Special Edition: Baby Jean

Jean Hopkinson
March 29, 2009
8am
8lb 2oz, 19.5inches

More baby pictures than you ever wanted to see:



There's not much to report by way of 'birth story.' Mine are pretty run of the mill, which I'm grateful for. I go into labor at night and a week early: check. Water breaks, debate with Aaron about seriousness of going to the hospital, drug me up, push her out, no complications. Amazing. A miracle. A blessing.

I thought having a 4th baby was great though; I got hand-waved through so many things. The nurse came to triage me and when I told her this was my 4th she lowered her clipboard, took off her gloves and sighed, "oh, well you know you're in labor. Let's skip this and go straight to a room." When the next nurse checked my progress and I was complete she really hustled to call the dr. when I told her to be ready to deliver the baby because I won't wait to push just because she asked me to (she tried to tell me I would wait and I humored her by negotiating for 10 minutes). When the recovery nurse was giving me the shpeel about all the paperwork on my clipboard she kept pulling sheets out and throwing them in the garbage muttering, "you can skip that, and that, and you don't have to watch this movie...." When another nurse checked in the second morning she entered by saying, "I don't need to tell you anything, you could probably tell me a thing or two, you have more kids than me." And to top it all off, a dr. never even checked me after the delivery. They ended up calling and getting my release permission over the phone! All of this kept me chuckling through the whole experience, I mean, 4 kids isn't really that many! but I guess it is in the context of popular society.

Which reminds me of a funny little observation Aaron made over the last 9 months. He likes to relate the various reactions and comments he gets in reaction to each successive pregnancy:
1st child: "Oh! how exciting. Good for you. You'll love being parents."
2nd child: "Oh! that's great you want to have kids. How fun."
3rd child: "Oh! that will make a nice little family. You'll be busy!"
4th child: "How many kids are you going to have?!?!?!?!"

This is clearly the line where we crossed all social acceptability and the doting sugary coated encouragement completely dissolves into incredulity.