Hey All,
So we did indeed have a baby this Spring and he came with a story...
Where we currently live there is a hospital, however it doesn't have labor and delivery services. For this people who live on our base must go to an army post in Seoul, which is about an hour north of us. To try to avoid any mishaps there is a program called the Stork's Nest for the pregnant women. You stay at a hotel on the post, within minutes of the hospital.
We went to the hotel 5 days before my due date, although you can go up to 2 weeks beforehand if you want. Daniel & I were both pretty restless after a couple of days. Not anything against the hotel because it's nice & has several restaurants but when you're that pregnant you don't want to do much. I ate, slept, swam & walked. That's pretty much all...
Well, the day after my official due date I began having contractions. They were sporadic so I wasn't certain that was what they were but now I know with certainty. In the afternoon I began documenting how far apart they were & how long they lasted. I couldn't sleep that night because of the contractions but I did at least try to rest. Around 5am-ish I got up took a shower and got dressed. I woke Daniel & let him know we needed to go to the hospital. He questioned me to which I did not dignify his answer with a response (ummm... 9 month pregnant wife having contractions the previous day, duh!). He also showered & got ready & we headed to the hospital.
At the hospital we parked in the special parking spot & they put me in a wheelchair & took me to the WICU. At this point my contractions were 5min apart, confirmed by the machine they had on the unit. There were just 2 nurses there & they were kind, although maybe not very competent. The older nurse attempted to check my cervix to see how dilated I was but stated she could feel the baby's head but not my cervix so it wasn't time to give birth. She said I would probably have the baby that day but not ready yet so they sent me back to the hotel because I needed to be dilated a certain amount before they could admit me.
Daniel wheeled me back to the car and we proceeded back to the hotel where I continued to labor. I had Daniel call our friend Sarah, a dula, to get suggestions on what I could do to speed it up and decrease the pain... walk, warm shower, drink water, try to eat, etc. I did all of these with the exception of eat, although I tried. Well anyway, one suggestion was sit on the tiolet to get the baby to drop...
Drop he did, in fact he started coming out & I knew there would be no driving back to the hospital. Daniel tried to get a wheelchair to get me to the car to go back but there was no way. He called the WICU people to let them know what was up & a nuse tried to talk him in preparation to deliver the baby himself. Thank God there were no other people delivering on the unit because that meant a doctor & (2 different) nurses were able to scramble together to get to us & deliver our healthy baby boy in the bathtub of our hotel room.
It had been 3 hours from when we went to the hospital originally, so yea... I'm just sayin, I was right on time before.
I have more behind the scenes information to add if you want to know since afterwards I talked with the doctors & nurses. Oh & he's kind of infamous there, more than once we've heard "oh this is the Dragon Hill baby!" HILARIOUS!
Psalm 127:3, 4
Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward.
Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one'syouth.
Love y'all,
Camille
Here were some baby bears.
