The Delivery

After a couple of months, Paul and I decided to move into his grandmother's upstairs. It was like a small efficiency apt without a kitchen. It had a bedroom, living room and bathroom. Grandma Emily let us use her kitchen when we needed it but at age 19, we ate mostly Hardee's and White Castle's! I had a rather easy pregnancy. Although I got huge, I didn't have any morning sickness or anything like that. I craved crackers and they had to be Zesta and also crushed ice and it had to be crushed! The only time I remember feeling sick at all was when my friend Donda and I went to Hardee's and I got a cheeseburger and the pickle was hot, like it had been put in the microwave and it about made me barf! By the way, Donda was pregnant too and she got sick all the time so she was probably laughing at me for getting sick that one time. Donda worked at a fast food restaurant and would have to leave the counter to go throw up so she was probably hating me for not getting sick at all! Anyways, living at Grandma Emily's was cool because we didnt have to pay any rent and Emily made sure we had everything we needed for the baby! I had two baby showers and got pretty much three of everything, one for our place, one for my mom's house and one for Paul's mom's house. I had several labor scares throughout my 8th and into my 9th month. You know, those Braxton Hicks contractions? My all time favorite was when I thought I was having back labor pains and I went to the hospital along with half the family and a bunch of friends and the nurse came out to announce to everyone that I was not in labor....I was constipated! That was fun! I sure felt stupid! I ended up being 9 days overdue before the doctor finally put me in the hospital to induce labor. I went in the night before so they could monitor the baby's heart rate overnight and start inducing me the next morning. They started inducing me around 6:00 AM and the doctor came in around 10:00 AM to examine me. He said "no dilation, it will be another 8-10 hours before this baby is born". I found that hard to believe considering how bad my contractions had been. They were topping the chart over 100% for the past two hours! So, everyone that had been waiting all morning, starving, decided to go get some food, including Paul. I decided to get up and go to the bathroom! That was a bad idea! As soon as I got back in bed and the nurses hooked me back up to all the monitors, the baby's heartbeat plummeted! It was ranging between 132 and 150 all morning and it dropped to 36 beats per minute. The nurses hurriedly called the doctor back in and the next thing I know, they are stripping me, shaving me (yes, we had carpet in the 90's), and giving me an epidural! I had like 6 people working on me at the same time, pulling me every which way and I was scared to death! I was only 19, barely 19! So, they paged Paul, "Mr. Paul Nachand, please report to the operating room immediately". Well, that was enough to scare the dickens out of him. He RAN back to the area of my room as fast as he could. He didnt even know where the operating room was! As he approached my room, they were rolling me out on a stretcher, taking me to the operating room. The doctor grabbed his arm in his wrist area and asked "are you the father?" Paul nodded and stared at me, all hooked up to oxygen, looking scared to death! I'm sure he thought I was gonna die or something! He was only 19! As the doctor grabbed his wrist and told him to come with him to get his scrubs on, the doctor realized that Paul's pulse was beating out of his arm and told him "son, you arent going to be able to go in, you're heart rate is up too high and if you pass out on that floor, we will just have to leave you there because the mother and baby are most important right now". I was already in the operating room being prepped for the C-section, waiting for Paul to come stand by my side. When the doctor came in, there was no Paul! I couldn't talk, I had an oxygen mask on my face and was feeling really loopy! The anesthesiologist came around and started rubbing my head and told me it was going to be ok and that he would be there with me the entire time. At 10:39 AM, yes only 39 minutes later, my little girl was born weighing 5 lbs 14 oz and only 18 1/2 inches long. She didnt have much hair but she had a very loud cry! They brought her up towards my face so that I could see her and tears rolled down my face. She was beautiful, my first baby girl! And she was healthy and she made it into the world without "many" problems. They took her away to "keep her warm" and finished stitching me up. I didn't see her agian until 2:30 PM! It seemed like a decade! We named her Allison Dawn. Believe it or not, the idea came from a race horse named Alli-Dar. After all, her daddy was a gambling man!