This is what I wanted to post to Facebook for Throwback Thursday today, but was afraid.

34 years ago today I had a baby boy. That saying that one forgets the EXTREMELY intense pain afterwards is a bunch of "bunk." On the way to the delivery room I made the remark that I would never be able to understand why anyone would want to do this again! He was born the day before my 35th birthday. Since I had pre-eclampsia, I had to stay in bed for the last six weeks of my pregnancy. The doctor wanted to hospitalize me, but as we had no insurance at the time, I was allowed to stay home. Now I don’t know about anyone else, but when you feel fine and you’re hungry and there is no one there to get you food, you’re going to get up and get it. After two weeks, I even went over to our new house and walked upstairs to measure for curtains. Luckily, I had a doctor appointment immediately afterwards and my vitals showed full-blown toxemia. I was told to drive immediately to the hospital where I was admitted and further tests showed everything as normal. The vitals at the doctor’s office though qualified us for assistance to women who developed toxemia and we had to pay only 20% of our bill as a normal insured couple. We only had to allow access to my medical records for "study."

As it turned out he came three weeks early - which was fine.

In the hospital, I was weighed every day and after a week, I got on the scales with water running down my legs. I thought "My God I wet myself," and I’m embarrassed and apologizing all over the place. Of course, I’d just woken up and wasn’t quite "with it" yet. The nurses were very kind and did allow me to take a shower while they were changing my bed. As it turned out my water had broken, and I "leaked" all day. And wouldn’t you know it, I had the inside bed and the girl beside me - her husband was there all day long. Since my water had broken, I was only allowed to wear the hospital gown, which as you know, leaves a lot to be covered. I was extremely uncomfortable and embarrassed when I had to walk past this guy who just wouldn’t go home!

That evening, a stranger, a girl who said she lived next door to me (next to the house I was moving into - we hadn’t even moved in yet!) came to visit me. She stayed and stayed and stayed and in the meantime, I’m getting wetter and wetter and wetter. I’m praying, "God, please make her leave!" By the time she left, I had to call the nurses to come and change my bed again and I had to go clean up, again walking past that dumb man sitting in that stupid chair.

About 4:00 the next morning, I began to feel "weird" twinges and they kept up continually. I finally called a nurse who assured me that I had started labor. By 8:00 I had to again talk them into letting me take another shower. They said I could if a nurse stayed at the door with me. I went back to bed and the twinges increased and I was taken to the "labor" room. There I was assigned a male nurse (the indignities never end) who wanted to give me an enema. As my water had broken I wasn’t allowed to use the bathroom like a nice girl, He gave me a bedpan and stood there and waited. Well, nothing happened. And nothing happened - five gallons of water and nothing! He won’t leave me laying on the table because I might fall off. So he waits! And I wait, my bowels refusing to budge! Finally I win, only just a little though. He agrees to leave the room and all is fairly okay with the world again - a little privacy at last! He finally calls in a female nurse for the rest of this ordeal.

Now the labor room was just that - a room where you labored and the more you labored, the worse it hurt! My husband came in and asked did I really want him there, it was just going to take a long time with nothing happening, and he was bored and hungry. I was in no mood for him to be pestering me, so I told him to just leave and I’d be fine. My parents and a couple of friends came soon afterwards. My husband finally came back (by the way, we are now divorced - see above).

Now I don’t remember having "contractions." I remember hell. There was the pain and then there was more pain (I suppose that was the contractions). That pain never let up like I thought it would, the pain just kep coming. From the beginning it took about 8-9 hours to reach 4 centimeters. And then within 30 minutes I was at 10. Then I hit what I suppose is "transition."

All of a sudden there was this urge to push. However, the doctor hadn’t arrived yet, and the nurses are telling me, "no hold it, don’t push!" Yeah! like right!

The nurses see that I’m still pushing (how in the world do you stop?) and are gloving up and finally the doctor comes in and is all nicey nice to my husband, who by this time I hate!

Finally, when the "doctor" is ready, he tells me I can push - whew - what a sweet guy! Two pushes and the baby is here. I’ll never forget when they laid him in my arms, loads and loads of black hair and weird wadded up ears! A total stranger and all of a sudden I realized I had no idea who he was or what he liked or even if he would like me.

Then they told me that they were going to give me a sponge bath and a massage! I thought, ah, how nice - I don’t have to work at anything now, I can rest. I envisioned a nice dimly lit room with people around my bedside attending to my every need and a wonderful bath and massage!

Whoaaa! Reality check!

The sponge bath WAS very nice. But that massage! Was I in for an education. There was no way on earth that I would have believed that some little nurse was going to come in and jump up and plop herself on my stomach four times in the next hour (at least that’s what it felt like, and that’s exactly what she did! Supposedly this is to make sure that the womb is cleared). Luckly by the fourth time, I knew what was coming and it did get a little better. But that first groan (which was more like a scream) I will always remember! I don’t know why they didn’t tell us this stuff! And as I lay there waiting the next 15 minutes for her to make her rounds of unfeeling manipulation, I could hear the groans and screams of the other ladies who had also unknowingly entered this hell.

