LJ Idol Three Strikes: Prompt 2 - "What Really Matters"
5p.m. Saturday, July 3, 2021
I’m sitting on the couch, feeling impatient, waiting for my husband, David, to finish building the cabinet he’s been working on all afternoon. There are pieces of woods and nails and screws all over the ottomans and the couches in the living room.
Ellie sits beside me, reading a book the way three-year-olds read a book - by flipping pages and looking at the photos.
“Done!” she tells me and adds her book to a steadily growing pile.
“You’re such a fast reader,” I say to her, as she selects another book to read.
I check the clock on my phone and sigh. It’s almost time to start getting ready. I think about the piles of laundry that need to be washed, the dishes that need to go in the dishwasher. I think about the clothes in piles in the soon-to-be-baby’s room that need to go in drawers, about the pictures and the decorations that need to be hung and placed.
I’m so behind with this little guy. But I was with Ellie, too, I remind myself. I finished her nursery the day before we checked into the hospital to be induced, and I still have two weeks left before my scheduled C-section with this one.
Nothing to worry about, I remind myself. At least not tonight.
5.30p.m. Saturday, July 3, 2021
The water from the shower is nice and hot. I let it wash over me as I think about the night’s events to come - hamburgers at my sister’s house, grilled by her husband. Then a night of fireworks, sitting on the lawn at their community park, chatting and listening to music.
Fireworks were cancelled last year because of COVID lockdowns, and Ellie was just a baby the year before. This will be the first time she can really enjoy them, and I am excited to watch her watching them.
I turn off the shower, wishing I could stay under the water longer but we need to be heading out. As I reach for my towel, I glance down. The water under my feet is tinted red.
I stare at it.
I’ve been spotting a little since last night - totally normal after the cervix check I had yesterday morning, I know - but I thought it had stopped.
I get out of the shower and put on a thin pad just in case it gets worse, tell myself this is nothing to be concerned about, and then I go back to thinking about fireworks.
5.45p.m. Saturday, July 3, 2021
I wait for my sister to answer the phone.
“We’re just heading back from the pool,” is the first thing she says. “You all can come over any time.”
“I think my water broke,” I say.
There is a pause.
“Oh my god! Okay, well, we can watch Ellie, and she can sleep here. We have an air mattress we can put in Caitlin’s room. We’ll take her to the fireworks. She’ll have fun.”
“Thank you,” I say. “We need to finish packing, but we’ll be over soon.”
“Just breathe,” she says before we hang up. “This is exciting!”
I hang up the phone, holler to David who is downstairs in the kitchen to tell him Liz said she could watch Ellie, and then hurry to our bedroom to throw the rest of the stuff I might need into a bag.
Packing for the hospital is one more thing on the list that I haven’t gotten around to yet, although I at least have made a list.
I check the pad I put on - the second one since I got out of the shower - to see if maybe I’m wrong, but I find it full of liquid. I sigh.
On TV, water always seems to break in a whoosh. When my sister’s water broke with her son, it broke in a whoosh - all over the chair she was sitting on in a Mexican restaurant. I didn’t know that sometimes it can just trickle out, little tiny bit by little tiny bit, but Google tells me it can.
For ten minutes after my shower, I thought it was just normal spotting. I am pretty sure by now that it is most definitely not.
I throw the last few things in my bag and grab my pillow, since it’s softer than a hospital pillow, and head out. By the door to the baby’s room, I stop and peek in.
So much undone. So much I need to do.
I have one more week of work before maternity leave and then a whole week of maternity leave before the baby comes. David’s mom is flying in the day before my scheduled C-section to watch Ellie. My parents are flying in two days before. My stepmom and I have plans to go shopping to get the last few things the baby might need.
I stare down at my belly.
Well, at least that was supposed to have been the plan.
6.15p.m. Saturday, July 3, 2021
I call my dad, who lives in California, as David drives us to my sister’s house. We had just talked that morning.
“We’ve decided,” my dad had said when we’d talked, “that if Riker wants to come early, he can come on the 11th. That way, the day we get to Texas, you’ll be out of the hospital.”
My dad and my stepmom have never missed the birth of one of their grandchildren. Riker is the last grandchild, and they don’t want to miss his either.
My dad answers on the second ring.
“Bad news,” I say. “My water broke.”
“No!!!” my dad says. “We just talked about that this morning!”
“This kid is already a rebel,” I tell him.
He yells for Sharon, so he can tell her this news. They tell us to keep them posted. They say they’ll change their tickets and they’ll see us in a few days.
6.30p.m. Saturday, July 3, 2021
We say goodbye to Ellie in the living room of my sister’s house. Give her hugs and kisses and tell her the next time we see her, we’ll have her baby brother. She is too busy playing with her cousins to really care that we’re leaving.
I give the last of the instructions to Liz, tell her we’ll text with updates, and tell them to have fun at the fireworks.
I really wanted to see the fireworks.
Instead, we head to the hospital.
“Are you nervous?” David asks.
“A little,” I say. “Are you?”
“A little.”
At the hospital, the only open entrance is through the emergency room. We head inside and go up to the lady at the window.
“Can I help you?” she says.
“I’m pretty sure my water broke,” I tell her.
She has me fill out paperwork and then tells us to sit in the waiting room. It’s maybe only five minutes before a nurse appears to walk us up to Labor and Delivery.
She leads us into the triage area, where I sit on a gurney. I change into a hospital gown and get a COVID test. The nurse who asks me even more questions and inputs my information says we can skip the test where they make sure it’s really amniotic fluid leaking. She says it’s quite obvious it is.
Everything happens fast from there.
The anesthesiologist stops by to explain the spinal block. The on-call obstetrician comes by to introduce herself. Dr. Evans is her name. She says there is no reason to wait.
They walk me to the operating room, and I sit on the bed in there. I take deep breaths to calm myself.
It is time.
9.11p.m. Saturday, July 3, 2021
Baby Riker enters the world at 9:11 p.m., weighing 5lbs 13 ounces (a lot smaller than I expect him to be) and measuring at 18.5 inches.
The few seconds before he cries feels like the longest of my life, but then I hear them, and my heart swells.
Ten miles away, over a park near my sister’s house, fireworks explode in the sky and Ellie smiles and laughs with her cousins.
Barely more than four hours ago, I sat on the couch and worried about the laundry and the other chores undone. Now, as I wait to hold my baby for the first time, none of that matters.
The only thing that matters is he is here, he is okay, and finally, our little family is complete: David, Ellie, Riker and me.
Non-fiction.
As it turns out, it would be three weeks before we could actually all be together as a family, but that is a story for another entry. Also, I promise not every story this season will be about my kids. I just haven't had a chance to write some of this stuff out, and it's nice to have a written account of things. Even better when it fits the prompt!
This was written for therealljidol Three Strikes Mini Season. If you liked my entry, please consider voting for me! You should also go read all the other amazing entries. You can find them all here. Voting should be up Monday night!