Baby Love

I know what you are thinking.  You believe that Mike turned over a totally new leaf and became Mr. Wonderful.  You would be wrong to assume that.

He was being transferred to be in the Presidential detachment of Marines at Camp David.  They have to have a very high-security clearance to be stationed there.  He would be there for days at a time without coming home.  It all depended on the use of the facility by the President.  Normally, he might be there five or six days in a row before getting time off.  That was great.  I could live with that; in fact, I loved it.

He had been on his good behavior for a while, so I won't bore you with the boring stuff.  We did get married, not the nice wedding everyone was counting on, but at Upper Marlborough, Maryland, with the Justice of the Peace officiating.  I almost backed out at the last minute due to nerves and then changed my mind—dummy me.

He bought a new Camaro, and that became his addiction for a while.  When he didn't show up, I had to call some connections to find out where he was.  That connection turned out to be Steve, the guy with the GTO.  Just a fluke, but he got the information I needed without having to go to anyone in charge.  He called Camp David.  And Mr. Mike had signed out as being on leave and going to Ottawa, Ohio.  What a dog.  I didn't call his mom or anyone else; I think I really just didn't care.  I just waited for him to end his field trip and come back and see what he would tell me.

I didn't see him for 10 days.  And that was okay except that I was pregnant and missed an appointment because of it.  When he finally returned home, I waited for him to say something about where he had been.  He was talking like he had been at Camp David the whole time.  I just let him talk for a while, making a fool out of himself.  Then I asked him, "How did your friends like your car?'  He didn't get it; he just said that was old news, that all of the guys up there had seen it.  "Oh, I'm sorry, I meant how did your friends in Ohio like it?"  Bam!!  "Huh?', that's all he said, but his face was bright red.  I told him everything that I knew, and instead of apologizing, he wanted to know how I found out.  I just told him that I had friends in high places.  So I didn't know what he did and didn't care.  I can't stand somebody lying to me.  I never ever trusted him after that.

And then one day, a little red-headed boy came into my life, and my life changed forever.  I  went to the doctor, and he told me that the baby wasn't in position for at least two more weeks.  And now I would have to go to Bethesda every week for a checkup.  Mike was with me that day when I went to the doctor.  Just a fluke.  I had anemia pretty bad the last few months and was prone to falling out with a minimal warning. Going to Bethesda was such a circus.  Go here and do this, then go down there and do that, then come back up here to get the results before you go back down there to see the doctor.  It was exhausting, especially late in the game.  When I got back home, I laid down to take a nap.  I was having a hard time falling asleep; Mike was already asleep.  Finally, I dozed off and then, "oh no," my water had broken.  As soon as I said Mike's name, he woke up instantly looking at me.  "My water broke."  And then he was up and dressed and a nervous wreck.  It was about 2 in the afternoon.  I told him to call Bethesda and see what they wanted me to do.  Of course, I had to go to the hospital.

I wasn't prepared to go; I had just been told that day it could be up to a month before I would hatch.  Now I had to pack my stuff and baby stuff.  Mike was useless; he was a nervous wreck, not that I was calm. I was scared silly.  No one told me that once your water breaks, the fluid continues to flow off and on.  I changed my clothes twice because I was soaking wet.  We got ready to leave, and as soon as I sat down in the car, I was soaked again.  We were in the midst of DC rush hour, driving from Temple Hills to Bethesda through rush hour traffic.  And my labor started.  And then traffic was stopped due to a wreck.  We didn't know it at the time, but one of our friend's wives was killed in that wreck.

It took an hour and a half to get to Bethesda.  The back of me looked like I had fallen into a swimming pool.  You had to park in the regular parking lot; nobody was coming to get you in a wheelchair in a military hospital.  I think they viewed pregnant women as cattle, herding them here, there, or where ever.  One of the Navy nurses told me they were all there to take care of the boys; we were just an imposition.  The maternity area was up in the tower of the hospital.  They brought you a gown and gave you a room to lay down in, and that was about it, for hours.  There was no air conditioning, there were no covers on the bed, no television, no nothing.  All you could do was lay there and listen to women screaming, and it was scary.  At 4 am, they made Mike go home.  I was in hard labor and had been for hours, but it didn't seem to matter.  Nobody checked me.  They told Mike I wouldn't be having the baby when he left because they let the doctors sleep at night unless it was an emergency.

All I could do was lay there and watch the clock and listen to screaming.  On the wall, I noticed a picture of Lynda Bird Johnson Robb (President Johnson's daughter), autographed by her and Charles Robb.  When a nurse came in to peek at me, I asked her what it was there for.  She told me that I was in the same room that Lynda had been in when she was in labor.  She told me that President Johnson had brought a jar of dirt from Texas and had put it on the shelf underneath the bed so that his grandchild would be born over Texas soil.  "Cute story, can I have something for pain now?"  She looked at me like I was crazy.  Of course, I couldn't because it would slow down my labor.  "Oh, holy Hell!"  I did not have the wonderful childbirth experience that women talked about.  Was I a wuss, or were they all crazy?  This was the worst thing that had ever happened to me.


Mike showed up at about 7 pm.  They had told me that he had been calling all day.  Now he was there, and I don't think he could believe what I was going through.  My teeth were chattering, and the pain was indescribable.  I told him to find me a blanket or sheet or something for cover; I didn't care if he had to take it off of somebody else, find something.  He came back after a long time with a sheet, better than nothing.  I had been there for over 24 hours now.  He went and asked a nurse what was going on.  She told him if I didn't deliver by 1 am that they may take the baby.  I think they gave me something to speed up the labor, finally.  Glen was born sometime after 4 am.  I had been in labor for 26 and 1/2 hours.  I just wanted pain medicine and sleep.  He was a small baby, red and skinny and long, but he had red hair.  I was glad he endured the trauma of the delivery.

At 6 am a nurse was shaking me to wake me up.  "Get up and feed that baby."  She was doing it to everyone, it was a ward, and there were probably 25 new moms in there.  I'm surprised there was no bugler in the middle of the floor calling us to get up.  It was dreadful.  I was really weak, and after giving Glen his bottle, I asked a nurse if she would help me up to go tinkle.  She must have been a drill sergeant at one time; she told me to get up by myself and stop acting like a baby.  Okay, so I dragged myself down the hall to the bathroom area; that's all I remember.  I knew the next thing: I was on a stretcher pulled up next to my bed, my crank up bed, not electric.  I had passed out; I wanted to scream at them, "I told you I needed help!"  But I didn't think it would be wise to do it.  It was really just an awful experience, and I vowed that I would never rely on a military hospital for my care again.

On the way home from the hospital, we were driving down the Beltway in Maryland.  For no particular reason that I could see, cars were braking and spinning everywhere, including us.  I don't know what caused it, but if everyone driving had not been on the top of their game that day, we wouldn't have made it home in one piece.

It had been a horrible four days for me.  I just wanted to get home and look at the pretty pink, red-headed package that I had in my lap and figure out how to take care of him.  This child would be my salvation many times over. I had named him Michael Glen, but he was called Glen because I never wanted him to be a Michael; one had been enough.