Ask And You Shall Receive

It really seems like yesterday. My husband and I were at El Compadre, our favorite place to get stuffed and sloshed (their Cadillac margaritas + the mole enchiladas = heaven) on a chilly January evening last year. The topic of New Years resolutions came up and I boldly declared, "I only really want two things in 2006! I want a cover story and I want to get pregnant."

"You can make both of them happen if you try," hubby said, in his typical encouraging way. Well, yeah, but obviously I needed his help with one of 'em.

Flash forward a month later, the third week of February to be exact. After a long limo ride to San Diego for some Hard Rock Hotel event I was covering (see the post I did way back when here), I get a call that a piece I did on controversial local character/film maker John Roecker made the Weekly's cover. Yeah! One down and in only a month! Quite a big deal for me. Plenty, and I mean plenty of celebratory champagne followed.

In the blog posting from that weekend you'll see I mention a bad case of nausea while riding the limo to and from the event. Well, well, well… Little did I know I was knocked up too! Two down! (And yeah, the champagne binge was not good, I know. I worried about it throughout my entire pregnancy).

Almost a whole year later, as I look at the angelic face of my 2 month old daughter, I'm done worrying (about that anyway). She's healthy and happy and gorgeous.

The delivery didn't go perfectly. In a nutshell it went like this:
3 hours of torturous contractions at home starting at 1 am.
A groggy- and grouchy- drive from my husband to Glendale Adventist Hospital from our home in Silver Lake at 4 am (thank god for the 2 freeway).
The merciful epidural at 5am!
Barfing so bad the nurse said they'd never seen anything like it at 6 am ("Really?" I ask in disbelief. "Well, yes ladies get sick during labor, but not the kind Exorcist projectile vomiting you were doing!" she replied. Nice…)
Three hours of pushing I couldn't really feel ("Imagine you're pooping!" the nurse said. Real nice…)
And ultimately an emergency C-section at 3:20 pm the following day.

All turned out as it was supposed to. I got the best holiday gift ever: my little Charlotte-Elsie-Cadillac (yes, it's a reference to those El Compadre maragaritas… they make me really frisky and we believe she was conceived on them).

As I look forward to the new year, I'm optimistic and hopeful. You really can get what you want from a resolution with enough determination… and luck.
Let's hope so because I still got 15 of the 40 pounds I gained last year and I want them gone in 07!

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