Happy Birthday, Hayden!

Hayden and Harley

Three Little Cousins:

Kanyon, Lincoln, Hayden

All 2 months apart starting with Lincoln

Our "backwards Oreo"

Ten years later

Hayden and Kanny

On Monday, February 22, 1999, I went to the doctor hoping she would induce me like she said she...might. "Um, no. You're not even dilated at all."

"Oh for the love of Pete. Are you kidding me?"

"Nope. Come back on Wednesday."

(Me: Stomps out of the office, grumpily.) (After I got dressed, of course.) (You're welcome for the visual.)

So that night I went to bed and woke up at 4:00 in the morning to pee. Went back to bed and...OK, these are probably details you don't want. What I'm getting at is that my water broke right when I got back in bed and I thought I had just peed myself. Which wouldn't be all that unlikely.

I woke up my (at the time) husband, Scott and told him my water broke. He flies out of bed and we proceed to panic and get ready to go. You see, we thought the baby was like a fish. That he couldn't live without water. And we had a 45 minute drive to LDS hospital in down town Salt Lake from our house in Tooele. So after I remind Scott that he should probably wait for me, and we call our mothers, we start the drive down the back road out of town. At 90 mph. Down a 45 mph road.

"Scott, it's going to take us longer if we get pulled over than if we just go the speed limit." He sands it down to 60.

We got to the hospital at 5:00 am. Our mothers got there at 5:15 am. Let me just back up a bit by saying that I had been having contractions for the last week. I could literally time them and several times a day they were like 5 minutes apart for a couple of hours at a time. Well now. Now that my water had broken, there were no contractions to be had. None. But since I had ruptured, they let me stay. My biggest fear was that they'd tell me to go home. So we wander the halls of the floor, trying to get some contractions going. Nothing. Have I mentioned that they won't let me eat? Ya, I'm STARVING.

Finally, at 2:00 pm a contraction! At that point I got the epidural. Hey, it's my belief that we owe it to the pioneers of medicine to get epidurals.

Me: "What's that? The baby is post...what? Oh, posterior. So I have to turn from one side to the other to get him to flip over? You realize I'm numb, right? That I have ZERO control of my limbs below the waist? Oh, OK, so Scott and my mom get to flop my legs over for me as I turn over. That should be fun for them."

Tick, tock. Tick, tock. Tick........tock.

Tick freaking TOCK.

7:00 pm rolls around. Scott and moms are hungry. (Oh, really? The hell, you say.) So they go eat dinner. I tell Scott to please hurry. Which he did. It was about 7 seconds after they all left that the epidural wore off and I was in some seriously hard freaking labor. (Are you keeping up? It's been 15 hours!!!) And it KILLED!!! Scott came back shortly and was able to alert the proper authorities and get me hooked back up with some drugs. Aaaaaaaahhhhhhh.....that's better.

8:30 pm. Guess what? It's time to push! YIPEEE!!! Let's get this party started!

"Mom, you get to hold my leg. Scott, you're on the other one. Lucky, lucky ducks!!!"

Push. Push. Push. For an hour.

Mom: "He's got hair! I can see his cute hair!!!"

"Am I even pushing in the right place?"

"Well, sometimes. Push like you're having a...y'know...(looks around, whispers)...bowel movement."

"Excuse me? What was that?" So I do. And they all start cheering, "YES AMBER!! THAT'S IT! PUSH RIGHT THERE!!!"

Absolutely not. Even worse than being sent home was (is) my fear of doing that on the delivery table. I don't care if it takes all freaking night to deliver this baby I'm so not pushing there.

I keep asking Scott, "did I poop? Did I? Now?"

Scott: "No, you're fine."

"You'll tell me if I poop, right?"

"You're not going to poop."

"But you'll tell me, right?"

"Yes, I'll tell you."

9:30 pm I feel the strangest sensation I'd ever felt in my life. I feel my baby "slither" out of me. I hadn't felt a thing up to then but I felt that. And then the next sensation that I felt was overwhelming. I NEEDED him. I needed him on me, now. NOW. You could have been standing there holding a million dollars in your hands, telling me I could have it if I just waited one minute to hold my baby and I'd have turned you down before you even got the whole sentence out. Give. Me. My. Baby.

Scott will tell you that the doctor tossed him up two feet in the air like a pizza and cleaned him all off. I didn't care if he was covered in gutty stuff. I needed him. Those four and a half seconds were the longest of my entire life.

And then she laid my beautiful baby boy on my chest. And I was complete. My heart opened up and he landed squarely in it. He was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. Oh, was he CUTE! And perfect!

The first thing I said when I saw him was, "shit, he's cute."

He was such a good baby. He slept through the night at two weeks of age. He had his dad wrapped around his little finger right from the word "go". He was always tall and skinny. His first words were "beat up". He'd wrestle with Scott, that's how he learned that phrase. One day, when he was almost 2 we were driving to Jill's to play with her and her baby boy who was born just two months after mine. I told him we were going to play with Kanny (Kanyon). He said, "Tanny, beat up?"

"Um, no, mister. You can't beat Kanny up."

He didn't put weight on his legs til he was a year. He "commando crawled" with lightning speed. He walked at 15 months. Scott and I would wonder out loud what we ever did for entertainment before he was born. We had so much fun with him. We could hum the tune to Indiana Jones, Darth Vader's theme song, Star Wars, and Superman and he'd tell you their respective titles. That time of my life was among the best I can remember. My mom didn't work. I spent the days with her and Jill and our babies. Being a mom suited me. I felt right at ease with it.

So today I honor my first born. The one that gave me my first experience with unconditional love. The one that still loves to snuggle up with me. The one that can put his legs behind his head or curl up into a tiny ball. My "human pretzel". He makes me laugh every day.

Today is your day, Hayden. I love you.