Storyworth: Born in Ice

[lillibet]

Was there anything unusual about your birth?

I was born in the middle of an ice storm.

My mother was forty-three at the time and the doctors had warned her that I would almost certainly be deaf and might well have Down Syndrome. My father was recovering from kidney surgery.

Mom had arranged with a neighbor to drive her to the nearest hospital—half an hour away—and bring our car back so that my father could get his rest and join us the next day. But when the labor pains began around ten o’clock at night and my mother called Mrs. Bailey, she was too afraid to drive at night on the icy roads. My mother said that was fine, she would drive herself, if Mrs. Bailey would just come along to bring the car back after dawn. I’ve never heard any details of that drive, but they made it.

I was born about three-thirty in the morning. The call woke my father who said that for a third girl they could have waited until nine o’clock. He loved that story when I was younger, but later apologized to me, telling me that he little knew at the time just how lucky he was.

Comments

[gilana]

It's funny the family jokes that can go on for decades before anyone thinks about them and realizes how hurtful they can be. I'm so glad that he was able to do that.

[bex77]

I always learn things I didn't know when you write up these stories. I remember that night so clearly... I was sleeping fitfully due to being home with the flu. I heard the phone ring in the middle of the night, a long pause and then Dad shouted, "It's a GIRL! 8 pounds 9 oz!"