Hellobee

Hello from the fourth floor of a hotel in snowy Winnipeg…

I woke up this morning and looked outside and was suddenly very, very glad that we left yesterday, even though we departed from our own driveway at least three hours later than intended and didn’t get here until well past dinnertime, ensuring M stayed up until midnight.

We knew we were being kicked out of town, to Winnipeg, to deliver — what we weren’t expecting was how quickly it would happen. I talked to my doctor about the necessity to leave on a Saturday. That Tuesday the clinic called me and said they had the appointment info, and we had to be in Winnipeg for pre-op in exactly a week (this upcoming Tuesday) for surgery this Wednesday. The baby’s due date is December 15, M was two weeks late, and so I was originally hoping to have a baby by Christmas — even when we switched to the scheduled local C-section plan, it was set up for December 9, and I had scheduled my own leave from work to start after December 2 so I’d have a week to get things in order.

Instead, I spent last Tuesday alternating between crying, texting various people to sort out the logistics of one set of grandparents coming to Winnipeg with us, emailing my boss who was out of town to tell him I wouldn’t be at work when he got back, and making frantic to-do lists. I saw my doctor the next day and she reassured me on the medical side of things — she was very confident we are doing the right thing — but from Tuesday to when we left on Saturday afternoon, I did not stop moving. I set up every space in the house I could get at, but our basement is a disaster and there are a lot of things I had wanted to clean and organize that just didn’t get done. We were running out of time on renovations anyway, and were definitely not expecting this mad dash to the end.

Packing for an out of town delivery was its own set of strangeness. What do you pack when you aren’t sure how long you’ll even be in the hospital, and when various family members are staying in various places? I had to do my own hospital bag, plus stuff for baby, stuff for me pre-delivery while staying in a hotel/AirBnB, stuff for baby once we’re released, a bag for Mac Daddy that could work for hotel, AirBnB and hospital, and a bag for M. And then we forgot her entire backpack and Mac Daddy had to run to the mall to buy her a new wardrobe the day after we arrived. We had to stash an extra car seat in the car so that my mom and her partner can haul M around when we aren’t there, plus a pack and play in case we get discharged earlier than we expected so baby has a place to sleep, plus winter gear for everyone just in case…

All of these logistic hurdles and the sheer busy scrambling that came with still technically being at work while trying to get everything else done meant that I didn’t really have the time or energy to even think about the whole having a baby thing. I crashed into bed with a sore body every night and tried to get some sleep knowing I had to get up and do it some more the next day. So it wasn’t until we were actually driving to Winnipeg that I started trying to wrap my head around the realities of this birth, the way that it is so far off from our original expectations, the fact that I am having another Cesarean, the fears about hemophilia and having a baby that’s a bit on the early side, the anxiety of delivering in a new place with new people, and of course, the joy that we’re BRINGING A BABY HOME SOON.

It’s been one of the most tumultuous, weird weeks of my life. Now that we’re here I’m forced to leave the worries about home at home, because we’re five hours away and I can’t telepathically clean the house. I’m trying to embrace these last few days with M, to soak in the details, to give her some one-on-one time, and I’m trying to clear some mental space to think about the newest member of our family’s arrival, too.

One quote I read recently has been sticking with me, and that’s, “It’s not what happens, it’s how you handle it.” Tensions have been high in our household over the last week, with everyone’s anxieties and priorities suddenly surfacing at warp speed — this is the part where we let it all go and accept what comes next, whatever that may be.

Hopefully the next time I check in we have a happy, healthy new baby! Thank you for all of your support on this journey so far.