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last few hours.

I went out to the clothesline to see Milly, our lab, and clean up her deposits under the clothesline while she played. While shoveling, I felt the first few contractions start up again and prayed this would be it. It was about six PM.

Upon coming in and getting a batch of banana bread started, the
contractions intensified and seemed to come much quicker. I went to lie down while the bread baked and had Mark call Linda, the CNM. She wanted to talk to me, and she must have thought I wasn't very far along by the way I sounded, for she didn't get there until the head was crowning.

Jamie's babysitter got there in plenty of time, and she would let him wander in and out of the bedroom at his own leisure. It was getting on toward his bedtime, nine PM, when the doorbell rang. In breezed Linda with her assistant carrying her briefcase and oxygen tank. They were brisk and business-like the way they got all washed and set up.

By the time she got around to examining me, she could only yell to Mark, who was on the phone in the other room arranging the hymns for Sunday with the organist, "Mark! The head is crowning!" Of course the organist, busybody that she was, wasted no time spreading the news that a baby was being born in the parsonage, as it was easy for anyone to hear that shout for miles around!

Most of the four-hour labor felt like strong menstrual cramps, so I was by myself for a lot of the time. Mark had to deal with setting up the Sunday service and the babysitter and all.

By the time the exam was over, I felt like pushing. Linda told me not to and by this time Mark was there, breathing in my face, but too bad, I just couldn't help it. One push and out popped Baby Julia. There's the reason this baby was nicknamed, "Flyer-Guyer". I took three stitches after Julia Rose was born; and wasn't Papa proud to have his little Geegumplex; an 8 pound 10 ounce girl!

All hands were on deck rubbing the creamy vernix into the back of this supposedly two week, overdue, wrinkle-free baby as she lay nursing on my chest. (Even Jamie helped) Jamie was somewhat devastated by her appearance later, but he would walk around for days, bent over, pointing between his knees saying, "See baby? See baby?"

I was very tired after Julia's birth, partly because of the worry about her being breech, partly due to the castor oil, but mostly because I just wasn't in good, physically athletic shape.
She nursed more often, about every one and half to two hours, where Jamie nursed every three hours around the clock. We never had a crib. They always slept in the family bed and started moving out at about eighteen months to two.

I don't know what we would have done had she not come the day she did. We wanted all our children to be born at home, but this one almost didn't make it. Next time, we would have a definite Plan B prepared for the inevitable interruptions of nature's way. We were very fortunate the small glitches we encountered did not throw us entirely off course.

Learn more about this author, Amy Guyer.
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