Dear Lilo,
You’ve arrived!
The details:
Date: November 12, 2018
Time: 6:32 PM
Place: Orange Coast Memorial Hospital, Fountain Valley, CA
Sign: I don’t know that, but I think Scorpio?
This is my first letter to you.1 I will keep it short as I don't want to burn you out on these too soon. Also, you can't read yet, and by the time you can read, this might not be the first thing you choose to read, and when you decide, if you decide, to read this, you'll probably have heard the story of your birth over and over again. Parents seem to do stuff like that. Just know that I was the first to tell you.
Your birth process was going slowly until it wasn't. One minute, your Mom measured three centimeters (cm); the next, she was at 10 cm and ready to start pushing you out. All this will make more sense to you a long time from now, but trust me, it was a long day for your Mother and Father. I'm curious if you'll ever really know what a cm is. When I was in school many years ago, we learned the metric system because only a few countries still use the imperial system, including the US and England. We learned both metric and imperial in school because we were sure to switch at some point. 50 years later, and we haven't changed, we still use the imperial system (pounds, ounces, inches, feet, miles, etc.), as does England.
In contrast, the rest of the world uses the metric system (the much easier-to-understand system if we take the time to understand it). However, for some reason, when talking about how ready a mother is to give birth, we speak in metric, not imperial. So, your Mother was at 10 cm approximately 10 hours after being induced (hours are used both in metric and imperial). I think I have that right. You will have to ask your Mom about it. Your Dad and Mom went to the hospital at 5:00 am Monday morning. The nurse induced labor at 6:00 am, and your Mom hit 10 cm at 4:30 pm. She pushed for a couple hours, and voila! You were born. Your Dad was in the room with your Mom, supporting her the whole time. Mama, Papa, Mimi Cha Cha, and I were in the waiting room. Great Uncles Kelly and Marco were at the hospital, but they were fetching food in the cafeteria when your Dad entered the waiting room and announced the exciting news. Your Dad held it together well. I remember when your Mom was born, and I burst into the waiting room to give similar information to my and Mimi's parents; I could barely get the words out before breaking down in tears (a theme from me you may learn about one day).
Excitement ensued. We waited a little while until the nurse told us it was okay to visit your Mommy. We didn't see you right away because you were taken by the nurses to get checked out and cleaned up. I remember after your Mimi Cha Cha gave birth to your Mother, she felt similar. You and your Mother were both big babies, so your deliveries took their toll on Mom and Grand Mom. I won't go into details here. You can ask your Mother. It is my privilege as a Grandfather to pick and choose what I want to do and say with you. A freedom I have already and will continue to exploit follow. It's difficult for the parents, who have just gone through one of their lives most magical and taxing (for the Mother) experiences. Now as they come out of that experience, here we are, the gloating grandparents and great-grandparents standing by with our questions and our stories of how this all affected us…like any of that matters, especially to the Mom, who is ready to eat, drink, sleep, hold her new baby, and possibly kill someone all at the same time. So even though I remember those days as a new parent and how I likely said I wouldn't do that as a grandparent, I was standing at the foot of your Mother's bed, smiling and ready to fire away my questions. It's not the first time I have done something as a parent or grandparent that, when I was younger, I said I would never do. It probably won't be the last, although I've hopefully run through all those scenarios by now. That said, there are a few things I said I would never do as a parent or grandparent that my parents or grandparents did, and I've stuck to my convictions. That is a topic for a future letter.
In most cases, wisdom has won out, and I've matured as I've gotten older. No need for you to look for verification from others on this. Please take my word for it.
Welcome to the world!
Much love,
Pops
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