The birth of Ben

 Why was this guy in the store smiling at me while I proudly held my new baby boy?  I could only guess he thought as I did that Ben was the cutest thing that ever lived and wished he had one just like him.  I later found out that he probably was smiling because Ben had urrped up a batch of cottage cheese down the backside of my brown winter coat.  Shopping at JC Penny's was serious business and Ben had been handed off to me so Sandy could better concentrate on the shopping mission before her.  Which meant I wandered around the store aimlessly with the little squirt perched up on my shoulder.  Apparently this was before I learned the necessity of a burping cloth under his chin at all times.  Ben came out of the womb with a real talent for urpping milk, he did it in two variations, one was right after eating and that came out in the same consistency it went in but with a lot more force, think projectile vomiting.  Just don't get anywhere in front of him if you like the clothes you are wearing.  The other way was the slow cooker method, he would ingest large quantities of milk and then later deliver little white curds of cottage cheese.  This came out much more daintily and you wouldn't even know it was there until you noticed a curd or two lingering on his lower lip then find a fresh batch on whatever clean clothes he or you were wearing.  

How did two unknowing people find themselves caring for a little baby of which they knew almost nothing?  Well as the childhood rhyme says "First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes (insert name here) with a baby carriage!"  But before the baby carriage came Lamaze classes and lots of breathing lessons.  I can't even remember all the different types of breathing that was required for all the different stages of childbirth which was going to make having a baby a pretty smooth process.  It was good to be living in the new enlightened age when just breathing correctly was going to be the difference between having a life and death struggle to bear a child and the joyful experience of birthing your child together.  In fact the husband was no longer banished to the waiting room as in the old days but he was now the coach and equal partner in the process, helping his dear wife concentrate on her breathing so as to move the process along smoothly.  Lamaze even said some mothers chose to have their babies in a bathtub full of water, what a calm and delightful birth that must have been..  I took my lessons seriously and looked forward to the happy birth of our first child.

Contractions started getting stronger and closer together, when they came about 5 minutes apart we headed to the hospital excited to get this done, the new baby was about to arrive!  But the rather naive nurse examined Sandy and said she was not dilated enough to be admitted and sent us home.  Did this nurse really know what she was doing?  We were having contractions 5 minutes apart, the baby must be imminent!  We went home against my better judgement and the contractions did slow down so maybe the nurse was right about this one.  Maybe a lucky guess on her part, who knows?  Later the contractions started up again and we headed back to the hospital, a little less confident this time, I wondered would  the mean nurse let us stay and get this delivery going this time or not?  Happily she let us stay this time, surely the baby will be out soon!  I started coaching, Sandy started breathing, we are doing great, in fact maybe too great.  The Lamaze coach did say it would become rather intense and there might even be a time when Sandy (I could hardly believe this) would have flashes of anger toward me for getting her pregnant but not to worry that would all go away after the baby was born.  There was no sign of any anger coming from Sandy, just diligent breathing and waiting for the big event to happen.  However as the minutes turned to hours and the breathing didn't seem to be moving along the birth in any way, it became difficult to keep up the rah, rah spirit a good coach should have.  After MANY hours of waiting, and contractions, and Lamaze breathing, things finally began to get more intense.  But when we would summon the nurses to check to see if Sandy was fully dilated they would just say "not yet, give it more time".  Somewhere along the way the breathing routine started to get old and when I tried to encourage Sandy to do the "candle blowing" she flashed a look at me that suggested the only blowing she wanted to do was blowing my head off with a gun if one were only available, so I decided to back off on the coaching for now.  Finally the time came, they called the Dr. to come to the hospital, by then it was late at night and I thought the nurses said they had to get him from a party.  In a while a short man with a cocky attitude arrived and started giving orders to nurses who seemed to be very capable of running the delivery room without him.  The time to push came and I saw  a struggle to push and veins popping out that I never even knew existed on Sandy's forehead..  The Dr. did a little checking here and there and then decided he needed forceps.  I don't think the Lamaze class said much about forceps so I watched with great interest as the Dr. inserted these rather large spoon like devices into the birth canal and then clicked them together to form a metal cup around Ben's head.  The Dr. said he had to wait for a contraction and would then deliver the baby with the aid of the forceps.  I anticipated a gentle tug from the Dr. would be just the thing to get that stubborn baby to slip out.  To my surprise the little man crouched down at the end of the birthing table and placed one foot on the end of the table and prepared to pull with all his might when the contraction started.  The contraction started and the Dr. pulled with all his might and I immediately lost all hope of having a live baby come out.  I was confused- why would this cruel Dr. leave me in the delivery room while he pulled our baby out one piece at a time?  Why would he not send me out if this is what the plan was?  To my surprise out came Ben's head and then amazingly, the rest of his body was still attached to his head!  We had our baby at last and he was alive- a little dented up, but alive.  The forceps put dents in his skull but the nurses  said that was normal and other than a cone shaped head, he looked pretty good.  So my moment of despair quickly turned to joy and all was right with the world and our little family.  Sandy didn't look like she hated me anymore and I began to realize the nurses were our best friends in the birthing room, the Dr. was a necessary intruder, and Lamaze?  Well, wasn't Lamaze French and isn't it said that very little in the French culture actually works?  I think now if it had been a German or a Dutch birthing program it would probably have worked, instead of being called something smooth and easy like "Lamaze" it would have been called "Der Gettenouttababe" and a lot of marching around and loud yelling would have proceeded a quick delivery.  Welcome to the world Benjamin James, nothing has been the same since you arrived.

