Annie's Day, Part III

I strolled back into the room at 10:30 with some honey mustard and onion pretzels, a Gatorade Frost (blue of course, the purple is wack) and some random candy. There was a slight buzz in the air, because your mother had just had her first contraction. Strangely, she slept through it. I would have never known you were beginning your slow descent had the nurse not shown me the graph charting the contractions. So this peaceful start gave Joann a chance to run back to her office about 15 minutes away and take care of a few other things. Mom kept sleeping; Kim and I kept grooving and you were just a little black spike on the labor chart.

At 11’ish mom woke up with her first real taste of what was in store that day. Now, I obviously will never know what she went through on so many different levels to have you. Including a continuous Reglin intravenous drip for three months of her pregnancy, for which someone (myself or Grandma Liz) had to stick her with a needle every 48 hours to deliver the medicine. Do the math my love, that’s 45 different needles. And, where each one was placed it left behind a small, round, hard pustule. Her upper legs, stomach and butt began to look like so many constellations in the sky.

That being said, until you see someone you love in true pain Annie, you will never know what it is like to be willing to do anything for them. I’m not talking about the kind of pain we all cope with on a daily basis, but true pain. Pain the makes their pupils dilate like they were a cornered animal. The kind of pain the gets all the way into a person and peels everything back, baring their soul. On your birth day I saw that pain and then some, and would have given my life to relieve it. I hope to never see you like that love.