Girl Trouble

All kinds of people have been telling me that I need to write about our new baby’s arrival, but I really want to share with you that word is spreading about the February Alternative Holiday is spreading. I have a friend, Tom, who is a middle school Social Studies teacher in Wisconsin. Here is what he emailed me:

“Congratulations, Dad!!!! Cigars all around!! I was just thinking of you actually. My students and are going to celebrate a dual holiday on Monday. We are not only celebrating Valentine's day but also Arizona Statehood Day. (Some spicy food for WI people would be good for their soul, especially in the middle of winter.) I figure some South Western cuisine is in order. Is there anything else that would be truly authentic Arizona fare? (I thought we could have grandparents come in at one point to simulate Sun City, but that is probably pushing it a bit.)”

I directed him to my last column on the web at my blog since half of that column was devoted to how to celebrate Arizona Statehood Day (February 14, 1912). Here was his reply:

“I liked the article. We'll all have a Barry Goldwater dress-up contest and drink Arizona Ice Tea! Actually, I think my class and I will have a southwestern pot luck lunch on Monday. We have some of the preliminary decorations done. My bulletin board has a sandy desert-scape with saguaro cacti wearing sunglasses. Our school has one of those bulletin board die cutter machines so we have orange letters saying "Happy Arizona Statehood Day". We'll then put up stars with all the kids' names on them. Chips, salsa and chili will be the menu of Monday. My 8th graders are pumped about this. Holly (Tom’s wife) suggested that I have the kids find out as many different facts about Arizona as possible in a kind of Scategories format. The winner gets a prize or extra credit or something. The 7th graders were teasing the 8th graders about their bulletin board, though. They said that the sand dunes looked like potatoes. I'd have to agree with the 7th graders. As I look at the board, it DOES look like somebody up-ended giant potatoes on the board. Funny! “

So, perhaps Valentine’s Day’s days are numbered, at least here in the upper Midwest. Or maybe not, but you can’t blame a guy for trying.

So what can I tell ya? There’s a lot less sleeping going on in the Mallory home. We were expecting a new arrival on or around February 23rd. We scheduled a cesarean-section for February 18th. We got our third little girl on Sunday the 6th. Nothing ever goes quite as planned.

When our first daughter, Grace was born, I believe we even went in for an exam a couple of days after her due date. It was a nightmare for first-time parents. It was a huge, unfriendly HMO in a tough part of the Valley.

We were there for three or four days. The doctors and nurses all changed every shift. Some of them didn’t speak English, at least many of them had thick accents from all over the world. Late one night there was a loud argument out at the nurse’s station. The U.S. war in Kosovo was on CNN and it turned out that our OB was a Serb and one of our nurses was a Croatian.

The HMO’s policies were Hell-bent on natural childbirth, so Grace had to be in severe distress, with the chord wrapped around her neck before they finally took her by c-section.

It was much more comfortable having Ellie at the hospital in Denison. She came a few weeks early. We had just signed the release forms to schedule her c-section at Dr. Crabb’s office. He jokingly warned us that “90% of all couples go into labor as soon as they schedule these things.” Sure enough, it was 2 the next morning that we had to rush to Crawford County Memorial.

Annamarie was early too. We’d been having some concerns about her heart rate and amniotic fluid, so we had an appointment scheduled for Monday the 7th with a specialist in Omaha. Annamarie, obviously had a different idea.

Everything happened to quick to remember. We called in the morning with a question, we checked in for a test around Noon, by 1:57 we had a baby.

Bethany and Annamarie finally came home on Thursday the 10th. Grace wants to help change diapers and would like to bring the baby to school for show and tell. Ellie desperately missed her Mom, and could not sleep the first night. She finally got down sometime after ten. Annamarie needed feeding after Midnight, and I did my best to help. When she woke up again at 3:30 in the morning, Ellie woke up too and she never really went back to sleep. It must be hard being a middle-child.

As soon as Dr.Crabb delivered Annamarie he said “this is the one that will give you all the trouble!” I told him that we all ready had one who gives us all kinds of trouble.

He must have assumed that I wanted a boy (I sincerely didn’t have a preference either way) because he tried to console me, “Not to worry,” he said, “with three girls, there are bound to be boys.”

Our nurse actually had some specific advice; “Start adding five more bathrooms to your house.”