One thing I’m pretty sure of these days is if all it took was sheer worry to arrive at grandparent-hood, I’d have a whole village of grandchildren by now. Let me explain:
When your daughter abruptly steps out of adolescence and into young womanhood, the next thing you know you’ve turned into the clothing police. You get this insane notion that she’s painting those little Capri pants directly onto her body, not to mention your disbelief that she spent a bucket of money on a bikini that affords less coverage than a Barbie’s Band-Aid. This trauma is a clear signal that pretty soon young men will start calling and like it or not, it crosses your mind that you may need to purchase a shotgun. (And when I say “you,” let’s face it – I am referring to, well … me.) I mean, I’ve heard of teens that became pregnant by standing too close together in line to purchase concert tickets for heaven’s sake.
But say your daughter manages to graduate without the extra challenges of motherhood and eventually she marries, and the new couple decides they want a baby. So now you turn it all around and worry that she won’t get pregnant. And when she calls one night to say by gosh she’s pregnant, you worry about whether she can stay pregnant and other sundry items such as if her swollen feet are just temporary.
So you see what I was up against. Add to that approximately 350 miles between us and our future granddaughter who would be born near Los Angeles and my anxiety rose to Olympian levels. Yet despite my random meltdowns, nine months flew by and we were hard upon the laughably unreliable “due date.”
My spouse and I randomly chose the day following the baby’s estimated arrival date to head off to southern California where we greeted our very pregnant daughter. Wearing black maternity slacks and a more-or-less fitted black tank top, my tall, slender offspring was an impressive sight. “Wow,” I remarked helpfully, “you look kind of like a python that just swallowed a whole rabbit for dinner.”
Pregnant women do a lot of walking to hasten a baby’s arrival, so one evening we walked to a nearby Greek cafe for dinner. Shooting back into worry mode, I feared the laws of physics would prohibit my ultra-pregnant daughter’s forward momentum with that belly cantilevered out to there, but we arrived intact at the restaurant. A bright-eyed server directed us to a tiny table by the window where my daughter’s tummy basically needed its own chair.
Nights spent waiting were long since you’re never quite yourself when sleeping in a strange bed, and my spouse picked those nights to snore like a chainsaw (accusing me of doing likewise, which as you and I both know, is so not true since that would be, well … unladylike and all.) So I roamed nocturnally about the house, eventually constructing a makeshift bed on the couch, hoping for a few hours of sleep. And I would have slept except the stupid cuckoo clock that was adorable in the light of day announced the hour and half hour so incessantly that I could have ripped its little throat out, which wouldn’t have been too, well … grandmotherly I suppose.
Finally our daughter was admitted to the hospital in early labor, which gave way to more early labor and so on well into the night. Daughter Number Two jetted down from San Jose in time – lots and lots of time – to meet her first niece’s arrival. Gathered around my pregnant daughter’s bedside, we must have looked like a rowdy audience waiting for the floorshow.
Like a herd of turtles, hour upon hour her labor progressed. Personally, I thought it’d be a swell idea to spend my last official non-grandmother night getting hammered, putting me out of my misery, although on a grandmotherly scale that  would’ve registered in the neighborhood of a minus four. So we settled for leaving the hospital to get some sleep instead, instructing our son-in-law to call as soon as delivery was at hand. Expecting a phone call imminently, I fell into bed as the obnoxious cuckoo clock struck 1am. And then:
- 2:30am – No phone call. Wringing my hands I figured they sedated my daughter and she’d resume labor in the morning.
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3:30am – No phone call. What was wrong with those people!! The doctor released the amniotic fluid the preceding evening – the baby could no longer float for the love of God! Maybe I should call the hospital…
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5am – still no phone call. OK, I realize she’s someone else’s wife now, but she’s been my daughter forever and dang it, I need answers! My patience snaps, and I begin waking up the household. “We need to go to the hospital!!” I holler at no one in particular. This rouses my snoring spouse who gives me “the look” and tells me to go back to bed.
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7am – My phone rings! It’s my son-in-law. No rush, doctor thinks the baby will come within three to six hours. In a leisurely manner, we prepare to head to the hospital.
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8am – My phone rings again. This time it’s my daughter – and what, prey tell, is she doing on the telephone in the midst of labor?? “Good news,” she reports more calmly than she has any business being. “I’m going to begin pushing in a few minutes.”
Oh, dear God! Major panic as I herd my family (that has now chosen for some inexplicable reason to move in slow-mo) out the door until we’re finally on the freeway navigating madly through – naturally, because this is, after all, Los Angeles – rush hour traffic.
So after careening at a breakneck speed of 15mph or so, we arrived at the hospital four minutes after our baby granddaughter made her world debut. Holding her, I flashed back to the first time I held my own daughter in my arms, and all was well at last. But between you and me and the lamppost, I swear it took a whole boatload of worrying to get that baby born.
Gale Hammond is a writer and freelance photographer who has lived in Morgan Hill 24 years. Reach her at ga*********@*ol.com.
