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Waiting for baby
JUNEAU -- My daughter and I strapped ice grippers onto our boots and walked the dogs through the frosted brush to the Mendenhall Glacier. I held the leash for an energetic young lab and my daughter had her mellower bloodhound as we gingerly crossed the ice overflow on a creek. "Juneau people want all dogs on leashes," my daughter said, over her shoulder, "and it's really hard for a pregnant lady to walk two dogs on a leash. This is much better." She was glad I had arrived in town to help. As I grabbed an alder trunk to stay upright, I was too. The dog on my leash belongs to the family she and my son-in-law have been house-sitting for since December 22. They will be home any day. The baby was due January 5. My daughter was born in the Haines clinic in 1985, and is one of the last people with its address on her birth certificate. Insurance costs for doctors delivering babies went way up, and at the same time, the Native health care services decided that local Native deliveries had to be at a hospital for safety reasons. So, we can't have babies in Haines anymore. I take that back. Of course you can. It's just not allowed, and if anything goes wrong -- woe be to you. One woman, for mostly religious reasons, has had several of her seven or eight babies in the bathtub. I know of two other babies who arrived early and fast and caught everyone by surprise. They are another reason why local doctors tell their pregnant patients to be near the hospital or birthing center at least three weeks before the baby is due. When I was in Juneau waiting for my fourth, my husband and our young children remained in Haines, for over a month. (She was late.) My daughter is lucky because her husband works for Fish & Game, so he can be at the Juneau office while she is here, and because an old friend from Haines has moved to Juneau and opened her home to them. Still, she has a lot of time on her hands. She has filled up a box of baby board books she found at the Friends of the Library used bookstore. She's reading Operating Instructions and novels she calls guilty pleasures, like Lipstick Jungle. "I figure its better than watching old episodes of 'Sex and the City'," she said. While she reads, her husband has seen every college bowl game. The first time she bought groceries at the huge Fred Meyer store it took her fifteen minutes to find the olive oil. Now, she shows me where the bath salts are. She shops almost everyday, since she doesn't want to stock up when she could be in labor any minute. On the way out, the clerk guessed she had two more months. "No, I'm actually due today," my daughter said. The woman said she might want to stick around, "my water broke at Fred Meyer." My daughter is very clean, and so is the house. Because she says, "you never know when you'll be in labor." She has also thought about middle names that would work with the season, like Holiday, Eve, Champagne, and Melchior. I'm kidding about the last one. They know the baby is a girl. But she still may have a boy's name, since Andre Dawson was just inducted into the hall of fame and my son-in-law is a huge Cubs fan. "I think Caroline Dawson sounds great," he said, and is appropriately northern, like Dawson City. "How about Caroline Andre instead?" She said. We were in the little ranch house near the big glacier finishing dinner. My daughter's husband looked out at the snow changing to rain in the streetlight, and said, "I'm so ready to go home." A friend was coming in on the evening ferry and needed to be picked up, and the owners of the house were arriving at the airport later. They'd all be together from now on. (I am bunking with friends.) We were eating quiche, since both my daughter and son-in-law had bought eggs the day before, and wanted to use them, just in case. My daughter picked at hers; she wasn't that hungry, she said.
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