Charles Thomas is One Today

The Story of How Charlie-Bear Came Into This World:

On July 17th, 2007, I was having lunch at a friend's house and her cousin would be coming over to join us. Her cousin was my bestest friend when we were in grades preschool-4 (when she moved away) and she now lives in Albany, New York, so I never get to see her. I was very excited. My due date was the 22nd and even though I was overly pregnant, the day before my doctor had scheduled an induction for a few days later because he thought I wasn't even close to going into labor.

I've come to find out that in my Fabulous OB's Wisdom, he knew that if he said those words that I'd relax and the baby would come flying out into this world. I just wish he would have warned me in some way.

I discovered my water broke just before we were about to have a delicious lasagna lunch; I called the office and they said to head straight to the hospital; the boys stayed with my friend until my mom picked them up; Kevin met me at home; we grabbed the suitcase and headed down there; we checked in at the triage; and...we waited.

There were 22 babies born at that hospital that day and because I was not having serious labor they had me hang out. For the rest of the day. Kevin and I both had books with us (he had Crosley and I had The Memory Keeper's Daughter) so that took care of some time, and then we saw that the TV in the room (still in triage) had a VCR and a dubbed tape of '80s movies.

It wasn't until 7:00pm that they moved us to a room where I could begin pitocin. We watched the end of the Reds game in there, then finally there was a labor and delivery room that opened up and I was moved there. I kept telling the nurses that I needed to have this baby before midnight, and they said it would probably be about 5am the next day.

Well, I knew it wasn't going to be that long but I couldn't convince the nurses of that so they slacked on calling my doctor and the baby was coming! They said that I could go ahead and have the baby without my doctor but I thought that was crazy so I did nothing of the sort.

My Doctor walked through the door a bit after midnight and Charlie was born at 12:42am.

There was still the problem of finding a room for us because of the mass amounts of babies born that day. It wasn't until 3:30am that we were taken from Labor and Delivery and put in a room with another couple...who probably wasn't too excited to smell Kevin walking in a little later with some White Castle--the only thing open at that time of day.

Charlie was such a good baby from the moment he entered this world, and he continues to be. Happy 1st Birthday, Bear!