Thatcher’s story

It wasn’t so much the ingestion of spicy food that did it this time as the sight of Linden eating some asparagus from the grill…

After viewing Linden playing with (rather than eating!) some asparagus, Laura promptly excused herself from the dinner table saying she wasn’t feeling well. Turns out Laura was starting to labor on Wednesday night at dinner time.

A couple hours later found us going to the hospital for a real roller coaster of a night. The initial check had Laura at only 1 cm (not what she wanted to hear...). After another hour and a check with Laura’s doc, the nurse came back with an Ambien and a Percoset and told us to go home and sleep through the labor. Must’ve been what Laura needed to hear, because almost immediately the labor really kicked in and just prior to leaving the nurse realized things changed very quickly – ‘you’re spending the night here’ she told us.

Nighttime was off and on – no movement followed by bursts of it – ‘fits and starts’ Dr. Powar would later describe it. We had great care all the way around and Lauren, the nurse who would help deliver the next morning, came on and was really terrific.

As morning rolled around, we started playing something akin to ‘time the baby’ – Dr. Powar had a procedure scheduled at Stanford at 8:30 and would be at Sequoia at 10. Ruth was getting Linden ready and dropping her at a friend’s for the day (thanks again Kelly!). Meanwhile, Laura had progressed to about 8 cm and the baby was clearly gettin’ ready. Things were kind of lined up, but we surely didn’t want to have the baby w/o the Doc or Ruth, who had spent a week with us up til this point to make sure she could be there for the delivery!

I guess time was on our side - Dr. Powar re-scheduled his procedure to be with us sooner, further cementing his rock-star status with Laura and me. And Ruth arrived at just before 10 as Laura was really laboring (and the epidural was wearing off!). Dr. Powar gave Laura 2 options to either 1) go for it and push without much (any?) pain relief or 2) add to the epidural, but delay the labor/birth. ‘Go for it’ was unanimous. 3 sets of pushes and maybe 12 minutes later our boy came out with that full head o’ hair and looking straight at Ruth and me on Laura’s right side. The cries that we all listen intently for after delivery came almost immediately and I think we all began floating a few feet in the air from the high of finally having our son/grandson with us.

Another miracle is born and we’re sure elated to have him here!