I had come off of the night shift on Friday morning and slept for a few hours before waking up to go and help one of my best friends do some last minute baby shopping. Her husband and I are good friends, I consider him a brother and we were room ates before they met and got married and we still live just down the road from each other. A year and a half ago they had their beautiful daughter, whom I absolutely adore, and watch often-for 2 or 3 hour stretches. Basically they are my makeshift family, we spend lazy weekends, holidays and dinners together, and I am their socialite single friend that they live vicariously through. Well it wasn't long before baby number 2 decide to show up. As her due date drew near we were all pretty much playing the waiting game...
So I must have drifted off pathetically early for a Friday night...like at about 7:30. Anyway I was deep asleep when suddenly my cellphone,on full volume next to my ear, starting blaring "It's a long way to the top if you want to rock and roll...", (which for obvious reasons is my "close friend category" designated ring tone). I looked at my alarm clock thinking it was 2 or 3am, actually it was 9:30pm. I answered and it was M telling me that they were in labor. I groggily got out of bed and cursing myself for not thinking to back a duffel bag ahead of time, threw some random clothes into a victoria's secret bag, found some boots, got into my freezing cold car (where the temperature read 9 degrees) and headed over.
L looked clearly uncomfortable with the whole being in labor thing, it has been about 5 years since I did my maternity rotation and it still haunts me to this day. My god daughter was already in bed(On a side note when L was pregnant with her, the three of us were all living together, just before they bought their house, and we tried to convince M to name her strawberry, which thankfully he refused), and so M&L quietly left for the hospital, leaving me with a dog, a cat and an 18 month old under my care for an unknown amount of time.
Baby girl slept quietly through the night until 6am when she woke me up asking for "a snack". I consulted the manual (the list of instructions that M had written out for me) for breakfast plans. All she would eat was blueberries.
Overall the weekend was fine, the hardest part was that every time I had to take the dog for a walk I had to bundle up in the frigid below freezing temperatures, then I had to bundle up baby girl, and then I had to put the maniac dog on the leash, and then I had to carry the baby since the sidewalks were not plowed for stroller use and the snow was too deep for her to walk, while the dog pulled us all over the heck and back. The other near disaster was when we ran out of blue berries and after going through every other food in the house, I eventually made some popcorn, thinking myself brilliant because she couldn't get enough of it. My mother called just then and I told her we were having a snack. When she found out what we were feasting on you would have thought that I was feeding the child small toy parts or nuclear weapons. Apparently young kids don't do well with popcorn, its easy for them to choke. She didn't, but how was I supposed to know? It wasn't in the manual.
Anyway long story short, I'll just cut to the end; Baby boy Grady was finally born this morning at 3am, nearly 30 hours of L went into labor. Baby girl Strawberry and I have survived and once she wakes up from her nap we are going to see mommy and daddy (whom she misses very very much) and meet Baby brother.
In other news, Early tomorrow morning I'm off for a lovely 4 day ski/snowboarding trip with 10 of my favorite girls from work. I'm sure there will be more drinking, kareoking, and foolishness than Skiing, but that is just fine with me.
