elijah nathanael lee morgan will be a week old tomorrow. he is grandson #5 and grandchild #10 and he is the fifth child of my first - stephen lee morgan. thinking about eli's birth brought back memories of stephen's birth. in fact eli was almost as big as his daddy -- eli 8lbs 15 ozs -- step 9lbs 3 ozs. another similarity -- eli was born on saturday afternoon and step was born on friday. eli is probably the last child to be born to their family whereas step was the first.
stephen was a bit of a surprise --- well actually all of my children were. i had a miscarriage in march and then had a terrible stomach flu in april and then come may i got pregnant. we were living in pensacola, fl and had friends down to visit us for a week during june. they were a bit older than we were and didn't have any kids. during their visit they shared their news that they were expecting their first child. unknowing at the time that we also were expecting our first child. kimberly was born about a month before stephen.
sam was working for a construction company that did contract work for southern bell telephone company and i was working for an insurance agency. after learning our surprising news sam began to think of getting a better paying job. about that time we went home (mississippi) for a visit. his brother-in-law bob and his nephew billy had both just hired on with the army corp of engineers to work on the tombigbee waterway project. after we got back to pensacola, sam made contact with the corp office in mobile, alabama and got a job working on a drill rig. first job was in aliceville, alabama. i stayed on in pensacola for the first month and gave my notice. then in october i started travelling with sam. our plans were to just keep our apartment in pensacola until we decided where we wanted to settle.
those plans changed abruptly when i called our realtor the first of november to make sure they got our rent check and see if things were going ok. he gave us the news that our apartment had been broken into and some of our stuff stolen. fortunately the theives were caught with our stuff so we got most of it back. the theives were our next door neighbors -- they crawled through the attic and got into our apartment that way. they were new neighbors who had not lived there very long before i left.
so during thanksgiving holidays sam, bob, billy, and i drove down and loaded everything up and moved us to calhoun city -- to a small apartment (only 1 bedroom -- stephen's crib was in a corner of the dining room) that sat beside the furneral home. so i travelled with sam until february than i stayed at the apartment and he would come home on weekends. at that time they were working around columbus so it wasn't a bad drive.
i don't remember exactly but i think my due date was not too long after my birthday -- which is february 17. but i really didn't think he/she would come until the first part of march. he came on march 7th. the last couple of weeks i stayed with my folks (just in case). i remember my aunt louise would call me every morning and say " weeellll how you feeling to day jan? you feel any different?"
same answer everyday --- nope just the same.
i had a doctor's appointment on march 6. doc decided maybe the baby needed a bit of help to get things started so he told me to check into the hospital that evening and he would induce the next morning. sam came over to see me that night and the plans were for him to come back after work the next day --- thinking that baby wouldn't come before then. he leaves around 9 and mother and i get settled in for the night. around midnight i have to go to the bathroom and as i'm getting back into bed my water breaks. guess stephen didn't like the idea of him not being the one in charge of when he wanted to make an appearance. so we get everything humming along and i go back to sleep (kinda). when doc comes in to check up on me early in the morning he doesn't like the looks of things and puts a monitor on stephen --- just in case. daddy calls sam about 5:30 and tells him to hightail it back to houston. my cousin nell and my aunt louise show up sometime during the day and my daddy gets there as soon after work as possible. as for me i didn't know about any of this until later. things rock along all day until the magic time sometime around 5. by this time i'm finally alert and know what's happening. they wheel me into delivery and there at 5:30 i get to meet my beautiful big baby boy. ( i think daddy got there just as the doctor was coming out to tell everybody what we had. i also think he got a speeding ticket that evening.)
it was a very special time. i think all my family members were standing around in the hall i know sam was anyway when the doctor came out. sam said after he told them what we had and how big he was he just looked at sam and just smiled and shook his head then walked off down the hall.
5 days later we got to go home to begin our life as a family. i stayed at my folks house except for weekends when sam came home. then in april stephen and i started travelling with him. he would rent us a trailer so we didn't have to stay in motels. so for the first year of his life stephen didn't stay in one place more than a few weeks at a time. he travelled from columbus, ms to fulton, ms to clarksville, tn to kingsport, tn and back to clarksville then finally to calhoun city. then when he was 17 months old we moved to coldwater, ms and rented a house and he had his own room at last -- at least for a few months. when he was 28 months he had to share it with his sister emily but that's another story.
