I barely slept that night. I was so uncomfortable and I spent a lot of the night timing contractions which were between 5 and 15 minutes apart but still not overly painful. I was grateful to be in the city knowing that I could wait to go to the hospital until I was much further along. Well, I got up and had breakfast and after a while, Rob pulled into the hotel in a truck that the mine let him have. The mine was so great! They offered us some drivers for the day which we happily accepted and we hopped into another truck to pick my mom up from the airport. After all of my stress, by 11am I had my mother and husband with me and was feeling a lot better. My contractions had slowed down and I was thinking that we would be heading to the mine after my 2:30 appointment and that maybe all of this drama was for nothing.
We had a great lunch, which I am still thinking about, and then did some shopping until the appointment. No big deal. Rob got a day off and a chance to get to some stores that he had been wanting to go to, and I was feeling a little silly. The doctor was surprised to see my mom and we had a nice laugh about it and then I went for another pelvic exam. There had been no change in my dilation so we started discussing how to proceed. We would head home and I would go to the hospital here twice a day to have my blood pressure checked since it was kind of high that day. Before we left the office, we all crowded into one of the little rooms and he put me on the fetal monitor again. He hooked it up and had me roll onto my left side. The heartbeat slowed to 80 and the doctor had me roll back onto my back. We were all talking and discussing and the doctor very calmly said something like, "I'm not comfortable with this, I think that we should go ahead and do this now." Basically, that was it. He said he wanted us to head to the emergency room and that he wanted to do a c-section. Rob asked, "When?" and he said "Now". Oh....crap....we all kind of looked at each other. God I was glad that everyone was with me. It was amazing how calm we all were. We went to the doctor's desk where he wrote up a paper for us to give to the emergency room and off we went. Rob and my mom quickly formulated a plan that during the surgery, my mom would go check into the hotel and then return to the hospital. Rob would have to wait outside and I would go in for the c-section. Before I knew it, we were in the prep room and they were asking me questions and Rob went into admissions to fill out some forms. They put me on a gurney and wheeled me to the operating room. I'd never had surgery before and was trying to stay calm. Thankfully, I'd done that lamaze class the day before and boy did those breathing techniques come in handy as I started to realize what was happening. You have to keep in mind that my Spanish is still terrible and that I am in Honduras. Most of the doctors speak English and thankfully, the wonderful anesthesiologist spoke a bit of English, too. The whole surgery was fairly terrifying and I'd rather not relive it so I'm going to brush over it fairly quickly. I was awake but pretty numb. My doctor did the surgery with a good friend of his and they seemed to have the time of their life while I tried not to look at the reflection of their work in the light above my head. Eventually, I heard the women in the room all say "oooh" and then I heard "varon" which basically meant that its a boy! I didn't hear any crying or anything and got a bit scared. Then the pediatrician stepped up and grabbed the baby and took him to a table. Finally I heard my son screaming his little head off. It was as though I wasnt there. Finally someone looked at me and let me know that everything was good. I heard my doctor tell someone that the umbilical was wrapped around his neck and that was the problem. I started to feel better and after a while, they brought my screaming baby over to me and held him to my cheek for about a minute. I couldnt move my arms to hold him or touch him so all I could do was lay there and cry with relief. Then they took him away and the surgery continued. I was numb but it still was uncomfortable and there was a lot of work to do before it was finally over. The rest is unimportant. At about 3:30 on July 6 my doctor made the decision and by 5:45, Hunter was in the world. We are all healthy and happy. It is now Sunday night and after 3 days in the hospital, we are settled in at home. I'm still very sore and trying to get into the swing of things. My son is gorgeous and funny and we are all so happy that he is here.
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