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January 2, 2001
My sincere apologies for not posting this sooner. And a warning - don't get your hopes up, this is gonna be a three-parter. I tried and tried to finish this, but let me tell you, three kids, one a newborn, one with special needs, and one who thinks she is the boss of the house, is NOT conducive to getting anything done. I PROMISE to finish this up soon. :)
**Birth Story Part II**
(If this is at all confusing to you, you might want to read Birth Story Part I)
But I was, of course, unaware that John couldn’t hear the cell phone. So I called. And it rang. And rang. And rang. Nothing is worse to a hugely pregnant laboring woman than being on the wrong end of an unanswered phone call. The voice mail message clicked on, so I hung up and called back. And back. Nothing.
It was at this point that I realized that, for whatever reason, the cell phone was just not going to be the way I got a hold of John. So I called the message center where he works. When the guy answered the phone I was in the middle of a contraction. I still managed to get out the sentence “I’m in labor! Tell my husband!” I gave him John’s info, and hung up the phone. Apparently that sentence translated to “Hold onto this message for 45 minutes before giving it to said recipient of message.” I’m not joking. I’m not sure how much more dramatic I could have made my phone call or what I could have possibly said to make Messenger Boy get his act together and freakin’ RUN, not walk, the message to John.
But, of course, it didn’t happen. Although I didn’t know this, since I was too busy trying to breathe and get it all together mentally at 1:40 in the morning while in labor. I didn’t even consider the possibility that John wouldn’t get the message promptly. I had, for the moment, bigger fish to fry, and that included getting someone over to watch Chloe and Ivan.
Hello snag Number 2. What does Murphy’s Law state? Anything that CAN go wrong WILL.
I called the home of our first babysitter, my aunt and uncle. The phone rang, and rang. Hey, this was getting to be a familiar theme in my life. Their answering machine picked up, and I left a rather dramatic message, thinking that at any time one of them would pick up sounding sleepy and confused. Not so. No one picked up. Even after three calls. Unbeknownst to me, they had left their cordless phone downstairs. They all sleep on the second floor, and never heard my early morning call.
On to babysitter number two. Guess what? Their phone rang and rang and rang, and NOTHING picked up – no voice mail, no answering machine. I’m not sure how long I let the phone ring, but I do know that I sat through two contractions with that damn sound in my ear before I gave up.
Third times a charm, right? Wrong. This time I didn’t even get a ring. I got a busy signal. I tried the phone number three times, and every time it rang busy. I even called the operator to try and do an emergency break in the call. That would have worked if babysitter number 3’s phone hadn’t been off the hook.
So, it was now nearing 2:00 AM, and I had basically not been able to get a hold of anyone. Not one person. Well, except for the Lame-o Messenger Boy. To add insult to injury, my contractions were getting stronger and lasting longer. I’m sure the stress from not being able to talk to anyone I wanted or needed to talk to didn’t help.
At this point, I had a brilliant idea. Call the midwife! I called the main after-hours number, and within a few rings Amika, one of my midwives, answered. A human! Another human’s voice! Someone who knew me! I nearly started crying from sheer relief. Or something.
I managed to tell Amika everything – how long and far apart my contractions were, the fact that I couldn’t get a hold of anyone - John and babysitters included - and that I was a little freaked out. She calmed me down a bit, and told me to come on in when I could, or call back if I couldn’t.
After hanging up the phone with Amika I actually felt calmer. I knew I had at least a little while before the baby was born. Part of me was still concerned that I’d end up on the evening news as one of those women who give birth alone at home or on the side of the road in the front seat of their car. But I knew that dwelling on that was only going to make things more difficult. And I knew I needed something to occupy me until John called or got home. But what could I do? Play Solitaire or something?
I got in the shower.
It wasn’t a cleanliness issue. It was a relaxation issue. I turned the water on as hot as I could stand it, and let the spray hit my lower back. I stayed in there for about 10 minutes, or until my meager hot water allotment ran cold. After getting out of the shower, I busied myself by packing a bag for Chloe and Ivan, since I realized there was pretty much no getting out of bringing them along. Juice, milk, snacks, three videos, two changes of clothes for each, a passel of toys and for some unknown reason, finger paints, all went into their bag.
I threw the bag together while still having to stop between each contraction. In all honesty, it helped to have something to do and a goal to meet that wasn’t directly related to labor. A contraction would hit, and I would double over against the bed or counter or table, and I wouldn’t think, “Ack! This is awful.” Instead I would think, “Damn – where is Ivan’s jacket? He can’t go outside without his jacket!”
After my shower and hasty packing session, I glanced at the clock and realized that it was nearly 2:20 AM. “Crikey,” I thought, “Where’s John? He should have called by now!” I called the cell phone again, and it rang and rang, only to let me hear voice mail message again. I called the message center back, but this time no one answered. It was later discovered that Messenger Boy had fallen asleep and that it was most likely my call that woke him, sending him off to deliver the late message to John.
At this point the pendulum swung back towards “panic” again. I’m not crazy. But I had dealt with about all I could reasonably be expected to deal with. And it wasn’t taking much to push me over towards histrionics.
I think this is about when I started crying. I had managed to stave off tears for almost an entire hour on my own, with nearly nothing going as planned. I had no more calm, rational thoughts left in my head, and nothing else to try.
In one final, desperate attempt to have a normal birth, I called the cell phone one more time. Music to my ears – John picked up on the first ring. At first it sounded like he was on the inside of a diesel truck engine – it was that loud. Then I heard him yell through the phone “Hold on!” I could tell from his voice that he was running. A few seconds later, I heard what sounded like yelling inside a diesel truck.
Later I learned that John got the message and instantly whipped out the cell phone. It said something like “6 missed calls”. At that same moment, I tried to reach him again, and he could tell from the display that a call was coming through. He answered, but knew he wouldn’t be able to hear me over the machinery. So he told me to hold on, and then ran through the work area as fast as he could.
As for the yelling - all of the work crew knew that we were expecting a new baby. So when they saw John running, phone in hand, with a look of panic painted across his face, they knew what was up. And they started cheering loudly. So loudly that I could hear it over the machinery through the cell phone. In retrospect, just imagining this scene makes me laugh out loud.
Once outside, John started yelling all sorts of questions through the phone. I think he still thought he needed to yell so that I could hear him, which was sweet and annoying at the same time. He would ask a normal question (like “are the kids still asleep?”) and then follow it up with “do you think you have to push?” He asked this question about twenty times and finally I yelled something like “I’ll let you know when I have to push, okay?”
I promise...more to come soon!
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