“Wake up, little boy. Time to be born.”

Dear Mary and Rainer,

Where has the time gone? I was going to write you a nice long letter at Christmas, then again at New Year’s, and here January is almost gone. Sometimes I worry whether you feel neglected, but I do know how busy you are, especially during the holidays. Time just got away from us too.

The big news, of course, is that we finally convinced Jean’s baby it was time to get up. was born about 4 o’clock Saturday, January 22, in Loudoun Hospital.

When Jean’s due date came and went last Monday, her doctor gave her the option of waiting it out or inducing labor on Saturday. The little guy slept through the week, while your sister got just plain tired. Mary, she was huge. She swore she wasn’t uncomfortable, but come on, 40 pounds straight out in front? And she could still put her socks on.

I followed them to the hospital so I could come or go as I wished. Well, truth to tell, I followed them so as not to get lost in the still-dark beginnings of rush hour in northern Virginia.

They popped her into a “birthing room,” I guess they call it. Jean’s nurse-practitioner, Anne, is one of those quick, efficient young women who just exude confidence. She was in and out of the room every half hour or so all day, and she who titrated the Pitocin drip until she was satisfied labor had indeed begun, from about 6:30 a.m. until the baby was finally coaxed out at about 4 p.m.

We filled the first of those half-hour gaps reading the paper or dozing, while Jean labored. Except that she’d stop in mid-sentence, or appeared very distracted, you’d never have known she was in labor.

Credit the epidural for that relief of pain. The anesthesiologist used a surface spray to numb the spot into which he pushed his magic elixir, then sat Jean up as high as possible. Soon she said she couldn’t make her legs move; they felt like huge lumps. He was pleased to hear that.

I forgot to mention that during the entire on-again, off-again drama, from the moment Jean put her cotton hospital dress on until the baby was born, the background sound was his amplified heartbeat, a slightly creaky “Pa-dum-pa-dum-pa-dum-pa-dum,” averaging 138 beats per minute.

Let me tell you that the long wait was justified by the joyous drama of the birth. Although this little boy was blue as can be when he finally emerged, he went through several waves of purple before settling on a healthy pink.

Once his daddy, Brian, cut the cord – a first for him, and this was his fifth child – he was handed off from one person to another to be weighed, measure him, cleaned up a little, swaddled in receiving blankets.

Did I mention that the boy weighed eight pounds, 13 ounces? And is 20 1/2 inches long? And fully equipped with 10 perfect fingers, 10 perfect toes? He tried squinting around and actually seemed able to focus on his mom’s face. He didn’t have much to say, and when he did, it was quiet, less piercing than other neonates I’ve known. I’ll probably retract that comment in a few months.

I tried to remember about how many babies I’ve delivered. Four or five, I guess, although when a baby comes fast, as they tend to do in ambulances, it usually means he’s healthy.

The last time I spent much time in a delivery room, however, must have been when Jean herself was born. At that time (the 1960s) a few pushy mommies urged the dads to accompany them through the whole process. Revenge, I suspect, or part of the feminists’ movement. We didn’t.

This “birthing center” was a cross between a delivery room and a private hospital room, and didn’t have those klieg lights I remember all around us back in the olden days. Childbirth seemed to be an illness and the emphasis was on the medical aspect. Jean had breakfast at the IHOP on the way to the hospital. She was not handed a razor, as we certainly were.

We didn’t get up until next day, and even then we stayed five full days in the hospital. Older sibs could not come in, and for that matter, dads couldn’t be in the room when the babies were there. Just having the baby in the mother’s room seemed to require the full supervision of a warden/nurse.

Most satisfactory of all, here everyone talked to Jean as though she was part of the team, telling her what to expect and whether to push or relax, minute by minute. The entire group was cheerful and cooperative. And our confidence in Dr. Akbar was boosted even more when Anne mentioned that he had delivered her children.

As I’m sure you’ve suspected, this will be this week’s column. We’re not going to be here long, probably heading home Wednesday. It’s been a long month, especially since we figured this baby would come early like his older brother did.

So congratulations, Aunt Mary, and come see your nephews before they grow up. “Time is the thief you cannot banish,” said the poet.

Time isn’t going to slow down anytime soon.

Love, Mom