Tenor Dad’s Birth Day

So today is my birthday and I do not feel like writing a blog, so I had my Mom write it for me. Here is the story of the day I was born, as told by Tenor Grammy.

It was a warm, sunny, April afternoon. I put the turkey in the oven for dinner, took a shower and headed off with my husband to what I hoped would be my last OB appointment before my first child would be born. I was 9 days late and was getting anxious to meet the child growing inside me. He, however, seemed to be in no hurry to come out.

I expected to hear Dr. Mostel ( If the name sounds familiar, he was Zero Mostel’s nephew) tell me to make another appointment. Imagine my surprise when he told me I was in labor. How could this be? I had no pain. Hey, I thought maybe this wasn’t as bad as I had heard. The Dr. sent my husband and me for a walk for an hour and asked me to keep track of the contractions. That would have been fine except I couldn’t feel any contractions and I had a turkey in the oven at home!

After the walk I was informed that I was 7 cm dilated and should go to the hospital because we lived 45 minutes away. But wait a minute, did we forget I have a turkey in the oven. My husband was the rational one at this point. He called our neighbors and told them they were having our turkey for dinner and that we were going to have a baby soon.

I was the only one in maternity that night. The doctor wanted a good night’s sleep so he gave me a sleeping pill, which might have worked if the nurse hadn’t, out of boredom, talked to me all night. My husband, on the other hand, went to sleep.

At 4:30 AM I discovered that I was not going to have a painless childbirth. They call it hard labor for a reason. Adam’s father gets a lot of credit here. We had taken LaMaze classes together and he was a great labor coach. I breathed; he breathed with me and timed the contractions that ran into each other.

At 9:36 AM on Friday, April 21, 1978, our 21in, 9lbs. 6oz. baby boy was born, Adam Christopher Hall. The turkey was completely forgotten as I, in awe, held the child I had carried inside me for nine months, the child who would change my life forever.