Happy Birthday, Jennifer

It was a Friday morning, forty-five years ago today, that Leslie and I headed out to the St Joseph Hospital in Ann Arbor, Michigan with Leslie in active labor. We had taken the mandatory Lamaze classes to permit me to be in the Delivery Room, so we had visited the hospital ahead of time and knew where to pull up and drop off Leslie and then where I had to go to get her checked in and find the Maternity Ward. It was a partly sunny, cool morning as we drove, but as the labor became more active and the contractions happen more quickly in the Maternity Ward room, I could see snowflakes falling outside. About noontime Leslie was wheeled into the Delivery Room and I followed after getting on the required paper booties, gown, and hat. In the delivery room I had a stool with wheels to sit on--it would permit the doctor to push me out of the way if I fainted during the birth. Throughout labor I coached Leslie with the Lamaze methods "dog panting, cleansing breath, relax"). In the confines of the Delivery Room I recalled the story of a woman in labor who responded to her husband's coaching by biting his nose, so I maintained a safe distance while coaching. Jennifer arrived fairly quickly and was hustled off by the nurse to get weighed, washed off, and bundled in a blanket before being placed on the sheet on top of Leslie's stomach. (Back in those days, you know, the Middle Ages and Winterfell, they thought the mother could pass germs to the new infant, so skin-to-skin contact was to be avoided in the Delivery Room!)
Jennifer was taken off to the Nursery and Leslie and I went to the Recovery Room. It took a while for Leslie's uterus to recover its original size and shape, so as we tried to make that happen with massages and transfusions, they kept Jennifer in the Nursery. Leslie was not happy with that, so she convinced the nurse to get her baby, NOW.
I went off to phone the news to our families and Leslie and Jennifer spent the rest of Friday and all of Saturday enjoying the amenities of a hospital with constant vital sign measures and wonderful cuisine. Sunday dawned warm and humid and checkout was scheduled after lunchtime. As I headed to the hospital with our new baby car seat, I head the local radio issue a tornado watch for Ann Arbor. As an aspiring graduate meteorology student at the University of Michigan at the time, I naturally scoffed at the forecast and continued to the hospital. When I parked in the hospital lot, I found the hospital was on lock down and many patients were huddled in the central hallways for protection from the non-existent tornado. As I was explaining to the admissions desk that I was there to take my wife and new daughter home and there wasn't any real threat of a tornado hitting the hospital, the hospital administrators realized there wasn't any threat, and they cancelled the lock down. I ran up and gathered Leslie and Jennifer and we quickly exited the hospital before they changed their minds. And off we headed to our townhouse apartment in Ypsilanti and our new future as a family. Jennifer had arrived!