Category: History

My Birthday :)

On 13 July 2014

Today is my birthday and I got a phone call from my mom who out of the blue just started to tell me about the day I was born. So I thought I’d share that story although it isn’t an unusual one, but I felt like sharing it since it’s something that tends to not be written down.

side note: I feel like birthday’s should be more about the mother than the baby. After all, they do most of the work!

Probably 1983, when I was about one but this is the closest I had on hand to baby me 🙂

This is my mom’s version of the story:

“It was three days before your due date and I was at the doctor’s for a checkup. I was in the waiting room when I felt my water leak a bit. I went to the receptionist and said that I thought my water was leaking so they took me in a room and got me ready for a doctor. They got me dressed, on to the table stirrups and all, and went to find a doctor. All the while I could feel myself leaking a bit more and didn’t understand why I was still there waiting! About 15 minutes passed when a nurse came back in, checked me, and said she was going to just send me over to the hospital since all the doctors were busy. I drove myself to the hospital, they put me in a wheel chair, and I signed in. They wheeled me up to the room, I stood up to get undressed and onto the bed when whoosh… my water officially broke and there went the long pants I was wearing!

I had called your dad to let him know. He was taking a class at the high school (not a high school class though, some sort of mechanics class) so I had to call the school. They wouldn’t let me talk to them so I told them ‘Well, this is his wife and I’m having his baby at the moment.’ To which they replied that they would rush the message to him. About 10 minutes later he showed up at the hospital! He had taken his bike to the school so I could have the car that day so he must have flown on his bike to the hospital! [side note: that is normally about a 20 minute bike ride with traffic!] He was huffing and puffing when he finally arrived but he wanted to be there because he got to be in the delivery room this time with me. He didn’t get to for Devon [my older brother]. He didn’t need to rush though as it takes time from the water breaking to the actual delivery.

I got to the hospital about 12:30 and had also called my friend who was a nurse in that part of the hospital. She had told me to let her know when I was there so she could be my nurse. Of course, it was her day off but she came up anyway to sit with me. After a few hours, she mentioned that she didn’t like something and left to find a doctor. That made me nervous. A bit later I heard nurses telling the doctor “Just come in! Don’t bother washing!’

I told them I had to push a bit on that last one and they set me up to deliver. The umbilical cord was around your neck, that was what my friend didn’t like. Your heartbeat was slowing the further down you went and when I had contractions. Once your head was out, they cut the cord without a problem, and out came the rest of you! It was such a relief!

My friend turned to me and said I now had the perfect family: a boy and a girl. I felt so good after the birth too. The nurse asked if I was hungry and I was and then I proceeded to call everyone to tell them the happy news. It was so easy that I thought I could have five more without a problem! I didn’t want to have five more but I felt like I could. “

I was born at 4:40 so only about 4 hours of labor! I have had friends who had over 20 hours of labor so I know how lucky my mom was. Days like this make me wish I lived so much closer to my family. I miss them!

Left to right: my nephew with my sister-in-law (who was pregnant with my next nephew at the time), my brother, me, my mom, my dad, and my sister. This goofy picture pretty much sums up my family!

Those Places Thursday: Mt. Pleasant, Michigan

By Nichelle Barra

On 19 June 2014

In History, Unrelated

I have to say, as a Michigander, I love those Pure Michigan commercials!

I went to Central Michigan University as because of that, I am a rather large fan of Mt. Pleasant, Michigan. Now, when I chose my university I did it purely on financial reasons. I couldn’t really afford to be picky. But it worked out very well in my favor. I learned a lot about myself during that time and met some amazing people.

Central is also known as a teaching school. It used to be called Central Michigan Normal School (started in 1892) AND I have women in my family who went to school there to become teachers. These ancestors aren’t in my direct line but I was very excited to see them in census records as attending either a “teaching school” or “central normal school.”

I don’t have permission to post some of the wonderful old pictures of CMU but if you go here, you’ll see some information on Central’s 120th anniversary from 2012 along with some neat old pictures. There was a fire in 1925 that destroyed some of the main buildings. Warriner Hall was built to replace it (see below) and was our main building for admission/academic items to go to. At least it was when I went there. If you’re curious about what the fire looked like, go here.

CMU has changed a lot since I went to school there. Even while I was attending school, it was changing. My freshman year I lived in the Towers (non-air conditioned freshman halls – although most dorms weren’t air conditioned then) while they were building the “New Towers” that were more like apartments (VERY NOISILY – started at 8am M-F – even during exams!). The Towers had four people in each dorm. The dorm consisted of 3 rooms – a main room, a thin, small bathroom, and a bedroom. It could get a bit cramped in those dorms. The new dorms have four separate bedrooms, a main living area, and two bathrooms. Talk about a luxury! I did get the chance to stay there during the summer when I worked summer desk. They are very nice! And the rest of the dorms are a bit better than those freshman dorms. I didn’t stay in the Towers after my first year but moved to an all girls dorm, Beddow, across the way (smelled so much better than co-ed dorms), which is no longer an all-girls dorm. These dorms still have four people but there are two bedrooms, a main room, and a bathroom. Not as cramped and really nice as far as dorms go.

Besides those new buildings, they now have a new education building! While I was getting my education degree, the education building was the old library with “classrooms” set up with semi-permanent walls that didn’t quite touch the ceiling and quite a bit of outdated equipment. In short, we were well prepared for what we would get in the teaching world (HA!). The new building is quite amazing with all this wonderful technology (that sadly won’t be found in many classrooms that these new teachers will be placed in later). I was sad that it came about after I left!

One of my favorite new buildings also came about my freshman year. The library (go figure, right?). It is a large, glass walled building with MOVING SHELVES! That was oddly my favorite feature. It was also the first time I got to work with old documents, microfilm, and research techniques. I fell in love with it all 🙂

This is on the floor of the new education building

Campus from a window of the education building

Warriner Hall

Beautiful fall scenery! My favorite time of year 🙂

Well. I just realized this was a entry entirely dedicated to my love for my university. It works, right? 🙂