Happy Birthday Elwood
April 16th, 2008
Today is my middle son’s birthday. He is 10 years old. Since I shared the story of my first son being born, I’ll share his birth too.
I, once again, was past my due date. Having already had a child 15 months prior I knew what to expect. I had a different doctor because the first one made douchebags look like wonderful people. I had decided that I didn’t want to be induced. I wanted to do it myself. I had a doctor visit and I wasn’t even dialated. My doctor was going out of town so he wanted to give my a hormone insert and induce me the next day. I wasn’t thrilled but I wanted him to deliver my child (we didn’t know the sex of this one). The plan was to go the Methodist, get my hormones to dialate me and the next morning I would be induced. My son had other plans.
I get to Methodist and they get me settled in my room. The nurse comes to check me before they give me my hormones and I had started to dialate. They call my doctor, who happens to be in a nearby town covering their emergency room. He said to skip the hormones, so I don’t dialate too fast. Well, the resident decided that he was just going to induce me. I refused. So silly little resident tells me that he will just call my doctor and tell him. I told him that the doctor and I had a deal that I would be induced in the morning and if I wasn’t progressing I would be induced then but I would be damned if he would induce me now. He called my doctor. He came back to my room with his head hung low and told me he wasn’t going to induce me. Ha! Victory is mine! So I keep on dialating and contracting and Brad has to leave. He had to cover someone else’s shift at work so he had to basically show up and then I would call and he would come back to the hospital. I fell asleep and when I wake up, no contractions. Shit! Now I have to be induced in a few hours. I get up to go to the bathroom and the mother of contractions start. The nurses are a bit concerned and I call Brad. The nurses keep asking me if I am alone and I keep telling them Brad is on his way. I am getting irritated. Brad finally shows up and I am in some heavy duty labor but where is my doctor? He is still out of town covering the emergency room. Finally, doctor is here, Brad is here, I am ready. No I am not. I still have a half of a centimeter to dialate. So my doctor decides to take a quick walk, since he has been up all night, to get him pumped up for delivering my kid. Once again, my son has other plans. Suddenly, I finish dialating and he decides he is coming, ready or not. So they are paging my doctor, a resident is trying to hold him back and all I want to do is push and get it over with (no epidural this time either). My doctor rushes in and basically catches my son. I had some problems in my pregnancy and didn’t gain alot of weight and didn’t get very big so when they announced that he was 9 pounds and 3 ounces the doctor almost had a stroke.
Now since we didn’t know the sex of our child we didn’t have a name picked out like with our first child. So here we are with another little boy when inspiration hits my husband. He wants to name him Elwood after the Blues Brothers because we already had a Jake. I had a fit. There was no way I was naming this child Elwood. The nurses all agreed with me. So we “discussed” names during my whole stay at the hospital. We didn’t finally settle on one until about an hour before my release. Now that my son is older and has seen the Blues Brothers he is pissed that his name isn’t Elwood. He has told me that he is going to get it changed. I’m hoping he’ll out grown this but knowing him I doubt it. So Happy Birthday Elwood!







