Well, as I last posted, the waiting game is finally over as Meara Aspen Mock entered this world on April 29th, 2005. As any parent who has gone through this, there are a great many things that people never tell you about. No matter how much you may think you’ve learned in Lamaze class, or how many times you go over the “Hospital Luggage”, there is something you will always miss or never expect. Sometimes the most unexpected part is how everything is going to start.
For us it began on April the 28th, as Lena had the last of her scheduled weekly OB appointments at 2:45p.m. That morning, for some reason, I had this odd feeling that I really needed to get the camera equipment together, so I tore apart the larger case I use for my film SLR camera so that is could use it for the new 8 and 6 mega pixel digital camera’s, along with the new digital camcorder. Let simply say that this sudden gut feeling to make sure last minute items were in place made me quite late to work. The rest of that morning followed its usual course as a regular Thursday at work.
That afternoon, we went to Lena’s weekly appointment expecting to get the same answer of “just a little longer”, until I saw the reaction on the nurse’s face while she took Lena’s vitals. She wouldn’t even tell us what it was because she didn’t want us to be stressed out. Even then, however, we didn’t think too much of it and we prepped the checkbook to write a bribery check for the doctor, to get her induced of course. We continued to believe this appointment was going to be the same as all the others until we got a very similar and unsettling response from Dr. Weary towards her vitals:
158 over 100, with a +2 protein in her urine, which was an indicator for Toxemia.
Due to the concern of either Gestational Hypertension, or even worse Toxemia, he decided to send us to the hospital to prepare for an induction. At this point we were over-run with emotions from excitement to concern. We headed straight over the hospital only to find out that everyone else and their grandmother were having a baby that day as well, causing us to be put in one of the older rooms in the birth center. Fortunately this made for a slightly larger room, which provided useful for all the visitors later, but none of the older rooms Jacuzzi tubs were working (which is something we had decided we were going to use during the labor to help Lena to relax).