For the first time in my life, I threw caution to the wind and chucked all diets.  I was pregnant and glad of it.  I made an appointment with a doctor friend of my husband’s who was an OB/GYN.  He told me that I would be able to stay on my medication, thank God.  He let me know all was well with my pregnancy and I was I was relieved to hear that. 

            Even though I was nauseous for the first three months, for the first time my heart and mind were at peace.  I didn’t understand everything but I felt good, I felt relieved, and I felt happy.  I was getting all the attention I wanted and I was able to focus on something other than myself.  I stopped drinking and smoking.  I had been a smoking trick, too.  I didn’t do anything without a cig.  The amazing thing to me was I was giving things up in my life that I loved, making the sacrifice for someone else and the feeling was euphoric.    

            I allowed myself carte blanche with food and it was not long before I was putting on weight too fast.  The doctor told me I had to stop gaining weight because my blood pressure was getting too high.  There was an ever-growing concern about me contracting Toxemia, so I started dreading the scheduled appointments for fear of him getting mad at me. 

 I started to make a more concentrated effort not to eat as much out of fear of becoming sick.  I went to my next scheduled doctor’s appointment and much to his amazement, I had lost a quarter of a pound.  Believe me; I didn’t do it on purpose but I took the credit.  The doctor was elated at my progress, which in turn, made me feel good about myself.  That afternoon my dad called to see how my appointment went.  I told him the good news and he started laughing.  I said defensively, ”What is so funny?”  He said, “Molly, that is like an elephant taking a shave.” 

  The pregnancy continued and several weeks later I got up one morning and just felt different somehow.  I got dressed and went to the hospital to visit my sister who had just given birth to a baby girl.  I returned home very tired and got in bed that evening with a big bowl of ice cream.  I was propped up in bed, having just licked the last of the Hershey’s syrup off the spoon, when I felt an odd kind of cramp.  The teachers at our birthing classes said, “Try not to eat any food after you go into labor because you will throw it all up.”  I hated throwing up worse than life itself.  Now all I could think of was throwing up all over the place right in the middle of delivery.

 Though not unbearable, the cramps started to come more frequently.  We were told we had hours to get to the hospital once they started and not to rush getting there.  We timed them and they seemed to be about five or six minutes apart by early morning.  We made the call to the doctor and he said to meet him at the hospital.  I took a shower, got dressed; we put my bag in the car and headed off to have a baby.  The doctor checked me and said I had only dilated a centimeter.  He sent me home with a sedative and told me to get some rest.  I was told I could stay this way for weeks.  The cramps did not stop and we ended back to the hospital the very next morning.   

  I was hooked up to a monitor and was told I was definitely in labor but I had not dilated.  They tried everything they could to induce hard labor but nothing helped.  Thirty-six hours passed with no delivery.  I had fallen asleep and upon waking, didn’t see my husband in the room.  I was told that he had gone home to get some rest.  I was furious.  He was tired!  All he had been doing was laying in a Lazy Boy recliner.  I called my sister-in-law and told her I was going to divorce him.  I couldn’t believe he had left me there alone.  I realized that I was not the first woman to have a baby, but this was MY delivery, my baby, and I was scared.  Where was my husband?  He showed up the next morning about 6:00 a.m. and the first thing I did was throw up when he walked into the room.      

A feeling of dread came over me and I felt that something wasn’t quite right.  Without knowing why, I started begging the only God I knew to please let me have this baby.  That was a pretty gutsy thing to do, considering I had four abortions under my belt.  However, I was gutsy when it came to getting what I wanted and on top of it all, I was scared to death.  I promise! I promise! I’ll do better!  I’ll take good care of it!  I promise! 

All of a sudden, the doctor and nurses rushed into the room.  They flipped me over on my right side.  The baby’s heartbeat had dropped to twenty-three beats a minute.  Two nurses rushed into the room, huddled in the corner and started whispering.  I saw one hand a syringe to the other one.  I said, “What is that for?”  I knew, however, what they were thinking.  They thought the baby wasn’t going to make it and they would have to knock me out.  I just knew it.  Maybe I wasn’t going to make it either.  One of them said, “Don’t worry what this is for.” 

 The epidural had been given to me several hours earlier.  My husband was told to get changed and to meet us in the delivery room.  So off I went.  They placed a blue sheet over my stomach, tested for pain, and the doctor made the incision.  The doctor asked my husband if he wanted to take a look.  He stood up, peeked over the sheet, and said, “Molly, it’s just like guttin’ a deer!”  I thought, “How neat!” 

  My husband and I had listened to the girl in the next labor room screaming her head off, “Get this baby out of me.”  So, I knew I was going to be tough.  I had listened to many horror stories about childbirth, so I was scared.  But deliverance was in front of me and I was going to have to get through it and be a trooper no matter what the outcome.     

 My husband and I just knew we were going to have a little boy.  Secretly, I didn’t want to have a little girl because I didn’t want her to be like me.  I had two nephews and I knew how to treat boys.  I had grown up with two older brothers and had played with all the boys in the neighborhood.  There hadn’t been a girl born on my husband’s side of the family in twenty-three years, so the odds of it happening now were slim.  The baby had a hard time “letting loose.”  The doctor pulled and pulled; only to have the baby keep slipping from his hands.  He kept grabbing and pulling and finally, our baby emerged!  My husband whispered in my ear, “Molly, he has the biggest penis I have ever seen.”  The doctor knew my husband from the gun club and said, “You have a little girl, skeet shooter.”  A girl?  We looked at each other in shock and I quickly asked him to check and make certain all her fingers and toes were there.  He said, “I think so.  Wait, I think she is missing her little toe on her left foot.”  The two nurses who had been standing in the corner turned and walked out of the delivery room.  For my baby to be healthy at all, I thought, was a true miracle.  God had heard my prayer, hadn’t he?  The long penis turned out to be the umbilical cord, which was wrapped around her neck, causing the long labor and difficult arrival.  A little girl?  I didn’t want her to be like me.  God help me and help her.