Actually, I will start the day before he was born! The day before Joel was born I was on my third day of maternity leave, looking forward to the two weeks I had apportioned for preparing Joel's room and myself for his arrival. On the Monday of that week I had trained my replacement and left at lunchtime. I have no memory of Tuesday or Wednesday. The day I am describing now is Thursday. On Thursday I walked into Broad Ripple proper and went to the Grand Reopening of Thrifty Threads. A TV crew was there and I tried not to get on screen in case people from work saw it on screen later. While I was in line checking out with my great bargains, I started to have bad back pains.
Thinking nothing of the pains, I sauntered down the road to Scholar’s Inn Bakehouse where I treated myself to a bagel and cream cheese. The cramps continued. I was in denial. I walked home.
At home later, there was blood in the toilet so I decided that perhaps something interesting was going on. I paged Aaron with 257 5847 911 - our predetermined emergency code.
By the time Aaron got home I realized I was in labor and Aaron took me to the upstairs bedroom where he tortured me by not letting me go to the hospital until my contractions were 5 minutes apart.
It was 8:30 at night when we got to St. Vincent’s Hospital. After my evaluation they gave me a room and some drugs. Aaron’s mom popped her head into say “hello” not long after we arrived. She and Greg had driven down from Michigan. Matt was on his way from Kansas. I fell asleep.
At about 2:30 in the morning the nurses determined that I was fully dilated and ready to push. They paged Dr. Vandenberg, who proceeded to ignore my pages, or fall back asleep when he attempted to get up and go to the hospital. At 5 am , Dr. Vandenberg finally arrived and my medication had worn off. I was in heavy labor for 2 and a half hours when a surgical consult was called in the room. he said I was crazy to have ever tried vaginal delivery as Joel was stuck.
I was rushed into c-section where things got scary. They gave me an anesthetic to which I had a bad reaction, to understate the matter. Before the reaction took place, Joel was extracted at 7:31 am. I got a quick look at him and then decided that it had been a long day and that I had had enough. I told everyone I was leaving and tried to throw myself off the table. At this time my whole uterus was out of my body... Aaron had the fun job of restraining me until some one injected me with something and knocked me out. I woke up some time later in another room with Joel in an incubator next to me. I think I was out for an hour. That is when my job as Joel’s mother started.
For the next couple of days I stayed in my room and fed Joel and let other people hold him. Debbie, Steve, Clarissa and Thomas Ricks came to see me, as did Jenny Griffee, Jamia (Haenggi) Griffee, Megan Kocher, Tim and Connie Kratzer, The McCune Family (Bethany, Mike, Shalyn, Shantel, and Simon), and maybe other people too! I was drugged and sleep deprived. Every couple of hours during the night I was woken to feed Joel and the lactation consultant grabbed my breast and shoved it in his mouth. When we did get to take Joel home he was jaundiced and had to wear a light blanket. When we did get released on the third day, we returned to a crazy house. Nothing was ready! ARGH! That is another story though....
Thinking nothing of the pains, I sauntered down the road to Scholar’s Inn Bakehouse where I treated myself to a bagel and cream cheese. The cramps continued. I was in denial. I walked home.
At home later, there was blood in the toilet so I decided that perhaps something interesting was going on. I paged Aaron with 257 5847 911 - our predetermined emergency code.
By the time Aaron got home I realized I was in labor and Aaron took me to the upstairs bedroom where he tortured me by not letting me go to the hospital until my contractions were 5 minutes apart.
It was 8:30 at night when we got to St. Vincent’s Hospital. After my evaluation they gave me a room and some drugs. Aaron’s mom popped her head into say “hello” not long after we arrived. She and Greg had driven down from Michigan. Matt was on his way from Kansas. I fell asleep.
At about 2:30 in the morning the nurses determined that I was fully dilated and ready to push. They paged Dr. Vandenberg, who proceeded to ignore my pages, or fall back asleep when he attempted to get up and go to the hospital. At 5 am , Dr. Vandenberg finally arrived and my medication had worn off. I was in heavy labor for 2 and a half hours when a surgical consult was called in the room. he said I was crazy to have ever tried vaginal delivery as Joel was stuck.
I was rushed into c-section where things got scary. They gave me an anesthetic to which I had a bad reaction, to understate the matter. Before the reaction took place, Joel was extracted at 7:31 am. I got a quick look at him and then decided that it had been a long day and that I had had enough. I told everyone I was leaving and tried to throw myself off the table. At this time my whole uterus was out of my body... Aaron had the fun job of restraining me until some one injected me with something and knocked me out. I woke up some time later in another room with Joel in an incubator next to me. I think I was out for an hour. That is when my job as Joel’s mother started.
For the next couple of days I stayed in my room and fed Joel and let other people hold him. Debbie, Steve, Clarissa and Thomas Ricks came to see me, as did Jenny Griffee, Jamia (Haenggi) Griffee, Megan Kocher, Tim and Connie Kratzer, The McCune Family (Bethany, Mike, Shalyn, Shantel, and Simon), and maybe other people too! I was drugged and sleep deprived. Every couple of hours during the night I was woken to feed Joel and the lactation consultant grabbed my breast and shoved it in his mouth. When we did get to take Joel home he was jaundiced and had to wear a light blanket. When we did get released on the third day, we returned to a crazy house. Nothing was ready! ARGH! That is another story though....
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