English Emma Blooms

In April, 2004, I was finishing up my last month of medical school and looking forward to Joel's arrival, which we were expecting sometime in early May. However, Emma and I devised a plan for communication in which if she felt that she was going into labor, she would page me with our home number followed by "911". On April 29th, my second-to-last day of medical school, around 1pm, I received the page: 257-5847 911!!! I felt my heart skip a beat and my voice catch in my throat. I found my preceptor and said, "I have to go now, my wife might be in labor and I probably won't be back tomorrow." I drove home speedily but safely, pulled into the driveway, and ran into the house. I found Emma curled up in a ball on the bed in the upstairs bedroom. Like clockwork, every several minutes, she would tighten up and cringe as contractions became stronger and stronger. I think we then called into the doctor's office and let them know we would be making ou...

Actually, I will start the day before he was born! The day before Joel was born I was on my third day of maternity leave, looking forward to the two weeks I had apportioned for preparing Joel's room and myself for his arrival. On the Monday of that week I had trained my replacement and left at lunchtime. I have no memory of Tuesday or Wednesday. The day I am describing now is Thursday. On Thursday I walked into Broad Ripple proper and went to the Grand Reopening of Thrifty Threads. A TV crew was there and I tried not to get on screen in case people from work saw it on screen later. While I was in line checking out with my great bargains, I started to have bad back pains. Thinking nothing of the pains, I sauntered down the road to Scholar’s Inn Bakehouse where I treated myself to a bagel and cream cheese. The cramps continued. I was in denial. I walked home. At home later, there was blood in the toilet so I decided that perhaps something interesting was going on. ...