August 11, 1989 began with a  gush of warm fluid, pulling me from my sleep and prompting a tug on Greg’s arm and the panicked pronouncement that “something is coming out of me”. Greg – deep in his own sleep – came awake with a mumbled “You mean like an Alien?” How wrong we both were; who would have expected the stubborn creature I had been so carefully nurturing for the last nine months would spend the next 24 hours just flat out refusing to make his entrance.

It was a perfect August day – blue sky, temperatures reaching 32 degrees, a small cell like room with no air conditioning. No anesthetists on call – therefore no hope of an epidural. Sucking on the canister of laughing gas until I was sure I would collapse my nasal passages with the force of my in breath.

Baby stubbornly sitting on my spine with his shoulders turned. Agonizing back pain. Crouching on the bed on all fours in the hopes he would drop off the spine and turn. Feet turning purple as the circulation to my feet was blocked.

Steaming hot labour room. Red face. Sweat dripping from every inch of skin. Greg gently pressing a wash cloth to my brow only to have me snatch it, mop the streaming sweat off my face, and then slap him with the cloth snarling “That’s how you wipe a damn face”. Dr. G telling Greg not to take it personally – it was just the pain talking.

Finally in the delivery room. Feet up in stirrups. Greg at my feet watching with horror as the doctor braced her own feet up on the stirrups and pulled forcfully and unsuccessfully, first with forceps and then with a suction machine.

Watching the clock tick towards dawn of August 12^th. Weeping softly, exhausted, certain I was never going to be able to deliver this baby. The sudden presence of an angel in white with the voice of a football coach who bellowed “It is time to get this baby out of there” and with that the angel wrapped her arm around my shoulder, lifted me up and forward and yelled “PUSH!!!” And just like that (surely she had called upon some primal source of magic) Jordan slipped out and into our lives.

Sometime later, lying in my bed, staring in wonder at this beautiful creature with his downy head and his brilliant blue eyes, the spitting image of his father. Marveling at his perfection; certain he was destined for an amazing life and completely terrified that we were not up to the job of being his parents.

Jordan Conley Chartier. August 12, 1989 – July 30, 2013. Both his arrival and his departure from this world came wrapped in pain. But the joy and the pride and the immeasurable love that the years in between provided is what continues to hold my shattered heart together.

Happy Birthday my beautiful beautiful boy.