The start of "labor"

Cramping indeed. Didn't they know I was about to make my presence known ?

Around 2 a.m., mom was still "cramping". The pains were inconsistent in all regards: strength, duration, time in between, location. There was nothing to indicate labor and everything to indicate a bad stomach ache.

After what was now 4 hours of this and innumerable calls to the Dr., dad decided it was time to go to the hospital because, as he told the Dr. "either this is labor or there is something very very wrong". After calling my aunts and grandmother....guess whoever got there first could watch sis... off we went .. mom kind of waddled to the car and they set off for the hospital.

I was almost named Peabody for the Peabody Museum at Yale because as Dad was driving by it, mom realized that, like it or not that, I was going to be born tonight. It was obvious to dad also that tonight would be the night but for a totally different reason.

You have to picture this... Mom is the kind of driver that is an accident waiting to happen, not that she drives badly but exactly the opposite. She obeys every law stringently and drives exactly the speed limit .. both of which qualify you as a road hazard in CT. ... so when dad got on the main road and mom said "you'd better run the lights !", he knew this was serious.

He floored it, blowing the horn and flashing the lights, all the way through downtown New Haven and up to the main entrance at Yale New Haven. I imagine it would have been better if he had gone to the emergency room where they were ready for such things, and I am sure the poor security guard at the main entrance eventually forgave him, but to the main entrance he went. After banging on the door and mumbling something unintelligible about "labor" and "premature", they took mom up to maternity but I wasn't sure I wanted to wait that long .....