Precerpt from Raising God's Rainbow Makers: Lizzie's Birth, Part 2
Precerpt (excerpt from book prior to publication): Raising God's Rainbow Makers (Mahlou)
Lizzie's Birth, part 2
Labor Day? Going into labor on Labor Day? Of course, babies are born on Labor Day every year, but somehow it felt too on the nose.
That day, my husband Donnie—who was working for the U.S. Forest Service at the time and knew every pristine corner of the Bitterroot and St. Joe National Forests—had taken me on a wonderfully relaxing all-day picnic. Just the two of us, stopping wherever the wilderness invited us to linger.
We drove more than a hundred miles, heading north along the Montana side of the Bitterroot Mountains, then west across Lolo Pass and into the lush valley and crystal lake of the Coeur d’Alene area (I could suddenly understand the beauty that inspired that name). From there, we traveled south along the sparkling Salmon River, its occasional small rapids and graceful twists lined with pine trees. We watched as rainbow trout, with nowhere to hide in the crystal-clear waters, practically leapt for bait in plain sight of any eager fisherman.
Finally, we headed east into the Bitterroot Wilderness, then a little north, back home to our tiny upstairs apartment—just behind the doctor’s office in the center of our ten-block town.
I suppose the only reason our little town boasted two doctors—a senior partner and a younger junior partner, both general practitioners—was because we were the only town serving a long stretch of ranches scattered along the narrow Bitterroot Valley. The valley ran more than 90 miles north to south, cradled between the gem-studded Sapphire Mountains to the east and the lodgepole-pine-covered Bitterroot Mountains to the west. Someone had to care for the people who lived and worked there. Having those two doctors—and a small hospital that was really more of a first-aid station than anything resembling a city hospital—turned out to be a blessing. So, too, was the fact that our apartment sat right behind the doctor’s office and only a short distance from the hospital.
But that Labor Day evening, when the pains started, I refused to believe I was actually in labor. The irony was too much. Besides, I’d been having similar pains off and on since July—ever since that day I’d overdone it, climbing through a snowbank at Twin Peaks. So, I brushed it off, went to bed, and actually managed to sleep through most of it.
The next morning, though, the pains continued. Still, I reassured Donnie that it was just more of the false labor I’d been having for weeks. The doctor had given me a due date two weeks away—why would I doubt that? So, as confidently naive as I was, Donnie headed off to spend the day deep in the forest, our only car with him.
A few hours later, as the pains kept coming, I decided I needed something to distract me. I called the doctor’s office. This was my first baby, and with my mother 3,000 miles away in Maine while I was in Montana, I didn’t have anyone nearby to talk things through with. I figured I’d ask if I could do something like scrub the floors to take my mind off what I still believed were false labor pains.
When the nurse answered, I asked casually, “Would it be okay to do some heavy work—like washing the floor—to distract myself from these false labor pains?”
“What makes you believe they’re false?” she asked.
“They’re not regular,” I said, confidently. I was sure labor pains had to come at perfectly even intervals to be considered real.
“Describe them for me,” she said gently. “How irregular are they?”
“Well, some are 45 seconds apart,” I told her, “and some are 30.”
There was a pause. Then her voice sharpened.
“You get in here now,” she ordered.
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