So there we were ...

So here we are. July 3, 1991. My arrival was quite the production.

I made my debut with all the fanfare I could muster. I was premature, my birth was fast and full of surprises (You should have seen the look on the OBGYN’s face). Mom went medication free since there wasn’t time to administer any but, given my condition, meds couldn’t have been used anyway.

We determined later that mom didn’t realize she was in labor for two reasons: She never had labor pains with sis (really. Only one small “cramp” in the Trumbull Arthur's) and  it wasn’t a typical labor…. No hormones, no internal clock going off … just that the uterus couldn’t stretch any more and was trying to empty itself …. So I guess it really was “cramping” after all.

And mom’s water never broke until the OBGYN started to “poke around” and then it broke in a flooding gush. And me being as small as I was, I pretty much just surfed the wave into the outside world.

So there we were:

I was technically a still birth - no heartbeat and ,as dad recalled later, a lovely shade of grey....but I was revived quickly by the newborn staff.

The tear of the cord and the abruption combined to put mom at great risk even though she and dad didn’t know it at the time.

Dad just buzzed along on caffeine and nicotine and tried to fathom what was going on.

Mom said later when she got to the hospital and while dad was banging on the (wrong) door, that she looked up into the sky and thought to herself that life was changing forever.

She was right ....