35 years ago today, my first wife, Margaret (now deceased), and I were attending a home expo show in Dallas. She was nearly nine months pregnant, within a week or two of her anticipated delivery date, but assured me that she was up to walking around and seeing the expo.
After we had been there less than an hour, Margaret gave me a panicked look and told me that her water had broken, and it was time.
I knew immediately that it was going to be a really long night. We went back home to gather up some things we figured we would need, and stopped by a store on the way to the hospital to get some other miscellaneous items, including a board game that I figured would help pass the time.
Things developed a lot faster than I expected. We spent less than a half-hour playing our board game (I don’t even remember which one it was), when I noticed that Margaret was suddenly not paying any attention at all to the game. I went down to the nurses’ station, and told them that I thought the birth was imminent. They came in and confirmed that, and paged the doctor (remember pagers?), who arrived with only a few minutes to spare.
Karen Kramer Harkness (Now Karen Kuo) was born in the wee hours of April 20th, 1980.
Afterwards, the doctor scolded me for not coming directly to the hospital when the water broke, and told me that if we had a 2nd child, it would probably arrive even faster.
Now, Karen is expecting her own baby, in June. We are hosting her baby shower next weekend.