Beginnings

In other words, how I came to be. The truth is, I was a result of a failure of communication between my parents. Without going into uncomfortable detail, my mother took an action that made my father think that Mom was already expecting, so he ceased the use of preventive measures. My mother observed the lack of preventive measures and assumed that Dad had decided it was time for another baby. But did they discuss this with each other? No, they did not! Therefore, here I am. A happy accident, so to speak. 

Dad told me years later that he regarded me as someone whom God decided just needed to be. I've no objection to this, and try to avoid letting it give me the Big Head. 

On the night I was born, Mom woke Dad and informed him that it was time to go fetch the car out of the garage and bring it around to the front for the trip to the hospital. By the time he got himself clothed and the car fetched, it was too late. So he ran to wake up the lady next door who had already had five of her own, thinking that she'd know what to do. Well, that was a mixed success. This was in the days of Twilight Sleep birthing, and women didn't have to experience the nitty gritty of actually being aware of what was happening to them as they gave birth. Chris did successfully deliver me, but was so repulsed by the experience that she never had another one.

I was caught in a dish towel (I was not a large baby) and placed in a laundry basket to await the ambulance which was on its way. Dad always claimed that the ambulance staff initially picked up the wrong laundry basket, but I suspect that particular detail is apocryphal. Mom and I were hauled off the to the hospital, where I was deemed unsanitary, since I'd been born at home, and thus not allowed to stay in the nursery with the other babies. So Mom had to keep me with her, which I'm sure did not make her happy, but she was just accidentally ahead of her time.

An interesting side effect of emergency home birth is that nobody knows, really, what time I appeared. They were all busy, and nobody looked at a clock. 

My younger brother and I got to musing a few years ago about the timing of my conception, but as regards the calendar. It would have been just about the time of the OSU/Michigan game, which is still a landmark occasion in our family every year. My brother posited that I was a celebration baby. Thanks to the modern miracle of the interwebs, I was able to find out the score for the year before I was born. Alas, I appear to have been a consolation prize.

Love, Spud