Family Calamity

This is part 7 of the Journey. To start from the begining go here.

“Are you ok?” the doctor asked in her funny accent.

“Yeah, I’ll be fine, I just need to sit a minute.”

“You look really pale.” My wife chimed in between contractions

“I think you should go outside,” the doctor insisted.

She grabbed me by the arm and led me out to a lone chair in the hallway. Now I’m no specialist in preventative passing out measures, but I always thought you were supposed to put your head between your knees. Apparently not.

“Lean your head back” the doctor barked.

Won’t that make it harder for the blood to get up to the noggin?

She took her palm and pushed my forehead back with her nasty bloody glove. As soon as my head tapped the wall….

Fainting is just like the movies, a bright light above, people repeating “are you ok?” as they slowly come back into focus, blackness fading. My body was tremoring.

“Yeah, I’m fine, what the heck happened?”

Our translator-escort-good-friend Jer clued me in “You passed out, are you ok man? It was pretty scary, your whole body was shaking. The doctor wondered if you were going into epileptic shock.”

“How long was I out?”

“About 30 seconds, you really gave me a scare.”

My whole body tingled and I was still shaking. For some reason I kept repeating this over and over.

“I’m soo tingly.”

A nurse came and started to splash water in my face…I thought she was a little late. I was annoyed. At least I could feel good about giving my wife a break from Dr. Fingers. The doctor instructed Jer to hold my legs up. So here I am right next to the elevator that everybody is getting in and out of, lying on the floor shaking with my legs up in the air repeating “My body’s so tingly” I’m sure it was a wonderful site for all. The highlight of my life. The doctor returned to Morgan, not changing her gloves I might add. Ever hear of sterile, doc?

After I stopped tingling they wheeled me down to the emergency room and put me in a bed to fully recover. Jeremy made sure I was alright before going back up to make sure Morgan wouldn’t need any translation. I believe he will be forever changed by the sounds that escaped my wife as he waited in that hallway.

I was sitting alone on an ER bed in a dark room when my phone rang.

“How are you doing?” It was Jeremy.

“Oh I’m feeling better, I’ll probably head up in a few minutes.”

“You’d better get up here, you’re a dad again.”

I had missed the birth of my second son. It only took Morgan an hour from when we arrived. Jonas was born at 6:00 am on the nose. I sat up, forgetting about the tingles and ran up the stairs. He was 8lbs, 2 ounces. I had just enough time to bring the nurse his baby clothes when somebody from the billing department hunted me down to let me know I needed to go pay for my ER visit.

Are you kidding me, I thought. My son is all of five minutes old and you need me to pay my ER bill now? I guess they were unaware that I’d be spending a lot of time at their fine establishment over the next ten days.

This is part seven of the journey. To continue follow the links below.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8

This is part five of Jonas’ Journey. To start from the beginning go here

It’s early in the morning, 4:00 am, my wife likes to make sure our last free night before a new baby is one of little sleep. Her contractions are 4 minutes apart and are getting stronger.

“I think it’s time to call Jer.” My wife says calmly. Jeremy is our ride to the hospital. Wait, he’s more than that, he’s our translator, a big comfort in a our upcoming time of need, an extra person to play Settlers of Catan, and one of our best friends.

“Are you sure?” I’ve been told not to ask this when your wife utters those words, but it’s better than what I said last time. Fortunately my wife had grace for my response despite her pain.

“Yes. Call Jer.”

I picked up the phone wondering how Jeremy would feel about being woken up at 4:00 am. I was just relieved he actually answered.

“It’s go time.”

“What exactly does that mean?”

I explained and he headed on over.

I grabbed the suitcase. The hospitals here provide nothing. No clothes, blankets, diapers, wipes, or anything. You have to bring it all yourself. Jeremy arrived rather quickly. We loaded the car and headed out.

“Slow down!” My wife barked at Jeremy. “I’m in labor, are you trying to jolt the baby out!?!” They bickered back and forth, in a playful way of course. It’s how they communicate a good bit of the time.

We pulled up to the hospital, got out, and headed up the elevator to the labor and delivery floor. I started to call the doctor, but no need, she was already there delivering another baby.

In this country you don’t have doctors on rotation for delivery. You have your doctor and she delivers your baby regardless of what time it is, if she has to be at the office all day the next day, or if she’s in the middle of an appointment. When it’s time to push the child out, she drops everything and delivers your baby. This normally isn’t a big deal because about 80% of women have c-sections. That’s not our cup of tea though, we went natural (I use the term we very loosely here). The doctor had to be in her office to start her day in just a couple hours, and had already been up with another delivery. She clearly wanted to get out of there. We believe this is what led to the poor decisions she was about to make.

This is part five of the journey. To continue follow the links below.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8

This is part four of Jonas’ Journey. To start from the beginning go here.

“You’re pregnant?” The steward franticly asked when he finally noticed my wifes belly.

Even though they rip you off on baggage these days we weren’t trying to smuggle an extra carry-on bag. The workers of EasyJet somehow managed to miss my wife’s bump until we were on the plane. The steward seemed in a panic, but he hastily had my wife sign some sort of waiver and was put to ease.

The employees in Spain were a little brighter: they noticed the bulge at baggage check in.

“How many weeks are you?” The ticket agent questioned.

“Twenty-eight.”

“Do you have a note from your doctor?”

“Uhhh, no, we said 28, not 36.”

“You can’t fly.”

What? We can’t fly? The only reason we were on this trip was to renew our visas. How did we just fly over here four days ago? My wife had the same belly. The waiver! Well we tried to resurrect that option but to no avail. They wouldn’t let us fly without a note and they weren’t at all accommodating in helping us find a solution.

Now we were frantic. We called a friend back home, told him to try and get ahold of Morgan’s doctor and ask the doctor to fax the note. We barely got our message communicated when my phone ran out of minutes (prepaid). We sat, we waited, and we sat some more. Final boarding was at 1:10. The fax, came at 1:08. Our doctor came through, but the race was on. I ran with Elijah and my wife rolled down the halls dragging a suitcase behind. We made it just in time to stand around with everybody else waiting to board the flight. It was slightly delayed. Go figure.

This is part four of the journey. To continue follow the links below.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8

This is part two of Jonas’ Journey. If you missed part one go here first.

As Morgan went to take her umpteenth pregnancy test, I was secretly hoping for positive results. Sure the whole Christmas shaft was a drag, but how can you not get excited? I still refused to show any emotion. My wife was just a little loony and addicted to urinating on a stick. I couldn’t join in the insanity by hopping on the crazy train.

This time Morgan’s intuition was right. There were two lines. I was tickled. We immediately jumped on the Internet to calculate the due date. It was December 31st. Poor kid. Not only will the baby get the Christmas shaft, but the baby will inevitably share its birthday parties with the older brother who was born Dec. 14th. Not a major crisis though. We were elated.

Now we had a choice to make. We were living in Africa and I wouldn’t exactly recommend the health care. Public health care is about as good as having your wife deliver at the fish market. Morgan and I knew a few people who had positive experiences with deliveries in the private sector, and she had a relatively good pregnancy and delivery last time outside of not being able to hold anything down for the first 3 months. The idea of going back to America and being around family was appealing, but expensive. We had international insurance, and it only covered everything if you were out of country because America’s health care system is terrible and ridiculously expensive. That’s another issue all together. In the end we chose to have the baby in Africa. The lure of the States was strong, but not several thousand dollars strong when we believed his care here would be close to par as a US hospital.

This is part two of the journey. To continue follow the links below.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8