The Birth Story, Part One

Wow.

Talk about a completely transcendental experience. Everything that everyone says about childbirth is true. It's one of the greatest, neatest things you'll ever be a part of.

Kelsey had her 30-some odd week checkup the Wednesday before Henry was born. In the exam, her doctor was a little concerned that Henry was growing too big for her to deliver comfortably. With that in mind, she suggested that we induce on Friday. Obviously, you'd like to have the baby without inducing, because it's a more natural process for your body to go through. Isn't as shocking. But plenty of people do so, with no ill effects.

One of Kelsey's friends had a very good experience inducing labor with acupuncture, so we decided to give that a shot. She went in Thursday for her acupuncture, and that seemed to bring things along a little. Her contractions were a little more constant, although still sporadic.

When you have your first child, you read everything about everything, but you don't necessarily know a contraction when you see it. In the early stages, it feels a lot like cramping. So you ask yourselves, "Ok, am I just lucky? Am I having light labor pains? Is this baby going to fall out in twenty minutes?"

Then your mother/mother-in-law tells you about the friend they have that had to sit on a hamper because the baby was coming out, come hell or high water. Will that happen to us too?

Well, not really, but we didn't know it then. So we were thinking "My God, the acupuncture worked! We're going to have this baby tonight!" So what did we do? Go to the hospital?

Naw, we went to Chuy's. Kelsey's favorite restaurant. Where she and Amy would have lunch at one location, then dinner at the next.

Since it was a Thursday night, and it was 8 PM, we knew we were looking at a minimum 45 minute wait to get a table. When you're starting early labor, you don't want to wait 45 minutes for a table.

We called ahead. Kelsey explained that she was in labor, wanted to have Chuy's for her last meal, and if there was any way we could get on the list, which is usually a no-no (you have to be there). After some wrangling with the manager, they said sure, they'll make an exception in this case.

When we arrived, we were greeted by a white-faced young lad, who barked out to another hostess "We need to get these people in a two-top (is that the term?) immediately!" I guess he didn't realize that early labor is not active labor, and must've thought we were going to drop amniotic fluid all over their fine linoleum floors.

I don't think we've ever been served faster in our lives. We maybe spent a total of 15 minutes, from ordering to finishing our food, they wanted us and our bag of amniotic fluid out of there that fast. To sweeten the deal, they knocked off half of our bill, so I made sure to tip the Waitress extra nicely. Gotta spread the love.

So, that was a pretty nice pre-delivery experience. We went home, went to bed, and planned for our 5:30 induction. I don't think I slept more than ten minutes at a time, I was ready for her to go at any moment.

Next: Birth Story, Part Deux