Birth Day

*I've been meaning to post this for a while, but being a bit behind is my life these days. Oh wait, that's always been my life.

**I usually try not to write long, detailed posts, but for record's sake, long and detailed it is! Consider yourself warned.

When our first baby was born I was mainly concerned with getting the house just perfect, buying everything we needed, and the labor itself. This go around I hardly gave any of that much thought. It was simply, what are we going to do with Charlie when we have to go to the hospital? We don't have any family near, and most of the friends that we have made would be traveling for the holidays. I prayed (and worried) about this for weeks. months. I knew the Lord would work it out some way, but I had no idea he would do it so lovingly.

The weekend began with some of our favorite people coming for a visit.

Though I would have loved to paint the town with them, being 8 (9?) months pregnant was taking its toll and I let them go on their own ~ at least for a day. I did have one thing I really wanted to do while they were here~ take a picture for our Christmas card in front of the Rockefeller Christmas tree.

We should have known, but we were shocked by the mob of people in the city. It was dark before we could even get near the tree, and "near" meant hundreds of people between us and it. I somehow managed to get one shot while being bumped and prodded along.
So this ended up being the best we could get. Not the lovely family Christmas picture that I had envisioned, but I'm so thankful for it ~ little did I know we would be a family of four the next day!
The chaos and cold had by then taken its toll so we went to a nearby restaurant where both pregnant women (yes, Heather was about 7 weeks pregnant at the time!) were hanging on by a thread by the time we finally got our table. Somewhere on our trek back to Grand Central I looked at Heather, wide-eyed. I've been thinking of how to write this without embarrassing myself.....but I don't know how to put it.....and don't know how to leave it out.....I told her that I had either just peed on myself, or my water was breaking. We spent the rest of the walk back calmly trying to decide what to do. Calmly, until we heard that the next train didn't leave for another 45 minutes. Then the tears began to flow. Because intense contractions started immediately after my water broke with Charlie, and because he came pretty quickly, and because we had another hour to get home ~ where no bags were packed, and because I was only 36 weeks.....I really wanted to panic. But a call to the doctor put me at ease. She really didn't think it could be happening.

But during the night, "it" happened again and I told Bryan to throw some things in a bag. I smiled while making my way to Clay and Heather's room, thinking how Clay had told us that night that when his Mom's water broke she hit his dad and said "it's go time!". After knocking to no avail, I finally ran in and woke them with "it's go time!".

By now I was really excited, feeling like the Lord had answered my midnight prayer to confirm if it was time or not, as well as what I had been praying for months - for Charlie to be taken care of. I'm still amazed that we just "happened" to have dear friends here that Charlie loves as much as we do. I was thanking the Lord all along the beautiful snowy drive to the hospital in CT.

When we arrived, I had clearly woken up the on-call doctor. I was treated like an overly-concerned first-timer . I was so bummed that the tests "confirmed" her attitude, and that we had to do the walk of shame all the way home.

Clay and Heather went to the Radio City Christmas Show without us that afternoon, but we joined them at a local diner that night. All through dinner I was having mild contractions, but since I had been having them since week 20 I didn't know whether to take them seriously or not. I finally called the doctor again (who I mistakenly called "Scallywag", because her true name rhymes with it, and I was pregnant and had no brain. oops) who was clearly perturbed this time. She told me to "do whatever I thought". I was furious. confused. wishing I had said, "but your the doctor, you tell me what to do!".

I am so thankful for Heather and Clay, who prayed for us and asked for the Lord to give us wisdom about what to do. As soon as "amen", the phone rang. It was Scallywag, who simply said "I think you should go in". Thank you Lord. Until then I had resolved to wait until my doctor's appointment the next day. We later would find that the baby would have been in danger by then.

Evidently, Scallywag called to make sure another doc was there to deal with me, and he was clearly perturbed too. But alas, tests finally confirmed that my water indeed had begun to break. I was immediately admitted, and poor Scallywag had to come in. They had just given me pitocin when she walked in my room and saw me on my computer and said, "oh no, you are way to comfortable, bump her up" (talking to the nurses about my pitocin). I lightheartedly asked if she knew they had just put me on it, and she shot me a look of death. I also told her that my other child had come quickly....but she didn't seem to care. I was really hoping baby would hold on until the next doctor's shift!

When I had progressed enough to get an epidural, it only lasted long enough for the anesthesiologist to walk out of the room. I told the nurses that it was wearing off, but yet again, I wasn't taken seriously. When I was no longer able to talk, the nurse called the anesthesiologist, but before he could get there I told her (with panic behind my calm voice) that I thought I was ready to have this baby. She froze, wide-eyed, then ran out of the room to get the doctor. A whole crew then came rushing in, trying to quickly set up their stations. The kind nurse was trying to tell the doctor that I needed my epidural fixed, but Scallywag told her no, stared me down and said, "you can do this, and you can do it in five minutes". Sure enough she was right. Samuel was born minutes later. The cord was wrapped around his neck (which explained his heart rate dropping many times earlier) so it was good that we did not wait.

We were surprised that Samuel was a "whopping" 5 lbs, 13 oz. being 4 weeks early, and that he was perfectly healthy. Perfectly perfect.

Our hospital stay was wonderful. so restful. We were even served the hospital's signature "celebration dinner" of filet mignon, lobster, champagne and dessert!
I was a little nervous about going home this time. I knew that chaos awaited.
But chaos waited a few weeks. More on that in the next post.