arrival

My birth, as everything else in my life, was nothing as simple as it should have been. My parents had been married for eight years before Mom announced her pregnancy to my unsuspecting Father. Mom was twenty-eight; Dad, thirty-two.
The pregnancy was fairly uneventful. Mom did not gain much weight; most people who were not told directly would never know she was pregnant. However, one day in May, exactly a month to the day before I was to be born, things went drastically wrong. They said they had to take me early—they might still lose me, but if they did not take this measure, they would lose both my mother and me.
As we have already discussed, my mother had toxemia poisoning. In fact, I believe I told you I was not going to tell you this story; that you would not believe it. Well, chances are you probably don’t believe a lot of what I have told you thus far, so why stop now. Gay boys, as do women, reserve the right to change their minds. Just deal with it!
They were expecting everything to be fine once they removed me from my Mom via C-section. After all, she is allergic to being pregnant, in essence, so no more baby inside, no more allergic reaction. How’s that for dumbing down medical terminology? As would be the case when Ted would be born ten years later, Mom got worse after I was taken from the womb. However, in ’78, the technology for toxemia was not nearly as advanced as it would be the second time around.
They removed from my mother a perfectly healthy, five pound, one ounce bald baby boy. There were no problems with me at all. I was ready to leave the hospital at soon as I emerged into the world. I still hate to be late and wait around. My Mother, on the other hand, was a very different story. Her bodily functions shut down. She could not expel any fluids. She began to swell. Her tongue completely filled her mouth, her fingers swelled to the point to where they looked like she was splaying them as wide as possible (like jazz hands, for all you gay boys out there), she could not speak, or communicate, she was not really conscious. This went on for several days. The swelling continued. My Mother’s delicate, lovely features were contorted beyond recognition. As when both my Grandma and Grandpa came down with their respective cancers, people all over the country were praying for my mom’s life. We are well connected to God’s hotline through the prayer chain. Several days after my birth, the doctor came to Dad and told him to call the rest of the family in, that Mom was going to die within the next few hours and that everyone should say their good-byes.
Well, Dad did call the family, a broken mess. Apparently, the men in my family have never held back the hysterical waterworks when they are called for. He relayed the doctor’s message, however, put a little twist on it. He told them to forget the whole coming in to say good-bye nonsense, but, instead, to spend their time praying.
Within the next five hours, a shift change happened; the daytime nurses left and the evening ones came in. When the evening nurse came into Mom’s room and saw the woman in the bed, she looked at Dad in confusion. “I am so sorry, I was desperately hoping your wife would make it through. When did she pass?”
Dad looked up at her quizzically, “What do you mean? She is right here. She is fine.”
You see, within those few hours, Mom began to pass her fluids. They literally poured out of her. By the time they affixed a new bag to her catheter, it was filled and they had to replace it with a new one. They did this time after time. She was returned to her normal beauty and consciousness as if the previous five days had not existed.
When she awoke, she began to weep uncontrollably. Dad did not know what to do. “What is wrong? You are ok now; the doctors said you are going to be fine.”
“That doesn’t matter! Our baby is dead!” Dad held me out to her. She looked at him in confusion. “What are you doing? This is not our baby! I heard the doctors say that he was stillborn when he took him out of me.”
No one has figured out why Mom thought she had heard about my death in the delivery room. Dad was in there though. I was the baby the emerged from my mother. It took awhile to calm Mom down and truly convince her that I was really there and she had not lost her baby.
We were both able to leave the hospital the next day. On the way out of the building, Dad stopped the doctor as they were leaving to thank him for all he did for mom.
“Sir, I am not in any way a religious man, but you should not thank me. We did nothing for your wife. There was nothing left for us to do. She was going to die. She should have died. The only reason your wife is alive is God. Only a miracle could have done that. I have never seen anything like it, and never thought that I would.”