by Elby Cloud

Created on: June 02, 2007

Neither my husband nor I wanted to learn the sex of our baby before it was born. He wanted "something to be surprised about" and I have never liked to know the ending of a story until I get to it. That said, my husband has 12 siblings, only two of them girls. His brothers are pretty light on the x-chromosomes too, so I knew the odds were slim for me to have a girl.

Here's where we were wrong. For my husband's concerns about monotony, it turns out babies are less predictable than you'd think. For instance, held at the right angle, a two month old can actually project poop up to two feet. Also for someone who can't crawl they can roll off a bed pretty quickly. For me, the brilliant geneticist, the surprise came in a pink hat.
My doctor decided to induce labor one morning when the fetal heartbeat had slowed. We scooted to the hospital, watched them strap belts on my belly and, just as the nurse was preparing to administer the Pitocin, looked on in perplexity as the fetal monitors started bleeping.
"You just had a contraction," the nurse said.
"Did you induce me already?" I asked.
"No," the nurse paused, looking confused. Then she shrugged and pressed the plunger, sending a dose of lemony liquid into my I.V.
Well, OK. I thought, preparing for the Big Pain, the sweaty swearing session where I got to call my husband bad names for doing this to me. A couple of hours later I was practicing Lamaze breaths to overcome a mild menstrual cramp. I read six chapters of a novel and gazed out the window at the East River. Occasionally someone would come in and tell me to breathe more so my baby's heartbeat would speed up, but for the most part it was an uneventful afternoon. Then my husband mentioned he'd like to go see a movie while I waited.
"You're joking me, right?"
"Yeah, yeah," he said unconvincingly.
At 2:00 pm the nurse said if I wanted she could bring in the anesthesiologist for an epidural.
"Definitely!" I said, with the anticipation, if not the actual experience of bone prying pain. A short time later a teenager with a big needle helped me role onto my left side so he could poke me in the spine.
"Breathe, breathe," said the nurse, and soon the amplified heartbeat kicked it up a notch.
They rolled my body back onto the pillows and asked if the epidural was working.
"Well," I said, "The pain is dull now except this one spot."
"Hmm," said the boy with the big needle. "That sounds like a hot spot'. We'd better give you another dose. Sometimes parts of your body can block the medicine."
I

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