Well here is the story about how our little girl came into the world showing us she was boss...
On January 30, at 32 weeks pregnant, I woke up at 6am thinking I needed to get to the bathroom. As soon as I stood up there was the big gush of water of my water breaking. Not being entirely awake I wasn't sure if it was my water breaking, or that I peed my pants... that totally happens right? So I was up at 6, on the computer googling away trying to figure out what happened. My husband woke up and asked if I was ok. Because I would NEVER get up that early. I generally hit the snooze button until my husband tells me I reeeeally have to get up. So I told him that I thought that maybe my water might have broke... Of course, he was a little over concerned and thought I needed to be rushed up to the hospital.. pffft. I really wanted to have a shower just in case they wouldn't let me at the hospital. I mean, c'mon. Well, of course we went to the hospital without a shower.
So we got to hang out at the Fort St James hospital (in all 50 square feet of the delivery room) for 4 hours while they figured out where they could send us in BC since they couldn't care for our baby there. They even made me use a nasty bed pan "just in case" getting up to the tiolet (3 feet away) would put me into transition or something. Finally we were told we were going to, ready? Surrey! We were a little shocked and terrified. We never really heard anything nice about Surrey up north. Anyways, we were transfered to Prince George in an ambulance, code 3! We got to go the whole way, an hour and a half, with lights and sirens going! Not that anyone really moved out of our way... but I won't rant about how inconsiderate people are when emerg vehicles are going somewhere... thankfully we were fine. We waited in Prince George for 6 hours I think (and they let me use the bathroom, praise the Lord!) waiting for the air ambulance to be available to take us. My husband was tentatively booking flights in case he couldn't come with me, and we were having gourmet hospital tuna sandwiches. Yum.
We loaded the teeny tiny leer jet with me laying almost the whole length of the plane on my stretcher, Shawn and the 2 paramedics beside me... and it was only then that our day got interesting. The machine (??) that was supposed to give me whatever was in my i.v. didn't work so they had to use a syringe and do it by hand using a wrist watch to time it properly. The pilot was really nice though, and gave me half of his sandwich he just bought since I was pregnant and of course starving... Aaaaanyways, once we were airborn we got into a pretty nasty storm. The paramedic had my husband administer my i.v. and time it out, which apparently had to be fairly precise, the pilots wouldn't speak to anyone, there were tons of beeping and lights going off in the cockpit (which my head was pretty much in), and our plane turned 180 degrees, but kept going the same direction, um, so like sideways?... the other paramedic was pretty much frozen because he was so scared. Once we landed, which we were so amazed we did, one of the paramedics, who had been on the air ambulance for 17 years, said he had never been on a flight near as sketchy as that. Yes, we could had kissed the runway, I kid you not. One more ambulance ride and a very sketchy hollywood-esque wait in the ER we finally arrived in the maternity ward at 9:30pm.
I was on bedrest, thankfully with shower priviledges. During this time my husband and I were greatly overwhelmed with peace. Everything looked to be fine with our baby so far. And there was nothing that we could do. I just had to stay put, hoping that my body would wait long enough for my baby's lungs to mature. So this time of waiting was a time of refreshing oddly enough. My husband had been working 2 full time jobs, and I was working a fairly intense personal attendant job, so we didn't really have "us" time by any means. So, while in the hospital, we sat in a room alone and we fell in love all over again. And we were reminded and brought to a place where we had to rely on God. It was an amazing time for us. We even had "date night" where my husband took me out in a wheel chair after hours to the cafeteria and we bought ice cream from the vending machine and just had fun being silly and in love. We also had a lot of great nurses who came in and got to know us and prayed for us and our baby. Then on February 9 I started feeling contractions at night, but they went away. Feb 10 in the afternoon they started again and realised in the evening it might be labour. This wasn't too much of a worry, because they were planning on inducing me on the 13th anyways at 34 weeks, because they said the risk of infection outweighed the risk of prematurity. Somewhere around midnight they gave me morphine because if it was false labour they said the morphine would stop my contractions. But at 4:15 am on Feb 12 we had our little girl! Born at 34 weeks she was 5 pounds 15 ounces, her apgars were 9 both times and we got to hold her for a goof half hour before they took her down to the NICU.
There are so many stories to tell as our journey with her was another 5 weeks in the NICU. But, to call her "premature" seems wrong, as she didn't have any health issues, so we have called her "preterm" because what we endured is nothing compared to what many face with babies born that early and much earlier. The only thing we were waiting for her to do in the 5 weeks (mostly) was to be able to nurse/feed on her own and gain weight. In hindsight, she was getting more than enough milk though her NG tube and that's why she wasn't interested in nursing or bottle feeding... but whatever. We figured that out after a month. We really did meet some great NICU nurses (some more humble than others :P) who made our time a lot easier. We spent our last few nights in peds because there was no room in the NICU, and got to take our little girl home on March 16! And now we can't believe she is already 2!
At the Fort St James hospital
a "date night"
Our most favorite super duper awesome NICU nurse hehehe
What NICU nurses do when you aren't there...
Going home!
There are thousands of pictures I could put up, but I'll stop here... But I'll finish with what got us through every day:
God is good, all the time.
And all the time, God is Good.
Great post Chrystal! Love the pics... ;P
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