December 15th, 2010
While some of you may have heard bits and pieces of this story already, please consider those tidbits to be pure speculation, conjecture, and rumor. Here is the official account of the events leading up to Maria Joy’s arrival (times are exact unless otherwise noted) …
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
8.25 pm (approximately): Caleb and Simona call Grandpa Brenneman so Simona can sing her rendition of “Happy Birthday.” After catching up for a bit, Caleb and Grandpa have a good chuckle about how quickly the baby would need to come in order to still arrive on his birthday. If they only knew …
Thursday, December 9
1.30 pm: Nancy attends a routine weekly appointment with the OBGYN as she approaches the end of her 40th week of pregnancy. After waiting the obligatory hour and fifteen minutes for her 10-minute appointment, she is seen by the doctor. The doctor insists that she schedule next week’s appointment for Tuesday so we can discuss an induction if the baby has not yet arrived.
This strikes Nancy as a bit over-eager, since her due date is Saturday, December 11, and Tuesday will only be 72 hours “overdue”, so to speak.
3.05 pm: Nancy arrives home just as Caleb presses “Send” to submit his last final of the semester. Caleb is glad the baby has held off this long.
11.00 pm (approximately): Nancy and Caleb turn the lights out for the night. Nancy mentally wills the baby to come so that she will not have to face an induction next week. We’ve always known Nancy is “strong-willed” …
Friday, December 10
3.37 am: Nancy wakes up with a mild contraction. She gets out of bed, walks around the apartment for a few minutes, and packs some cookies baked earlier last night into a tupperware container. No more contractions seem to be coming.
3.47 am: Nancy returns to bed.
4.23 am: Nancy wakes again with a contraction that is somewhat painful. She gets up and walks around the apartment for a few more minutes and starts to get the final things together for the hospital. Contractions now seem to be coming regularly and with increasing intensity, so she decides to wake Caleb.
4.34 am: Nancy wakes Caleb and says it is time. Asked how far apart the contractions are, Nancy says, “About four minutes,” without really knowing for sure. Four minutes freaks Caleb out a bit. Think about how much more he would have been freaked out if he had known the real answer was “two minutes.”
4.36 am: Caleb calls the doctor and is on hold for two minutes before the answering service picks up. Oh those precious two minutes … The answering service says the on-call doctor will call us back soon. I guess that depends on your definition of soon …
4.40 am: Caleb speaks with Nancy’s mom, Pat, and tells her we are going to the hospital. Pat is coming to be home with Simona and Andreas. She says she will be out the door in 10 minutes (with a 40 minute drive ahead of her).
4.41 am: Next, Caleb calls Laryn, a good friend from DC. Laryn and Janel moved to Atlanta from DC this summer and live across the courtyard in the same apartment complex. They’ve agreed to be on-call to watch the kids if we need a stop-gap before one of Nancy’s parents can be here. Something in Caleb’s voice tells Laryn that they need him ASAP, so he doesn’t even bother to change out of his PJ’s.
4.47 am: Caleb and Nancy pass Laryn on the stairs on their way out of the building, and Laryn wishes them good luck. Nancy has a major contraction in the courtyard while Caleb puts the things in the car, gets it started, and pulls it around.
4.51 am: The mad-dash drive to Atlanta Medical Center begins. There are eight stoplights between our apartment and the hospital. All eight are red. Caleb runs every one of them. Nancy is yelling (to herself), “Don’t push! Don’t push!” Caleb drives faster.
4.56 am: After going around to the wrong side of the building for the off-hours entrance, we park right in front of the Emergency Room doors. Caleb overhears the security guard radioing for another security officer to bring a wheelchair.
4.57 am: The wheelchair is arriving as Caleb and Nancy enter the emergency waiting area. The guard from the door asks Caleb if he can move the car over to the lane farthest from the entrance. Caleb drops the things in the waiting area and waves to Nancy to go ahead.
4.58 am: Caleb dashes back inside, retrieves the bag from the waiting room floor and heads for the elevator. Nancy and her security guard escort have already made their way to the 7th floor. The elevator seems to take forEVER.
5.00 am: Nancy, being wheeled down the corridor by the security guard, has an incredibly hard contraction. She cannot resist the urge to push any longer, and decides it will be OK to just give one push since they are almost there. Then she feels something coming. She reaches down, lowers her McIntosh cross country sweat pants, and cradles her newborn baby. The security guard stops in his tracks, not sure of what to do, and the nurses from the nearby nurse’s station jump up to assist.
5.00 am: Caleb arrives on the 7th floor, reads the directional sign, and heads left for Labor and Delivery. He hears a baby crying, and thinks it strange to hear that sound before being inside the L&D double-doors. Then he sees some blood on the floor and a lot of commotion at the nurses’ station ahead.
Caleb comes around the corner to see Nancy sitting in a wheelchair, holding a baby. With a slightly bewildered look, Nancy says, “Our baby is here!” Caleb does not remember what he said (if anything) … he does remember the security guard saying only “Congratulations …” as he excused himself as quickly as possible.
Epilogue: after a few more minutes, we were escorted to an actual labor and delivery room. The midwife on duty showed up shortly and checked everyone over. Everyone was well – stunned, but well. Caleb and Nancy found it a bit ironic that one of the forms they were asked to sign about an hour later was a “Consent for Vaginal Birth”. Fantastic.
So, in summary, a few key stats:
26: Minutes between Caleb waking up and Maria being born
At least 3: Security guards who got a good laugh at their colleague’s expense
8: Red lights run on the way to the hospital
1: Times Nancy pushed
Still counting: Minutes until the doctor called back
27: Minutes between birth and being offered a smashed PBJ sandwich and a bag of Lay’s chips (yum)
Either 85 or 400: Interstate where Maria would have been born if we were going to Northside Hospital, where Nancy was initially scheduled to deliver.
5: Times Nancy has been asked “So YOU’RE the one who delivered in the wheelchair?”
1: Precious addition to our family with a great story to go along
