Guess what?!...it's TIME!! Part 1

written Thursday, May 9th, 2013 4am...

Oh my goodness.

I still can't believe I'm sitting here. 

Right here.

Meri and her sister to my left, my love to my right.

I'm in a hospital room...

the room where Amelia will be born!

As usual, I'll start at the beginning :)

Tuesday was a rough day. Meri had a doctor's appointment- and it didn't go well. We had been hoping for some news of being dilated or...something. But the doctor said no, nada. That was disappointing to the max. Poor Meri had a tough time of it. We had no real way to console her from Iowa except to say maybe we can see a movie next week! 

HA!!!!

That night I slept terribly for no real reason. It seemed unusual for me, even at the time. But Brad left for his ER exam, did well, and came back home...then we headed out to go shopping! Cheesecake Factory for lunch and then he took me to buy some much needed tennis shoes. "On the go Mom shoes" I kept calling them, in the weeks leading up to the shopping trip. I haven't had a pair of non-work tennis shoes in almost 8 years so I was pretty excited. 

We had a wonderful afternoon together. It was so nice being out....I can really look back and say I had a lovely day.

When we got home something had gone wrong with an item we needed to have ready for when Amelia arrived. I asked Brad to make the simple fix. He was feeling lax from the day out and said, yeah, yeah, later. I just kinda had that 'itch' and said, well, actually can you please do it now? Brad was so sweet and fixed what needed done and then I was going to head out to a friends baby shower. 

On my way there however, I got a text from Meri's sister saying she

had been having contractions and that she was watching her and would keep us updated. I'm like...ok....we're still 11 days away from her due date so I'm probably okay to go to the shower. That was at 7pm. At 7:45 the contractions were getting closer together. I had a sense of urgency and felt I needed to leave so I jumped up and practically ran out of the party lol. Sarah, forgive me! 

On my way home I'm frantically calling Brad telling him to get up and get packed. He was supposed to go into work at the ER that night but hadn't been feeling well. He also had a minor procedure earlier in the day so he had stitches which weren't very comfortable. Anyway, by the time I got home and jumped out of my practically still moving vehicle Brad was up and packing. I felt so relieved to see him getting into gear and sharing some of my nerves with me. Still though we hadn't heard if she was progressing, stopped, gone to the hospital etc. We both kept feeling a strong sense of urgency however and that kept pushing us forward even though logically we had few reasons to get all hyped up. 

At 9pm we headed down and filled both vehicles with gas. We had to take two cars since we didn't know how long we would be required to stay in Kansas and Brad has rotation requirements. When we got home from getting gas Meri was still contracting and they were getting closer together and feeling more intense. At five minutes apart they headed to the hospital to get checked out. We wanted to wait until we knew for SURE before we headed south. So we loaded the vehicles with all our gear- two bags for Amelia, two bags for me, Brads backpack, duffle for Brad, portable sleep thing for Amelia, the carseat, and cooler.

Then while we were waiting for the doctor to check her, then wait an hour and check her again for progression, we cleaned up and watched a show (lol Hannibal), and ate some delish kale white bean soup our awesome friends gave us. It brought a lot of comfort...eating homemade soup as we waited. The whole time I was like, we need to go! And Brad's like, we need to wait! haha. 

We had continued to hear about some progression and were waiting for another report when around 11:15pm I turned to Brad and said, hun, it's time. I know it's time. We need to leave now. I was worried he would tell me to calm down and just keep waiting but he looked into my eyes and I think it was then he knew, too. Ok, he said. Let's go. 

We jumped up, grabbed my purse and ran out the door- literally. We were on the road side by side when Brad rolls down his window-- Did we lock the house?? I jump out and run to the door leaving the cars in the road effectively completely blocking traffic. I run up to the house and oh my gosh. Not only is the house unlocked but the door is WIDE open...haha...oops!

Hey, we had more important things on the mind!

So we head out and get to the Edwards home around 12:10 or so. On the way there we got the official call- come now! They were storing the milk and we needed to pick some up. We actually had four different types of milk, just in case- breastmilk from 2 different women, premade formula, and powdered formula. Our friends were so cute and met us at the end of the driveway lol jumping up and down haha. As I sit here I can still see R in my mind so happy and doing her cute little jump haha. She had plenty of milk all packaged and ready to go. We tossed it in the ice chest, I ran back and jumped in the car and we were off!

The drive down was rough, I won't lie.

Every time we talk about it, Brad always says it was the longest drive of his life. We had left so quickly I didn't even grab a water bottle or snacks or anything. Which, maybe was a good thing because although I was thirsty, I was multitasking driving and using Siri to voice text on my iphone. Thank heavens for that phone feature. I was able to safely get updates, send updates, etc while driving. The other hard part was the weather. We drove through several fierce storms with lightning and rain that threatened to wash us off the road. I had my windshield wipers on high the whole time and I still felt like many times it was hard to see. We were blessed though because we mainly had the road to ourselves the entire time- usually the road is filled with truckers and commuters but really we hardly saw anyone else and I was so grateful.

Brad had been fairly sleepy on the drive down and so we were constantly on the phone to each other and to anyone else who was up haha. Brad was tired but I was wired. I have never in my life felt that kind of adrenaline. I told Brad I felt like I could run alongside the car lol. I felt no fatigue, none at all. In fact, the adrenaline surge would continue until I got a 3 hour nap after having been up for 32 hours. It was insane and I will always remember feeling that I was blessed and was sustained physically to be able to continue on.

When we arrived in Kansas we talked with Meri's sister and she said she's stable go grab some food (we had eaten at 11 pm but were starving by 3:30am when we arrived). We ran to the only open place that was open and then went over to the hospital. At that point there wasn't a soul in that part of the hospital, no receptionist, nada, so we felt very lucky we had taken the tour a few weeks ago and knew right where to go. A frustrating experience averted! 

Walking in and seeing Meri... indescribable. She is always beautiful and just seeing her there about made my heart burst. I was so proud of her. That feeling only intensified over the next couple hours...

part two coming up!