Wake Up, You Sleepyhead

"......and corn markets seem like they're going strong. In other news, Chicago Police are reporting that suspects are in custody for mass shootings at two South-Side parks." NPR blares to life as I blearily awaken to a June morning.

L is on her side of the bed, hugely pregnant. Improbably pregnant.

"Dave.... unh... I'm in labor." This is a shock to me. To be honest, it has no right to be a shock. L is almost a week overdue, so it would be more shocking to me if she wasn't in labor. This fact does not keep me from saying something profoundly stupid.

"Are you sure."

"Unh.... yep, pretty sure."  I begin to wake up fully. I am never fully myself first thing in the morning.

"Why did you let the alarm wake me? How long were you in labor before my alarm went off?"

"About an unh... hour." This is early labor. Women can walk and talk and are basically themselves during early labor. L, it turns out, had let me sleep because after the few false starts this week she hated the idea of waking me up to observe Braxton Hicks contractions.

"Should I be logging this?" There is an app for this. It is a contraction timer that helps you log contractions and rest periods and helpfully tells you what stage of labor your partner is in. I will consistently misuse the app all morning and get data that is strongly contradicted by L's actual, physical reactions to labor.

"I guess?" L is standing next to the bed with her arms on the rail. Any thoughts of false labor leave my head. I have never seen her like this. She looks exactly like my wife but different, animal.

"Should I go to the diner?" We have a plan. The plan is to basically use early labor as a last chance to play hooky before the baby is born. I will call in to work and we will spend early labor putting together the hospital bag, eating good food and watching good movies. If it is not too bad, we might try to catch a matinee of Joss Whedon's "Much Ado About Nothing" and hope that L's contractions aren't too loud. We will not be the kind of people who go to the hospital in early labor. Those people are silly, and learned everything they know about labor from movies and tv shows. We attended a two-day class.

I return from the diner with our usual (Veggie Omelet for L, Corned Beef Hash Skillet, extra crispy, for me) and L looks much different. When I left she was in early labor, she is now in active labor. I set out plates for us, I pour myself coffee. She is in active labor. I sit down, begin eating, and ask her to join me. She is in active labor. I have spare thoughts about what I would be doing if I was at work. She is in active labor. I call the midwife.

The midwife listens to me, and listens to L in the background. She correctly diagnoses active labor and tells me that it's time to go to the hospital. I agree and hang up. There's just one thing. We haven't packed the hospital bag.