3:00am: “Troy… Troy… TROY!” Allison said as she was in the bathroom. “Haaaaaa,” I replied. “I think my water broke,” Allison said. I jumped out of bed and said, "What should I do." Allison was VERY calm and it was starting to scare me because she is never calm in stressful situations. Allison said not to rush and wanted me to calm down. She decided to go and take a shower and I told her I would pack her car (White 2000 Toyota Corolla.) Allison, being the perfectionist, already had everything packed and ready to go. All I had to do was move everything into the car. I kept running back and forth and back and forth, double and triple checking that we didn’t leave anything. Allison finally got out of the shower refreshed. I thought that meant that we could leave BUT of course that means we can blow dry our hair and put on our make-up. So, I made the bed and straightened up a few things before we left.Allison was finally ready and off we went to Clovis Community Hospital.
We decided to go down Herndon and ended up behind a drunk driver at around Cedar Avenue. Allison and I were trying to decide whether to call the police but decided to follow a little while longer. The person was going between lanes and ended up putting on their hazard lights as well. Then we decided that this person could really hurt someone and called the cops. I had Clovis PD saved in my cell phone (Nextel i730) because my office (200 W. Bullard, Suite B4, Clovis, CA 93612) was in Clovis and we had been burglarized before. So we called and spoke to a really nice lady on the phone. We described the situation and they said they had a cop coming the other way on Herndon. We turned off onto the freeway to get to the hospital and lost sight of the drunk. The cops called back because they couldn’t find them but we told them we already turned. Finally we were at the hospital.
We drove up to Clovis Community at about 4:15am and had to go to the emergency room side of the hospital. We had to go to this side because the regular hospital side is only there from 7:00am to 7:00pm. We gathered the essential items and made our way to the door. Allison was feeling good and hadn’t had any contractions yet. Little did we know what was to come. We walked up to the counter and filled out the paperwork and headed off to the elevators. The delivery and recovery was on the second floor. Allison was in a wheelchair and I wheeled her up to the second floor.We accidentally went to the recovery area and pressed the intercom button. No one answered the call. So we went to the other side and remembered that this areas was for delivery. I should have known this but it was a little too early to remember everything. As soon as I pressed the intercom button the doors opened. We walked (and rolled) up to the counter and they said keep going this way to door number 506. It was a straight shot from the hallway.
We got Allison up and she needed to change into her hospital gown.We started to get situated in the room that we were going to be for the next 12 hours. As Allison was getting ready to change into the hospital gown and asked me if she should put on her dress she brought. I told her to just put on the hospital gown and we will try it out for the beginning. The nurse came in a visited for a little and told us she was going to call the doctor to give him an update. It was about 4:30am. I said, “You are going to wake him up?” The nurse said that she has been bothering Dr. Peters all morning. The nurse wanted to give him an update and ask him what the next step was going to be.
So the nurse left and Allison got into her beautiful hospital gown. Allison, came out of the bathroom and got into the bed.A little time had passed and a second nurse came in and said she was going to start Allison's IV. I think this is when Allison started to get nervous. Allison doesn't like the site of needles and decided to turn away as the nurse started the IV. Allison told her not to tell her when it was going in because she thought she would faint. The nurse got the IV in and taped everything down. The nurse left and I told Allison to lay down and try and get some sleep because she was going to need it later. Allison laid down and tried to get comfortable.The first nurse came back in with another devise and told Allison that Dr. Peters said to start her on "Pitocin" which would help start the contractions. Up until this point Allison has not been feeling anything. So, they started the drip. They started her at 1.. then 2... and then the contractions started to really get big.At this point Allison was having a hard time getting through the contractions. We had spoken about getting an Epideral and Allison had not made up her mind. At this point the hospital started to get more active. Others were having babies and we could hear screaming.
The head nurse came into check on us and her name was Wendy Goodfellow. She was very nice and had an English accent. She asked how we were doing and Allison told her that she was in a lot of pain already. We asked Wendy how much worse is it going to get and she said a lot more.It was now about 7:00am in the morning and the nurse that put in the IV came back in to check on us and Allison told her that she had decided that she wanted an Epideral. The nurse looked back and said, "We don't usually give Epiderals to smiling happy patients." The nurse left and Wendy came back in to check on us again. We told her that Allison was going to want to have an Epideral and that we had told the other nurse. We told Wendy what the other nurse had said and Wendy said, "Well, is she in the bed with the pain?" Up to this point we had heard horror stories about people waiting too long and not being able to get an Epideral so we wanted to put in our request early. Wendy said she would try an catch the Anesthesiologist in between the five C-sections that were scheduled for today. She said it might be a little while.Well, two and a half hours later the Anesthesiologist still had not arrived. Wendy came back to check again and decided to give Allison something that would help her relax a little until the Anesthesiologist arrived. This calmed Allison down and helped her get through the next 30 minutes until the Anesthesiologist was able to break away.
It was now 10:00am and the Anesthesiologist was ready to give Allison the Epideral. This was very intemidating because you have to read the disclaimer that you could be paralized and tons of things could go wrong. Once again Wendy was right there by our side guiding us through the stress. She got Allison talking and so did the doctor and this helped her relax through the process. Allison told the doctor that she didn't want to know when the needle prick was going to happen. So, we continued talking and the doctor said that you might feel a little shock and right then Allison jumped. "Wow, it felt like I stuck my and in the light socket." The doctor started an infusion of the medicine and Allison's pain immediatly went away. So, the doctor finished up taping and organizing the cords. He finished up and then Wendy said she was going to put in a calthader and another monitoring device for the actual labor/pushing part.
Nurse:Wendy Goodfellow
Doctor:Dr. Alfred Peters
Visitors:Jeri (coffee in the morning), Jeri & Jim 10 minutes after birth), Dave & Karen
Activities:Moved to new room in hospital
Fun Stuff: We heard Mia’s cry and it sounded like she was saying, “Ah-Huh, Ah-Huh, Ah-Huh, Ah-Huh.” This was soooo cute.
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