The Day It All Began

Sandy Rettschlag

4 years ago

It was just six days before Christmas. I was eight months pregnant, it was the holidays. A lot of the presents were not yet purchased or wrapped, to say the least. The Christmas tree was up but not trimmed. More importantly, the nursery was a skeleton of what it was supposed to be. After all, we had a whole month to go before our little cherub would be born. Well, guess what, this was the day that my hysterical life began. You know, being organized, having a clean house, time to do those things that you do when you want to enjoy life. I did work full-time, so I had given notice to my boss that I would be ending my employment at the law office where I worked upon the birth of my soon-to-be baby. You see, I was never going to come back to work.

I woke up on a Saturday morning, the l9th day of December 1964, to be exact, and discovered that my water was leaking. What did I do, well I called my mom, of course. She said there should be no reason that I couldn’t go to work. Unbelievable, right???

I worked on Saturday mornings during this period. I really didn’t think there was any problem. Talk about being uninformed of the facts of life. My mom, unbeknownst to me, was in contact with the doctor. He told her to get me to the hospital asap. When she told me this I told her I had to wait until noon when my day would be done.

You see, I felt this was a bump in the road, I certainly would not be having the baby a month early, and it was a week before Christmas after all. Surprise, surprise, after picking up my husband at work and going to the hospital things took a different avenue.

I remember it was snowing huge big flakes of snow, a gorgeous December day. It was just perfect to finish those fun Christmas chores. I was crabby as I had lots to do and this was just getting in the way of my planned weekend. Well, my life changed dramatically as at 6:30 p.m. on that day I delivered a sweet, month early, 6 lb. 8 oz. little girl, which we named Lisa. What a surprise. Art was in the waiting room at the time sleeping. Anyone who knows Art knows this is not a surprise. When the doctor came out and announced that he had a baby girl, he was shocked. The doctor said to me, “You sure didn’t prepare him for this did you?” I don’t know what he thought was in my huge belly.

From that point on, I swear my life seems to be on the more hysterical, constantly out of whack, side of things. I blame my firstborn baby girl, Lisa, for this.

Then on another note, I don’t seem to do things in a normal fashion. After two miscarriages we were thrilled that we were again pregnant and this was going to make it full-term. My second baby girl, as indicated by the doctor, was going to be a boy. She was one week overdue. I guess she did not want to come into this crazy world as I had what is called placenta previa. I had to have an emergency c-section but was absolutely thrilled to have a healthy baby girl, which we named Michelle. She was born at 8 lbs. 12 oz. She evidently was just hanging out perhaps not ready for the real world yet.