June 2nd, 2020 started just like any other day until I got a phone call that I landed the job I had interviewed for a while back. I knew that baby number 3 was coming soon and my hopes of finding a job before he arrived had started to dwindle, so this put so many of my worries to rest. The next day I made an appointment for my background check and drug test. As my husband and I headed out of the house, I started feeling contractions and like something was wrong. I called my doctor and she told me to drive to the hospital to check things out, but she was pretty confident everything was fine. She knows I’m a worrier and because I have had only c sections, I didn’t know the feeling of going into labor.
I was pretty determined to get this background check and drug test completed before the baby came, so I insisted on going to my appointment and then going straight to the hospital afterwards. In hindsight, yes, that was probably a poor decision, but I had heard stories of people going grocery shopping and taking showers while in labor and I wasn’t even sure that I was in labor, so I thought it wasn’t a big deal. My husband disagreed, but we won’t tell him that he was right. While we were there, the nurse asked me when I was due and I joked with her that I was going to the hospital straight after this. She cracked up, hurried me along, and wished me luck.
We arrived at the hospital, an hour away, and my husband and I walked inside hand in hand, ready for whatever was coming. Until they told him that he couldn’t stay. COVID protocol was that the spouse could only enter the hospital once I was admitted and having the baby. I suddenly got very nervous. This wasn’t the plan. This was our third baby and never had I walked through those hospital doors alone. I checked in alone. I got triaged alone. Strapped up to the monitors alone. Sent for ultrasound alone. Just so alone; my husband waiting out in the car.
The monitors showed that I was having steady contractions but they didn’t ever form a pattern, so I was not actually in labor. They gave me a shot to stop the contractions and said that it would probably be about an hour of monitoring and I could go home. After an hour I was still showing contractions with no sign of slowing down or speeding up. My doctor had a feeling that something wasn’t quite right even though the monitors and ultrasound weren’t showing anything definitively wrong, so she decided to admit me for observation. Finally, 11 hours later, they let my husband come inside. The man waited in the car for 11 hours!
I got about 5 hours of sleep when the doctor came in the room and told me that she didn’t feel good about what was going on and they were taking me for c section. My oldest daughter’s birthday was June 6th and I told this baby that he could come any time in June except for June 4th, 5th, or 6th so that I wouldn’t miss her birthday. But alas, babies do not care about dates. It was June 4th and he was coming.
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