Nine years ago...

I was hooked up to a pitocin drip wondering when I would finally become mommy for the first time and if the baby who was so happy inside there would be a boy or a girl. After two years of trying to conceive (damn depo provera) we had finally come to the end of forty one weeks of pregnancy.

It all began much earlier in the day. I had laid down to take a nap with Keith, since he had to go to work at 8 that night. I could never get comfortable, so I got up to go to the bathroom when my water broke. I stepped out and very calmly told Keith that my water had broke to which he replied, "No it didn't!" It took a bit of convincing, but we got a shower and got things together to head to the hospital. My parents were living in Amarillo at the time with my dad's best friend. I called to let them know what was going on. "Uncle Jim" answered and I told him that my water had broke and that they needed to be on their way, to which he replied, "What the hell are you doing on the phone with me then? Why aren't you at the hospital?"

I tied a jacket around my waist so people wouldn't think the pregnant lady had peed on herself and we headed off to the hospital. We finally got to L&D and they immediately knew what was going on. They said the jacket gave me away. The nurse used the litmus paper to confirm that I hadn't indeed peed on myself and they checked me into a room and hooked up the monitors. The only problem was I never started having contractions on my own. I got my epidural fairly early, and have always wondered if that was why. Finally around 8 p.m. the doctor came and we decided to start pitocin. My parents had made it a few hours earlier, and my brother and granny were also at the hospital. My dad and Keith had a great time watching the monitor and telling me how much I should be hurting with each contraction. Unfortunately, the epidural had worked TOO good, and I couldn't feel anything below my belly button. I will never forget thinking how horrible it would be to be paralyzed, since I couldn't even move my legs on my own.

The good thing was that once the pitocin was started, it wasn't long before I was ready to have a baby. Keith and the nurses held my legs, and with just a few pushes, Dr. Hanes let daddy cut the umbilical cord, announced that, "It's a girl!" So at 12:35 a.m. on January 18, Ariel Michelle was born. I'm still not sure who was more proud, the daddy or the papa. My dad had bet mom $5 that she would be a girl. They laughed up until the day he passed away that mom never paid up.