Photos by William Bilancio
On March 11th, 1993 – 24 years ago at this time I was sitting in the hospital with Carolyn waiting for the birth of our child (we didn’t know the sex of the baby yet) at the original Princeton Hospital in Princeton NJ.
For us, the day started around 3 am* with Carolyn waking me up to tell me her water broke and that the baby was going to be arriving a lot earlier than we expected. We had just finished the Lamaze class two nights before and gotten the tour of the hospital, so we were ready for this, we both figured we would have a bouncing baby something by lunch….. We called the doctor, and he told us not to head to the hospital till 7 am if the labor pains were still far apart. Forget going back to sleep at this point, so I started to wandering around the 70 Cleveland Lane house and came across my godmother taking care of her dog who wasn’t doing well that night, the look of surprise on her face when I told her that Carolyn’s water had broken and we would be having the baby today.
We headed to the hospital at 7 am and were admitted in our private birthing room by 7:30 am and the wait started. By 11 am we realized that this little bundle of joy wasn’t going to be coming out anytime soon, the day wore on, and we went trough two shifts of nurses and doctors. Carolyn’s doctor had been stopping by throughout the day to check on her and see her progress. Around 7 pm he informed us it was getting close to time and be ready to start pushing and breathing. So the nurses started prepping Carolyn for the final parts of birthing a baby and then the journey started. After about an hour and 45 min of screaming and pushing and breathing out came a cute, small bundle of girl on March 11, 1993, @ 8:45 pm in time for us to watch Cheers. Avery was rushed off to the nursery and Carolyn was taken care of and moved to her room. I headed to the nursery, and there was my godmother looking at the baby through the window, and she turned to me and said she is beautiful and is going to be a great person and do great things…..
All through the day, we kept talking about a name, and we still hadn’t come up with a name at this point, so we decided to take the night and the next day to come up with a name. It came down to Avery because we both loved the show Murph Brown and she had named her TV baby Avery, and it stuck with us…so Avery it was.
That day was one of the most special days for me, and I am so proud of my daughter who has turned into such a wonderful woman who is just starting on the journey of her adult life and is going to do great things, just like my godmother said.
To celebrate this great night after I left the hospital, I headed to Hoagie Haven and got myself two large cheese steaks with everything one for dinner and one for breakfast. So today I am going to be on the hunt for a decent cheese steak in the Corning area to celebrate my daughters birthday!
Happy Birthday, Avery…I love and miss you so much!
Photos by William Bilancio
- All times are an approximation except for the birth time. (Hey it’s been 24 years and I didn’t take any notes during the day 🙂 )
Wonderful Remembrance, William.