On this day, thirty-one years ago, God Blessed my wife and I with our youngest Daughter, Savannah Leigh De La O. Our family was now complete. Today, she is a grown woman now, with a family of her own.
I cannot help but see the years running through my head like an old movie. All my children are a gift to my wife and I each has grip and a home in our hearts. It has been a beautiful and incredible journey with you baby girl. I thank God for every single moment. I remember it all, some times through laughter, some times through tears,
Your mother and I love you more than we can say but I'll say it anyway. We Love You We Love you, Josh and our grandson Jack.
Happy Birthday Baby Girl!!!
On The day She Was Born
Jeri’s original due date was December 16, 1987, my father’s birthday We were excited about that but the day came and went and Christmas came and went. It was a tough pregnancy for my wife.
I cannot remember where I read about this Creole recipe, guaranteed to induce labor, in an old cook book perhaps or maybe in an old magazine. I decided the minute I read it that I was making this dish.
It was a one pot meal with rice & beans (I used pinto beans), hot Louisiana sausages, smoked sausage, chunks of pork, green pepper, onions, garlic and plenty of spices, I even threw in some New Mexico Red Chile for good measure.. Dr. Randy was determined to bring his latest child into the world tonight!
I let it simmer for a few hours. Jeri called my mother and invited her over for dinner. It was early evening by the time we all sat down to eat. I served them and made the declaration, half joking and half hopeful, “You’re having this baby tonight!” They both looked at me with doubt in their eyes but they were humoring me
Later, after my mother left, and Jeri went to lie down in bed for a while and I settled down to watch an episode of Married with Children. Meranda and Andrew were in their room.
“Randy!!” I jump off the couch and run to the room and Jeri says to me, “I’m having contractions!” I thought to my self, “It worked!”
Now, I should tell you this, I have to be honest, despite having gone through this twice before, I am the most ignorant, useless man alive, and sometimes the most thoughtless, when it comes to labor, childbirth and such. I can make them but that’s about it.
“You need to time my contractions!” she says in a firm and authoritative tone of voice, which of course, made me raise an eye brow, not caring too much to be talked to in such a firm and authoritative tone of voice.. “Huh” was my initial response, followed by a sense of panic. I assessed the situation and decided to just do as I was told.
I checked and timed her contractions and got up to go back to the front room. “Where are you going? She asked. “They’re showing a new episode of “Married with Children, I’ll be back when the commercial start!” (it was the episode when they were in a haunted house)
“What???”
“Okay, I’m back!
When Married With Children was over I decided to take her to the hospital, or maybe she decided, I honestly can’t remember.
We arrived at the Whittier Hospital, I’m guessing about 9:00 pm, or thereabouts. We checked in and they gave her a room adjacent to the torture room, or labor room, or whatever they call that room
We find out that her Doctor, Dr. Edith Bloome, was on vacation but another Doctor would be delivering the baby. She didn’t handle that news too well, neither one us did but there was nothing we could do about it.
Directly above Jeri’s head but out of her view was a TV set and a movie had just started. It was “the Song of Bernadette” with Jennifer Jones, a fine old classic from 1943.
As my wife was talking to me she caught me looking up, “Are you even listening to me?’ What are you looking at? She asked. Her tone was still firm and authoritative, to which I took a slight offense. “The Song of Bernadette” with Jennifer Jones. It’s a good movie.
The nurse comes into the room. She was a big woman, an Amazon, really, she reminded me of one of those women that played a guard at a women’s prison in the old movies. She was intimidating. She also spoke in a firm and authoritative tone of voice.
Time was going by and Jeri began to feel sick, and she was getting sicker by the minute. “I’m going to throw up! She yells out.
I’m looking for a place to hide but before I can say or do anything she says, “”Help me get up! I need to get to the rest room!” I help her and I’m walking behind her as she waddles, hand over mouth, in that way that pregnant women waddle when they are in a hurry. I open the door for her and just as she steps into the doorway, she removed her hand and there it was, my labor inducing meal of; rice, beans, sausages and other food products. It was a scene that would have made Linda Blair greener with envy. I did my best not to faint and told my wife," I don’t think the nurse is going to like this."
Sure enough, a few minutes later, the Amazonian nurse walks in. She already had a scowl on her face but when I said to her, "Um, excuse me, my wife was feeling a little sick and had to throw up.” Her face tightened up a bit. I said, “She made it to the bathroom though.”
“Good!”
She walks toward the restroom, opens the door and I hear her start to yell and mumble to herself. Feeling obligated I walk to the doorway and say to her ”Well at least she made it to the rest room”! It didn’t seem to help. Her head jutting forward and with a look that would have made the Terminator step back a few feet, she asks me “What did she eat?" I didn’t feel as though this was the best time to go through the entire recipe so I gave her the short version, “Rice & Beans”
She points a finger to her chest and I can tell that she's feeling like the victim here, and yells at me, in that firm and authoritative tone of voice that I did not appreciate, “Well I’m the one that’s going to have to clean it up!!”
It was right at this particular moment when I decided that I had enough of women, any woman, speaking to me in a firm and authoritative tone of voice. While I had no illusions about beating her in a fair fight I still took a step forward, looked her dead in the eye and said to her, in my own firm and authoritative tone of voice “Lady, it’s your job to clean this mess, I don’t want to hear any more from you. Clean the bathroom, in case my wife needs to use it. My wife is having a baby tonight and I don’t care if you like it or not." That was about it, verbatim, word for word. All I can say is that she hopped to it and never said another word to me.
Things were just getting started. They come to get her and take her to the labor room. It is a fearsome place but it is a necessary one. She is on the table when the new doctor arrived, to be assisted with the previously angry nurse.
To add to the drama, he didn’t speak English, or at least not much of it. Now normally, I could care less what someone speaks but this was a delicate situation and I would think that clear communication would be a top priority.
He speaks to my wife about what is going to take place. My wife asked him “When am I going to get my epidural?
“I don’t give my patients epidural,”
My wife begins to panic a little. So I say to him, “She’s not your patient. She’s Dr. Bloome’s patient. He wouldn’t budge. There was no time left anyway because things began to move fast. I did what all men do in these situations and that is stand perfectly still until someone tells you what to do.
At some point, my wife began having severe cramps on one of her legs. Each leg was on it’s own stainless steel leg holder. Somebody, the doctor or the nurse, told me to rub her calves, so I did, then the other leg began to cramp. Between the labor pain and the cramps, my wife was having a hard time. Then, in what had to be the rudest and most thoughtless words a doctor could say to a woman in labor, he tells my wife, “Maybe if you stop screaming we can deliver a baby!
It was at this point when my wife just lost it. I can’t and won’t repeat the words that came out of my wife’s mouth at that moment but I can tell you this, they would have made a drunken sailor blush. I know this to be a fact because I was at one time, a drunken sailor.
When she was done with him I lit into him. I cannot remember anymore what I said but within minutes my daughter Savannah was born. We did not know until that very moment, whether it would be a boy or girl.
A long winded story, I know, but that’s the story of the day, in the wee hours of December 28, 1987, my last child, Savannah Leigh De La O, was born. God Blessed us and the family was complete.
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