photo by me

This is from Mom’s blog:

Today is my son’s birthday, 38 years ago in Jacksonville Beach, Florida at about midnight I called my landlady to come watch my little girl so I could go have a baby. The hospital was a little 25 bed building, it cost me $25 dollars for the two day stay, my husband was in the navy and that was the fee for an off base delivery. My regular doctor was away so I got his partner who I had only seen once before, but in the navy you got used to seeing a doctor only once. Anyway I had requested no anesthia, but that wasn’t what happened, this doctor was in charge, I had no say, he gave me sodium pentathal, of course I didn’t know until it was done. A few minutes later I was out except for a few lucid moments when I would tell that asshole of a doctor what I thought of him and his arrogance at me and my babies’ expense. At that time you didn’t know if you were having a boy or a girl, and when I woke up late the next morning I didn’t even know I had had my baby. I was so groggy I reached down to feel my tummy and thought it was still there, I called the nurse to find out, she told me I had a baby boy, that was it, she left. I rang again and asked to see my baby, she told me I had to wait until they brought the babies out to be with the mothers. I waited a few minutes, but I wanted to see my baby, so I got up and went down the hall to the nursery, he was beautiful. The nursery nurse picked him up and showed me his name band, ten fingers and ten toes. Wow, I felt much better, went back to my room and could hardly wait to hold him. Finally they brought him in and I had awhile alone with my boy, I took his clothes off to make sure he was all there, he was such a precious baby, and now I had two sweethearts. I nursed him for the first time, he was no effort at all. When we were done I just held him and loved him then looked at his name band, had a real hard time seeing it my eyes were still blurry from the drugs, when I finally made it out it did not have our name on it. I paniced and called the nurse, by then I was scared, angry and crying, you can’t imagine what was going through my mind, the fear of not knowing if this was the child I had born. She was nearly as upset as I was, she assured me he was my baby and rushed out of the room. I guess she went to the nursery, when she returned she was with two other nurses and a new wrist band for my boy. They looked at him, checked both his ankle and wrist bands, the ankle band confirmed he was mine. Apparently the wrist bands were put on the wrong babies, and the other two were girls. That afternoon my milk came in and I thought I would die from the pain because I had to wait a couple of hours to feed the baby on their time schedule. When he finally came in I experienced terrible afterpains, which I did not have with my first birth. To add to my destress I dropped my husbands picture, who was out at sea, I felt very alone that day, I cried and cried some more. Spent the next week at home with my precious babies, until their dad got home from overseas and my mom and sister came to meet the new baby. All in all it worked out ok, but at the time it wasn’t much fun. Anyway, I ended up with the greatest gift of all a happy healthy lovely and very loving boy, now a loving son, husband, brother and uncle. I love you Boo, HAPPY BIRTHDAY.