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How I Got to Be in the Mother Of FIVE Club Finale(ly)

dapper donny

This sexy dude plus living in a tiny duplex packed with boxes and kids & with no entertainment = baby number five

By the time we get to the last member of our party we are living on the Outer Banks in a jammed pack duplex that belongs to a friend (one side for us, one side for our stuff) while our house is being built.

“This one’s yours,” I tell Donny when we discover that we’re pregnant. If it were physically possible I would surely let him be the pregnant one. Despite the discomforts, I pretty much enjoy being pregnant but enough is enough. The best Donny can do is pamper me. And he does. He brings me Great Garden sandwiches from Stuffy’s in Richmond because nothing else will do. “It’ll be soggy,” he suggests. I don’t care. He acquiesces. He takes care of everything when he is home, letting me be a miserably sick pregnant woman without concern. He lets me make the momentous decision to have this baby in Richmond via our midwife Sally. The details about how we can actually make this work are unimportant.

The months tick off one by one. I see a local nurse practitioner in between visits to Sally in Richmond. As time approaches Patty tell me that I will have the baby where I want to have it. But if need be she has a birthing kit. She can and will help me until we can get to the over an hour away hospital if it comes to that.

lewis

Lewis Chapin Ball February 2, 1985

Visits to Sally became more frequent. The baby is due in February. By late January I am ready. He’s not ready yet, Sally tells me. I know better, but since we have no real game plan other than wait for the baby, I accept another week of waiting. The next week when we trek to Richmond, Donny checks us into the Hyatt. I have told him that I just really can’t have the baby in his rooms at the store. They are clean and comfy. Two rooms he has carved out for his living space. One is a tiny living type room with a fold out couch that the kids sleep on. The other a room with built in book shelves and a mattress on the floor that takes up most of the space. The arrangement is fine normally but I can not visualize birthing our child there.

Our rooms at the Hyatt are a nightmare, right by the elevators, we can hear folks coming and going all night long. We check out. I go for my appointment with Sally. “He’s ready,” she declares. “This is what we’ll do. I’ll get Dr. Fitzhugh to bring his knitting needle to work tomorrow and we’ll pop the water sac.”

It worked by gosh!

Our mother son talk worked by gosh!

We check back into the Hyatt. Donny explains to the clerk that we need rooms away from the elevators. Things are much better. The kids are in heaven. A pool. A buffet. Endless TV.

We all get settled in for the night. I cannot sleep. During one of my many trips to the bathroom, I have a heart to heart talk with the baby. I tell him that one way or the other he is coming into this world in a few hours. I tell him that it will hurt a lot for both of us. I also assure him that if we work together it will be over quickly. I tell him about the doctor’s knitting needle that will start the birthing process. I tell him that it’s his choice whether he or the doctor start the ball rolling. I go back to bed.

I wake up for yet another trip to the bathroom. It’s early morning by now. While there, my water breaks. I smile and pat the baby, “Well done.” We call Sally. It is over soon. Our party is complete. Later Sally tells me that Dr. Fitzhugh forgot to bring his knitting needle to the office anyway.

The next week when I go for my checkup with Sally, Dr. Fitzhugh comes into the waiting room and purposefully walks up to me awe on his face. “How did you do that?” he asks. I look at him, confused at first. And then it dawns. “I talked to the baby. I told him that it was his choice.”

Missed Part One? Part Two? Part Three? Part Four?

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How I Got to Be in the Mother Of FIVE Club Part Four

You can’t get pregnant while you’re nursing. Ah, freedom for a few months. I bought it, hook, line & sinker.

And then one day Stephen quit cold turkey on me. Ten months old, he was eating solids but nursing was still the major part of his diet. Our kids loved mother’s milk. All solid nursers, no pussy footing around. But this baby just up and refused. My boobs were dying. “Please,” I implored. He clamped his mouth shut. The only way I could salvage the situation was to catch him just as he was falling asleep and trick him into draining a few drops from my super loaded, super confused breasts.

And then the light dawned. Hormones. He tastes new hormones. Pregnancy hormones. Nothing apparently that he wants anything to do with. Yup! We were on that band wagon again.

Soooo…natural delivery was a success but I could do better. I wanted a home delivery. I’m still trying to discern how I came upon information that there was a midwife in Richmond working through an OB-GYN to do home deliveries. Certainly not any of my girl friends. They were all main stream and this was radical. Not even any birthing centers in those days. Only hospitals. Being in the time well before google searching, I must have read an article somewhere. At any rate I called. My track record was a plus. I was told we needed to be within ten minutes of a hospital. MCV covered that base for us being just up the road from our Varina home. I was in.

Sally & I hit it off from the start. She was amazing. She had delivered babies in tents, in communes, and plain ordinary houses. The months drifted by. This baby was due in late November. At the start of the month, Sally told me that she was leaving town for a few weeks but would be back in plenty of time for delivery. She also told me that she was coming back on Election Day to vote and then was leaving again.

I protested. Did she forget that I was calibrated for early deliveries? Like clockwork every baby had been at least two weeks early. She told me not to worry and gave me her pager number. Election Day rolled around. I felt funny but nothing was happening. Still I couldn’t settle anywhere. I paced. I stretched. I played with Stephen. He napped. I didn’t. And then the mucus plug came out. A new one for me, I had read that meant imminent delivery. I called Donny. He came home. We waited. Nothing happened. And then contractions started rolling in, nice and slow, then picking up speed. “This is it!”

We paged Sally. She called. “We’re having dinner.” We was Dr Fitzhugh, his girl friend and Sally.

“You might want to skip dessert.”

They arrived to find me in full swing. “I’m worried about transition,” I told Sally. I did remember How. Hard. It. Really. Was.

sally

“You’ll be fine,” she said. She was right. Transition came and went. I hardly had time to recognize it. Time to push!

“Stop pushing for a moment,” came Sally’s calm voice. What? Not again. I stopped. “Get me a light,” I heard her say to Dr Fitzhugh who was hovering close by. Our bedroom had no overhead light. Only a small bedside lamp. There was one other lamp in the room but it had a broken shade and so only got turned on when you really needed a bright light. Dr Fitzhugh turned it on and brought it close to Sally. There was fumbling and low conversation. Then, “Okay push now. Hard!”

I did. And I promise just as that little soul entered the room everything changed. He filled the entire room with his presence. I could feel it everywhere. It was ethereal and glorious. We had our baby number four.

andrew born

Andrew Saunders Ball November 5, 1980

andrew s&a

“Why did you have me stop?” I asked Sally later.

“Oh the cord was around his neck,” she replied casually. “I needed to cut it.” So that’s what Andrew had been doing a few weeks prior when I was sure he was working on his gymnastic skills. Tangling himself up. I think early was a good thing. Glad that’s my calibration.

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