Happy Birthday Monkey!

Today is our little guy's sixth birthday! He already opened one gift: a Webkinz German Shepherd that he named Derek after Jeter. The hubby tried to get him to call it Derek Dieter (he is German after all) but the humor was lost on him.

So six years ago today, my boss gave me the day off! Crazy! I was due three days prior and was as big as a house. "Stay home and have that baby," she counseled me. I heed advice well.

I had the world's fastest labor. Either that or I slept through most of it; I do have a high tolerance for pain. I took a nap, woke up in labor and knew I needed to get to the hospital STAT. (Love using that term in that sentence!) I took a quick shower and, as we were walking out the door, my boss called. So what did I do? Why I took the call, of course! Never mind that it's rush hour traffic on a Friday night and I'm about to give birth, what interesting events happened at the office today?

We hung up when she caught wind of the hubby's insistence in the background.

We made it to the hospital in record time only to find they didn't want to admit me because my water had not broken. So they put me in triage and called for a doctor. A few minutes later a nurse came in, checked me out and told me that I'm not even close to giving birth and they'll probably just give me some drugs to ease the pain and send me home. What??? I politely shared with him that I'm giving birth THIS INSTANT and not leaving the hospital.

We then waited a few more minutes for a doctor. The doctor examined me, with the nurse by her side, and not-so-calmly said, "Get her to a room immediately. This is an emergency!"

So, the nurse started running and wheeling my bed down the hall lickety-split. We were careening and hitting walls while he yelled at people to get out of the way. The hubby asked him if he had just come in from Happy Hour. Even though I was in some serious labor, we were all laughing.

I give birth approximately two seconds after arriving in my room. All-in-all, less than an hour in total and <30 minutes after I hung up with my boss.

After calling my mom to tell her all was well, the hubby left a message on my boss' home answering machine. She got home about a minute later amazed that in the time it took her to pack her gear and drive home, I had already gotten to the hospital and given birth.

No wonder we promote our process optimization services so highly. I gave birth to the poster child for streamlining and workflow efficiencies . . .