Since Dylan became a big brother a month before we had expected that he would, we did not have all of the details in place for who he would spend time with during my labor and delivery. Well, that is not exactly true. We did have details in place, but we only had a plan “A” and not a plan “B”.
As of a week before baby Blake’s arrival, everything was looking good and it seemed as though my dream of giving birth at home was about to become a reality. My husband and I talked about what Dylan would need while I was going through the process of laboring and giving birth and we had decided that it was very important that my husband be the one to look after Dylan while all of that was going on.
I was feeling confident in my body’s ability to get me through labor and birth as well as in the two midwives that I had been seeing for my prenatal care. I felt that they would be all of the support that I needed to get through the birth. My husband was a wonderful labor support during the birth of our first son, but I decided that it was more important for Dylan to be cared for by his Daddy then for me to have his Daddy by my side while he was cared for by other family members. My husband agreed because we did not want Dylan to feel like he had been shuffled off with someone else while Mommy and Daddy were busy “getting baby out of Mama’s belly”.
Unfortunately, my health began to decline and lab tests produced results that indicated that it was time for my midwives to transfer my care to a hospital. When I visited the hospital for more tests, the tests revealed that I had developed a medical condition that required that I deliver the baby the next day. I am not sure what my husband and I were thinking as we packed all of our things for the hospital that night – perhaps we were not thinking. We packed everything that Dylan would need for a few days and we took him with us. As you will learn in the next post in this series, this was not a good idea.
Photo by click on morguefile.com.