That Time I Almost Had A Baby In The Car

As I said in the post “Oh F*ck I Peed On The Floor,” both of my kid’s birthdays are within a several week time period. Since I told you about how much I enjoyed tolerated being pregnant with my daughter, I thought it only fair that I also tell you about being pregnant with my son.

By the time I got pregnant with my son, I had already had a baby, so I should have had this pregnancy thing down, am I right?

Wrong.

Why is pregnancy so different each time around? I mean like seriously, everything feels different. Because it was my second baby I looked pregnant almost right away, but because I was so busy chasing after a two year old I would constantly forget that I was pregnant until I looked down and saw my HUGE belly.

You guys, I was seriously huge. I’m not even exaggerating, I was huge. See the picture? There was only one baby in there, I swear. I’m not a very big person to begin with and I don’t have a very long torso, so that baby had nowhere to grow except for out, and out did he grow.

Doesn’t that freak you out a little? It totally freaks me out looking at it. It absolutely freaked me out living it.

I knew almost immediately that he was a boy. Again, I don’t know how I knew, I just did. The morning of my gender ultrasound I was terrified. Up until that point in my pregnancy my husband had repeatedly warned me that I had better not be having a boy and I was really worried about what would happen when he found out that I was indeed, having a boy.

When the ultrasound technician confirmed that he was a boy, my husband went ballistic. He didn’t want a son and he made it pretty clear to everyone in the near vicinity exactly how he felt about the situation. I vaguely remember overhearing the ultrasound tech telling him that if he was going to blame anyone, he should blame himself because it was his male sperm that had impregnated me, and then they told him that if he didn’t calm down they were going to call security.

I only vaguely overheard her because I was too busy looking at the ultrasound screen and my beautiful baby boy.

When the tech handed me some tissues I suddenly realized that I was crying. Tears were rolling down my face in response to a mixture of emotions. Here I was, looking at my amazing son, the life that I was growing, and I was already grieving the losses he would feel with a father that didn’t want him.

It was a somber ride home as I looked at my belly, a belly that held a life so wanted, and yet so unwanted at the same time.  It also then struck me that I had a penis inside of me and it would be staying there for the next several months, and that really freaked me out.

As far as my husband was concerned, my pregnancy was over. The baby was not wanted, the life was not important, and it need not be acknowledged.

Now up until this point in his parenting career, my husband’s efforts had sucked at best. When my daughter was born he barely lifted a finger. In fact, years later when he left for good I told a friend “I can’t do this alone. I can’t be a single mom,” and her response to me was “Honey, you have always been a single mom. The only thing that has changed is that the façade of having a husband is gone and you have gained the official title of being a single mom.”

Yet this was even worse than him not helping. This was an outright shunning of his own child. I don’t know why this surprised me, he had never thought of me as a human anyways, but this baby, this life, was a part of him, and he was throwing it away.

I managed through the rest of the pregnancy alone, so desperately wanting him to form any connection to the baby. “Feel him kick” I would ask him, trying to bring his hand to my belly as he would pull away and refuse. “Talk to him, he can hear you” I would say, near pleading that he acknowledge the existence of his son. Nothing. Ever.

As I neared my due date, the plan was that I was going to be induced a week before my son was due. Because of the speed in which my daughter arrived and the forty five minute drive from my house to the hospital,  the doctor thought it would be best if I were induced to avoid having a baby in the car. I don’t really believe in Western medicine and after the fiasco that was my first birth, I would have much preferred a birth with less medical intervention, but at that point I felt so completely unsupported in my pregnancy that I just wanted to be somewhere safe.

But all those plans went out the window when at 33 weeks pregnant I went into labor. I thought it might be happening, but my husband refused to acknowledge it. I wanted to go to the hospital but he kept making excuses as to why we shouldn’t go right then. Writhing on the bed in pain and trying to convince myself that maybe I was having some kind of gallbladder attack, I finally realized what was actually happening and that my husband really was not going to take me to the hospital, but it was too late, I couldn’t even drive myself by then. I attempted to call 911 but he ripped the phone out of my hands and gruffed “Fine, get your ass to the car.” We had to drive across town to drop my daughter off before heading to the hospital and I didn’t think we were going to make it. I was in so much pain that I was kneeling in the front passenger seat of the car, backwards, my arms wrapped around the seat, and begging him to run the red lights. I could barely breathe and I literally had to choke down a scream with every bump that we hit.

