Sarah Is 22

22 years ago today, I had my second baby. She was born in the Emergency Room at a big city hospital because she was in kind of a hurry. Three years earlier, it took me 19 hours of screaming pain to get her older sister born, so when I woke up with mild back pain to signal the imminent birth of Sarah, I interpreted this to mean that nothing was imminent. So I just wandered around waiting for the real bad part to begin, but it never did.

A couple of hours after the first symptoms, we called the doctor and told him I was having mild contractions every few minutes. He told us to get to the hospital right away, so I went off to get dressed. Mr. Pseudonym called my mom to come stay with little Jul. I came out to the living room a few minutes later and told him that I felt "vaguely pushy." This feeling intensified on the drive to the hospital, and I told Mr. P that he'd better not stop for aspirin. Good thing, since having a baby in the parking lot of a convenience store usually gets a lot of embarassing press.

Things got decidedly urgent in the waiting room at the hospital and, as they were loading me onto a stretcher, I told the ER doctor that I didn't think I could make it upstairs--the baby was on its way out, and he'd better catch it before it hit the floor. The doctor looked like a deer caught in the headlights, but he got on the phone with Obstetrics and they told him what to do until they could send a doctor down. They sent Mr. Pseudonym out into the corridor (unfortunately), and the Obstetrics doctor came down and said, "Priscilla, just pop the baby out; we don't have to do a thing to help." So I popped her out, and they wrapped her in a blanket, called Mr. Pseudonym in and handed his new baby to him.

Sarah didn't look or behave like her older sister. She had dark hair, darker skin and visible eyebrows. She looked more like me than like her dad, and she seemed crabby and colicky from the start. And she made the cutest little squeaking sounds; we nicknamed her "Squeaker." She did have colic for about three months, and that was hard on everyone. The second child is a tremendous adjustment for the whole family, and a colicky infant puts that much more added strain on the parents and siblings.

But Sarah's personality turned sunny after her tummy problems were over, and she grew into a real character--funny and imaginative, with a sweet disposition. At around 11-1/2, she started turning into a teenager and all bets were off, but our "good" kid was still there underneath, biding her time until she got through those rough growth years.

Sarah has her own apartment now. She works long hours and goes to school full time. She's bright, independent, edgy, funny and resourceful. We are so proud of her. Happy 22nd, Squeaker!