Tomorrow, September 1, is Linnea’s birthday, so it seems good, O reader, to give you the full story of her birth.

 Diane had a very short labor with Linnea.  So short, in fact, that she was born unexpectedly at home on Orchard Street in East Lansing, Michigan.  So many events and people were involved in such a short time that the only way to tell the tale is with long run-on sentences that you read quickly, punctuated by brief slow down intervals to catch your breath (hee-hee-who-who).  The story may not be as dramatic as Kevin and Trisha delivering their son Jacob in the parking lot at the hospital, but it was still an unusually unpredictable event.

You need to have some background…

First and foremost, Diane has a huge tolerance for pain. She soldiers on through waves of colitis attacks. She speaks complete sentences and makes decisions even as fierce headaches are ripping her brain apart. She walks through Plantar Fasciitis.  Her 15 years of the worst, most painful menstrual cramps imaginable had prepared her to have babies.  The only thing that ever stopped her was an ear infection shortly after we were married – the infamous ear infection during which I put spoiled milk on the cereal, causing her to throw up.

We had been married for seven years when we announced Diane was pregnant.  Her grandfather Stew made his own announcement, “I am so happy for you.  I figured you were sterile.”

We had been to Natural childbirth classes, practiced the hee-hee-who-who breathing techniques, and knew where the hospital was.  Diane had helped our friends Tim and Wanda the previous March to deliver their son Jeremiah at home.  Although I couldn’t help with that birth because I had to watch Magic Johnson and the MSU Spartans win the NCAA basketball title game, we figured we knew what we were doing.

Linnea was due August 15 and was born on September 1, 1979. Nowadays you don’t go two weeks after the due date, what with inducements and c-sections and such.  It turned out that September 1 is her Grandmother Dot’s birthday.  If you have to choose a birthday, go with your grandma’s birthday rather than a basketball national championship because you get a cool party every year with grandma and it is much easier to explain than the sports occasion.    We went to dinner at the Kellogg Center on Friday night, August 31.  Diane was crying miserably at dinner, “I’m not going to have an August baby.”  I made a wild guess that Diane may have been somewhat emotional at that time. 

We had birth announcements all drawn up, awaiting a sex identification (which would influence the name), height, and birth weight.  The orange card stock has a baseball theme with a diamond and the proclamation that a new member had joined the team.

Seemingly random events and circumstances were piling up.  We knew God was in charge of all these things but you don’t know the significance until later.

–           Emergency was a popular television program, following paramedics on their weekly adventures.  We watched sometimes; our favorite part was the inevitable step when the paramedics first arrived at the scene, always inserting an IV with ‘Ringer’s Lactate’, some sort of magic juice for distressed patients.

–          September 1 was a lovely Saturday afternoon during Labor Day weekend, no pun intended.  Many families were away at the lake or somewhere, but every boy left in town was out riding his bike.

–          Emergency 911 calls in East Lansing always sent out a response team – a fire truck, a police car, and an ambulance

–          We had a subscription to Sports Illustrated.

I had a stopwatch which I was ready and very willing to use.  Contractions had started Saturday morning;  I was timing them.  The intervals varied widely: 18 minutes, 30 minutes, 3 minutes, 12 minutes.

Our friends Tom and Mary came over from Grand Rapids to have lunch with us on Saturday.  Evidently walking is a labor inducer so we walked a few blocks to the restaurant.  Mary was a hospital OB nurse who listened to Diane’s symptoms and estimated the baby would be born in the next 24 hours.  She was right, but they left before all the fireworks started.

The Tigers were on TV that Saturday afternoon, and Diane’s brother Phil had come over to watch with us.  Diane’ contractions continued; I dutifully logged  the times and durations. Something must have happened with the game, but no one remembers any of that.  Diane excused herself to go upstairs, “I’m not feeling well and I’ll just lie down for a minute.” Later, the doctors suggested that Diane “not feeling well” meant that she was “in transition”  A few minutes later, a call came down the stairs, “Allan can you come up here?”

