The Day You Were Born - Part 9 - The Exercise Ball

Hammy,

As your dad stood in the hospital lobby waiting for me to reveal my big idea for getting my labor moving faster, I thought about some of the crazy things women do to get thier labor going. And I even thought about how I took matters into my own hands and how I was about to do that again.

Here's what some pregnant women do:

Some eat spicy Mexican food.

And some drink weird teas.

Some might even get someone to massage their big swollen unmanicured feet connected to thier lovely large cankles.

And others even drink castor oil.

Ham - I didn't do any of those things. The thought of the effects of very spicy Mexican food, nasty teas, and castor oil made me tremble with fear. Also I didn't want anyone near my cankles and horribly unmanicured toes.

Here's what I did do.

Two or three weeks before my due date, I decided to go have a lovely dinner with two of my co-workers. It was kind of like a bon voyage and a cheers to me and my baby all wrapped up in one.

When the waitress walked up to take our drink order, my co-workers ordered.....watermelon snowballs. They looked over at me and shrugged thier shoulders. I couldn't have a watermelon snowball because my doctor said absolutely not.

Anyway I ordered a big glass of water instead. The waitress couldn't tell I was pregnant because I still had my coat on so I revealed my big old belly to her and shook my head....no watermelon snowballs for me.

"You're pregnant?!" She exclaimed.

Yes mam, I am. It was either that or I swallowed a bowling ball.

And then this started the usual question/answer session you have when you are a woman, which you aren't, and you are this far along in your pregnancy.

And of course the conversation went just where I suspected it would go. You see she had a baby too not too far back and she was just dying to tell me....

"Well if you want to know how I got myself to go into labor...."

And even if I didn't want to know. Even if I thought, 'Hey I'll just leave this up to the man upstairs.' It didn't matter, because I became a file cabinet full of every crazy and hookie way to jump start labor.

So okay, here's what she said.

"You know those exercise balls?"

And I said "Uh, huh."

And she said, "I just bounced on one of those balls, every day for hours and pretty soon I went into labor. It was the fastest, easiest labor ever."

I just sat there blinking, wishing I had a watermelon snowball to wash that mental picture down.

But I didn't ham.

Do you know what happened?

I thought about. I didn't want to. But I did. I couldn't help it.

I actually thought about it.

I thought.....who do I know that has an exercise ball?

I went home and I googled a video of a woman- very pregnant -bouncing on an exercise ball. If I was going to do this I wanted to do it right.

And as my due date rapidly approached and the thought of being pregnant forever and ever and ever loomed heavy on my mind, the more desperate and crazy I became.

Crazy enough to consider something I might have dismissed altogether.

So Ham, I went straight to your Maw Maw's and Pop's house because I knew for a fact they had one perfectly useful labor inducing exercise ball.

I threw open the front door of thier house and said "Mom, I need your exercise ball."

Your Maw-Maw knew I was up to no good. She tried to talk some sense into me. But, Ham, you have one hard headed Momma.

I did it. I bounced on the exercise ball. That day and the day after and day after that.

And pretty soon I had some real sharp pains and I could almost barely walk....so I stopped.

But Ham, I knew it worked.

And that's not the only thing I tried, Ham.

Here's what I was about to do.....