I was 4 months pregnant when school ended for the year and other than my closest friends, no one at school knew. Not my fellow teachers. Not my principal. Not my students. My belly didn't 'pop' until after the 4 month mark, so I was still wearing my regular clothes. My surgery had been at the end of August and I was slated to take 6 weeks off to recover (though I ended up taking only 4). Needless to say, school had already started when I went back to resume teaching. Not only was it a huge surprise for my students to see me back at school, they were doubly surprised to learn that I was pregnant too!
With surgery behind me and the worry of my cyst gone, I was looking ahead to the future. When I first got pregnant, Joe and I agreed that we wanted midwives to deliver our baby. In fact, two of our really good friends were midwives and they were going to be the ones to do it. We also agreed that we wanted to have a home birth. I know that is shocking for some people, but we believed that it would be nicer to have our baby at home and we knew we were in really good hands! After the surgery, Joe and I started looking into the possibility of having a home 'water' birth. This would require us to get a special birthing tub and so we were slowly mulling it over.
We were like many couples who had hit the 7-month pregnancy mark, we didn't have a lot of the things needed for baby but we weren't in any rush to get them either. Theo's due date was December 25 so we still had lots of time. Yup, I was going to have a baby born on or around Christmas - something I had hoped never to do to my child. I myself was born less than a week before Christmas and had to endure years of 'birthday/Christmas' gifts (especially from my brothers). I was secretly praying that this baby would make an early entrance into the world.
Be careful what you wish for...
It was Friday, November 3 and I woke up at 7 to get ready for work. As I was walking down the hall towards the bathroom I suddenly felt a slight gushing sensation. Okay, either I have peed my pants (in which case, how embarrassing) or my water just broke...only, it is way too early for that to be happening! 7 1/2 weeks way too early! At this point most women would be calling for their husbands and freaking out a little. Well, I was definitely freaking out but it wasn't a little and it wouldn't have made a difference if I called out for Joe...because he was in B.C.!! For those of you not familiar with my amazing country - he was 4300 km (2670 miles) away. Ahhhhh!!
I think at some point I resumed breathing and was able to find the phone number to page my midwife, Jenn. After talking to her, I hopped in my car and drove to her house (still 'leaking' the whole time - how pleasant.). Her husband Geoff was there (her husband and my husband just happen to be best friends) and he ended up driving the two of us to the hospital (the same one where I had my surgery) so that I could get checked out by the OB/GYN there (the same one who did my surgery). All morning I was trying to get a hold of Joe on his cell phone and was not surprisingly unsuccessful...it was after all only 4:00 in the morning there.
When we got to the hospital and I got checked out, it was confirmed that my bag of membranes had indeed ruptured a little. So much for the peed my pants theory. Okay, so if you don't know too much about fetal development, I will give you the quick run down. At 32-weeks, while the baby is growing at an increasing rate, the baby's lungs are not yet fully developed. This meant that I needed to be given a special drug that would help the baby's lungs develop more quickly. Since the hospital I was at was not equipped to deal with preemies, I needed to be transferred to another one...
In style! This was the part where I got to experience my first (and hopefully last) ride in an ambulance (minus the sirens). Oh did I mention that the paramedics were super cute and I was too busy 'wetting' myself this morning to put on make-up or brush my hair (go figure!) It was, nonetheless, a cool ride to the hospital. Less cool was when we got there and they wheeled me out on a gurney, through the hospital and several onlookers.
I was taken into a room, introduced to another doctor and hooked up to a machine that would monitor my baby's heart rate and my contractions. They gave me drugs to help stop the contractions in hopes of keeping the baby inside me longer to keep 'cooking'. I had fingers, toes and every other appendage crossed hoping that the baby would at least wait until Joe got there before making his grand entrance into the world.
Meanwhile this whole time, Geoff (who had followed us to the hospital in his car) had been desperately trying to get a hold of Joe - calling people Joe worked with, trying to get Joe's client's phone number. Finally, he managed to get through to Joe (at around 10 am)- I can just imagine how that conversation went "Um, yeah, you might want to come home, Cathy's water broke and she's having contractions". The crazy part was that Joe was in this smaller town called Quesnel (pronounced kwe-nell) and needed to take a small plane to get to Vancouver where he could then fly home. And wouldn't you know it there was a snow storm there (of course). Amazingly enough he managed to get out on the last flight that left Quesnel before they closed the airport! He was then able to easily find a flight out of Vancouver heading for Toronto. When he arrived at the airport, he got in his car and drove straight to the hospital and I've been told he may have been going a little bit over the speed limit to get there.
I can't tell you the relief I felt when Joe walked in the door at 5:30 that afternoon. Almost immediately after his arrival, my contractions stopped. It was like the baby knew - "Okay, Daddy's here, no need to rush". Of course, even with the immediate danger over, they couldn't exactly send me home - so I was checked into a different room at the hospital...and the waiting began.
To be continued.
No comments:
Post a Comment