Melissa had been in the bathroom for a few minutes and Charlotte, like any good almost-two-year-old would do, kept bugging her mom. In hindsight, Melissa was laboring pretty good at this point and our guess is that she was probably already dilated about 5cm at this point. She had begun to text our friends who watch Charlotte when I'm out of town because they were our "plan b." "Plan a" was for my mom and dad to arrive on March 4th. We'd head to the hospital early morning March 5th and Charlotte would get to spend a couple of good days with my parents. But that plan was appreantly not going to work, so Melissa made contact with our friends to come up with the plan to drop off Charlotte. When Melissa had Charlotte, she did a great job. It was our plan to deliver naturally without any drugs or intervention and we basically did all up until Charlotte's emergency c-section. So this time around I knew what labor looked and sounded like. So when Melissa started making all of those far to memorable noises, I knew we had to get to the hospital like 5 minutes ago. Her contractions were coming probably every 4-5 minutes at this point so I knew our only chance was to work in between those contractions. I was running all over the house getting a few things together for Charlotte and just trying to get out of the door. Charlotte would watch me run around and then head back to the bathroom to see what noise mommy was making now. I looked at Melissa and said, "we have got to go now. If you don't get some clothes on and get in the car we are going to have to call an ambulance." My ultimatum seemed to work and we made our way to the car.
Charlotte and I sat in silence as we pulled out of the neighborhood. I called our hospital's emergency room to let them know we were on our way. I made that call at 7:56am. Google says the drive is 11.9 miles and 17 minutes, but I know we made it there in about 12 minutes...haha. We got all green lights and luckily it was Saturday morning, so the road traffic was light if any. There is one on ramp and one off ramp to get there and I'm surprised that the handle above the door wasn't pulled off by Melissa. They are those clover-leaf on/off ramps, so I had to manage not going too fast as to cause more pain to Melissa, but I also wanted to get there as fast as I could. Charlotte decided it would be funny to mimic the sounds that her laboring mommy was making and it was hard for me not to laugh. About three minutes away from the hospital Melissa let me know that her water had just broken. About two minutes away from the hospital she let me know that also had soiled her pants in another way. I just said, "that's OK" and we kept driving.
We pulled up to the emergency room entrance and our friend was already there to grab Charlotte. She ran in to get a wheelchair while I got Melissa's car door open and coaxed her out. We got Melissa on the wheelchair and wheeled her over to the desk. They had me fill out a short little form. Name, address, birthdate, social security number, etc. I was a little flustered so I wrote down all of my information...haha. I think they could see the urgency on my face and I know they could hear it in Melissa's groans, but the receptionist looked up and said, "she'll need to go through triage first." In my mind I screamed, "are you kidding me?" We didn't end up having to sit in the triage office, which was good because that baby would have been born right there otherwise.
Now, based on Melissa's history and the instruction of her doctor we were trained to let everyone know that we needed a c-section and that if she were to deliver naturally, things would probably go very badly. So I got behind the wheelchair and followed the nurse from the emergency room up to the labor and delivery floor. Again, I know a lot of ladies come into the emergency room dilated 1cm and can have a normal conversation to get checked in and will probably sit up in labor and deliver for hours before their baby comes. Our situation was a little different than that and I knew that time was of the essence, so I took off walking pretty briskly and the nurse looks over and says, "slow down dad, don't walk too fast." I wanted to say a few things to that lady, but instead I just kept up my pace and ignored her ignorance. We arrived at the elevator door, pressed the button and the door opened. This elevator had doors on both sides so as we are entering a lady from the kitchen with a large cart of lunch trays entered through the opposite door. The emergency room nurse actually looked at her and said, "do you mind if we go up first?" Again I had some things to say, but thankfully there was enough room for us, the wheelchair and the food cart to go up together.
We made our way onto the labor and delivery floor and they were expecting us, but again, had no idea (as they shouldn't) of Melissa's history. The lead nurse began asking Melissa some questions. If you ever get the chance, try to ask a lady who is 10cm dilated if she wants to go the bathroom, or if she can take her own clothes off or any question really. Maybe with an epidural and loads of drugs you could get some of those questions answered, but I would bet not. So I'm answering the questions and trying to tell these people our situation and history. The lead nurse checked Melissa out and found that she was fully dilated and that Oliver's head was right there. That's when the mood of the room changed from, "Oh, just another delivery....we'll be here a few hours before anything happens" to "Oh, we need to get a doctor in here fast." And that's when things got a little too familiar to me as quickly nurses swarmed in and once again, all too similar to last time I heard one nurse day, "where is dr. so and so" with a response of "oh, he's delivering a baby in room 62"..."well what about the other dr. so and so"..."I'm not sure where he is right now." This was the exact same thing that happened almost two years ago when Melissa was ready to deliver Charlotte. Before I knew it I counted 12 people in our room, but still no doctor in sight and everything inside of me thought, "here we go again."
to be continued...