So what does my loving selfish husband do while I, his wife, am writhing in pain, kneeling backwards in the front seat of the car, in preterm labor? A wife who delivered his daughter with an ENTIRE labor and delivery lasting only 19 minutes and was currently in very active labor, what does that man do?

He pulled into a Walgreens parking lot to get himself a drink. “Well if I’m going to have to sit there, I at least want a drink.”

Here I am, having a premature baby in the freaking car, begging him to run the red lights so that we can get there faster, and he stops for a drink? The man is lucky he is still alive.

The original birth plan was to drop my daughter off with my parents before going to the hospital, but as things seemed to be moving quickly, I told him to forget dropping my daughter off, we needed to go to the hospital RIGHT now, and I literally started fighting him for the steering wheel. I think he knew that I was on the verge of actually shoving his sorry ass out of the car and running over his body, because he changed his course and to the hospital we went. When we got there, he dropped me off.

You guys, he dropped me off.

I can’t walk, I can barely breathe at his point, and the man drops me off, and not even at the front door! He doesn’t want to “have to pull all the way in.” I’m left standing there and I can’t even stand up straight.

Someone must have noticed me because out runs an orderly with a wheelchair and up to labor and delivery we go.

My husband then dropped my daughter off at my parents house and guess where he went next?

To the hospital, you might like to believe? Nope!

HE WENT HOME.

He went home after calling me and telling me that he didn’t care if he missed the birth, he didn’t want a son.

The doctor checks me and I’m 4 centimeters dilated, fully effaced, completely engaged, and entering that short transition period between active labor and when you start pushing. They were giving me medications to stop the labor, telling me that the medications weren’t working, and preparing me for the fact that a preterm baby automatically goes to the NICU no matter what shape he is in.

After I got settled in and was able to absorb the fact that I had not had the baby in the car, but my baby was coming early, I was able to relax about as much as you can while giving birth, and then… labor stopped.

It just stopped.

And since my water hadn’t broken, they sent me home!

Six weeks later and not long after arriving at the hospital, my son was born drug free, and without the lunatic screaming that occurred the first time around. My husband once again nearly missed the birth after dropped me off at the delivery ward and the baby came quickly, but miraculously my mother and my husband showed up just in time to see his birth.

My son though, well he was not going to allow his sister to be the only one to make a dramatic entrance, oh no, he needed to have a little drama of his own as well.

Because it was still a relatively quick birth, my water didn’t even have time to break. At 1:21 pm my son was born in the water bag, which just happened to EXPLODE all over my husband. Explode as if a fire hydrant had momentarily gone off in his direction. I mean the man was absolutely COVERED in amniotic fluid. It. Was. Awesome. The doctor said in all her years she had never seen anything like it, that she couldn’t even believe what had just happened. The nurses are all agasp, I was laughing my ass off, and he was positively running around the room screaming and asking the staff if it was going to “stain his favorite shirt” while wiping it off of his face.

Well played son, well played.

As soon as he was born my husband told me the baby looked “retarded” and went home. What little I saw of him over the next few days were when he would show up at the hospital and fall asleep in a chair. When he brought me home from the hospital, he dropped me and the two kids off on the driveway and off he went. He didn’t even come in the house or help me carry anything, or anyone, in.

My daughter was named after the location of my first mission’s trip, so I thought it only fitting that my son have a meaningful name as well. Since I know what it is like to grow up feeling unwanted and I knew my husband’s feelings toward my son, I wanted him to carry around a constant reminder of how special he is, and so I chose a name with a meaning that reflects that.

This month my son will turn three. I look at his face and I am awestruck at how much I love him. I wasn’t sure how I would parent a boy, seeing as how I’m not one and I really don’t have any great examples of what a man should act like, but together we are figuring it out.