And the pace picked up…

I went upstairs and Diane said she had two really hard contractions in a row, so I called the hospital and explained the situation and they said, “If those hard contractions keep up for another half hour come on in,” and as I hung up and turned around, Diane said, “My water just broke and the baby is coming, ” so I called the hospital again and agitatedly asked them to send an ambulance but they said, “We don’t send ambulances, you will have to call 9-1-1,” so I yelled down the stairs and told Phil to call 9-1-1 to order an ambulance because this baby is coming, and Phil called 9-1-1 and said please send an ambulance, and they asked, “What is the address?” Well, Phil did not live there and he had no clue but he picked up the Sports Illustrated magazine and read the address off the label and said “I hope this is right.” 

Meanwhile Diane and I are upstairs preparing for Allan being the delivery boy.   I retrieved towels from the cupboard and spread them on the bed where Diane then laid down.  We were past the hee-hee-who-whos and concentrated on blow-blow and don’t push.  I got a wet washcloth for wetting the lips and mouth.  My short journal notes have a cryptic description of “blow, blow, want some washcloth?”  I’m sure we were just as calm as could be, but don’t really remember that part. I think we got some water in a basin.  I bet we prayed.  A lot.

And then we heard the sirens…

The ambulance, fire truck, and police car all arrived at the same time, parked out front and came running into the house. Phil pointed upstairs, and pretty soon there were seven men, in uniforms, standing beside me in the bedroom where Trent the paramedic took charge and said, “I am just going to call the hospital to get them connected.” “Hello,” Trent says into the phone, “This is Trent and we have a woman here who thinks she is in labor.” At which point Diane is saying, “Can I push yet?”  And Trent announces he is just going to check the lady and then they will transport to the hospital.  Trent checks the appropriate area and screams, “Yahhh… I see the head!”  The hospital guy on the phone calms the paramedic down, “Trent, you have been trained for this, you know what to do, and you have done it before.” “But that was in Vietnam,” says brave Trent.  The hospital guy gives some orders and quickly a Ringer’s Lactate (!) IV drip is started, Trent is in position, and Diane starts pushing.  Meanwhile every boy in the neighborhood has followed the sirens and parked their bike in our front yard and the neighbors started gathering. The older fireman at the head of the bed leans over to Diane and says, “You’re doing great, honey.  I don’t know anything about this, but you’re doing great!”  The breathing drill is out the window; one push and the head crowns; another push and most of the head clears; a third push and most of the body clears and the baby cries; one last push and a baby girl is born at 6:30 pm. That first cry follows the breathing drill right out the open windows, where the gathered multitude breaks into applause, just like we were on the Waltons or something.  The little boys’ cheers turned to boos when Uncle Phil told them it was a girl, as Trent wiped off the baby, wrapped her in a blanket, and handed her to me. “You take care of this beauty while we get everything ready to transport to the hospital.  They can deliver the placenta there.”

At this point, time slowed down for Linnea and her proud father.  She looked at me with the calmest sweetest expression; truly a lovely creation! I took her on a tour of the house.  First stop – her bedroom, containing a crib, a changing table, and a bookcase. “This is the library, Linnea.  Here is our book collection.  A lot of textbooks, Agatha Christie mysteries, Hobbit tales, and some of the latest and greatest Christian best sellers.  And this is the bathroom with a tub and sink.  And out here in the hall is your mom on the gurney, being lugged down the stairs and out the doorway.  And we are walking down the stairs after them. Here is the living room and the TV, but looks like the Tigers game is over.  Do you know who won?  Here is the dining room and the kitchen with the calendar on the wall.  Did you know you were born on your grandmother Dot’s birthday? Let’s go back to the front of the house, and  look, there is your Uncle Phil talking to the crowd, and here is the front door and please, meet the crowd.”

Things had not slowed down for Diane…

Once the decision was made to “transport,” the crews set up the gurney, secured all the lines and wires, and 1-2-3 switched the new mom onto said gurney and the most scary part commenced as four seemingly old and out of shape men huffed and puffed and took that gurney over the staircase railing, down the stairs, and out the front door all the while Diane feeling surely there would be a heart attack or stroke and she would get dropped although she was evidently secured to the bed and was unlikely to slide off the downhill side and then they hoisted her, gurney and all into the ambulance.  I climbed in, still holding Linnea, and they took off, asking Diane if she wanted the sirens on or not, which she declined.

