Forty years ago today, I was sixteen days overdue with my second child. I was still working half days and in the midst of work, a tenth month of pregnancy and a very active 3.5 year old… I managed to whip up a batch of Christmas sweets each day after Thanksgiving. I’d been “nesting” for weeks and having delivered an eleven pound baby boy my last pregnancy (who was 16 days overdue) I was more than ready to get this show on the road. My OB however, had scheduled a ski trip over Thanksgiving and his parting words from my week overdue appointment were “Good luck, unless I see you when I get back, but I highly doubt it.” Don’t doubt a Clouse baby.
It had been 22 months since my Dad passed away. I had actually hoped the baby would be born on his birthday which was November 30 (due date 11/15). If it was a boy, we would (middle) name him after my Dad. I’d had Braxton Hicks contractions since a week before my due date and the evening of the 29th, we went to the hospital (I didn’t care who was on call) hoping they’d keep/induce me. Nope… they sent us home. “We’ll see you on Wednesday” (Dec. 1)
Before going to work that morning, I arranged a large plate of Christmas candy to take to the nurses at the OB office. I made an appearance at work for a couple hours and updated the Baby Pool, which now no one could win outright, as all the guessed days had passed. I met Steve at home, loaded the suitcase and candy plate into the car and off we went to Iowa City.
The nurses and office staff were delighted with their first candy plate of the holiday season. I saw my OB (who, when I asked about his ski trip, told me it had been canceled) … apologized for ‘missing my November 30 target’ and said “Let’s go have a baby.” Steve and I got checked in at Mercy Hospital and waited in the Father’s Waiting Room (where there was a TV) for Dr. Hesse to come over the lunch hour to induce me. We watched my all time favorite soap opera (All My Children) where not to my surprise, (I’d seen the previous day’s episode) a character, Donna Beck Tyler Cortlandt went into labor. I was called back when the doctor arrived and literally, in the course of a commercial, he broke my water. By the time I returned to the waiting room (with a thick pad of blankets to sit on) Donna was holding her baby boy in her hospital room, looking fresh as a daisy.
It took hours for the contractions to start (eventually with a pit drip) and even longer to progress. My hopes of delivering in one of those ‘cool birthing rooms’ OR using a new state of the art ‘birthing chair’ were both dashed as the doctor reminded us of complications after my previous delivery saying the risk was too great. Steve took that news better than I did. Since I’d nearly died with baby boy #1 - he was totally on board with a bright, sterile, white-walled operating room. Since the patient census was low that evening, I was allowed to sit in a comfortable chair in a birthing room and watch tv as I munched on ice chips while Steve went to the cafeteria.
The next few hours were probably textbook labor. Everything thing went as expected - except baby Clouse #2 would NOT be born on his Uncle Mark’s December 1 birthday. He would delay his entrance by 8 minutes … into a new day that would be ‘his’ and from that year forward, a very special day.
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