1968
If memory serves me, my experience with the basal body thermometer, which registers a slight elevation in temperature, indicating ovulation taking place, has already been penned, suggesting you know that each slight rise in body temperature alerts me to 24 hours of fertility, and thus can you understand why, at least once each month, the leopard lays in wait for the hunter's return from his hospital shift, so she can entice Dr. Will into her lair as soon as he walks through the apartment's front door to find a dark haired, green eyed vixen (???) ready to pounce, hungrily, upon her prey, who, though being sleep deprived, rises, admirably, to the occasion ... However, over the next three months, guess who has need to visit the red tent, thrice, suggesting that not until our fourth attempt does woman's intuition have sound reason to whisper 'success' into my husband's satisfied but skeptical ear.
Though I don't recall what assures my sixth sense of pregnancy with such immediacy, I do remember rising the morning after seducing an exceptionally exhausted intern to count 280 days ahead of my last stay in the red tent, and with no doubt, whatsoever, my mind marks February 3, 1969 as the birthdate of our first born child ...
Since my surety of having conceived is expressed to Will within twenty-four hours of deeming myself 'with child', my husband's laughter, concerning the absurdity of my prematurity, doth not offend my ear, because I know that 'she who laughs last, laughs best'. And as no drugstore tests will be available for many years to come, the waiting game begins.
When three weeks pass with no need for the red tent, Will takes my urine sample to the hospital, suggesting my not being the one to wear a Mona Lisa smile before expressing our success. In fact, it's Will, who, having completed his 36 hour shift at the hospital, is seen bounding up three flights of stairs, so eager is he to share the news that his friend in the lab has confirmed that which my heart has 'known' to be true since the moment of conception when egg and sperm had wed.
How could you have possibly known with such assurity? asks doctor of wife?
I just did, is my reply. Something felt different during the night. Guess I'm qlike a basal body thermometer ... highly sensitive to the slightest change.
Though I long to celebrate the coming of a miracle child with the world at large, Will cautions me to muster the patience to wait till the first 'ify' trimester has passed, and I comply until we attend a party that weekend, where all of our college/med school best buds gather round to offer me a deluge of best wishes, which gives me reason to believe that Will's sound advice to muster patience refers only to me, because he'd been unable to suppress his excitement for even one day, suggesting that everyone in the medical community knows our happy news before I felt free to jump for joy with both sides of our family ... except for my mom, whom I'd taken into my confidence, as young women tend to do.
February 3, 1969
Let's fast forward for a moment, eight months plus one week, so we can peek into the delivery room, a few minutes after noon, when a smiling nurse places my sweet, first born son into his mother's open, loving arms, and while cradling Barry close to my heart, my eyes, which have been smiling down at our miracle child, glance up, laughingly, at Will, who is actually clapping and jumping up and down for joy ... so much did Captain Sports hope for a boy ... And though medical staff joins in laughing to see a captain, dressed in the staid khaki uniform of the U.S. Air Force, feeling so gleeful as to jump and clap like a ten year old kid, you and I know that my reason for laughing is two fold: I, too, love to see my husband bust loose of his serious bent, and my prediction, concerning Barry's birthdate, has come true, so she who laughs last, laughs best!
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