Famous Blue Rocker

Twenty-three years ago I was large with my first child in the middle of a hot, dry Colorado summer. I lay on the couch in our toasty little Martian Acres home and tried not to moan too loudly; friends stopped by with white chocolate ice cream and words of comfort. The baby had stopped doing somersaults in my womb a few days ago and was now just writing his name on the wall every now and then – it was becoming increasingly apparent that, improbable as it might seem, he would be expecting to emerge soon through a very small aperture somewhere down below and currently out of my direct line of view.

My Mom had flown in from Indiana to lend moral support, and on the official due date of July 4 she, my husband and I drove up to Brainard Lake to allow me to gaze at the cool Arapahoe Peaks and lumber slowly along a path by the water, hoping the baby would be shaken and stirred into action. But the due date seemed destined to come and go with no trip to the hospital. That evening my brother came over to have dinner with all of us and later that night set off some very loud fireworks in the backyard. The sounds startled me into a hopping little tiptoe dance a lot like the dance of the hippos in Fantasia – and this is finally what did it. Later that night my water broke.

I sat quietly in the big blue rocker, waking no one yet, and timing the contractions. When they were 5 minutes apart, I woke up my husband, who blearily drove my Mom and me to the hospital along the previously agreed upon backstreet route, not that there was any traffic at 3 in the morning. In the hospital parking lot my husband and mother got out of the car and strode purposefully toward the ER, belatedly realizing I was moving kind of slow at the junction and hurrying back to hold my elbows and help me inside.


The legendary and fabulous OB-GYN nurses at Boulder Community sized me up, and then gave me a stern talking to – to get to 10 centimeters dilation I would have to walk. And up and down the halls I hobbled to keep the contractions going and get myself to the point where I was ready to deliver the baby. The doctor didn’t come until right before delivery time – but there were lots of jokes about this particular physician and his preference for the “little brown stool” he sat on during delivery. With my husband’s coaching and my mother’s quietly reassuring presence, I did the Lamaze breathing and was able to refuse the drugs. Many long hours later, around noon, our beautiful son was born, his alert little eyes looking right up at us in amazement we surely shared.

I only learned later that my husband had nearly gone into full crisis mode during the delivery. The doctor, ensconced on his little brown stool, had determined that the baby was head down as desired, but facing the wrong way, and had used a suction cup device to help pull our baby through the birth canal. When he pulled the suction cup off my son’s head after delivery, the red goo used to affix it looked like blood and my husband thought the top of the baby’s head had come off. In a few seconds he realized that everybody else in the delivery room was still calm and happy; luckily we had been blessed with a healthy and hungry baby boy.

The next day my son and I returned home tired but triumphant, and I found great comfort in taking our first few naps together in the famous blue rocker. Happy birthday, Shannon!