the birth story, part 1

of course, you knew that we wouldn’t get through this chapter of our story without having to scrap another rough draft didn’t you?

we left our house on Saturday afternoon and drove about eight hours that first day.  The plan was to drive to San Antonio on Sunday, stay with my relatives there overnight, pick up the Pack-n-Play we’d had shipped ahead, then drive the last two hours to the town where “c” lives and spend a relaxing day with her, hanging out, snacking and talking, then i would be able to be with her during the c-section, scheduled to happen at 7:00 a.m. on Tuesday.

Instead, about an hour after we left our hotel on Sunday morning, she texted me to say that her water had just broken.  goodbye relaxing day of visiting with “c”, goodbye pack-n-play, goodbye possibility of being present during the surgery.  dang it.  okay, deep breath.  if she had called us with this news yesterday or the day before, we STILL wouldn’t have been able to enjoy any of those things and we wouldn’t have been packed or ready yet.  Yes, we would have flown instead of trying to drive, but we still wouldn’t have had a possible chance of getting there in time for the birth.  As it was, at least we were already on the way.  We were already packed and would be there just as soon as we could–about 12 more hours.  After a few frantic phone calls to see if there were any flights out of Memphis that would get at least one of us there sooner (grr…nope, not really), we resigned ourselves to the inevitable and tried to stay in contact with the outside world via my phone.  My battery started running low and we suddenly realized that the cell phone charger we’d brought with us was totally non-functional, so I had to recharge my phone off of my laptop.  We texted and called “C” as often as we could.  She sent us photos of the baby that her mom had taken after he was born and she was awake.  We tried to send flowers, but NO flower shops in her town were open on a Sunday and the local grocery store and Wal-Mart didn’t deliver flowers and the hospital gift shop (run by volunteers and i never saw any fresh flowers there after we arrived) was also closed on Sunday.  I even found a website that advertised “Same day delivery, guaranteed!” and I called them and asked and they said that no one in that town was open.  She helpfully told me that if I’d ordered the flowers yesterday that the shops would have delivered them on Sunday, but that’s not really same-day, now is it?  Apparently their guarantee wasn’t really worth much.  Sigh.

As I mentioned before, “C” had been texting us and talking with us on the phone throughout the trip.  She told us that her mom had been able to be with her during the surgery, so at least she wasn’t alone when the doctors put her under.  She also told us that at first, she hadn’t wanted to see the baby in person before we got there (she looked at photos her mom had taken first), but after awhile, she thought that if she was going to “get all emotional” maybe it would be better to do that without us watching her, so she asked for him to be brought in to see her.  She had enjoyed having time to talk to him privately.  She sent us pictures of him over her phone.

After 14 hours of driving straight through (we did stop for gas three times and we stopped once for a meal at Dairy Queen (where we had to giggle at the country song about International Harvester–is it a hit song or a commercial?) we finally arrived at the hospital.  It was 11:00, but I’d called ahead and was told that if we went in and told them that we were visiting from out of town, they’d let us in to visit.

When we at last got into her room, we sat and visited with her for awhile.  We asked how she was feeling and then she told us more details about her side of that crazy day.   We all agreed that while it wasn’t what any of us had planned, it had all worked out fine in the end.  After we’d been at the hospital for about an hour, a nurse wheeled the baby in from the nursery.  I asked if I could pick him up and “C” said it was okay, and then i got all nervous.  How do you pick up a tiny baby out of one of those plastic bassinets?  How do you pick up your (possibly, potentially) son for the first time?  Then I took a deep breath and just did it.  And I said hello and he smiled at me.

p.s.  J is a rockstar.  He drove the entire way.  I was in no shape to drive.  He was completely exhausted by the time we arrived, but still managed to stay awake and even hold and interact with the baby too.