The emergency was handled, the baby was born, the crowed melted away, and life with Linnea began.  Diane got a larger than expected baby dose the first couple of nights in the hospital because “dirty babies” born outside cannot mix with those delivered in the normal location and must stay in the room with the mother!  We are still grateful to our neighbors Jim and Marge (Marge, actually) who took all the bedclothes and towels and washed them for us.  Uncle Phil is still a quick-thinking star whenever the tale is told.  Special paramedic Trent came by a few years later to see how his special delivery was doing.  I wore my suit to church that Labor Day Sunday because I realized it was time to grow up. Linnea attributes her career as a librarian to her early exposure to books.   The birth announcement was altered to include the phrase “safe at home.” 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

God has some strange diseases out there, and I had one.  Just before my thirty-first birthday I came down with Guillain-Barré Syndrome.  Linnea had recently turned two and we were living on Hazel Street near the Gothros, the Whites, and the Quinns.

Guillain-Barré is a syndrome because people don’t know what causes it and are not quite sure how to fix it.  I have heard there have been treatment advances recently involving complete blood transfusions.  What IS known about Guillain-Barré is that it is a neurological disorder where the Mylar sheathing on your nerves is stripped away, resulting in paralysis because there is no more communication between your brain and your muscles.  It’s an ascending paralysis, meaning it starts in your feet and hands and moves up your body.  If the paralysis reaches your diaphragm then you’re in trouble and you have to go on a ventilator.  If it reaches your heart then you’re in even more trouble and have to have a pacemaker installed.  At some point, the nerve sheathing stops shedding and starts regenerating. 

The course of the disease is pretty well-defined even though it’s a syndrome; they even have a named treatment plan – Expectant Therapy.  They expect you are going to hit bottom at some point and then start getting better; expectant therapy is keeping you alive until you do so.  I like that – keep me alive until I start getting better.  About 2% of the victims die, but those odds were in my favor, especially as I was a young non-smoker.  And, there was another Guillain-Barré Syndrome patient in the hospital when I arrived.  He died, which probably made my odds better somehow.

My case was just like everybody else, at least as far as I know.  You fall down the stairs the night before Halloween, one of the first signs that your muscles are going.  You go to the clinic on Monday and talk to Dr Keith who was substituting for Dr Geoff that day.  It turns out Dr Keith had presented a paper on Guillain-Barré the prior summer, knew all about it, and was surprised to see a real case.  He puts you in the hospital and tells you the basics:  “We don’t know how long this will last, but at some point you will probably feel like your bones are pressing down through your body because the muscles are no longer able to support them.”  Something to look forward to?

You spend your birthday in the hospital, but get nice cards and a banner, and then your prayer buddies come along and crush your head with when they lay hands on, because you just can’t hold your head up and it really hurts and you cry. 

You gradually get worse until the point where you choke on chicken soup and you have to go on the ventilator.  Someone pumps an air bag through your mouth while you’re waiting; there is a delay because someone had to go downstairs to the pharmacy to get the cocaine.  They make you snort cocaine to increase the size of your nasal passage so they can ram the air tube down into the lungs, and then the ventilator takes over. 

The next morning they replace the nose tube because the prior one was too small and was leaking.  This time, the drug of choice is curare – they don’t want you moving while they work.  You hear a train go through your head (right to left) and realize the complete paralysis of the curare occurred while your eyes are open… you see what’s going on! The doctors talk like you can’t see OR hear.  “Let’s work fast, we have about two minutes.  Do we need a seven or a seven and a half?”  I am about to die, I am a car,  and the mechanics are figuring out what size wrench to use…

We get the tube size figured out and the ventilator breathes for you in the Intensive Care Unit and punches a hole in the left lung (pneumothorax), requiring an incision to re-inflate the thing.  Then pneumonia sets in and the doctors are planning a new air tube through the esophagus (tracheostomy) for Monday morning.   At just the right time on Sunday night, the elders come in and pray like it says to do in James 5, and you start getting better.  Literally. These prayer buddies said I was ashen when they came in but had turned pink by the time they left.  A Monday morning x-ray showed enough improvement to call off the trach!

There are many  highlights in this story – cocaine, curare, collapsed lung, choking on chicken soup, etc.  But the best one, from my point of view, was the miracle answer to the elders’ prayer – I started getting better!