On the day before my daughter was born, my mother took me to my doctor’s appointment. And my husband had to go to work one more day before I was supposed to have the baby, and I had been told that if we didn’t go into labor before Friday, th — I was going to be induced. So, I had to go and have — to get one more checkup and check-in and all the rest of the stuff, and my mother took me. And the doctor told me that, you know, I was ready to go, but I just hadn’t got to a certain point yet and labor hadn’t started and everything. And he said, “You need to go someplace and walk.” Well, it was about forty degrees and pouring rain. And so, obviously I wasn’t going to be walking outside, so my mother said, “Let’s go to the [mall name].” We were close — the hospital was close [to] there, so we went to the mall. And she said, “We’ll get, we’ll get lunch there, and we can start our Christmas shopping.” And — because she said, “Besides, you know, you should start it now because once you’ve had the baby you’re not gonna feel like going out and doing Christmas shopping.”
So, my mother and I started our Christmas shopping that day, and it was really funny. She had me walking back and forth on bo — all ends of that mall and everything else. And when she took me home and she stayed until my husband got home from work, and then she went home and she said, “I’ll see you at the hospital tomorrow.” And I said, “Are you com — when are you coming?” And she said, “Oh, I’ll come when you call me, or when [diarist’s husband] calls me.” And so I — we, you know, went on with everything, had dinner and watched TV and all that kind of stuff, and it was kinda crazy because my husband said — when we went to bed, he said — well, he said, “I’m gonna take a shower and everything because we’ll just get up in the morning and go.” And I went, “Okay. Alright. Do that.”
So, we went to bed, and he laid his, his wallet and his keys someplace where it wouldn’t be difficult for him to find them. He put them on top of the TV that — this is back in the day when, you know, you had a big box-type TV. He set it — them on top of the TV, his wallet and his keys. We got up — we went to bed. At 2 o’clock in the morning, I went into labor. Four hours before I was supposed to get up and go to be induced. So, we got up — we had everything laid out anyway because we were gonna get up early and go — got up, got dressed. My husband couldn’t find his keys and couldn’t figure out where he put them and everything else. Finally, I handed him my keys and said, “Let’s go.”
And we went to the hospital, and he couldn’t find his keys and his wallet — we went there without them. And I said, “We know they’re in the house. They were there when we went to bed, they’ll be there when you get back.” And we went to the hospital — we did not call my mother at 2 in the morning, we just went to the hospital. My daughter was born at 6:30, and my husband called her- my mother and said, “We are at the hospital. The baby has been born. This is what…” you know, and gave her all the statistics. My mother was thrilled. My father had not yet gone to work, and she did not have to try to catch him — because of course this is before cell phones — she did not have to try to catch him before he went to work or call his office. And they were both up and had — were just starting to eat breakfast, so they both finished eating breakfast and got dressed and came to the hospital to see us.
And when they got there, my husband said, “I have to go home and hunt for my wallet and my keys.” And so he went home and did that and found them, of course, exactly where he left them on top of the TV, but he couldn’t see them and neither could I when we went to go to the hospital. So, that’s always been kind of a humorous and funny thing.