Trish the Dish

A daddy is not a daddy until he has a little girl. Twenty nine years ago, about 11 AM today, Trish the Dish changed my life forever.

We had been married four years and Cherry and I were driving home from work when she announced she was pregnant. Since it was unplanned, I held back my excitement until I determined that she was happy also. Cherry is great at everything she does and she bought books and we started learning about the whole business of having babies.

By chance we were invited to a UT Health Science wine and cheese event where doctors from the neonatal unit at Hermann Hospital would educate us about their business. Wow, that was a mistake! Tiny little babies are born whose arms fit through a wedding ring. Now we had something else to worry about.

Cherry ate apples and other good food and gained the minimum amount of weight so that our child would be healthy and strong. She had a radiant glow, a sparkle in her eye, and looked more beautiful every day. She purchased maternity dresses and stretchy pants but her favorite garb was her overalls which work as well for expectant mothers as they do for pot bellied men. I kept her healthy by drinking four drinks at happy hour so she could avoid alcohol.

We went to childbirth classes with our pillow for the moms and the hard floor for the dads and practiced our breathing. We practiced at home and we knew how to progress from ha-ha to hee-hee to ha-ha-hee-hee-ho-ho etc. They showed us a film of a stranger having a baby which I found to be quite disturbing.

Cherry's doctor happened to be the same man who delivered her twenty-five years earlier. He was quite old fashioned and liked to do things his way. Epidurals are all the rage now but at the time they were banned at Park Plaza Hospital near Hermann Park. The doctor favored the saddle block which sometimes gives women headaches. Cherry wanted a pudendal block which it turns out is two shots using a foot long needle. I was summoned to a meeting at the doctors office where the doctor apparently expected me to instruct Cherry to do as the doctor wishes. As intimidating as the doctor was I knew better than that.

On November 14, 1980 I was getting ready for work and Cherry said she thought she might be going into labor. I recall asking her if I should dress for work or wear jeans as she did not seem to be sure. About that time her water broke and things started happening faster. She started having contractions and she had trouble getting her pants on so she got into the car and we covered her with a blanket. Now it was rush hour traffic in Houston and the hospital was 15 miles away and twenty minutes with no traffic or maybe an hour with traffic. Cherry was having lots of hard contractions and so we tried doing our ha-ha breathing. It was not helping so I suggested we go to the next level and Cherry said it was for later and I said it does not matter let's do what is required. So I had a half clothed woman rolling around in my car in pain. Things were not going according to plan. I decided that we needed to get to the hospital soon so I ran four red lights and drove on the shoulder of the freeway and got to the hospital in thirty minutes. I stopped in front of the hospital ushered Cherry inside and went to park the car. When I came inside they made me wait for an hour before I could join Cherry. She was already at 9 cm dilation so we were mostly done with breathing. Cherry started having some pain and I suggested we start breathing and she told me to just get the nurse. They rolled a woman by our door screaming at the top of her lungs which added to the atmosphere.

By a little after 11 AM we had a beautiful baby girl. I remember telling my Dad on the phone that she was the most beautiful baby I had ever seen. My Dad figured I was just excited but I recall him telling someone after he saw her that she was the most beautiful baby he had seen.

Now a day after she was born, the nurse in the hospital could tell that we were tentative around this fragile little being. She demonstrated the many ways we could pick up and carry and hold a baby. The one I remember was the football carry where she carried her in the crook of her arm like a football. Perhaps that is why she enjoys football so much today.

That is the story of Kelly Patricia who I occaisionally call Trish the Dish. Happy Birthday, Trish.