A Birth Story - Princess

It was January 1996, and a cold miserable winter day. Except for one bright spot…that pregnancy stick had a plus sign! We weren’t sure if it was a good idea to get pregnant or not. I was still recovering from my knee surgery in November. At 31, I wasn’t bouncing back nearly as quickly as I wanted to. Our fears were eased when my surgeon assured us that the best thing we could do was get pregnant. He said a child growing inside me would stimulate growth and healing to my recently replaced ACL.

All in all the pregnancy was an easy one, one of those tender mercies for which I am so grateful. The Dog Walker was barely 2 and we were clueless about the whole autism thing. At that point he was pretty normal except that he didn’t really speak or play with others. We just assumed he was anti-social like his daddy.

Spring turned into summer and slowly and steadily my knee improved. My doctor reminded me that walking normally could take up to a year or more. September rolled around and we scheduled an induction ten days before my due date. I always knew Princess would be induced. If you remember, Teach was over 10 pounds and when the Dog Walker weighed in at 9 lbs 2 oz, the doc said we would induce from now on.

We arrived at the hospital at the crack of dawn but it took them a while to get things going. By the time we had the epidural and things were really moving along, it was getting close to midnight. I was so tired! My sweetie slept for a while. It had been a long day and he would still have to drive home in the middle of the night. When the nurse said seven, I knew it wouldn’t be long. She called the doctor and I woke up my sweetie. It was approaching 2:00 in the morning.

One of my biggest worries (other than a healthy baby, of course) is that because of the epidural I wouldn’t feel any pain in my knee and I would do something that would cause me much trouble during recovery. When the doc got there, I reminded him of my concerns and he told my sweetie that he was in charge of taking care of my leg and if anything happened it was his fault. My sweetie took this charge very seriously and he held my leg steady the entire time. (And he did a great job of it because I didn’t have any additional pain in my leg when the epidural wore off.) My tiny beautiful Princess was born at 2:36 AM.

And now it’s 2011 and she is nearly grown up. I don’t usually end a birth story this way, but she is so excited! A couple of weeks ago she auditioned for the Sleeping Beauty ballet. Her greatest wish was to earn the part of Carabosse (or if you are a hick Disney fan like me…Maleficent). The cast was announced today and that is exactly what she got! Such a long stretch from the tiny sweet girl born 15 years ago. Congrats Princess. You will be amazing!