NOT!! Thirty-three years ago yesterday, I gave birth to a much wished for baby girl. My little girl would have brown eyes and dark hair I was positive…of course five years earlier I was positive about that then too. NOT – Joel Damien Berti was born with blond hair and blue eyes that stayed blue. They turned out to be a beautiful blue but that’s another story for another time.
Chiara Jude Berti was born on a lovely Sunday morning in March 1977. Those were the days of Lamaz classes and all my friends encourage me to go “natural” . Maybe it was a fulfilling experience for them but for me – NOT! Everything was NOT going according to the plan; first of all I woke up with a terrific backache and since I had had back labor with Joel, I knew this was it. I’m type A and my husband at that time, Dennis, wasn’t exactly a cool character under pressure to say the least so while he was running around getting stuff (who knows what?) I hopped in the shower. I was counting the time between back twinges (my contractions) and he yells “What are you doing in there? Let’s go!” – “I”m shaving my legs”. Needless to say that didn’t go over so well and he was right – what was I doing? Propping my leg up on the shower wall to shave it and having a contraction, I almost sliced open a vein in a leg I could hardly see over my belly. Just for the record, I’m pretty sure this was the one and only time he was ever right.
Dressed and out the door and I don’t even remember what we did with Joel!?! We lived in Avon and the hospital was in Hartford and that meant we needed to go over a mountain. Dennis took off like a mad man and by the time we were going down the mountain at breakneck speed, I was yelling “oh God, I’m going to have this baby right now if you keep hitting bumps.”
Into the hospital and my first experience with the prep nurse is a disaster, she’s old, crabby and probably at the end of her shift – She doesn’t really believe in Lamaz! As soon as I was in the delivery room, I was grateful to see that I had a Lamaz-trained nurse with us. If you know anything about the LaMaz method, you know the mother to be needs a partner who can work with her through the pain. Our classes had been disastrous and he didn’t want to practice, sooooooo. It wasn’t very long before the nurse knew we were headed for hysteria so she just pushed him aside and said in a very loud voice “Listen to ME when I count and tell you when to breath in and out.” It took just a short time to get in the rhythm and Baby Berti was born fairly quickly. It turns out I slept through the first two stages and by the time I got to the hospital I was already in the crazy stage known as Transition no wonder the techniques designed for the beginning stages hadn’t worked.
She was beautiful and a little jaundiced so we both got to stay in the hospital a few more days. We had been calling her Nicole but it didn’t seem quite right. I wanted to call her Gabriella but her father said he didn’t like the nickname Gabby. I was leaving the hospital and taking my last luxurious sitz bath when in walks one of the floor nurses. She was a big Jamaican woman who looked down on me and said in her lilting accent, “Mrs. Berti, that baby don’t have a name and she is NOT leaving this hospital till you put one on that birth certificate.” OK I had been warned and duly noted. That day Baby Berti left the hospital with a beautiful name; Chiara Jude Berti. I had wanted my little angel to have an Italian name – Chiara is Italian for Clare and from that day forward she was always my Chiara de la luna, the bright and clear light of the moon.
I had visions of her distant future husband whispering in her ear, “Chiara what a beautiful name you have!” What I didn’t anticipate in her future was the constant mispronunciation of her lovely name and having to send her to school with the phonetic spelling of her name pinned on her dress!!! She blossomed into a beautiful woman with a beautiful name. She is an accomplished young woman and a loving and devoted mother. And I am so pleased that when she had her own gorgeous little girl, she chose a lovely and unique name too – Finley Ray Clark.
Happy Birthday honey, sorry this blog is belated but the pc gremlins were busy, busy, busy yesterday and I couldn’t get on the computer. 33 years is a hell of long time, where oh where did it go??
Finny is off to a party.
Chiara and Finley Ray
Bill Ding and his band of clowns are the security patrol for this blog site. He is a favorite toy from the 50*s. By the way sometimes a blog is just an ego-maniacal stream of conscience.
Pbenjay's Blog 