Eva's birth story as told by my best friend Rebekah, who was thankfully with me every step of the way.
I have been flying on adrenaline the past 24 hours, because little Eva Kay Rayner was born at 6:18 yesterday (September 17th). The adrenaline part came when Meeghan decided to test our friendship and start having the baby in the van, on the way to the hospital! Long story short, I received a call from Meeghan at 6:00pm yesterday [note the time of Eva’s birth], saying she “thought” she was in labor and needed for me to pick her up and take her to the hospital. No sooner did we get to the end of the street and both of us were in tears—Meeghan’s for pain, mine because I didn’t know what else to do! As we pulled on to 32 Mile she was huffing and puffing pretty good…by about 30 mile she says, “we need to call the doctor and find out what to do…” In my head I’m thinking…”what do you mean ‘what to do?’” The doctor was paged and we were told we’d hear back in 15 or 20 minutes….We’re at about 27 mile at this point and Meeghan says (not calmly—mind you) “Call 9-1-1.” Umm…okay. (I wasn’t convinced we had a problem—I though maybe Meeghan had panicked). I said, “about how far apart are your contractions?”
“Two minutes!”
“WHAT?!?!?!?”
We call 9-1-1, they tell us to pull over on the ramp to 26 mile and they’ll be there in minutes….In the meantime Meeghan is crying in pain that the baby is coming and she needs to push…I cannot tell you the panic that took over as I furiously dialed 9-1-1 AGAIN, to insure that they were on their way. What seemed liked an hour probably took about a minute and half! The EMS guys show up and tell me, “Don’t worry, it’s going to be okay.”
In my mind, “okay” meant we were going to fly to the hospital, barely get to a room, and Chris would help Meeghan in her delivery. I sighed a breath of relief…
Until a second later Meeghan’s clothes were flying off and she’s saying, “I need to push.”
Back to panicked mayhem! To my shock, they fully intended on delivering her, in the ambulance, on the way to the hospital. (Not that Meeghan had a choice in the matter!)
Meeghan pushes once—the head pops out.
Twice, Holy Cow…we have a baby!
EMS later told us that it took exactly 6 minutes for Meeghan to deliver the baby from the time they put her on the stretcher…
Thank you JESUS, they got there when they did! Meeg and I were 6 minutes away from delivering that baby on the side of the road!
Not only did I have the awesome job of holding my friend’s hand as she welcomed her beautiful [speedy] baby into the world, but I became an honorary deputy and helped with oxygen, blankets, gloves, etc. Unexplainably INCREDIBLE!
Chris had beat us to the hospital…however, the last phone call he received went something like, “They’re loading her into the ambulance right now and checking her…CLICK.” You can imagine his surprise when the doors opened and out comes mom WITH baby!
It was quite the event! Mom and Baby are both doing awesome. Little Eva is a little blue and purple from the sky-rocketing that happened through the birth canal, but she was a healthy 8lbs 3oz, and 20 inches long.
Time line:
6:10pm - The 911 call was made
6:12pm - EMS arrives
6:18- Eva is born!!!
I cannot tell you how thankful I was to have Rebekah with me. She means the world to me (and our girls). We are so excited for her and her husband who are walking the road of adoption. Please pray for them, as they walk out this journey. You can follow their adoption journey at Heart Cries.
1 comment:
I was just thinking about our experience yesterday and told Ben it has to be one of the top highlights of my life. I asked him if he could possibly imagine sitting in the back of an ambulance, looking over at his best friend and saying, "Um...you just had a baby--in an ambulance!" I am repeatedly thankful for our swift EMS guys and couldn't put a price on the experience. Or Eva. She came out an aggressor; it's no wonder she's wanting to walk early. She'll problably be president before she's 12!
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