No Pain, No Gain

Friday we had Jude. Named after the Beatle's song, and middle name Emanual after his grandfather's middle name (they spelled it a little different but we love it). So, I had him in the hospital, without any medications. Without getting graphic, here's some metaphorical examples of giving birth without meds:

You know that super computer HAL in the great movie "2001:A Space Odyssey"? Well, during one very creepy scene, HAL locks the bay doors so that an astronaut is cut off from his ship, left to float in space while his comrade looks on in horror without any possible way to help him. This scene pretty much sums up what I went through for 1.5 hours while pushing our son into the world. No relief, no possible way for anyone to help me. There was no begging for mercy (which I did ask in the form of "GET HIM OUT", and "I CAN'T") because there was no possible way to get around the situation except for me alone to get our son moving along. Afterwards, I thought about how rare that is for us all- there is so much relief from pain we may find in our lives, in the form of friends, laughter, drugs, alcohol, doctors writing prescriptions, exercise, spiritual habits, etc. This was the one time ever in my life when NO ONE, and NOTHING was going to help the pain except for me alone, and that was that. Even the doctor told me over and over, "There's nothing to do except for you to end it all, and there's only one way to do that."
Now, THAT statement gives a girl motivation.
We would have been super happy to get Jude here any means necessary. He would have been fine, but we were concerned with how long our last labor was, and there were real consequences from Nick's labor that we had to deal with that our family knows about, so we appreciate their support. It's all over except raising the children now!
In the meantime, there will be that little nugget of a memory always in my mind, that cannot be explained or described well enough to give it the respect it deserves.