March 22, 2012
As this pregnancy has progressed, Noah and I were getting more and more used to being awakened by observations of Rani's current state. Always sympathetic, we would commiserate with the heartburn, back aches, sleepless nights, and shrunken bladder. It got to the point that Noah was getting sympathy pains in the morning, often complaining because the baby was kicking him too hard (while in his belly) while he was trying to sleep.
On this morning, I was asked, for the hundredth time, if I thought that her contractions were real or not. I made the mistake of going with my stock answer of, "don't worry, they are just those braxton thingies". Since we had 17 more minutes until our alarms were to go off, we rolled back over and went back to sleep.
Rani woke with a start, exclaiming, "Nope, these ones are real!" So, I stumbled out of bed to get Noah going. When I told him the news, he yawned and said calmly, "How exciting..., can I hold her?" Taking Noah's lead, we slowly got into our morning routine of showers, breakfast, etc. Of course this included packing our bags since we were totally unprepared for this event.
We were keeping our normal steady pace, when Noah and I started hearing primal animal screams coming from upstairs. Noah, thinking this was one of our wacky games, started trying to communicate back. Every 4 mins. there was a healthy dose of, "ooohhhaaahhhhaa!" from Rani and then a, "oohooh ahh ahh?" response from Noah. The increased decibels of these "conversations" finally spurred me into action.
Five minutes later, we were racing (under the speed limit, Oma) down the road to Noah's creche. Noah encouraged us on by yelling at any motorists who got in our way. A few times we heard, "Regarde bus, we are gonna fly over you if you don't move!"
After dumping Noah and his baggage off at daycare, we got to the hospital over 75 minutes after leaving the house. (Mind you we chose this clinic while living in our old house, a half hour closer.) The non-chalant attitude continued once we got to the hospital. As Rani was obviously withholding her urges, the sage femme calmly told us to wait in the waiting room as all the birthing rooms were full. Although muffled, Rani's contractions clearly scared all of the other expectant mothers in the waiting room, for when the sage femme returned and asked who was next, they all pointed in Rani's direction.
From here on out, it was smooth sailing. It turns out Rani was already at 5 cm by the time they checked her in. After a quick epidural, the Rani we all know and love returned. I will spare all of the details, but after a pretty routine labor, our little Auréléa was born. There are no words to describe it, so I won't even try, but it was truly amazing. Rani was incredible and our little girl was so beautiful.
