Did I Ever Tell You About the Time...

When I was pregnant with Lizzy, I was sick. And I do mean SICK. So when I started preterm labor six weeks before my due date, I was scared but not surprised. I knew something was wrong the entire time. I just knew it. [My lame medical care will be the topic of blogs to come, as will Lizzy's negligent medical care (can't call hers lame, they almost killed her, for Christ's sake.)] So I went to the hospital six weeks before my due date in full-blown labor and was given a series of Terbutaline shots and sent home on strict bedrest, with instructions to take that evil Terbutaline shit every four hours. Holy hell, if that isn't Satan in pill form then I don't know what is. Bedrest lasted a week, until I was up every hour or so one Wednesday night into Thursday morning with a sick, but not sure what was wrong with her, Meghan and noticed that every time I got out of bed, I was considerably "leakier" than usual. But at eight months pregnant, you really have no standards left, particularly if you are eight months pregnant for the third time. Nothing works like it's supposed to. So when the leakiness kept up into Thursday morning, I called my girlfriends, because God knows you call your girlfriends about this kind of stuff first. Not the doctor.

Needless to say, after finally submitting to girlfriend advice that I seek medical advice, I went to the hospital on Thursday, December 20, 2007. I told Pete (who was working full-time, taking care of me on bedrest and playing Mr. Mom - hence my constant "He's a Prince" characterizations) that I'd drive myself to the hospital to see if my water had broken. I was certain it had not, so I would just come home afterward and everything would go back to normal. He could take the girls to school for their holiday parties, I'd be fine, yadda yadda yadda. He told me to put down the crack pipe and all of us piled into the minivan. Off we went, all of us, to Labor & Delivery, because remember we were in Maryland and didn't really have anyone with whom we could leave the girls. Plus we really thought we would be in and out. So there we are, and they do the whole ferning test and the doctor comes back in and says, "Yep, your water broke. You're stayin' here 'til the baby comes. We won't help things along because you're not 36 weeks yet, but we won't stop things either."

May I please remind you of the date: December 20th. 5 days until Christmas. This was not part of the plan. The nurses then started my IV, complete with fluids and antibiotics because of my broken water, and while they are putting the IV in, my Erin is there and she starts bawling, saying, "Mommy's dying! Mommy's dying!" She was totally traumatized, and by then my last pill of Terbutaline is wearing off and here come the contractions. Lordy. I'm panting and grunting and starting to call in the reinforcements from New Jersey to get their asses in their cars and get down here because we have a situation. It was sometime around now in the story that I look over at my two children and realize that they are totally glassy-eyed, flushed and really messed-up looking. I happened to have a "kid bag" with me that had a digital thermometer in it. Don't ask. I don't know why. So I asked Meg to come over to me and I took her temperature and then I took Erin's temperature and there we were, lo and behold, in L&D with two children who had 102 degree fevers. Yep. We were THOSE people.

So obviously they needed to go to the doctor because what the hell is wrong with them? But Pete had never been to the pediatrician in Maryland, he had no idea where it was, and in his (at that time) 5+ years of fatherhood he had NEVER taken two children to the doctor alone. So I'm on the cell, in labor mind you, making appointments for him to take them to the peds and then writing directions to the doctor on the back of a Color Wonder coloring book so he can try to find it. (Before our purchase of a GPS. How we lived without that thing I'll never know.)

They leave and I'm in L&D and I'm a mess. I'm one of those idiots who knows I'm going to get an epidural at some point but I like to wait as long as possible as to not "slow down" the natural labor process. Plus, they didn't know how quickly I would progress because I was preterm, and it's not like they can hook me up to an epi for a week. And that's what the doctor was predicting - that it could take a week to have her. Yeah, lame.

So I was panting and crying and all alone and my cell phone rang and it was Pete. He was finishing up at the doctor with the kids. And guess what? They had strep throat. Both of them. Strep. Freaking. Throat.

My mind immediately starts reeling because OH. MY.GOD. They were in Labor and Delivery and touched God knows what and they had strep throat. But then I had to switch gears to start directing Pete through Frederick, Maryland, to get to the pharmacy, to take the kids home, to feed them (because the day was shot by then), to put them back in the car to pick up their antibiotics, to take them back home to wait for the grandparents to arrive to come back to the hospital to be with me because we were having a baby. Remember?

Good times.

Next installment...lame medical care. Buckle up...