three years ago today

Three years ago today, at 2:02am Briar was born.

Labour had been short and mellow. Jeff and I had gone for walks up and down our road, talking to neighbours along the way. We had gardened and watched a movie (Walk the Line). Jeff had slept beside me while I rested between contractions.

When they were five minutes apart, he insisted that we go to the hospital event though I didn`t feel that it was necessary yet. I immediately got in the shower at the hospital. The water was cold and the jet was flimsy and intermittent. I was entering transition and didn`t have the energy or ability to change the temperature myself. I hated the nurse at that moment....I've often thought of donating a more competent shower head since then....

Suddenly, I got the urge. I actually thought (just like in movies) that I had to use the toilet. Jeff and a nurse half dragged me, half supported my noodle-like legs over to the bed. I was annoyed that Jeff didn`t just carry me....His failure to do so had nothing to do with my enormous, unwieldy pregnant body. ;)

Up on the table, Briar was coming and there was no stopping it. The doctor was telling me to not push. The nurses were asking me to relax my legs. I told each of them where to go and the speed at which to get there.

Within seconds, there was Briar. Jeff cut the cord. They whisked Briar`s little red and wrinkly body away to check him out. He didn`t cry, just looked around. Jeff always claimed that they gave him a smack to get a cry out of him. I missed that. I probably would have lost it on them. He squawked briefly and then settled back into his mellow observation of this new world around him.

After he was handed back, Jeff and I cuddled and inspected our new little family member. We named him Cole.

As the nurses tidied up, Jeff got ready to head home for some sleep and I apologized to everyone profusely for some of the language that I had chosen as approriate for conversing with medical staff during the climax of Briar`s birth.

Jeff left, leaving me to be wheeled by a nurse to our room. As Briar and I rode down the hall, I stared at my little man listing off all the words that rhyme with Cole....bowl, mole, foal, roll, hole, pole....

In the morning, when Jeff arrived to pick us up, I announced to him, Ì hope you haven`t phoned anyone yet. Our baby can`t be named Cole. It rhymes with too many other...words and he just doesn`t fit the name.` Jeff suggested Briar and there and then, our little man had his real name. Although, when Liv arrived, she INSISTED that his name was `Prince Charming`and continued to call him by this moniker for some time....

Welcome to the world, Cole Briar Prince Charming! You are loved so very, very much, my little man!