Get out before she blows!

I'm going to take a winding trail to get to the heart of this story.  It starts for me with the fact that my Dad often had an old car sitting around that was there as far as us kids were concerned to drive through the two track in the woods behind the house.  Usually the trick was getting it started.  My first rememberence was my great aunt Nell's early sixties Renault Dolphine- it was a little bug of a car with a rear engine that was supposed to be Renualt's answer to the Volkswagon Beetle.  The brakes had gone out on it and so Dad had it at the house to fix them, but I remember hearing him tell people that the car had a full splash pan under it and all the bolts were metric and he wasn't about to tackle that project.  So us kids started driving it though the woods, driving a car without brakes thought the woods- what could possibly go wrong?  Actually nothing ever went wrong, we knew it didn't have brakes and drove accordingly.  My older sisters taught me how to drive it since it was the first stick shift car I ever drove.  It stayed around for a year or so as I remember, then it must have moved over to the junkyard next door.  The next car I remember was  a year or so before I got my drivers license, someone gave my dad an old rusted out mid 50's Ponitac which was an old clunker that was too far gone to fix.  But it ran- if you jump started the battery and poured a little gas into the carburetor before you started it.  That car would roar to life once started and it was a very satisfying sound to a young man's ears.  The exhaust had almost completely rusted away and a V-8 engine with no exhaust is a deafening sound.  I loved the car, but it did have it faults, first of all if you were careless with giving it a shot of gas in the carb it would sometimes shot a flame out of the carburetor like a flamethrower so you never knew if you might catch the car on fire or get a fun ride.  The second problem was the floor boards were totally rusted out and the front bench seat would flip over backwards when you stepped on the gas so you had to hold onto the steering wheel to keep you upright while you drove.  A minor inconvenience for a teenage thrill seeker.  It was pretty fun to drive and I figured out how to make donuts at the turnaround at the end of the two track, the roar of the engine and throwing dirt from the tires while turning around made the trouble of getting it started worthwhile.  Around that time my best friend Tim decided to rebuild the engine in the old Nash station wagon his dad gave him.  Tim espoused to be a seasoned mechanic at the ripe old age of 14 and proceeded to pull the engine out of the car and install new rings and bearings with my dads help.  Somewhere along the way a bolt must not have been tightened properly and when the rebuilt engine was started it had an ominous knocking noise that clearly said something was wrong.  Well my dad laughed and blamed it on Tim (which was probably true) and the car joined my Ponitiac on the trail.  This was all for the good since now Tim and I could race each other through the woods.  It was great fun until one day when Tim slid into a tree and smashed up the front headlight and grille,  After that Tim's claim that he was going to go back into the engine and fix the knocking sound and have the car road ready by the time he got his license quietly went away and the car ended up next door at the junkyard with the rest of the junkers.

Fast forward to around 1989 when we had recently moved to Muskegon from Terre Haute.  Your mom decided Ben needed his best friends Jason and Shawn to visit for a week the summer after we had moved here.  Of course Steve joined in also for a week of camping, hiking, biking, and Michigan's Adventure type activities.  And of course somehow I was volunteered to take the week off work to make this all happen.  It was actually a lot of fun but also the hardest working vacation I probably ever went on.  Feeding and supervising 4 busy boys was a full time job.  I think most of the meals were cooked over an open fire at the campsite at Pioneer park and clean up lasted almost until the next meal.  At that time my dad had an old 70's Buick that he let Ben and Steve drive though the woods,  It was a huge four door land yacht and not in too bad of shape.   So of course all the boys had to take the car for a spin through the woods.  We warned Ben to drive slowly and carefully which was probably just a waste of breath at that point.  We were standing in the yard at Grandpa and Grandma Barnharts waiting for the car to come back from their ride when all of a sudden we heard a tremendous crash sound from the woods.  Sandy and I both raced out to see all of them out of the car which had plowed into a tree and the front fender was crushed into the wheel so the car couldn't move.  Ben's story was he was driving carefully and somehow got distracted or something and hit the tree.  When it happened Jason shouted "get out before she blows!" and I think they all jumped out the windows at that point.  I was really disgusted and took an axe to the fender and chopped it away from the tire so it could at least be driven again.  "Get out before she blows" became a favorite saying in the Barnhart clan after that whenever something crashed or when wrong.  Which was fairly often.