3am - The phone rang and woke me out of a deep sleep. I knew it was "the call" as I had the birth mom's ringer set to a different one than everyone else. She told me that her water broke and that it was time. I told her we would get packed up and it would be 6-7 hours before we would be there.
Trent was up as well and we both jumped out of a bed and set to motion getting packed up and on the road. Poor Ping had no idea what we were doing and was not excited for our bags to get moved to the car. She always knows when something is up. We were on the road, packed and fully gassed up within 30 minutes.
4am - The phone rang again and it was the birth mom. I don't know if it was the time of the morning or the adrenaline rush, but I could not understand/hear what she was trying to tell me. Finally after her repeating herself about 5 times I got it. "He's here." Uhhh...what? Yep, our little man decided to make a grand entrance and could not wait to get to the hospital and was born at home. Thankfully the birth mom anticipated that he was not going to wait so the ambulance arrived within minutes of his birth.
Somewhere along the 6.5 hour drive we talked to our attorney a few times and got news that mom and baby made it to the hospital and that everyone was healthy. Baby weighed in at 7 lbs 6 oz and measuring 20.5 inches long.
We rolled into St Louis around 9:30am and were told to go to the hotel and wait for the birth mom to invite us up. We checked in to the hotel, unloaded all of gear and then made our way to find lunch. About 1:30pm we got a message from the birth mom that we could come up and see him.
We made our way to the hospital and up to the 9th floor maternity ward. The nurses were expecting us and we soon found ourselves in the nursery. While trying to explain who we were to this set of nurses and handing over our IDs, I turned around to see two babies in isolettes behind me. I quickly found the birth mom's name on the one on the right and saw my baby boy for the first time. All swaddled up with his mustache hat on, looking as perfect as could be. The nurses got us checked in and lead us to the other side of the nursery where there were rocking chairs so we could hold him. We stayed there with him for several hours and I even got to feed him. He never made a sound the whole time we were there and opened his eyes for a few short minutes. Here was this perfect little miracle we had been waiting for for over a year and yet he wasn't ours just yet. The next 48 hours were going to be longest on record for us.
We got word that the birth mom requested him back in her room so we headed down to the cafeteria for some dinner. We got to see him briefly after dinner when they brought him back to the nursery for a doctor's check. It was nice to talk with the Pediatrician on how he was doing (all good!). But our visit was cut short as the birth mom wanted to keep him her room over night and spend some time with him. We headed back to the hotel as we were complete zombies at this point.
So many emotions were going through our heads that night. We were parents, but not officially, and our baby wasn't with us just yet. So we did the best thing we knew to do and that was sleep while we could.
No comments:
Post a Comment