I Blinked and It Was Thirty-Five Years Later

Thirty-five years ago on May 27, 1989 I got up around 5:30 am to visit the bathroom and a huge gush of water ran down my legs, leaving a large amount of water on the floor. I was fearful, and knew the day had finally arrived…I woke my husband up and around 7 am we began walking around the mobile home park trying to get labor going.

I was not really having any regular contractions, and by noon we were told to come to the hospital anyway since my water had broken over seven hours earlier. Zachary James Elfers was born and took his first breaths just before midnight that night–11:57 pm–making his birth date shared with my cousin Laura’s oldest son, William, who was born in 1983.

Below is a photo of me about a week before Zach’s birth (in the pink shorts). I remember being at the cash register of a store that day in that outfit and the cashier looked at me and said, “That’s the biggest stomach I have ever seen!”

The next photo of me in the blue dress was taken the morning of May 27, before we went to the hospital.

When baby Zach was about a week old we took him out strawberry picking somewhere in Maryland. I was surprised to find that I felt up to that kind of outing and was interested in not missing my yearly jam-making with each fruit…beginning with strawberries.

I believe these next three photos were from that day; before we left we took some photos in a favorite little outfit gifted to Zach by Katy Uniacke. We put him in a carrier with some protective covering from the sun, and he slept through most of the strawberry picking outing and car ride as I recall…he was a very easy, mellow baby and not very fussy.

About a week ago I saw my son’s grown hand holding freshly picked strawberries somewhere on Instagram but now I cannot locate it. If I can get the photo from him, I will add it here since I’m thinking about that strawberry picking when he was a week old. And in the blink of an eye he is now a full-grown man, almost nine years older than I was (at age 26) when he was born.

Happy 35th Birthday, Zach; I love you. ~ Mom