Monsters, Inc. will forever be etched into my memory. On Saturday mornings, our local cinema shows kids films for £1. It’s a bargain, and for a rainy weekend with a heavily pregnant wife it seemed like a pretty safe option. But as we watched the antics of Sully and Mike, son number two decided to begin his way out of the womb.
Not wanting to get too carried away by the whole thing, Faith didn’t tell me until the credits were rolling. As adrenaline pumped round my body, I remembered that labour is not a particularly speedy process. So we waited. We walked. We…well, you know… Let’s just say we did everything in our power to keep labour going.
Despite our best efforts though, Saturday passed. Then Sunday passed. Then it was Monday, and I had to go to work. The adrenaline had come and gone at various points but none of the contractions had gathered much momentum. I expected a call from Faith throughout the day, but it never came (except for one call to ask if I knew where her keys were. It scared me to death and I didn’t).
When I got home from work we decided to go shopping. As we wandered round Waitrose (we were feeling posh) Faith paused in various aisles to have contractions. I think we bought something, but it’s all a blur.
It was when we got home that things seemed to get serious. We ate, I put Adlai to bed, and by the time I got downstairs I wasn’t worried about the contractions stopping anymore. It was clear by Faith’s general demeanor that things were moving! I called our friend Sharon to come over and babysit Adlai, and when I walked back into our bedroom to let Faith know help was on the way, I found her standing in a puddle.
“My water broke,” she said.
Yep, things were definitely happening. There was no going back.
