Healthvues

A bright pink sky greets us in the morning. The birthmother calls again at about 8:30 am and tells us she’s going to the hospital in about 2 hours. Her contractions are about 90 minutes apart now and she wants this over with NOW! This is it - we’re off. It will take us about 2 hours to get to Harrison, AR where the hospital is located. It’ll only take the birthmother about 30 minutes to get there. It’s an absolutely glorious day - not a cloud in the sky and about 60 degrees. We hardly say anything on the ride up - not really knowing what to expect. We didn’t know for sure if the hospital staff would be receptive to an adoptive couple (we’ve been told that not many hospitals are adoption-friendly). We didn’t know how the birthparents would be about all this - after all, this is crunch time. Now, not only are we kicked out of our comfort zone of home, but also our new-found comfort zone of Siloam Springs. We get to the hospital before the birthparents and decide to go check in to a hotel for the duration (some hospitals will let the adoptive couple stay in the hospital just like a birthmother, but we could not here). When we came back, we met the birthparents in the parking lot. After some nervousness, things start falling into place. The birthmother seems to be getting more comfortable as each thing falls into place - where we’re staying; that we’ll be allowed to care for the baby; that the legalities are in place; etc. Every nurse who comes in contact with us knows all about us and could not be any warmer and friendlier. They say that they do not get many adoptive situations, so we’re kind of an interesting adventure for them! This is a fairly small hospital serving a largely rural area and this doesn’t come up everyday. We meet the birthmother’s doctor and she is wonderful. She tells us she has been looking forward to meeting us. And she’s also fascinated by our choice to preserve Alex’s cord blood - they’ve never done that before either! (BTW, we talked about this with the birthmother months ago and she agreed it was a great idea. We contacted a cord blood bank in Boston and have the kit already with us - it’s incredibly easy to do.) She goes over Alex’s stats and tells us everything is looking great. All the nurses know about us and are so welcoming and include us in everything. They make sure they know how to get a hold of us when the magic moment arrives. The birthmother’s contractions are about 20 minutes apart, but she could still have a long way to go, so her doctor begins to induce. We’re told that we might as well go back to the hotel and wait for their phone call. We leave with an incredulous feeling - we’ve heard so many horror stories about rural hospitals and unfriendly nurses and policies towards adoption - but we have not experienced any of that. And the coolest thing about this so far? We hear Alex’s heartbeat for the first time!!! But for now, we head back to the hotel after saying a short “see ya in a few hours, hopefully!” to the birthmother. We go back to the hotel room and call over to the hospital every few hours to see what’s happening - progressing, but not very quickly.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 26th, 2007 at 6:06 am and is filed under Our Open Adoption Story. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.