Read Online Going Rogue: An American Life by Lynn Vincent, Sarah Palin - Free Book Online

so many young Alaskans dream of so he could work a schedule that would allow him to enjoy as many of our outdoor passions as possible while making a good living. While he waited, he worked. I remember him working so hard that he dropped to about 150
    pounds from handling the bags in the belly of the plane. (Surely it couldn’t have been my newlywed cooking skills that conttibuted to that.)
    While he slimmed down, I porked up, pregnant with our first child. As the months went on, Todd’s prayer was answered by an offer for a permanent position with BP: he’d move up from plowing patking lots to working a week-on, week-off schedule in the rich oil patch that BP partially controlled in Prudhoe Bay near the top of the continent, earning a king’s ransom of $14 an hour. When I made the happy announcement that Todd would be a Sloper, Dad responded, “Is that good news or bad news?”
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    Going
    He knew the pros and cons of the physical sepatation endured by Slope families. He’d seen many of his students whose parents’
    marriages collapsed under the demands of Slope life. Todd and I were excited about it, though. We’d been together but separate for many years already, so we figured we could handle whatever life dished out. We put it all in God’s hands.
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    On April 20, 1989, my life truly began. I became a mom. I had no idea how this tiny person, my son, would turn me inside out and upside down with the all-consuming love that swelled my heart from the second he was born. As
    as it sounds, that
    was the happiest day of my life.
    The two previous days, however, were not.
    On April 18, I went into labor. I called Todd and asked him to fly home early from his weekly hitch on the Slope-a mere 858mile commute, one way-to meet me, my mom, and Blanche at my parents’ house. I had set up camp there for the night, trying to find comfort while ignoring Dad’s attempt at humor: “I’m sticking close to home for the next few days,” he told a buddy on the phone. “Sarah’s ready to calve.”
    I was quite a cocky young mom-to-be. I’d gone through the requisite childbirth class (we were going to use the Lamaze method), and, being an athlete used to pain, I figured, How tough could giving birth be?
    Oh. My. Gosh. I thought I was going to die. In fact, I began to pray that I would die.
    A laserlike searing rolled through me in waves, from my knees to my belly button. Had any woman ever hurt this much?
    I didn’t think so. I gritted my teeth and willed myself not to scream.
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    SARAH
    PALIN
    Todd made it down from the Slope the next day. Between nuclear-level contractions, I couldn’r climb into our truck, so I squeezed sideways and backward into the passenger seat of Mom’s Subaru, my belly poking out like a medicine ball, and Todd drove me ro Valley Hospital. We saw the sign where were supposed
    to gO-DELIvERIEs-and followed the arrows.
    He parked the car, helped me out, and we entered rhrough a rear entrance. Struggling down hallway after hallway, stopping for contracrions in the industrial zone, I glanced over to see Todd near a janitor’s closer telling a maintenance worker: “You guys need better signage to ger people through ro deliveries!” Since I rhoughr I was dying, I didn’t care that we were in the warehouse part of the hospital. I figured I’d just die there near the delivery rrucks. I even came close to thinking that someday we’d laugh about it.
    All rhrough my perfect, healthy pregnancy, I had pictured this peaceful Earth Mother birth experience, the lights low in the delivery room, maybe even some of that nature-sound music playing in the background. Like a pioneer woman, I would bravely deliver our firsrborn, Todd beaming beside me, wirh the Alaska wilderness waiting ourside to welcome our son, the newest addirion to Nature’s grand march of creatures great and small.
    Instead, by the time the nurses gor me prepped, I was sweating and panting, trying to do those infernal breathing