A Child Is Born: Part I

It was Monday, January 26. The long awaited due date of our seventh child. The children were anxious, looking forward to meeting their new sibling, and hoping it would be soon. But soon is relative when it comes to babies. I was just hoping it wouldn’t be another ten days. Alas, the big day came and went uneventfully. We were in for some heavy weather mid-week, and I commenced with praying for a Friday baby, at the earliest. Who’d have thought I’d ever hope for a late-comer?

In the wee hours of Tuesday morning, I awoke to the first sounds of the storm that is still causing our neighbors so much trouble. I lay there listening to the tippity-tap of the ice pellets against the windows, hoping today would not be the day. A few hours later, we learned David had the day off; Fort Knox was closed. All day, the ice came down, and by evening, we looked out on a crystalline world, marveling at the beauty of tree branches so heavily laden that their highest boughs kissed the earth.

Though the power had flickered a few times that evening, we were not tracking the gravity of the situation. If they’d mentioned a hurricane, or a tornado, we’d have been prepared, but a “wintry mix of snow and ice”? As long as the baby stayed put and we didn’t have to drive, we didn’t see any need for alarm. That night, though, I was awakened at 2:10 by the squawking of the baby monitor. The power was out, and I somehow knew it would be out for a good long while. I checked on the kids upstairs and stopped in at the bathroom. At nine months pregnant, one does not make it through the night without visiting the bathroom. I flushed the toilet, and then it hit me: that was it. I’d just flushed away all of our water. The electric pump would not be drawing any more out of the well. Suddenly, I coveted the always-flowing city water, even if it would, in the coming days, have to be boiled before use.

Without power, the main furnace was not heating the upstairs, and some of the children woke up cold and moved downstairs to the living room, where our propane fireplace kept things cozy. At least we wouldn’t freeze. Lying there on the floor with Penelope, sleepless, I wondered what I’d serve for breakfast, if the power was still out, and how long our supply of clean undies and diapers would last. I tried not to dwell on issues of toilet flushing, hand washing, and dirty dishware. Stupid, stupid, stupid. How did we miss preparing for this storm?

David, of course, was unaware of our situation until he woke up around 7:30 Wednesday morning. The power had been out for five hours now, and I made my way to the corded phone on the kitchen wall. I only bought this phone about a year ago; cordless models do not work in a power outage, though cell phones might, depending on the situation. In ours, the cell towers were iced out of commission, too. The call I made to the electric company was not encouraging. Nobody even answered. I was just directed right away to a recorded message. Widespread power outages due to heavy ice. If you are still without power at this time, expect to be without for as long as two weeks. I can’t type what I was thinking.