Happy Birthday Thing 1

I'm aging as we speak. My first thing was born 15 years ago today. Pull up a chair and I'll tell you about it. Guys are allowed to zone out or glaze over, childbirth stories are a woman thing, to be sure.
At that time, iPastor was actually mayor of Montevideo, and was settling in for a particularly grueling fiscal meeting of some sort. He joked as he left, "Feel free to go into labor and get me out of this meeting." Ever an obliging and agreeable wife, I started having contractions. I called him home, and settled in to wait. The contractions were sporadic, so I headed for bed. When I woke in the morning, the contractions were becoming stronger and closer, so we headed to the hospital, where I got all checked in and settled into a room. By then the contractions were three minutes apart and getting hard. I foolishly had the thought that this was textbook, and proceeding like clockwork. That's when the doc came in and burst my bubble. Contractions were three minutes apart, but I was only dilated to two. No pushing a baby through that. He started a pitocin drip, and drove me to the edge of insanity. Periodically, a nurse would come in and rip my loins asunder to see if I'd dilated any further. The news was never very hopeful for me, so they'd pat my hand, help me to the bathroom, or fetch me a basin in which to puke. The doctor had made some brief mention of pain medication, but he wasn't a real proponent of it, feeling it slowed delivery. Six hours after the drip started, I had finally decided that I. NEEDED. DRUGS. NOW. when the nurse chirped "Oh, you're at 10, I'll get the doctor and you can push." With the end in sight, I could do without meds. Once they fetched the doctor from the clinic we got down to business and in 10 minutes I had a purple, squirming, eight and a half pound daughter.
Apparently I was a bit noisy, because the nurse told me a couple of times not to grunt, to concentrate on pushing the baby out. Not the way to my good side. In the aftermath, while they were stitching and cleaning me up, it came out in conversation(between her and the doctor, don't mind the groggy chick that you're sewing back together over here)that her kids were adopted. Adoptive parents are awesome, but don't be telling me how to force eight and a half pounds of grapefruit through a 10cm window if you've never done it yourself. Sheesh.
For all that, I got this:

She was a little smaller back then, but only slightly more cranky. 15-year-old girls just have a different set of needs to meet and different tears to dry. On a good day, she's funny, smiley and full of life. We'll stick with good days for now. Happy Birthday Thing 1. Love my girl, I do, I do.