She Is Legend

I debated over posting this story here, on my less-specific blog, or on Impending Doom, my baby-specific blog. This is the tale of the delivery of Porter, which should make the choice fairly easy. The crux is, while Porter was the main-event, the real story was all about Lil.

So, mostly to pad my post count and get it into triple digits, I’m going to post it here.

My wife is a FREAKING CHAMP.

She is LEGENDARY.

Dateline: Tuesday, September 25th, 2007, 2:12pm, somewhere in Southern California.

“Hi hunny.”

“Hi Lil.”

“I think I’m having contractions.”

About ten-thousand things now raced through my mind, all on a collision course. I’m an hour-and-a-half away from home, no immediate transportation, and the train left exactly 9 minutes ago.

I consider running to catch the train, or the fifty-two miles to home.

Lil saves me from myself.

“I’m on my way to my doctor’s appointment, so we’ll see what she says and then I’ll call you.”

This is good because if I ran, I would then have to shower and change clothes, and my current clothing choice is pretty spectacular.

Fast-forward 20 hours.

Lil has been given an epidural, I’ve been doped with three shots of Demerol and Valium. The nurse comes in and tells us that Lil is fully dilated and its time to start pushing. My training immediately kicks in:

“Excuse me, sir, pushing down on your wife’s stomach is not going to help.”

I pause to consider this.

“What if I jump? Atomic elbow from the top turnbuckle?”

Two hours after that, I’ve managed to work one arm out of the strait-jacket by dislocating my shoulder. It’s actually not as painful as it sounds. It’s more painful. I also learned that not everything you see in the movies is true. Mel Gibson, I’m talking to you here.

Fortunately, the doctor walked in at that moment, popped my shoulder back into place, retied my restraints, and checked my wife . . . all with one hand tied behind his back. Apparently, it’s a new method for delivering babies, mostly based on a dare.

“C-section,” the doctor said.

“No thanks,” Lil responded.

“Can you please release the doctor from the headlock?” the nurse asks my wife. “His face is turning blue. I’m pretty sure that’s not healthy.”

The doctor, who can now only communicate through writing and rude gestures, agrees to let Lil push for another hour. I cheer her on from the wall where they’ve chained me.

“You’re making progress,” the nurse keeps saying, then turns to me, “For the last time, I am NOT a robot.”

“That’s just what a robot would say.”

The hour is up, and the doctor appears again . . . just like a robot would.

“Mrphl-gurble,” he says.

“What was that?” Lil asks suspiciously, and the doctor flinches.

“I think he said, c-section.”

I’m good help.

Lil then cuts loose with a string of vitriolic abandon not heard since the first truck-driver sprung from the mold fully clothed in denim, flannel and a sweat-stained baseball cap, angry that he was alive.

The doctor, backing away slowly toward the door where a phalanx of nervous guards hold electric cattle-prods, agrees to give Lil another 30 minutes of pushing.

Now, and I’m not making this part up, Lil transforms from the beautiful woman I’ve been married to for exactly 3 years, 11 months and 29 days, in a pushing machine. She takes a grip on the birthing bed’s hand bars so that they groan and twist in a squeal of protesting metal. Flames, white-hot and twelve feet long if they were an inch, shoot from her eyes and scorch my eyebrows from my face, never to return. A wail like the cries of the damned in Hell itself issues from the depths of her soul. Using nothing but the sheer force of her will, which is picked up by seismometers as “the big one” two states away, she orders the nurse to her side.

And so, after 38 hours of labor and nearly five hours of pushing, Porter is born.

So let me say it again:

My wife is LEGENDARY.

And if someone has a spare key for a straight-jacket, it would be appreciated. You actually cannot use the bathroom in one of these things.

Curse you Mel Gibson!