IT'S THE ETHANATOR'S BIRTHDAY!!!
Now, if you're pregnant...stop reading. This is in no way going to be a thing you'll want to know about while you're pregnant.
It's hard for me to believe that the guy who gave me the nickname of "Norman" is now 6 big years old. In fact, it's easier for me to remember the day he was born. So to me, it's like yesterday that I finally got to meet him for the first time.
Oh sure, he'd been kicking around my kidney's for a while, but I didn't really set eyes on him until 6 years ago. And he sure as hell made his entrance something memorable.
Don't get me wrong, he wasn't on death's door and we weren't rushed to the hospital in some sort of drama that Lifetime likes to make mushy little made-for-tv movies about. It was just that he got....stuck.
Have you have been giving birth and your kid gets STUCK before? I had no freaking clue such a thing could happen. So there we were, deep in the throes of the miracle of birth when you could almost HEAR the doors of childbirth slam shut.
"PPPPPUSSSSSHHHH!!!!" yelled my husband gleefully. "PUUUUUSSSHHHHHH ooooooowwwwwSSSSSSSHHHHHHIIIIIITTTT!!!!" (that last part is me grabbing him by the soft skin underneath his chin. Did you know grabbing people there hurts a lot? It also made him stop being so damn happy about the fact that I was in labor)
"Um. You might want to stop coaching your wife to push right about now," mentioned the nurse "it appears your child is stuck."
"What the hell?!" STUCK? I would have offered to leap out of the bed and do a few jumping jacks to help dislodge him, but the epidural was hooked up and that was a bit of loveliness I did not want to part with. "Errrr.... yes. He appears to have his shoulders stuck. We might have to help him out with your next contraction..."
Silly me. I didn't know what this meant. See -- what they meant to say was this: "When you have your next contraction, this nurse here who looks like a linebacker for the Dallas Cowboys is going to stand on the rail of your hospital bed and wham the shit out of your hip to try to push your pelvis apart. Meanwhile, I'm going to pull on your baby's head and brace my foot on the end of the bed to gain more traction."
Or something like that. I know my husband was standing against the wall with a shocked look on his face watching the scene as he held an icepack to the underside of his chin. I even think someone from the hospital staff was taking pictures from the hallway. I bet if you look hard enough that damn picture is posted on someone's blog.
All I know is after the first round of that method, I have never pushed so hard in my life because I certainly didn't want the next contraction to begin and find out what kind of midwife fuckery they were going to pull next.
And that - in a nutshell - is how I met my son and he's been entertaining the family ever since.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY ETHAN!!!
Happy Birthday, Ethan! You da man!
Now stop reading. No! Stop, NOW! Mamma? Is he stopped, yet? Okay!
Now, Norman, I know exactly how you felt. I have had, on more than one occasion, a turd get stuck. It took two packs of ExLax gum, a tube of KY Jelly and a crowbar to get them out.
I even named them: Nutterbutt and John Holmes.
But I'm much better now.