December 19, 2002

It's almost that time! Christmas is 22 days away but that's not what I'm talking about. Joshua's birthday is the week before Christmas. He will be eleven years old. I'm slightly freaking out about it but not because my baby is growing up.

Because it makes me feel older than shit!

I was 24 when I had Joshua. When I think back to being 24 it feels like a lifetime ago but at the same time he's grown up so fast. Faster than I would have liked. Although I insisted on as many drugs as they could give me during labor, I still remember so many details.

I was induced at 6 am on December 18th, 2002 and Joshua didn't appear until 3:02 pm on the 19th. That was 33 very long, very tiring, and very miserable hours of labor. I remember lying in bed, in absolute agony with back pain and asking my dear husband to rub my back. Bless his heart, he got right to it, then I noticed he started to slow down. Then he stopped completely. I rolled my massive body over to see what he was doing and my hand to God he stopped rubbing my back, while I was in labor  with his big headed spawn, because he was watching a doughnut eating contest on tv.

A fucking doughnut eating contest! I'm told this was the first of many times in that time frame that my head began to spin like the Exorcist and profanities flew from my mouth. Maybe that's when my potty mouth was also born. I don't know. All I know is that one should never, ever, for any reason stop rubbing their laboring wife's back when she is trying to get push almost 8lbs of tiny human out of her hoo ha. (Btw, 2 years later when Natalie was born, he did much better ;) )

Another fond memory of that day was our friend Monte walking into the room while my feet were up in the stir ups and all my modesty and patience was long forgotten. I remember very clearly screaming " Get out you fucking idiot!!" while Ryan ran to the door. Poor guy. He had no clue, but you can bet your ass he hasn't entered a room without knocking since then!

The best memory of course was holding my baby boy for the first time. Nothing compares to the first time you hold your baby. December 25th is great, but December 19th will always be better. Happy early birthday, Joshua. Mommy loves you.