The next morning, I went down to a special class to learn how to take care of my little baby and I’m in this room with about 40 other women. The room is about 10 by 12 and crowded. I don’t know how the other ladies knew to bring inner tubes along to sit on, but nobody gave me one and it was extremely uncomfortable and HOT! I finally figured out that when I was little I’d played with dolls enough that I could figure out how to change a diaper and asked to go back to my room. I’d barely gotten back when a bunch of friends came into my room for a surprise baby shower. Normally, I would have been so pleased, but I was just tired and guiltily wishing they would all go home which they finally did!

Today, my baby is 34, married and maybe one day his wife will have one, though I hope her experience is different.

How can we protect our children?

This past Wednesday, April 19, little Hailey Owens from Springfield, Missouri, was kidnapped and within a couple of hours was raped and murdered (shot at the base of her skull). All of Springfield and surrounding area are mourning the loss of this beautiful young girl.

We are struggling to make sense of how a 45-year-old man, Craig Michael Wood, a middle-school coach and paraprofessional for in-school suspension, and a local musician, could do such a thing. Questions arose as to why this man was even working for the school system. The school has assured us that an extensive background check had been done and all that was found was a minor drug infraction back in 1990 - 24 years ago - and a minor hunting infraction in 2001, (apparently he hit a deer with his car, but the judge, a wildlife advocate, felt otherwise). He had been working for the Springfield school system for 15 years - with no problems whatsoever! His neighbors described him as quiet, most of the kids seemed to like him - one even said he was the best coach ever!

Of course, new information is just now coming out and I'm sure there will be more. A raid of his house found child pornography in a three-ring binder and several guns. During questioning so far he stated that in his 20s he had black-out spells and he has had a problem with alcohol. We still wonder, though, how did he stay off the radar for so long?

Hailey was sick earlier that day so she didn't go to school. (I need to point out that Craig Wood did NOT work at Hailey's school and they did NOT know each other.) Later after school was out she felt better and walked the two blocks to her best friend's house. It was during that walk that she was abducted. A few people saw Wood grab Hailey and tried to stop it, then tried chasing Wood with their car. When that failed, they called 911 with a description of the truck and license plate number and then went from house to house to try to find her parents. Because of the information police received they found Wood within 3-4 hours, but it was already too late.

This is such a sad and almost unbelievable story and Springfield is "reeling." We just don't know what to make of it. In our efforts to do something, we've set up funds to help Hailey's family with expenses, there will be a candlelight march on the northside of town tonight, a motorcycle ride is planned. And while we know it won't bring Hailey back, we hope it sends a message to her parents that we as a community care.

Almost immediately a Facebook page was set up in memory of Hailey Porch Lights for Hailey Owens. We were asked to turn on our porch light. Within an hour there were over 100,000 people all over the US and across the world turning on their porch lights and sending in pictures. As of this moment there are over 214,000 people around the world committed to turning on their porch lights in memory of Hailey and other children who have been kidnapped and murdered.

I remember when my own son David was that age in 1990. It hadn't been too long since Adam Walsh had been kidnapped and murdered; children's faces were on milk cartons and it was very much on our minds how dangerous the world was. My son was not allowed to leave our yard when he played outside. He went to a small private school so he didn't really know any of the neighborhood children until he was older. However, he did have friends stay over on the weekend - sometimes two, three, or four boys at a time. As silly as even I thought it was, he was still in daycare the summer after he turned 13 (under the guise that he was helping out). When he started public school in his middle school years, he took the bus which was two blocks away. I sat in the car at the bus stop until it arrived. I noticed the house where the bus stopped - a man sat at his window every morning and watched. I don't know if he was interested in keeping the kids safe or not, I wasn't about to find out.

Even as our children get older, we realize the danger is still not over. When David reached driving age, I would leave the newspaper open on the kitchen table when a teen had been involved in a horrific wreck. I wanted him to see what could still happen. He told me later that he saw those pictures and they scared him!

I've always been amazed though how many parents were just not available to their teens after midnight. One night while spending the night with a friend, he called around 2-3 a.m. because their car had broken down. There were four boys and I was the last parent to be called; none of the other parents answered their phone. As I was getting dressed to go out and rescue them, I could not believe that these kids' parents were unavailable at night. I found it even more amazing that one parent actually turned their phone off at night. The reason I know was because David had told me that he "might" spend the night at a friend's house, but he would let me know for sure. When he didn't call and still wasn't home at curfew, I started calling his friend's house an hour later. They did not answer until 8 or 9 in the morning because they turned their phone off at night - and they still had two teenage boys at home!

It seems though that sometimes even when we are extremely cautious there is very little we can do to protect our kids. Our own little town recently suffered several teen losses in only a couple of years. At least nine teens are gone much too soon in only the past three to four years. And from back in 1992 is the still unsolved case of The Springfield Three - two teenage friends Stacie McCall and Suzanne Streeter, and Suzanne's mother Sherrill Levitt who went missing the night after high school graduation.

I know Hailey's mom did nothing wrong - she said she walked her daughter to school every day, and this one day, because it was so nice, she let Hailey go to her friend's house by herself. Hailey and her friend always met half-way, but not that day.