 11:23 pm - I'm still kind of out of it and it takes me a while to understand that I don't have to work hard anymore and here's Rachel! They cleaned us up, stitched me up, made Brian dress her (pretty darn hard to do for a firsttime dad!), took our picture on our camera (didn't have any film in it, I'm sure it was a great picture - I got a new camera the next week), and let us stay in the room for an hour or so to bond. She nursed, she cooed (the nurse said no other baby did that - bet she says that to all the moms), it was wonderful.

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