A Baby Story. Part 1

The Undaground is back.

Sorry for the long layoff. I do have a good excuse, though.

I hope to get back to my normal schedule now as it pertains to this blog. I must warn you that I will be operating on less sleep than normal, so I may dangle a few modifiers or confuse “their”, “there” and “they’re” here and their.

The break from the writing was necessary, but now I’m left with a brain full of things that I never wrote about. I’ve probably forgotten a bunch of stuff, but I’ll do my best to fill in the blanks of the last few weeks. Sooner or later, I’ll have to catch up to the present day. My vast experience in using Tivo and navigating the past, present and future by taking advantage of today’s technology should help me in this effort. I guess I could start at the beginning and tell you about the birth.

Friday, Sept 29, Mrs. Undaground and I were entertaining her parents just one night after we all went to the Santana concert (seems like years ago).

Over the course of the evening, I consumed 8 to 12 beers, a bleu cheese burger, mozzarella with tomatoes, Halibut, stuffed flounder, pita chips with lobster dip, Baileys and Coffee, and about 10 other delectable items that I’ve chosen to block from my memory.

After a quick bleary-eyed Tivo session (to watch the Survivor episode that aired during the Santana show), the wife and I retired to bed.

I was just entering the deep, Heineken Premium Light-induced sleep at about 1230am when Mrs. U uttered the following phrase.

“I’ve either peed my pants, or my water broke.”

“Are you kidding? If this is the beginning of a running, nightly joke, please tell me now.”

“Let’s give it a few minutes and we’ll see.”

Because of the food, beer and Irish Crème swimming around in my belly, I guess I was hoping she had peed her pants. We’d all have a good story to tell some day and then maybe her water could break tomorrow. I could properly prepare my body for the event by eating fruits and vegetables and maybe some calisthenics. I closed my eyes again, returning to the game of catch I was having in my almost-sleep with one of the cornfield guys from Field of Dreams. I was jarred back to consciousness by my wife’s voice.

“It’s still happening. I think this is it.”

“OK. I’m awake. Whoa. Hold on.”

At this time, I did what any responsible adult would do when faced with a life-altering moment: I plodded into the bathroom like an injured Yeti, and grabbed the toilet. I wretched a couple of times. Then, I let it all go. It was disgusting. I just started writing a description of what came out of me, and then backspaced over the whole thing. There is no good that can come from those words.

As I brushed my teeth vigorously, I hollered through the toothpaste foam filling the bathroom:

“I’ll be right with you. Sorry about this. Can you hold off on having a baby for a minute until I gather myself?”

We quickly realized that although the water had broken, Mrs. U was not actually in labor. My physical symptoms were more consistent with labor than hers at that point. I was literally having contractions of my own, except my body was pushing up instead of down. I was taking sympathetic pregnancy to a whole new level.

The gruesome scene in the bathroom actually made me feel a lot better. And, voila, I was sober. Now, it was time to focus on the task at hand. Ladies, if you’re pregnant, please go pack a bag right now. Don’t wait until your water breaks. For the next few hours, we did just that. Mrs. U took a shower. I filled up the dog’s water dish and calmly explained to her that she will now be referred to as “Number 2” on our list of dependents.

We woke Mrs. U’s parents and let them know that we were going to the hospital, but go back to sleep, because it may just be some renegade urine.

We arrived at the hospital at about 230am. Once there, we entered through the emergency room. If you’ve never visited an emergency room in the wee hours of a Friday night/Saturday morning, I highly recommend it. It’ll give you a good look at what’s going on in the underbelly of the real world while you’re at home sleeping off a halibut and Heineken cocktail. We were escorted to labor and delivery by a friendly security guard. I guess he was friendly; he didn’t speak English. For all I know, he called us a couple of jackasses in his native tongue. Whatever he said, he said it in a friendly way.

Soon after, we were sitting in a room called “Triage”. As a nurse examined Mrs. U, I was considering asking what I need to do to get hooked up to an I-V. Then, she looked up at us.

“Yep. The membrane ruptured. Congratulations. You’re going to have a baby today.”

More tomorrow.